A separate gust sucked Nat towards the open gate.
I reached for him, tried to hook his wings, but my fingers could not span the widening gap.
He spun limp, his wings folding as he lost control and was flung into the wide-open sky.
But my wings filled. I was lifted by an opposing current. I’d won. Or the windbeaters had.
The challenger was defeated.
The galleries began to sing. Tradition. A second time through The Rise, this time to welcome a new Singer. Their song, which until that moment had been my song too, lifted higher, and the wind swept me up. I was truly theirs now.
I was a killer. I knew no greater pain.
* * *
“Come up, Kirit Spire!” Rumul shouted from the balcony.
Wik had to reach out with a hook and pull me onto the council tier. He let me lean against him while the council argued in a corner. Had I succeeded? The battle had been won, but by whom? And the secrets I had shared. The traditions I had shattered.
To my wind-deafened ears, their debate was just more noise. Then they parted, walked towards me, the full council following Rumul’s lead.
“Welcome, Singer,” he said.
The caustic sting barely registered as Rumul marked my right cheek with a new symbol for winning the challenge: a knife. Honoring my murderous deed. I let it burn, unflinching. I heard Nat’s scream again, an echo inside my head as he disappeared.
Now I was a Singer, marked with the death of my challenger.
Now I was Spire, locked within its walls no matter where I flew.
PART THREE. WHAT IS LOST
20. FALL
I released my wing grips and let my arms hang at my sides. My feet touched the bone floor of the balcony, and I wavered at the edge until Wik pulled me by the robe, farther into the tier.
A visibly pregnant Singer brought me water in a brass cup. Cold in my hand and against my lips. I could not swallow it without great effort. The Singer took the cup back and put a bowl in my hands.
“Eat,” she said, her brown eyes trying to look deep into mine. “The Gyre’s exhausting. You’ll feel better soon.”
I stared at the bowl. Stone fruit in honey. The sweet smell made my stomach growl, but my fingers gripped the bowl’s rim and did not reach for the fruit.
A gray-haired Singer patted my shoulder and handed me a clean gray robe. Another brought a sack of herbs and salve for my scratches and cuts.
Wik removed my novice wings, negotiating the straps and harness over my deadweight arms. I stared at his cheeks, his markings. He’d flown the Gyre. Faced a challenger. Many challengers. How did he go on after?
I didn’t ask, and he didn’t meet my eyes.
Behind the Singers tending and congratulating me, a low bone table held more of the stone fruit and two additional brass cups. Yes, I remembered. Three of us would fly today.
Even now, Sellis looked over the council balcony, waiting to fly. Vess, a novitiate an Allmoons older than Sellis, paced in the passageway between the tier’s galleries and large alcoves. We were on the newest council tier. The highest. The outcroppings of bone here were lightly carved, with areas marked for new carving by novitiates.
The noise from the galleries shifted from a discussion’s rumble to anticipatory hush. Sellis waited to be called forward, standing on intertwined symbols carved in the floor: sacrifice and duty.
Rumul stood beside her, right hand light on her shoulder. He looked my way and gestured to a fourth Singer elder, then turned his attention back to his acolyte.
After Allmoons, Rumul had given me a chance to change my life. He’d told me the past Ezarit had kept hidden. He’d put a burden on me: become a Singer or face the consequences of attacking the Spire.
The Singer sent over by Rumul lifted my wrist, examining my Lawsbreaks. Trespass, Bethalial, Treason. Heavy markers, bound with silk cord. Then she took her bone knife and cut through the skein. The markers fell into her palm.
With my challenge won, I’d proven myself. My burden — my Lawsbreaks — gone.
I’d accepted that bargain. I’d flown the Gyre. My friend had fallen at my hand.
Who was I now? Kirit Densira would have demanded to know how Nat’s loss served the city. Kirit Spire could not find the words to ask. Sacrifice. Duty. Tradition. I clenched my teeth. If I’d let sound escape my mouth, it would have been a scream. At the Singers. At myself.
Wik took the still-full bowl from my hands and cleared his throat. “It is not always this hard, Kirit. But if it were easy, Singers would be no better than monsters. Or the worst of the city’s Lawsbreakers.”
I looked him full in the eyes and opened my mouth, but no sound would come out. I choked on Nat’s name.
The gallery cheered as Sellis leapt from the council balcony to defend the city and defeat her challenger.
I looked over the balcony’s edge and watched her dive like a silent predator towards her quarry. The challenger circled the far wall of the Gyre.
Sellis drew her first knife. I could watch no more. I turned away.
A novice appeared on the ladder to the tier, carrying a long parcel. The gray silk wrapping glowed in the late sunlight. The knots of the package fell away at a touch to reveal a pair of Singer wings. Mine. No more borrowed novice wings. I did not reach for them. The novice looked at me, curious.
“Kirit?” Lurai’s voice. I hadn’t recognized him. He was once tower too, though he could not remember. I took the wings and vowed to remember Densira. My family.
“You did it,” Moc whispered, appearing by my side. He smelled of flame and rot gas.
Moc. Briber of windbeaters. Stirrer of disagreements that endangered all he loved.
Impervious to my despair, he laughed. “I knew you could.”
Of course I could. I’d hunted down my life as Kirit Densira, killed it right off, and had become this person. For what? For a pair of new wings and a gray robe.
I shook my head. No. For the good of the city too.
The tiers roared with satisfaction.
Lurai looked over the edge. “She did that perfectly. Fast. Without breaking silence.” A quick glance at me. “Sorry. You also did well.”
“Come up, Sellis Spire.” Rumul’s voice boomed in the Gyre’s slowing winds.
Sellis’s fight had finished quickly. Flawlessly.
She rose now on a draft, her hair wild across her forehead. Her eyes glittered from the fight. Her left hand still gripped a bone knife wet with blood.
She soared above the balcony and then landed by curling her wings just so. With a shrug, she furled the novice wings and stepped out of them. She took the robe from Rumul’s hands and smiled at him as she put it on over her fighting shift.
She turned her head to me, then looked down over the drop. “We did it.”
I licked my dry lips. Rasped, “Who did you kill?”
She paused. “I don’t know.” Turned to the table of food and drink before I could ask if she knew what the challenge had been.
I didn’t know what Nat’s challenge had been. I would never know.
Lurai held out another pair of Singer wings to Sellis, drawing her back towards us. She smiled brighter still and took them, brushing her fingers across the silk. She touched my wings next.
“We are like sisters now,” she said.
I could not find the words to respond. She waited a beat, then looked away, towards Rumul.
He waved her to approach the council members. When she reached them, he marked her hand as he had marked mine.
Novices brought more bowls to the table, this time containing apples and stone fruit.