Rumul appeared on the council gallery, and everyone stopped and turned to look. He spoke, and the wind carried his voice throughout the Spire.
“There has been a challenge. Singer Terrin wishes to address the city. The council has disagreed. He has issued the challenge.”
“Singer’s burden,” the groupings of gray-winged Singers said.
“He will fight for this right, and by fighting, earn his voice, or lose his wings, or forfeit his life.”
“Singer’s right,” the Spire responded. The deep tones of the group’s unified voice echoed across the tiers, through the galleries.
Sellis descended a ladder, eyes gleaming. She shouted, “Come on!” to me as she moved fast to find a good view in the galleries.
I followed in her wake, feeling rising excitement overcome the dread that had gripped the Spire for days. This was how Rumul had earned his tattoos. So many fights, like scars crossing his face. This was what my mother had done. And how my father became a windbeater. This was how, someday, I might earn my Singer wings. By fighting in the Gyre.
With everyone else, I turned and let the Gyre wind whip at my face.
* * *
The challenger had traded his gray robes for white. His wings were Singer’s wings, a lustrous gray. From where we sat, we could see Terrin had belted his straps double tight. He held a bone knife high in salute to his fellow Singers.
“In defense of the city,” Rumul shouted, “I will fight him.”
Beside me, Sellis gasped. Far above, Terrin looked paler than before. The rumble from the top tier grew so loud it sounded like the start of a city roar from the wrong direction.
Before anyone could move to stop him, Rumul dropped from the balcony, wings spread. He drew a worn, though still deadly sharp, bone knife from an arm sheath. He tossed it in the air from one hand to the other as he swept around the Gyre.
Terrin checked his straps and leapt, his wings spread full.
The two circled each other, sensing which gusts were powerful enough to lift them up and around. They worked the wind, full of pointed determination.
“I will speak,” Terrin shouted. Then he dove, only to shoot up another gust and tear at Rumul’s foot, as Rumul passed by.
“Terrin will try to drop Rumul at first opportunity,” Sellis said. She paused, swallowed hard, and added, “It’ll be his only opportunity.”
To me, the challenge seemed much like wingfights at Densira. The fight was smaller: only two men struggled to knock each other out of the Spire, dead or alive. But here, the stakes were higher: the winner spoke for the city, the loser was forever silenced.
“One may win without killing an opponent,” Sellis whispered. Her eyes were lamp-bright, and she leaned side to side as Rumul turned. She knew his battle glides, apparently, very well. “He trained me,” she explained. “As Wik and I have trained you.”
I nodded, still not sure enough of the situation to speak. Asking a muzz-dumb question at this point — when Sellis had just begun to confide in me instead of reminding me how little I truly knew — seemed unwise. I let her continue talking, as it seemed to ease her nerves.
Rumul’s glides grew shorter and shorter as he narrowed the horizontal and vertical gaps between him and Terrin. Then he shot forward on a fortunate gust. The smoke of the windbeaters’ rot gas preparations had tinted a breeze just enough for him to see it.
Below, the windbeaters drums and the pulse of their wings punctuated the battle at increasing speeds.
“What is it,” Lurai asked, coming to stand beside us, “that Terrin wants to say?”
Sellis shushed him. “The Gyre will prove whether it’s worth hearing over council’s advice.” She shook her head. “Terrin was Rumul’s friend.”
I wondered if there was a song for fighting a friend in a challenge, but I kept my mouth shut.
Sellis kneaded her robes with her hands. She saw me notice and pressed her palms to her lap. “Rumul won’t let him live. But he won’t let Terrin fall while still alive either; at this point, that would be shameful. For both of them.”
Back at Densira, wingfighters fought together in a tangle of jewel-colored wings and glass-spiked feet, of bone and fists and blood and netting. But that was child’s play compared to the Gyre. This was the maelstrom.
Terrin tired. His arms shook in his wings; sweat poured down his face.
Rumul was lucky with the gusts, for sure. One caught and lifted him towards Terrin. He took a wide swipe with his knife and almost tore one of Terrin’s wings. Terrin turned just in time.
They whipped by our tier, rising, mouths grim, knives sharp. Light spilled over them as the sun broached the Spire’s apex. Rumul blinked, dazzled for a moment. Long enough for Terrin to take advantage and get above the head Singer.
Sellis stuffed her hand between her teeth. I leaned forward, watching.
Terrin dove for Rumul, lips parted to shape a high-pitched shriek.
Singers in nearby galleries covered their ears, wincing in pain. I winced too, but could not turn away. Rumul growled and flipped an impossible turn in the tight space, timed to catch a windbeater’s gust perfectly. He grabbed Terrin’s wing.
With a jerk, he tried to tear the wing from Terrin’s back. This angled his own wings against the wind, and he plummeted, dragging Terrin with him.
In a moment, the two men were one body, falling together. Terrin landed a lucky strike with his knife, and blood bloomed on Rumul’s robe near his shoulder. Singers were on their feet, mouths open, soundlessly watching. Sellis among them.
Then Terrin’s second wingstrap gave way and his left arm pulled, dislocated, from the wing. Rumul rose, four wings bellying with wind, two at his back, two in his hands.
Shrilling with pain, Terrin grappled for a balcony. His fingers scraped the tier as he passed us. The gallery leaned forward as if they too were falling.
A grinding sound. A new gust pulled at us. A gate had opened at the base of the Spire’s occupied tiers. Terrin was sucked out still shrieking into the bright city sky.
The gate slammed as Terrin’s voice faded into nothingness.
The Spire held its breath as Rumul gathered his strength and rode the remaining Gyre winds upwards to the top of the Spire.
On the upper balconies, two council members reached out to pull Rumul onto the tier. They addressed the galleries. “It is decided.”
The galleries replied, “It is decided.”
Robes rustled as Singers turned back to their alcoves, order restored.
The council members led Rumul away from the top balcony to tend his wounds. The windbeaters dropped their oversized wings to the floor with a clatter.
In the moment after the beaters stopped channeling the winds, an ear-popping reversal swung the Gyre currents. The force pulled at my cheeks and my robes. Older Singers leaned away from the Gyre to brace themselves.
Ciel, standing too close to the edge of the gallery, tripped and fell forward, over the edge and into the chasm. Her tiny training wings fluttered half open and useless.
She screeched, breaking the post-challenge silence of the Spire. Lurai and I rushed back to the galleries and looked down. A half tier below, Ciel clung to the wall, looking up with wide eyes.
Sellis shook her head slowly. She looked exhausted. “Clumsy.” The word echoed around the Spire like a death rattle. There were few worse names to be called in the city. One thing the Spire had in common with the towers. Moc ran to my side and looked down.
“Singers can’t fall in the Gyre,” he whimpered.
I didn’t think. “Help me,” I said as I stepped to the edge. Sellis and Moc followed. Lurai hesitated, then joined us.