I reached for the prong.
Wik tucked it away in his upper robe. “You must learn to make your own echoes out here, as you did inside.”
Sellis took my hand and pulled me to the edge of the tower. She nudged me to sit, with my feet hanging over. I balked. I was unwinged, having left my training pair in my alcove.
“We will fly tonight,” she said. Her voice sounded more hesitant than I’d ever heard it.
“How many Singers are night fliers?” I asked.
“Most. Everyone has to train to do it, but some don’t like it. Many think this one step closer to falling.”
“But this lets you see! And hunt skymouths! It’s an honor to keep the city safe.”
Sellis winced. “This is a charge, not an honor. And you will notice your hearing gets more sensitive for all things. There is a tradeoff. You will be marred.”
I looked at my hand and its silver mark. “How?”
“You will hear too much. All the time. Singing will be painful, but you must continue to do it. You will overhear what you shouldn’t. You will find crowds abhorrent. It sets you apart.”
I already was set apart.
Being separate from the rest of the city was not unusual for Singers. I realized Sellis’s cautions held a note of pride. Her concerns were Spire concerns: traditions, skills, Rumul. How much power she had and could gain. How high on the tower you lived didn’t matter here. Influence within the Spire and marks did.
Wik had many marks. Rumul had many more. Sellis and I each had just the one, on our hands. Plus the pathways the echoes had begun carving in our brains — those were marks too.
“When do we begin?” I whispered.
“Now,” Wik said. He pulled me to my feet and covered my eyes with a silk scarf. Blind. I stood atop the Spire, blind.
“Wait!” I couldn’t see where the edge of the tower was, though I felt the solid bone beneath my soft footwraps. The air whistled around me, but I froze in place, afraid to step the wrong way. Nets or no, I did not want to fall.
Wik took my hand and guided me a few steps backwards. Then he let go and spun me around.
Sellis whispered, “Not so fast!” Her voice was loud in my ears. I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth, fast, like I’d done in the Spire. My eyes rolled beneath the scarf, searching for sound.
Wik said, “Listen.”
And I could, faintly. I heard the wind against the towers and how it wrapped them with soft sweeps of breeze. I could hear gusts too.
We had so many ways to describe different types of wind. Lifts. Crosses. Constants. Gaps. I might one day hear them all.
Something low and large echoed ahead of me. The closest tower? Varu. The wind swept over the shape, slowly, then ripped around the higher towers beside it, whistling. Far beyond, Lith lurked, broken and forlorn. I knew it was there, though I couldn’t hear it, because nothing else sounded so empty in the entire city.
I knew then that we stood at the apex of the Spire, on the western side, with Varu on my left. That was my compass. The other towers close in sounded whole and twisting. The wind moved among the tiers, and I heard soft laughter and muffled sounds of families gathered together for warmth and comfort. All very faint.
Echoes bounced off the crystals Sellis wore in her hair like shards of sound in a soft cushion. Sound marked where her body was next to mine and, in front of me, defined a broader, taller form. Wik. I reached out my hand. My palm brushed his silk robes.
“Well done, Kirit,” he said, removing my blindfold. He lifted two sets of wings from the roof, gesturing to Sellis and me.
The wing frames were covered with deep gray silk. In the dark, they were practically black. Nightwings. Invisible against the sky.
Nat, I thought, the stories were true.
I took one set of wings and slipped the straps over my shoulders.
“Already?” Sellis said, hesitating and pale. She looked at me and caught herself. “Kirit’s barely ready.” But I realized as she spoke that she’d never flown the dark either. I wasn’t so far behind her any longer.
My cheeks flushed, but I felt no fear. I knew I could die out there, but it would be among the towers, outside. In the wind. Not forgotten behind walls of bone.
“Frightened?” Sellis said to me.
“No,” I said, hoping this would continue to be true.
“You should be,” Wik said. “Many things live in the dark. Not just towers and skymouths.”
Skymouths. That did scare me. I looked over the edge of the Spire and saw the vast towers widening below us. The dark all around them, swirling to the clouds. Woozy, I had to catch myself before I fell. Sellis and Wik were too busy adjusting their wings. They did not notice.
My hand stung from Rumul’s mark as I flexed it to check the buckles on my nightwings. The straps were worn in, but the wings were beautifully made. Nothing like this kind of wing in the whole city. I could almost hear them sing. The wind cut around them with a chuckle, and it tickled my ears.
“Hurry,” said Wik. “Sunrise in a few hours.”
“Why can’t we test sounds at dawn?” Sellis asked.
“Because your eyes tell you what to see then. You need to train your ears.”
With that, Wik beckoned me to go first. I leapt from the Spire into the darkness.
As I leaned into my glide away from the Spire, waiting for Wik and Sellis to catch up, one of the worn buckles on my night-dark wings slipped.
The strap screeched. As the bone loop of the buckle continued to give, I could hear the fabric tearing. Before my training, I wouldn’t have heard a thing.
My wings pulled taut in the wind. All around me was pitch-black. If the strap broke, I would fall and no one would see me go. I scrambled to set my right wing’s elbow hook and reached as far as I could to hold the left strap together with my hand. The movement threw me off balance.
I began to spiral dizzyingly.
“What are you doing?” Wik shouted. When he realized what I held, he ordered, “Turn back now.”
I was already trying to turn back. Didn’t need to be told twice. I had dipped too low to regain the top of the Spire. I couldn’t maneuver, only glide and hope.
I heard the wind curve around something below me before I saw its shadowy outline, barely tinted against the darker forms of depth and clouds. A bridge.
Don’t overshoot it. You have one chance.
I could barely see it to time my landing.
I tried hearing the bridge, forcing my tongue against the dry — too dry — roof of my mouth repeatedly, until I made a loud, stuttering sound.
For a moment, my ears shaped the sweep of the sinew bridge. It stretched from Varu to Hirinat tower.
The bridge echo disappeared. I was not yet skilled enough.
I tried to hold the shape I’d heard in my mind. If I could drop low enough to catch the span with something — my hook, a knife, anything, I might stop my glide without falling.
Above, I heard the others glide past me. Wik dove below what must be the bridge. Catching me on this spiral would be risky, even for an accomplished Singer. But he was there to make the last-ditch attempt if I missed.
The strap slipped farther. The bone clasp cracked. And I heard Sellis beside me. She pushed me slightly off course with her backdraft.
“Shift, Sellis!” I shouted. How could she not hear me?
I could sense every change in the wind caused by the bridge and the looming wall of the Spire. If I didn’t course-correct soon, one would smash me flat, the other would cut me down.
“Sellis, break windward,” Wik yelled.
She finally heard and turned to clear the air. Her turn pulled me back onto a good landing angle for where I thought the bridge was. I kicked my feet out of their strap in time to hook the space where I pictured the railing should be.