“My father. He was in love with Ezarit, but he was Spire-born. He was trying to protect the city. He didn’t know—” I stopped. Civik knew.
Nat hitched himself up so that his back was propped against the wall. He looked for the water sack, but Tobiat had taken it with him.
His lips were so dry. I wished Tobiat would hurry back.
“And that’s why the Singers threw Naton down? Because he stole their secret?”
I pushed a strand of hair back behind my ear. “Yes.”
Around us, Lith creaked. The floor rumbled.
Nat shook his head. “That might be half of it.”
I stared at him, not understanding. “My father told me himself.”
Nat rolled over, groaning. I tried to help him, but he pushed me away. “Let me do this.”
With his finger, Nat traced from memory a pattern in the dust. After staring at it for a moment, I realized I knew a part of that pattern well. Even upside down. The skymouth pens. But the rest of it baffled me. Nat misunderstood my confusion.
“It’s one of the carvings from the back of Naton’s bone chips. Though it doesn’t look like instructions for night flying. It looks architectural.”
So even now, I’d not been told the whole truth. I sat back and studied the drawing. “What do you think these are?” I waved my hand over a tiny mark on the pattern, then another similar one.
“Elna called them Spire holes.”
I thought about that. The holes marked tier after tier. There were even more near the thick pattern that I’d recognized. But the holes marked tiers where there were no pulleys or pens. “Why would Naton drill so many holes?”
Nat shook his head.
“Where are the chips now?” If we could study them together, we could connect the secrets. Figure out Naton’s message.
He wiped the dust flat. “We traded them to the windbeaters. They didn’t want them at first, but Elna knew what to say. That they were from Naton.”
I could only imagine what kind of sabotage the windbeaters could get up to with that map. The ways they could foil Rumul, or those like him. The thought gave me pause. We were trapped in Lith, but Naton’s chips could still cause havoc.
But another question still bothered me. “How did you know about the vents?”
Tobiat crawled back through the wall and interrupted. “Me!” he hooted.
“Elna said she went looking for Naton after he disappeared, after he was thrown down. She flew as far downtower as she could, around the city. She didn’t find him.”
“Found me!” Tobiat spread his arms wide. “Shiny present for the artifex’s wife.”
Nat looked at me, dirty and wounded, and rolled his eyes. Squeezed my hand quickly. I squeezed back before he let go. Almost like old times.
“How long have you been here?”
“Days,” he whispered. “Shot through that vent in the Spire, got banged around, and fell again. Landed hard. Then someone found me. Brought me here.”
“Who?” I asked. This was important. Tobiat had said, Wind was right.
“I never saw. But then your Singer brought Tobiat to take care of me.” Nat laughed until he coughed, and his eyes closed again. He passed into a restless sleep, exhausted by our conversation.
Wik. I heard the dark Singer’s voice in my memory: I wouldn’t have let them harm Elna. Felt him catching me while Sellis flew on. So many secrets in the Spire. So many currents working round each other.
I crawled past Tobiat, back through the tunnel, and onto the empty, black balcony. I leaned against a crumbling wall and looked up at the city that had risen beyond Lith’s broken tiers.
24. HIDDEN
A shadow passed the balcony. One shadow, but two people: Wik, carrying Elna.
When Wik set her on the ledge, Elna stood for a moment before her legs wobbled. She caught herself against a spur, then sank to the ground and began to crawl towards the tunnel. Towards the sound of Tobiat’s voice. She’d been here before. But to fly like that, without wings, blind, after a near attack. She was stronger than I’d ever imagined she could be.
Wik stood on the thin balcony, furling his wings and looking to the horizon. I resisted the urge to push him off.
Elna disappeared into the tunnel, and I followed. She hadn’t realized I was there yet. I watched her tend Nat, listened to her clucking at him. She touched Nat’s wounds gently and reached into her satchel for a packet of herbs. Pulled back the gray silk, but kept it to reuse. “Who has been here?” she asked.
“Singer,” said Tobiat.
Elna dipped her head. “On your wings, Wik.”
Wik, who had followed us to the tunnel’s mouth, said, “Not me. Kirit.”
Elna paused in her work, and her face brightened. “Where?”
The tiny grotto had grown very crowded. I stepped closer to her and put my hand on her shoulder. But I turned to Wik. “Whose side are you on?” I put timbre into my voice. As I’d been taught. How could someone know all that Wik knew and not do something to stop it?
Elna touched my hand. “We trust him, Kirit.” It was almost enough.
“Why?”
Tobiat chuckled and gestured to Elna. “Trust,” he said. “Can’t remember why.”
My softhearted, gentle second mother. The woman who never picked a fight, who was always two steps ahead of us as children. Her chin hardened as she ran fingers along her only son’s broken limbs, ably adjusting bandages and applying salve as if he had just tripped while running in Densira.
“I went looking for Naton after Conclave. I left Nat with your mother, who was pregnant with you. I spent days at it, all through Allsuns. Broke my eyes, it turned out. Too much sun. Slept in a hang bag down every tower around the Spire for days in the winds. But I never found Naton. I found Tobiat. Hanging by a wing from an abandoned tier on Bissel. Birds had already started pecking at one of his eyes.”
She turned her face towards him, smiling fondly. “I don’t know how long he’d been there, but he was alive, and he was wearing a Singer robe.”
I held my breath. I’d been right.
“I figured if I could make him well, he might tell me of Naton’s last days.”
“How did he get there?”
Elna quieted and turned to Tobiat. Waited.
Tobiat cleared phlegm from his chest and spat. He coughed for a few seconds more, then drew a long breath.
“Challenge.” He cackled.
The sun was going down. Tobiat would babble until it came up again. I tried to hurry him. “Who did you challenge?”
Nat’s eyes were open; he was listening too. Tobiat spat again, hitting his first gob with the quivering mass of the second. “Young Rumul. For Naton.”
“Why did Rumul want this so badly?”
Wik stepped in. “A Singer historian found a set of bone plates hidden far downtower. They showed Singers using skymouths to hunt in the clouds, and Rumul saw the potential. There was not enough dissent to stop him. Not then. The council brought in an artifex. Called it tradition. Before the Rise, they said, Singers had trained skymouths to defend the Spire. They stopped long ago. Rumul thought it necessary again.”
My jaw hung open. Those? To defend the city? No. That wasn’t what Wik had said. He’d said the Spire.
“How long have people been trying to change this?”
I’d asked Wik, but Tobiat answered. “Too long. Too slow.”
Wik nodded. “Rumul had the votes in council and strength in the Gyre. He had many of the windbeaters too. With some towers rebelling against tithing and Conclave especially, Rumul has fought hard to keep order. Singers were afraid to have another Lith. He gained more supporters. Inside and outside the Spire.”
The southern towers, I thought. Where the Spire got its apples. Its muzz.