“I think we should risk going back tonight. The council should hear about Narath.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Narath? The first tower?”
“You didn’t notice?”
Her silence told me everything I needed to know. I’d heard pride at Narath in the celebration of their challenger. Not grief. Not hopelessness. The Singers would certainly see more dissent from them soon. I explained this to Sellis.
“I heard nothing of the sort,” she said.
“Rumul sees the value of my insights. He has forgiven my Lawsbreaks. Why can’t you?” I decided not to bargain with her. I would speak my mind, not caring whether I earned another punishment. Duty. “Spire-born are sometimes very deaf to what tower words mean. I might break tradition, but I can help you understand the towers.”
A long silence as we flew nearer to Viit. “I see your point,” Sellis said. I hoped her flat tone meant she was giving my words serious thought. We angled around Viit. Headed for the Spire.
Another few heartbeats, and Sellis began to echo. I joined her. Soon the shapes of the towers, grown closer at this depth, were clear around us. We found a breeze that would take us faster towards the Spire.
We passed into the purple night, the towers glowing across the heights with warm lights. The city had grown so full while my heart had grown so empty.
22. ATTACK
As we passed Viit, I heard a disturbance, an echo in the wind that should not have been there.
Sellis fell quiet. She’d heard it too.
Then she began to hum again, turning left, then right on the breeze. Trying to find the source of the echo. The disturbance sounded like bubbles in the air. Like occupants of the cages in the Spire.
“Skymouths,” she said.
We rode the darkness alone. No one in the towers could see well enough, or hear well enough, to know we were out here. Only the giant hungry mouths of the sky.
“You could try to divert them,” Sellis added, her voice hopeful.
“I’ve never done it for long,” I whispered back. “Or on the wing.” I wished Wik were there.
“Look.” Sellis pointed around the curve of Viit’s lowest tiers.
In the dark, I opened my mouth wide and echoed until I heard the curve of a tentacle. Then more. The enormous limbs, curling.
A huge skymouth prowled Viit. My throat squeezed in fear. I heard Sellis swallow, hard.
“There are more, Kirit.” She said it in a rush. “We need to get out of here.”
I fought the urge to flee. We were Singers. We protected the city. “We must help them, Sellis. We should wake Viit. And Wirra. They can sound the horns.”
“We can’t fight off an entire migration by ourselves.” Her voice edged with strain. She angled her wings to lift herself higher, preparing to race back to the Spire without care if she was seen.
“Wait!”
“What would you do? I can rouse the Spire.” Sellis and I carried no weapons beyond our short knives. Our flight was ceremonial. We weren’t prepared for a fight.
But I’d heard something behind another, smaller skymouth in the migration group. I’d heard the sound of silk in the wind. A skyshouter call.
Against the purpling sky, two Singers appeared, their nightwings locked so that they could hold their weapons at their chests, arrows nocked to bows. Their faces were obscured by shadow.
“Ah.” Sellis sighed, relieved. She circled, looking for a gust that would take her behind the Singers. “We are lucky.”
But my own relief muddled with confusion. The Singers weren’t driving the skymouths away from the towers. The group rounded Viit and headed the direction we’d come. “What are they doing?”
Sellis slowed her glide, angling up for a closer look, risking a stall. I did the same, then circled, still echoing. The three long bodies and sinuous tentacles revealed themselves clearly.
“I’m sure they have a reason,” she said, finally.
“The skymouths came from behind Viit and are flying towards Densira,” I said slowly.
“Perhaps Singers are driving this herd out of the city,” she responded, too quickly.
She thought the same thing I did.
These skymouths could have come from the pens in the Spire.
The monsters hovered, waiting for something. Waiting for their masters. Flying low.
“Nat said something, during his challenge,” I whispered to her as fast as I could. “He said Singers would send a skymouth to kill him if he conceded.”
“That’s mad!” Sellis said.
“What if it isn’t?”
We both fell silent.
“If it isn’t,” Sellis said finally, “then there’s a reason. There’s a mystery we do not know yet.” Her voice was firm. “This is a Singer matter. If we’d needed to know more, we would have been warned. If we hadn’t lingered, we wouldn’t have been caught up in this.” Time to go back to the Spire like proper Singers.
I would not obey, not here. Only a few Singers could guide skymouths. Wik might be there. But they were too close to Densira. My first tower. My family.
“We must do something to chase them away,” I said.
Sellis frowned and shook her head. “We must not interfere.”
My frustration caused me to wobble out of the draft. Focus, Kirit. I hissed at myself. Managed to find a weaker gust. Sellis coasted above me, circling away from the path of the slow-moving skymouths.
All I could hear was Nat’s voice. Send a skymouth. Was that possible? Would we do that?
Sellis interrupted my thoughts. “The council talked about crowding after the challenge. During initiation.”
So she’d been listening too.
“They were. Go on.”
She didn’t.
A herding call from one of the Singers drifted back to us on the wind. The verbal nudging of “away” and “here” that Wik had taught me for use in the pens. With a sinking feeling, I knew that Wik was one of the Singers flying with the skymouths. And they were guiding a migration towards Densira.
Finally, Sellis spoke again. “It is for the good of the city, Kirit. Whatever they do.” She was quiet for a moment. “We should offer assistance.”
Pieces fell into place in my mind. Things Civik had said. And Wik. Then something Tobiat had said, long ago.
Terrin had wanted to work with the towers. He didn’t have enough support to change the council’s direction on this. Cages. Delequerriat. Singers did their best for the city.
Too many skymouths in the pens for just bridges and training. Too many.
“Sellis! This is what Terrin challenged for. He wanted to change something. This!” I felt sick as I realized what this was. Another way to control the towers instead of working with them.
Sellis shook her head. “We aren’t in the Spire, Kirit. We cannot argue a decision here. Challenge, if you want. See whether you share Terrin’s fate.”
Some Singers and windbeaters had supported Terrin. Others had fought before him. Naton, once he realized why he was building the pens. Tobiat. Nat, even though he hadn’t realized what he was doing.
If there was dissent within the Spire, there could be dissent outside of it too.
I signaled to Sellis that I would not follow. Someone needed to warn the tower. To warn those on the lowest tiers especially, for they were most at risk. Elna. Ezarit. The salvagers. Tobiat.
Sellis broke from my side to fly behind the Singers. Perhaps to witness what they did.
I tried to think, keeping to my circuit. Witnessing was not enough. I had to try to help, to change their path.
But how could I interfere besides throwing myself between the skymouths and Densira?