they did not know to applaud.
Though it took a bit of muscle, she managed to loosen the wheel of the silo hatch and wrench it open. She reached into her pocket and took out the capped vial of the chemical weevil. Following Wylan’s instructions, she gave it a firm shake, then spilled the contents into the silo. A low hiss filled the air, and as she watched, the sugar moved as if something was alive beneath its surface. She shivered. She’d heard of workers dying in silos, getting caught inside when the grain or corn or sugar gave way beneath their feet, being slowly suffocated to death. She closed the hatch and sealed it tight.
Then she reached down to the first rung of the metal ladder and attached the magnetized clamp Wylan had given her. It certainly felt like a solid grip. With the press of a button, two magnetized guide wires sprang free and attached to the silo with a soft clang . She removed a crossbow and a heavy coil of wire from her pack, then looped one end of the wire through the clamp, secured it tightly, and attached the guide wires. The other end was fastened to a magnetized clamp loaded into the crossbow. She released the trigger. The first shot went astray, and she had to wind the wire back. The second shot hooked to the wrong rung. But the third shot latched properly in place on the next silo. She twisted the clamp until the tension in the line felt right. They’d used similar gear before, but never on a distance so wide or a climb so high. It didn’t matter. The distance, the danger would be transformed upon the wire, and she would be transformed too. On the high wire, she was beholden to no one, a creature without past or present, suspended between earth and sky.
It was time. You could learn the swings, but you had to be born to the wire.
Inej’s mother had told her that gifted wire walkers were descended from the People of the Air, that they’d once had wings, and that in the right light, those wings could still be glimpsed on the humans to whom they showed favor. After that, Inej was perpetually twisting this way and that in front of mirrors and checking her shadow, ignoring the laughter of her cousins, to see if perhaps her own wings might be showing.
When her father grew tired of her pestering him every day, he allowed her to begin her education on the low ropes, barefoot, so that she could get a feel for walking forward and backward, keeping her center balanced. She’d been bored senseless, but she’d dutifully gone through the exercises each day, testing her strength, trying the feel of leather shoes that would allow her to grip the stiffer, less friendly wire. If her father got distracted, she would flip into a handstand so that when he turned back to her, she was traversing the rope on her hands. He agreed to raise the rope a few inches, let her try a proper wire, and at each level, Inej mastered one skill after another—cartwheels, flips, keeping a pitcher of water perched on her head. She familiarized herself with the slender, flexible pole that would allow her to keep her balance at greater heights.
One afternoon her uncle and cousins had been setting up a new act. Hanzi was going to push Asha across the wire in a wheelbarrow. The day was hot and they’d decided to take a break for lunch and go for a swim in the river. Alone in the quiet camp, Inej scaled one of the platform rigs they’d erected, making sure her back was to the sun so that she’d have a clear view of the wire.
That high up, the world became a reflection of itself, its shapes stunted, its shadows elongated, familiar in its forms but somehow untrustworthy, and as Inej placed her slippered foot on the wire, she’d felt a sudden moment of doubt. Though this was the same width of wire she’d walked for weeks without fear, it seemed far thinner now, as if in this mirror world, the wire obeyed different rules. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.
Inej breathed deeply, tucked her hips beneath her navel, and took her first steps on the air. Beneath her the grass was an undulating sea. She felt her weight shift, listed left, felt the pull of the earth, gravity ready