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“You’re bad luck,” he grumbled. But I saw worry behind the anger. He needed to pass his wingtest too.
    I wanted to snap back at him, but fighting with him would make things worse. I pressed my lips together.
    Elna emerged from the kitchen to shake her head at both of us.
    â€œServes you both right.” She handed me a piece of lentil flatbread.
    â€œI don’t see why I’m punished,” Nat said. “I’ll miss training. I’m not the numbhead who went out.”
    She swatted him. “You didn’t stop her. And you closed the shutters. What do you think?”
    He looked down. I saw myself through his eyes for a moment. Not Kirit the sometimes-sister, wing-friend of his childhood; now just the spoiled high-tower person who took his mother’s attention and got him censured.
    â€œI wish I could change it all,” I said. I wanted him to remember what we’d been. Who I was before I moved uptower. To know that I was still the same person, still his friend. His almost-sister.
    I tried hard not to care where I was, or about the wingtest and whether we’d miss it. Tried hard not to think of my mother, who’d left me behind. Elna was angry, sure. But with Elna, that didn’t matter. She held me close and I breathed in the scent of her skin, the onions she’d cooked. I relaxed, until she murmured, “Our Kirit, skyblessed.”
    I groaned. So did Nat.
    â€œYou two.”
    â€œYou heard the Singer. I’m not skyblessed.”
    Elna dipped her head in agreement. But over dinner and until she went to bed, I caught her looking at me with the same blend of reverence and horror that she’d given to the Singer.
    Later, I wished she would wrap me up and tell me things would get better, as she had when I’d come in from flight with a bug in my eye or a scrape from the rough sinew nets.
    I touched the Laws chip Councilman Vant tied to my wrist. One side was marked “Broke Fortify, endangered tower.” The other held my sentence, “Lowtower labor.” Nat’s bore the more general “Lawsbreaker.” We would wear them until the councilman cut them off.
    Shivering, I pulled my quilt tight around me and curled up on my mat. It smelled of Ezarit’s spices and tea.
    I was censured. I hoped for forgiveness. For a miracle.

 
    3
    LOWTOWER
    In the morning, Nat banged thick baskets and buckets together to wake me. Woven vine rasped against age-dark bone. Elna gave us her cleaning rags. We tied everything on a hemp line and used ladders to descend eight tiers below Elna’s, into the no-man’s-zone of Densira. The smell of rot and refuse clung to my nostrils.
    I kept my eyes on the empty tiers we passed, not on the sky with its tempting breezes and diving whipperlings.
    â€œWhoo,” Nat said after a sniff at the stench. He jumped from the ladder onto the tier and stunt-rolled into the darkness beyond, howling like a banshee.
    The clouds were so close here. They flowed and parted to reveal even more clouds, always waiting. An occasional dark flicker within them might have been a large bird, or something worse.
    I disengaged from the ladder, feeling the sky tug at me. Stepped back from the edge, wingless and disgraced. The inner wall had grown much more down here. Barely enough room to sleep out of the weather and the fall of refuse from above. That, at least, was a blessing. Less space left to clean.
    I didn’t watch where I walked. One foot landed in a pile of muck.
    â€œBirdcrap!” I yelled. I heard Nat cackle. Then he yelped, backing up fast.
    A creature swung out of the depths of the tier, dressed in rags. It charged at us, hooting. A thin hand clutched Nat’s robe. Greasy hair dangled, and exposed parts of its body sagged like old courier bags, stretching from arms and buttocks. I looked away.
    â€œBegone. Not yours!” it yelled at us.
    Elna descended the ladder, pale as always, though the downtower