My throat was dry from my screams and my robes were torn from the fall. I would not last long here.
A wail echoed against the dark bone: my voice, burred and painful.
At least no one was around to hear me.
I was little comforted by that thought, until a shadow peeled from a wall and limped towards me, jittering and waving one starvation-thin arm.
“Look who fell!” Tobiat peered down at me, his robe flapping in the shadows of the dead tower.
He sidled closer, bringing a familiar Tobiat-stench with him. I lifted myself up to sitting and looked at him.
“Where did you come from?” I said. But he didn’t answer.
The wind coursed through the tower. The pitted bone whispered like a cracked flute.
Had he been left to die here too? Tobiat danced his feet back and forth. His old breaks creaked and stuck out at odd angles; he looked like a broken kite. But when the day brightened enough that he saw the color of my robes, he whistled and backed away.
“Singer.” He warded the air with his hands. Began to disappear into the shadows.
“I won’t hurt you.” I didn’t want to be alone, not now, not on Lith. “You remember me, right?”
“Tobiat, it’s me, Kirit,” I tried again. “Nat’s…” My voice failed. Nat’s what? Friend? Murderer? I couldn’t say it. “Remember the cleaning? At Densira?”
I rose and shrugged off the remains of my wings. Tobiat continued to back away.
“How long have you been here?” I asked gently, hoping to keep him near. “Who brought you here?”
Instead of answering, Tobiat ducked into a hole in the blackened wall.
I crawled after him, deep into the broken core of Lith. The tunnel we passed through was neither smoothed by age nor worn away by rot, though Lith smelled like rotting bone. This tunnel had been gouged with sharp tools, recently, to make passages.
The tower’s core was hard and cold. Where layers of bone had been peeled back to the marrow, the scent of rot lingered. I brushed a spot with my fingertip. It crackled and compressed at my touch. Nothing like the warmth I’d felt when Viridi let us touch the city.
Wind blew the gray dust of the tower from my finger. We emerged from one tunnel and crossed an open balcony. The floor’s odd angle made me wish for my wings. We stood on a dead tier, within a dead tower.
Cracks latticed Lith’s core, deep black lines on blackened bone. Nothing grew here except the resilient scourweed and lichen. No families made their homes here. No ladders hung from balconies, no banners. Lith was nothing like the towers of my childhood, and nothing like the Spire.
Tobiat didn’t seem to care. He’d threaded a line of silk through the tunnels. As he walked, retracing his steps, he gathered it up into loops. He didn’t look back.
“You talked to Nat before he challenged the Spire,” I said. This time, at “Nat,” Tobiat froze in place. “Why did you let him do it?”
“Wind was right,” Tobiat answered gruffly.
“You were a Singer once, weren’t you?” I asked, but he was silent.
We entered another tunnel. The gouges looked fresh here, as if someone had dug deep to make new passages between hollows. This passage ended in a narrow cell, walled on all sides and crowded by the central bone core. Two oil lamps glowed weakly in the darkness.
I saw a nest of rags. Smelled the stench of long residency and rotting meat.
Tobiat skittered away from the bedding and placed a small sack of water precariously atop a tripod. He cackled softly as I licked my lips.
A basket of wilted greens waited near the fire, spices and herbs nearby. Bird meat was drying on a rack. Tobiat hadn’t lived this well at Densira. Someone was taking care of him. Keeping him alive.
The old man crouched by the fire in his cell. Smoke wound its way out through holes drilled low in the wall. The tower’s walls sighed and moaned with the wind; ghost sounds made by a dead tower teetering dangerously on the border of bone and sky.
He peered at me from under heavy eyebrows. “Singers. Skymouths.”
“How did you know? Why did you tell Nat?”
“Nat,” he said again, echoing my words.
My throat constricted. I heard Nat falling again, sucked out the vent. I should have tried harder to save him.
“Kirit,” came a whisper from the cell’s far corner. Not Tobiat’s voice.
The ceiling was very low there. I crawled to the pile of rags, my hands needled by the rough bone floor.
The pile moved at my approach. A tangle of black hair. A glint of white robe spattered with old blood.
Nat.
23. SURVIVAL
My head spun at the sight of him. “You survived the fall?” I reached out and touched Nat’s arm, hoping.
He flinched, and I pulled my hand back, still reeling.
“How—” I began, then stopped. When I fought him, he fell. That was part of the how. He lay injured before me, while I knelt there whole.
I stepped back, nearly knocking the water sack into the fire. “I don’t understand.” By my hand he fell.
Tobiat crawled to Nat’s side and lifted the rag blanket away. I saw clearly what I’d done. His left leg, broken and splinted, but seeping. His right, torn in long gashes. His ribs, his arms, his head. Wrecked and bleeding, still. His broken form looked so much like Tobiat’s.
I knelt at his side. If his wounds healed badly, he would be as crippled as Tobiat. Unable to hunt or fight. Unable to fly? His fate would be tied to a single tower and those willing to care for him. I knew Nat well enough; that would be the worst of all the injuries.
Injuries I caused.
Tobiat’s breaks had never been set, never properly healed. And Elna had looked out for him. Someone would do the same for Nat.
I looked closer, thought more clearly. Nat’s left leg had been splinted. The gashes on his right were roughly bandaged. His ribs and arm also. I saw the start of a poultice heating beside him, though it was missing some elements.
A whipperling nested in a fold of fabric by Nat’s feet. Maalik. Nat’s bird.
Someone had found him and brought him here. Someone cared for him. “Tobiat, did you do this?”
“Some!” Tobiat laughed. He pointed at the rough bandages. “Others too.”
Someone with enough knowledge to make a poultice. A splint. Someone who could fix Nat and make him straight again. Straight enough to fly.
“Who?” I turned and nearly caught Tobiat. He skittered away. “Who comes here? Who brought you here to tend Nat?”
Tobiat echoed me. “Who comes here? Kirit comes here.”
Kirit did indeed. And Wik had brought her.
Nat’s eyes opened again. This time they stayed open, blinking at me. Not looking away. They were angry eyes. Fierce hunter’s eyes. I, his prey.
“Didn’t you hurt me enough in the Spire?” His voice was rough and filled with pain. “You’ve come to finish the job?”
No. “Never.” Never again.
“Liar.”
I heard again the sound of his arrow passing close to my ear. He had known what he was doing too. I watched his jaw clench and looked for clean rags to rebandage his wounds.
When I found none, I tore the hem of my new gray robe. The rip of silk broke the silence.
“Stop,” Nat said.
“Please hear me, Nat.”
“Singers hear.” Tobiat chittered behind me. He waved his arms above his head. I recognized a windbeater pattern.
“Tobiat,” I said, “you were in the Spire. You know how things work.”
He mumbled. “Bargains. Bribes.”
“Right! I made a bargain. I had to.”
Nat didn’t answer. He watched me from narrowed eyes.
“How did you survive the fall?” I started to reach out again, then drew my hand back.