Updraft by Fran Wilde

Author:Fran Wilde
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466858206
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

14

SENSE

Sellis watched me closely, silent questions hovering behind her eyes. She complimented my quick rise to third-stripe and compared her hand mark with mine. They were identical.

“Each council member has their own style,” she said, touching hers.

“What is that ink they use? It burns.”

She did not take her eyes off her mark. “A Singer secret. They mix it with something from the skymouths. That’s what stings and what makes the marks turn silver.”

I winced at the thought of gaining tattoos around my eyes like Wik had.

I didn’t see him that day. I did not know when he learned of my rise. Instead, I climbed down to the novices’ tier and watched the class. They practiced towers, much as I’d learned them at Densira for the wingtest.

When the Magister dismissed them, the novices broke left and right around me. Only Moc and Ciel greeted me.

“Why do they do that?” Around Sellis, the novices gathered and chittered happily, telling her about everything that happened in the Spire. She had the benefit of many eyes. I had two extra pairs only, both trained on me.

“You’re unpredictable,” Moc said. “You do unusual things. You couldn’t keep the Silence.”

“You’re tall.”

“Your voice is still strange.”

I raised a hand. “Enough, thanks.” I saw things more clearly. Even after showing them how quickly I could learn to be like them, the young Singers-to-be were still uncomfortable. I was different. The Spire didn’t like different. “You and Ciel aren’t bothered?”

Ciel tilted her head and laughed. “You’re new. Everything in the Spire is old and always happens up down up down. You came in sideways.”

They liked me for precisely the reasons the others didn’t. The twins were tiny and strange, but they were the eyes and ears I had in the Spire. I needed them.

But they’d begun disappearing for days, even before the Conclave. When they returned, their temples bruised, their eyes bloodshot, I asked what had happened, and they tried to explain.

“Training,” they had said. “We train to hear better.”

The day after my meeting with Rumul, I found out what they meant.

* * *

Wik sent a whipperling to the twins and me. The message chips it carried listed a tier and an alcove. Two levels down.

When we arrived, breathing hard from rushing, I caught a glimmer of metal. Wik held an ancient tool in his hand. Its base was the same shape as the bruises that sometimes appeared at Ciel’s temples: a deep purple blotch overlaying her soft, honey-colored skin.

My fingertips brushed the cold lenses that hung from my neck. Wik frowned at me. “You have a disadvantage, Kirit. You do not know how to listen.”

This was unfair. I tried very hard to listen. I had already heard the city whisper and roar.

Noting my frown, he shook his head. “When they are very young, Singers begin training in a different kind of listening. Some use what they learn to better hear the city. Others, to keep track of signals when we fly and fight. Still others use what they hear to see better.

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