He went quiet. Looked older for a moment. Harder. Gaunt. The hollows around his eyes weren’t just from pain. Since Allmoons, he’d been under Singer punishments. Weighted with Laws. A broken set of wings.
“How did you survive?” I repeated, though I meant so much more than the challenge now. “And Elna? Did Densira help you?” Elna too had looked gaunt, her eyes much worse, when I saw her. I’d been too caught up in my own guilt to realize.
The look he gave me told me all I needed to know. Worse than unlucky. They had become pariahs in the tower.
“I hunted,” he said proudly. “Ezarit gave us everything she could, when she could. No one would trade with her for weeks, until the Singers did. I kept us all fed. Went lower on the tower than anyone has in years.”
While I ate well in the Spire, Nat had taken care of everyone.
“How did you survive the fall from the Spire?” The third time I’d asked. Despite my shame, I could not ignore the fact that he was dodging my question. I caught his gaze. Held it.
“Tell,” Tobiat shouted, chuckling. So close to my side that I jumped.
Nat took a stuttering breath. “Tobiat taught me how.”
My face must have shown confusion, because Tobiat laughed again.
Nat coughed. “I didn’t go to the Spire to die. I went to survive. To gain the right to tell the truth my father knew.”
“The Singers would never let you speak a truth about Naton.” Even my mother had been held to secrecy. Had bargained for it. Another realization swept over me. Ezarit hadn’t known who she would have to fight either, in her challenge.
Just as Nat hadn’t come to fight me. That match had been Rumul’s doing.
“I had to try. We had nothing left but the truth. And Naton wanted people to know that Singer secrets are killing the city.” Nat’s voice was older, deeper. Even as injured as he was, I heard the strength in it.
“I know their secrets now,” I said. Some of them, at least.
“Spire secrets!” Tobiat shouted, and spat at me. A gob of phlegm landed on my foot. “Keep them in the tower!” It sounded like a caution.
“What does it matter anymore?” I raised my arms, palms up. Now Nat watched me intently as I argued with Tobiat.
“Tradition!” Tobiat shouted.
Nat looked between us, then took a deep breath. “Tobiat told me a way to survive, if the windbeaters could be bribed.”
My jaw hung open. Tradition indeed, Tobiat. “You bribed the windbeaters?”
Now Nat looked very uncomfortable. “Elna did.”
“To win?” I was shocked. She knew how to do this?
“If I could win.” This time it was Nat who looked away. Both of us, complicit in this fall.
I reached out and touched my once-best friend’s shoulder. “I did not want you dead. I am happy you are not.”
His face creased with a small smile that folded into a wince. “I am glad I’m not either. Nor you. But that challenge was never meant to be a fair trial.”
If I’d known who my challenger was going to be, I also would have bribed the windbeaters to let him live, as he’d done. I sat back on my heels.
Nat tried to raise his head, licked his lips. I brought him the goosebladder of water and let him sip at it. “We need to get you medicines. Herbs. Honey to keep out infection.”
“Soon.” Tobiat nodded.
Not soon if there were skymouths lurking near the towers. No one would get through. “Not with Singers on the wing.”
“Why would you want to be one of them?” Nat spat.
I searched for words to describe the enclosure. The feeling of learning my fate and my past. Rumul’s enticements. You were born to be a Singer. It had felt like hope within the walls of the Spire. A way to survive.
I took a deep breath, hoped he’d believe me.
“What I learned about the city, Nat, and about what Singers do, what they’ve done in the past — I thought I could help.”
Tobiat waved his hands emphatically. “Singers help kill.”
My mouth hung open. I stared at Tobiat. “That’s not what I mean.”
“But you were trying to kill me,” Nat said.
“You were trying to kill me too. Why did you keep fighting, once you saw me?”
He blanched and lay back. “I wanted to know. We needed a better life. We had a plan. Why did you?”
“I thought I could win and save you. And, yes, I wanted those wings. To try and change things. Some Singers disagree with Rumul.” He was weakening, needed rest. But I pressed him again. I was newly ruthless. “What did you give them? And to do what?”
Nat coughed, each jerk causing him to stiffen in pain. I tipped more water to his lips. The sack felt very light. Not much water left to us. He sipped.
“Take more.”
He handed it back. “You feel guilty. Don’t. You made your choice to be a Singer. Live with that. Change your course if you feel you should, but don’t feel guilty.”
I bristled. “I wouldn’t have flown the Gyre if you hadn’t challenged, Nat. I wasn’t near ready. So if I am a Singer now…” I paused. Was I still a Singer? Someone who killed people? With skymouths? And did I still want to be? “If I am a Singer, you helped make me one.”
Turning away from our argument, Tobiat grabbed the bladder and an empty satchel and crawled back through the tunnel, yelling, “Singer. Sing. Singing.” He left me alone with Nat, who began to doze again while I thought about the Gyre fight, the Singers. The skymouths.
* * *
Nat yelled himself awake from a nightmare that had him grasping the air with his hands.
“Shh.” I held his hand, and he didn’t pull away. “You have more lives than a nest of silk spiders.”
He grinned. A real Nat smile, from before everything. “Can’t give up. Worse than falling.”
“I didn’t give up.” I realized it was true. I had found a way to keep going. That was part of who I was. And part of who Nat was, also. We fought hard to live.
As the space around us grew pale with early light, I realized we had a bigger fight ahead of us. If Rumul knew we were alive, he would do everything to change that. We knew too much. I knew too much.
The truth was a gift I could give Nat.
“Nat,” I whispered, as he tried to find a more comfortable spot, “Singers fly at night. Nightwings are real.” I was nearly bursting to tell him how it worked. The old Nat would have loved to know. Would have been desperate to heal fast in order to try it himself.
He only looked tired. “One of too many secrets kept by the Spire.” He shifted position, trying to escape the pain. “Like what happened to Naton.”
It had been decided. The challenger was defeated. We keep the silence.
Still, the words rushed from me. “I know what happened.”
I’d betrayed Nat in the Gyre. But my father had betrayed his father, so many years ago. How many layers of betrayal did it take to work the cracks in a friendship — especially one like ours — and break it apart?
I took a deep breath. “Your dad discovered that the Singers could fly at night. He was going to trade the information. To Ezarit.”
“Ezarit? Why?”
Now I couldn’t bring myself to answer him. The words stuck in my throat. Because she wanted power and standing. She wanted it even before my father disappeared. She wanted to be the best and the fastest trader. No matter whose life she risked.
It was too close to a confession. Like mother, like daughter.
“Someone found out Naton was trading Singer secrets?”
It would have been so easy to echo his word—someone—and leave it at that. But I couldn’t keep things from him anymore.