The Spire itself moaned and shrieked as the bone walls of the tower split and cracked. I squinted as entire panels fell from the walls and daylight poured for the first time into the Spire. Novices blocked their eyes. They ran from the winds and the suddenly open tiers. Teachers tried to put wings on their students, to get them aloft.
The tower rumbled, and more walls shattered.
Holes opened around the pens. Naton’s tools had cut deep there too. Wind whistled over skymouths escaping the pens and squeezing themselves out of the Spire, suddenly free. The screaming faded as they scattered.
The pressure of invisible bodies gathering beneath me lessened, then disappeared. The netting sagged, and I sank into the depths.
A rough howl shook the tower. Sinew broke and metal snapped as the last giant skymouth’s pen twisted apart with a rush of air. The monsters were free.
“What have you done?” Rumul moaned. The line of his collarbone ran jagged beneath his skin and his legs were splayed, broken. Now freed from grasping tentacles. He could not move.
For the first time, the Spire was open to the elements, to the eyes of the city. For the first time, its tiers were unguarded. Singer-bred monsters flew in and out of the gaps in the walls, mouths open and searching for prey.
Sellis circled above us on a gust let in by new air. “What has happened?” Her voice pitched high and panicked. “What has—”
A whistling roar cut off her words. The biggest maw I’d ever seen opened howling and red behind her. Her robes puckered as invisible limbs grabbed her waist, crushed her wings. Drawn backwards, like she was being sucked out of the Spire, Sellis flailed, her arms and legs towards us, her head thrown back, before the mouth swallowed her whole.
The monster turned, the wind from its passage pushing me into the sagging net. A torn wing hung from its invisible mouth, rising to the top of the Spire and out, into the sky, into the city.
I turned to Rumul. His face was sallow and waxy, his eyes closed.
“Sellis! It took her!” I yelled, but he did not respond.
Wik appeared on my left and reached his hand out. “Grab my hand, Kirit. Hurry.” He helped me stand.
I followed him up a ladder to the windbeaters’ tier, then looked down. Two Singers, one with a large cut on the back of his head, the other with a torn robe covered in dust, braced Rumul’s legs on his folded wings, preparing to move him, unconscious, to safety.
The Spire stopped rumbling.
Civik lay crumpled beside the gallery, his wings beside him. With his mouth open, he looked as if he was still shouting, silently now.
“It took his last breath,” Wik said. “Shouting with you.”
When I took Civik’s cold hand in mine, I found Naton’s bone chips wrapped around his fingers. I left them there with my father as Wik pulled me towards the next tier. Naton’s holes had not weakened the ladders here.
“Moc? He was down here with the windbeaters. And the novices?”
“Being evacuated to the towers. They’re safe.” Wik climbed faster.
After three tiers, my arms were shaking. I could not lift them to the next rung. All around us, Singers gathered pieces of the Spire and tended the injured. The Gyre seemed clear, though with the walls blown open, it whistled with a complex wind. “You have to fly, Wik. You have to get to the top of the Spire. I am too slow.”
In answer, he unfurled his wings and locked them. Held out his arms to me.
Lifting me up, Wik made a running leap from the tier, and we plummeted into the Gyre. He found a gust glittering with sunlit bone grit, and we lifted, circling slowly higher.
I expected a mouth to open above us, or behind us, at any moment. I echoed, but heard and saw nothing. The mirror in my lenses showed me only Wik’s robe and his wingstraps. Below us, the nets and the scattered windbeaters receded.
As we rose, Wik called to different tiers, asking after the injured, shouting instructions. Singers waited by the galleries, making ready to fly up after us, but waiting so as not to foul our wind. More flew from the holes in the walls, searching for cracks and signs the Spire was about to collapse. The first of these, a woman Wik’s age, with a bruise ripening on her cheekbone, reported back as we reached the top of the Spire.
“It’s lacework out there, all open to the city,” she said. “But the breaks are evenly spaced. The tower seems to be holding, at least for now.”
“Find weapons,” Wik instructed her as he set me down. She descended a ladder and ran down the passageway below, following his orders.
“This is what Terrin feared would happen. That the skymouths would escape,” Viridi said. Her silver-streaked hair was dusted with bone shards. Her voice cracked. She held Ciel’s hand tightly. “We were wrong to pen them, to breed them.”
Another Singer interjected, “We’ll need weapons if the towers attack.”
I flexed my arms and bounced on the balls of my feet, trying to work some feeling back into my legs. “The towers attacking? That’s what you’re worried about right now?” My voice was rough as scourweed.
The Singer turned to look at me. Who was I to speak?
Wik said, “Listen to her.”
“She’s won the right to speak,” Viridi agreed, silencing any doubts.
“Skymouths are loose in the city.” My doing, in large part. I knew this. I would make it right.
Macal ran up to us. “The Spire may stand, but everyone knows its secrets now.” He gripped my shoulder in thanks. I winced, then spoke again.
“So now the city knows. And now the city suffers. We are still Singers,” I said. “We must do our duty. We must catch the skymouths.”
We would be stronger working together. No more separation between tower and Spire. I spotted Beliak on the council tier, helping clear large pieces of bone. “Tell the nearest towers to spread the word. Skymouths are loose.”
Beliak yanked at the Bissel trader’s robe and they climbed onto the roof of the Spire, unfurling their wings as they went.
I turned back to Viridi. “My mother.”
“She is safe. Lurai and the traders pulled her from the enclosure when the Spire began to crack. They’ve taken her to Varu, to let her rest.”
A shout from the Gyre. Singers climbed the pulley ropes laden with weapons. More gathered on lower tiers. They waited for instructions, ready to fly.
What if they would not follow me?
“What you did…,” Wik whispered.
“They’ll sing of it,” Viridi finished for him.
“Not yet,” I said. “Not unless — not until — the skymouths are caught.”
Beliak returned. “Varu is sending as many people as it can to warn the nearby towers, and the traders are flying to the city’s edges. Guards and hunters are ready to fight.”
“We have to work together.” I turned to Wik and Macal. “All of us.” They would follow the three of us, united in purpose. Spire, tower, and me — who was both at once.
With a worried look, Wik ran his hand through the air near my cheek, where ugly welts had replaced the rashes raised by skymouth oils. They no longer burned, but I could feel the passage of air across them, and it made me shiver. I steadied myself as his green eyes met mine and then looked to the horizon, which had emptied of birds.
Sacrifice. Duty. This was what we shared.
From around the city, we began to hear the klaxons. Bone horns sounded warnings, at first from Varu and the towers near the Spire, but soon rippling out. So many.
“We must fix this,” I said.
Wik shouted over the edge of the balcony, to the Singers and older novices assembled below. “We will catch the skymouths. Save the citizens first. Worry about the Spire later.”