As the person straightened, I heard wings being furled. Battens clacked together, and silk rustled and folded. My echoes bounced off broad shoulders again.
“I can see you, Wik.” I would not fail in his presence again. “Even with the blindfold on.”
He chuckled. “You are quite good at this. Not everyone is. Sellis couldn’t sound her way out of her alcove without help for a year.”
“And Ciel and Moc?” I stepped onto the tier.
“Their ears are as sharp as yours, but they’re distractible.” His voice was closer now. I could hear him breathing. “Your focus is good.”
I didn’t need to echo to know where he was now. My fingers stretched out and tapped his lower arm. I traced the muscle down to the veins on his hand with my fingertips. He froze. I kept my hand on his arm. Tightened my grip, trapping him there.
“Why did you have me failed at wingtest, Wik?”
He stayed silent for a moment. His lips parted, audibly, as if he’d pressed them together before deciding to speak. “The council felt you would be more motivated to consider our offer. And Macal showed you too much with that dive.”
The young Magister. I couldn’t remember his face very well. It seemed so long ago. But the dive. I remembered that dive. I smiled. “A Singer’s dive.”
Wik’s robes rustled. He pulled his hand away. “Macal is talented, but unpredictable, and young. My brother doesn’t hold with all the traditions.”
“Your brother?”
“Yes,” Wik said. “And a good Magister. He cares about the towers very much. He is trying to convince our mother and the council that he could serve the city better as a teacher.”
As I absorbed this, Wik touched my shoulder. I startled.
“You need to keep going, Kirit. You’re almost there.” He stepped around me and clambered up the ladder. “See if you can smell your way to breakfast,” he whispered.
I stood still for another moment, the floor cool beneath my feet. Then I climbed after him, sightless, but not blind.
The noise of the dining alcove on the next tier sounded like a storm: conversations built and lulled. Pairs and clusters of novices passed me, hushing each other when they spotted my blindfold.
Embarrassed, I lowered my outstretched hands and tried to echo as unobtrusively as possible. The moment I did that, my sense of surrounding space began to fade. I stumbled and stopped. Then, taking a deep breath, I tilted my head back and echoed the way that worked best for me. I heard shapes that must have been tables and benches. A jumble of motions around me could have been novices, seated, standing, and walking. I found a table shape near the entrance of the dining alcove where two figures were seated: one broad and larger than most novice shapes, the other slim and sitting ramrod straight.
I sat down at this table, next to the second figure, hoping I’d got it right. I smelled pungent spices.
Fingers tugged at the knots of my blindfold. When it dropped, the daylight in the room made me blink until my eyes watered.
“You did it,” Sellis said. “First try.” She smiled guardedly. I thought I saw a jealous twinge, but then she brightened. “You understand now,” she said.
“With your help,” I said. I meant it too.
Wik pushed a bowl of potatoes and peppers towards me. “With enough practice, we’ll make you a Singer yet, Kirit Spire.”
“What’s next?” Breakfast’s spices prickled my tongue, and I blew out to cool my mouth. All around me, the sounds of the meal and the room added to what I could see. I wanted to learn more, to know everything now.
“Rest,” Wik said. “With no moon tonight, we must rest today.” I couldn’t imagine why. Not when there was so much to hear.
By the time I returned to my tier, closing my eyes now and then to see if echoing still worked, I was ready to curl up without unfolding my mat. Exhaustion and giddy success netted me and pulled me into sleep.
15. LIFT
Sellis woke me in the dark.
Many Singers were already awake, readying themselves to fly.
In the towers, night was for sleeping. For storing up energy for the next day.
But Singers flew the night. Now that I was learning how they did it, I sensed the power of the skill, the advantages. Nightwings. Like the children’s song, but better. They might see the invisible and travel through the city unobserved.
Sellis took me to the top of the Spire, where Wik waited for us. I breathed the fresh air. I wanted to throw myself to it; it felt so different from the trapped stuff that cycled through the Spire.
No moon. The stars were dim. I could not guess how long until sunrise. But I could see the nearest towers. The few lights within. The city slept, though we did not.
“Can you hear?” Wik growled in my ear. He pressed the metal prong to my temple again. “Echo. You will hear.”
Suddenly, I could hear too much. I could hear Wik’s breath and Sellis’s teeth chattering. I tried echoing faster. Sellis and Wik joined me. Faintly, I could hear something beyond them, in the distance, resonating.
I pictured the city before me, the outlines of the towers I knew from my studies. I imagined what could be out there that I could hear but not see.
The forms sounded faint, but very large. They surrounded the Spire.
Oh.
The sounds that my ears strained to hear were the true shapes of the city.
I drew a breath and whispered, “I can hear.”
“You will get better at it,” Wik said, almost too loud. I realized he wasn’t shouting.
My heart leapt. If I could hear the city, I could fly it. Even if I could not see it.
More citizens could learn this, too. If we could hear what we could not see, the towers could help seek out skymouth nests and free the city from their terror.
Sellis must have interpreted the excited look in my eyes. She shook her head.
“The city entrusts us with this knowledge, Kirit. This is not for the towers.”
“Why not?”
“Tradition. Since the Rise.”
“Singers say ‘tradition’ when they don’t want to explain.”
“It’s more than that.” Wik shook his head, struggling for patience. “It’s about our history. About how people work. Traditions hold the city together, like the bridges do the towers. Once, we had no traditions. Only fear and loss.”
There had been no traditions in the clouds. Where skymouths and worse roamed free. Where towers had gone to war, attacking each other in fear and desperation. I’d studied. I had sung The real Rise. The Singers’ traditions had lifted the city from that darkness.
Now I shivered, chilled.
Sellis, impatient with old history, pulled the conversation back to the night’s lesson. “Echoing is a matter of learning to listen even more,” she said. “You can hear in directions, see in sounds.”
“But it takes practice,” said Wik. “Do not assume that you can hear everything straightaway.”
But I was surely much better at this than they thought. Perhaps it was like my voice, the shouts I could make that no one else on this blessed Spire could. At least sometimes. When I was lucky. But maybe I could hear differently too.
Then Wik took the prong away, Sellis fell silent, and the city went dark. I could no longer hear the towers spread around me like a flower. No. I was silenced and grounded again. Wik had cut off a newly grown limb. I wanted it back.