“You want me to go down beneath the Gyre again?” I was suspicious. “You just said Rumul has too many windbeaters on his side.”
“Civik sent Moc with a message after you and Sellis departed. The message in Naton’s bone chips swayed more windbeaters. He said he’d found places where Naton drilled the extra Spire holes. He thinks Naton meant to use them to undermine Rumul. He also says that some see a way to use the holes, where before they only knew defeat. We could gain more support.” Wik pulled a small wrapped package from his robes and held it out to me. “He sent these as his promise.”
I took the package and slowly unwrapped it. Glass and metal gleamed. Civik’s lenses. Heavy in my hands.
I stared at Elna and Tobiat, then at Wik. Perhaps Tobiat was not so damaged after all, nor Elna so gentle. “Who else is part of this? Why doesn’t Ezarit know?”
“She was already too much at risk,” Elna said. “The Singers watch her.”
Because of me.
“My brother has tried to help, while on excursion,” Wik said. “Though he sometimes acts too quickly.”
Wik’s family: Spire-born, all of them. They had siblings, cousins, parents all around them, as the tower-born did. And they got to keep their families, as long as they remained Singers. His brother — Macal. “Then Magisters can help.”
“Some, yes. Some, like Dix and Florian, are Rumul’s.”
Nat pushed against the floor with his hands. “You Singers have had your chance. I will tell everyone. The towers will take the Spire. End this.”
Elna pressed firmly with her hand, stilling him. “A few more days yet.” Her eyes said more than a few days.
My hair fell across my face, and I tucked a lock behind my ear. “Wik shouldn’t reveal himself if we can help it. If I return, I can try to lodge a challenge before the council can stop me. Rumul, trying to silence a new Singer that he’s just elevated? That would raise some eyebrows among the broader Singer ranks, and the windbeaters too.”
“Sellis has likely already spoken against you to the council,” Wik said. “You’d need to sneak in, or they’ll throw you down. Wait until dark. Then come.”
Nat looked at us, darkly angry, the old wing-sibling long gone. “If you don’t succeed this time, I will find a way to stop the Singers from outside the walls.”
Elna put her hand on his. Then I put mine over hers, and Tobiat joined me. Then Wik clasped our hands together. We were five for certain, set against the might of the Spire.
“I was wrong to hope this would all go away,” Elna said.
“We will make sure Naton’s message gets out,” I promised. One way or another. I hung Civik’s lenses around my neck. “Can you get a message to Macal? Tell him he’s needed at the Spire? Would he understand?”
Wik pulled a Spire marker from his robe. Made a symbol on it with his knife. Gave it to Nat. “Send Maalik to Mondarath with this.”
Below us, the tower shook anew.
Wik and I crawled back through the tunnel, leaving Elna, Nat, and Tobiat in their hiding place.
When we reached the balcony, we could hear a bone horn in the distance. Calling the city elders to the Spire.
“Something is happening,” Wik said.
“Not another Conclave?” Not so soon.
“I will find out. Will try to slow it, if so.”
Before I could say anything in response, Wik leapt from the tower. I was left to address the biggest hurdle of returning to the Spire: wings. Sellis’s knife had ripped mine, and my fall had made it worse. Four of us, trapped on Lith, with one working wing among us.
And a Singer who had so far kept secrets from both tower and Spire.
I looked about the abandoned balcony, then crawled back through the first passage, rummaging through the discarded refuse of Lith.
I would find a way to turn one wing into two. I would figure out how to get into the Spire without being seen.
Then I would make the Spire tell its secrets to the city.
25. TRUTH
As the day warmed, I descended through Lith’s broken tiers with increasing desperation.
Tobiat brought more strong silk rope with him, and he insisted on joining me while I picked through the tower. I couldn’t stop him. Nor could I keep him quiet. I struggled to focus. He smacked his gums together and rambled.
He hummed an old tune. Sometimes sang a verse. I listened, despite myself. This was another song long fallen from the city’s memory. More than that, I noticed that when he sang, Tobiat’s speech made more sense. He could remember longer sentences.
When Tobiat said, “Lith song,” I smiled, even as I searched.
“I don’t remember much of that one,” I said. I expected he wouldn’t either.
“Many bridges ran to Lith,” he sang, the legend clear and true. My jaw dropped. “They traded easy and made things beautiful.”
Now Tobiat did not skip or mumble. He sounded whole when he sang. His memory intact. I listened harder. I’d never thought to ask him to sing.
But they grew jealous of the Spire,
tried to raise their tower higher, without Singers’ help, nor Spire’s blessing.
Men found Lith who wished to fight.
They made it grow,
they made it strong.
They angered many, Lith cracked and died.
Singers helped them flee, made survivors beg shelter. Plenty perished.
No one came to sing their dead.
City punishes those who forget.
Tobiat’s song ended. Amazement washed over me, along with new appreciation for Tobiat. Then he shouted, “Roar!” as the city rumbled again.
I shuddered and sped up my search efforts. On one tier, we found a crafter’s studio, the floor broken and treacherous. A spine wall had caved in, and the bones scattered across the floor were big enough to be human.
If any of this tier’s residents had survived, they’d left everything behind when they went. Tools had blown against the central core and lay covered with dust: needles and saws and nails. Metal. Things I’d seen in Rumul’s chambers, in the wingmaker’s studio, and nowhere else. No one had risked coming back to Lith to salvage, even though the need was great. I gathered what I wanted: needles — even a metal one — awls, bone battens from a pile.
“Rise.” Tobiat held up a carved bone panel. It was gray with dust, but much lighter than the darkened tower. He cleaned it with a corner of his ruined robe.
The panel was beautiful. The carving crisp and confident. Cleaner even than the carving in the Spire. Our bone tools could not compete with the artistry. The sharp wings, the flowing hair of the fliers.
We’d lost so much.
“Oh,” I said. “The clouds.”
The swirling cuts that ridged the panel’s surface could be nothing but clouds. In every direction. Even thinking about clouds all around made me squirm. The panel must have come from the Rise. Part of our history.
At the center of the bone tablet, a woman with a marked face lifted a wingless citizen away from a hunting bird. A Singer saving someone. Not the whole city. One person.
This was almost too humble for the Singers. Most often, their carvings showed Singers lifting the towers themselves, filled with people. My hand, which had carved this very scene in the council tier as a novice, flexed at the memory.
We’d lost so much. We’d lost ourselves.
“The towers sing one version of The Rise, and the Singers know another,” I said.