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his hands. Nat lifted one, and the rest came with it. They were strung together like a necklace.
    â€œMore Laws,” Nat said. His eyes went flat, and his voice with them. “Thanks for nothing, Tobiat.” But he stuffed the stinking thing in his robe so that Tobiat would let his arm go. Once he did, Tobiat bobbed his head and muttered to himself. He receded back into the gloom.
    As we prepared to climb the ladder back to Elna’s, I heard Tobiat shout, “Leave!”
    *   *   *
    That night, I huddled in the sitting area. Elna had borrowed screens to make a guest space, but it was still breezy. The fire had gone out. Elna’s own sleeping screens, hand-me-downs from my mother, muffled her soft snores. Day after tomorrow was the wingtest. If there was the slightest chance we’d be allowed to take it, I would be ready. No time to sleep.
    When two fliers are on the same plane and at risk of collision, the flier with more maneuverability must give way. Traditionally, this is the flier with the wind coming over their right wing.
    Tradition. There was a rule for that too. Traditions meant everyone knew what to do, and did it. Laws were tradition, strengthened to avoid angering the city.
    After a while, I’d recited everything I could remember from Magister Florian’s instruction, jealous that our flight group had two extra days to practice with him. That they knew they’d be able to wingtest. I’d never felt so angry at my tower in my whole life. Nor at myself.
    â€œKirit,” Nat whispered.
    It took me a while to answer. “What?”
    He scooted into my space, his hair sleep-tossed. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at his hands. He toyed with old message chips, rubbing them together so they squealed.
    â€œThat’s a horrible sound,” I said. Then I pressed my lips together. We used to talk about everything. Then I rose and he pulled away, and now? I wanted to tell him everything, and now I couldn’t. The Singer’s fiat forbade me. I held my fears in my mouth. I swallowed what I would have once told him about how it felt to scream down a skymouth or argue with a Singer. I waited for him to speak.
    â€œTell me what it looked like, at least?”
    â€œThe skymouth?”
    He nodded, eager to hear.
    I could give him that. But where would it lead? To have the whole story pulled from me like a silk ribbon off a package, until I was emptied and Nat was tied up in it. No.
    He cleared his throat and tried again. “All right. What if I go first?”
    Hope rose, tickling the corners of my mouth, as I realized he wanted to fix things, a little.
    â€œYou have to see these,” he said. He wasn’t playing with any old message chips from a kavik. He’d been fingering the strand of chips Tobiat gave him. He’d cleaned them up, so that we could see the rope binding them was frayed blue silk. Much finer than the chips we tied to message birds. Or any Laws chips. The pieces of bone were thicker too. This strand was never intended to be sent by wing.
    I looked at the scratches on the chips. The carving included tiny holes, careful etchings. Carvings within carvings. “What is this?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” Nat said. “Look.” He wiped away a spot of mold on the back of a chip. The scratches took on shape and substance. “It’s like a tower map. Each chip is a tier. And there are symbols on the other side. I can’t make them out.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? You can read chips as well as I can.”
    â€œLook,” he said again. And he was right. The symbols weren’t made up of forms I knew. These were arabesque curls and sharp cuts. Odd angles. Tobiat had given us something very strange indeed.
    I whispered without thinking, “Some of it looks like the marks on that Singer’s face.” Suddenly, I wanted to go back to worrying about the wingtest.
    Nat watched me