Marroo did not weep when the old man breathed his last. He held his hand through the entire ordeal, and when it was done, remained beside his pallet and held his hand as the warmth left his body.

Darro found him there when he finally returned. Marroo’s father materialized, like a ghost, from the darkness of the alleyway. He paced through the carnage and poked at the bodies on the cistern’s floor with his toe. Marroo felt the world sharpen as his father finished off the few that hadn’t died from their wounds and heard him grunt in disgust as he kicked the pistol into the drainage ditch at the center of the alleyway.

“You’ve done well.” He grated when he stood over the Marroo. “You lack experience in these kinds of fights, but you did well. You should have struck before any of them could pull a pistol on you and you let them get around you, but once we get you to touch the icon that won’t matter as much. Your reach will be as long as theirs, and faster, and you won’t have to worry about teenagers ganging up on you.”

After a moment of silene Darro knelt and tilted Marroo’s face towards his to look him over. He touched a bruise Marroo hadn’t realized he’d received across his temple, then stood and looked down at the corpse of the old man Marroo still held by the hand.

“He was a good man.” Marroo’s father said.

Marroo looked up at him sharply.

“Of course I knew him.” His father snapped at the unspoken accusation. “Do you think I would offer mercy to a stranger? He used to watch out for us kids when we were on the streets. Let us know when the bad teams were out hunting.”

He looked at Marroo but Marroo wouldn’t meet his steady silver gaze.

“Come.” His father told him. “Someone will collect him when we’re gone. There’s always something to be taken from a corpse.”

The Cores light blinded Marroo as he stood with his father in the center of the circle of light cast on the heap of trash on the cistern’s floor. After hours spent in darkness his eyes stung and watered as he looked up at the light while they waited for his father’s familiar to return with the hired air-cab.

“The city is no different above ground than it is below.” His father told him while they waited. “Your mother reads because she wants to pretend that life might be different somewhere else, but the real world isn’t like her books. There are no happy endings, even when a hero sweeps her from her feet and carries her out of the darkness.”

The aircab appeared above them like a speck of darkness in an otherwise unbroken expanse of gold.

Darro scowled as he looked at the expanse of hovels around them. “I’ve met men who thought they were heroes.” He said. “Fools, the lot of them. Dead fools once I was done.” He looked down at his son. “She’ll make you weak, if you let her.”

Marroo stared up at the core and didn’t look at his father as the aircab grew from a tiny dot to a definable square against the backdrop of the core.

“I won’t always be there to look out for you.” His father said. “Only this, walking in the real world, with your eyes open, only this will make you strong.”

Marroo blinked as the light was eclipsed by the descending aircar and turned to Darro. “Are you going to kill her?” He asked.

His father scowled at Marroo but Marroo held his silver gaze while the aircab settled with a sigh on the heap of trash in front of them and dropped open its door.

“Never.” His father growled, then he marched into the cab and beckoned for Marroo to follow him.

------------------------------

At eight years old, reading with Aiza in the park came with challenges all its own.

While she no longer chased him, she now scooted up to him until her shoulder was pressed to his so that she could stare into the book, and when they laid on their stomachs she kicked her feet idly sometimes banging her shins painfully into his legs until he learned to angle himself away from her.

They didn’t argue, but their silences were filled with the un-voiced disagreements about who’s turn it was to flip the page. Aiza often got too absorbed to remember that she was reading with someone else and turned the page before Marroo was ready. When he flipped it back, she would flip it again, and when he told her to stop she told him to hurry up and then distracted him by fidgeting and kicking and generally making it impossible for Marroo to focus on the story.

It wasn’t very fun, but she seemed to get bored when he stopped fighting her about the pages and ran off to find some other kid to harass after she burned through his entire book in the first half hour of the play group. She came back and got him after only ten minutes and tried to drag him away to play whatever game they were playing.

No one could kick a ball the way he could, or throw, or dodge with the precision and power he’d learned at his father’s cultivation lessons. He felt like an outsider even when he won, and he usually drifted away from the games before they were finished to return to his books in some shady corner of the park.

She broke her leg a year after joining the playgroup and complained that she couldn’t lean forward constantly to read with him. “It hurts my leg.” She told him. When he held it up so that she could see she complained that it was too far away, then too close, and when he gave it to her to read she sighed after no more than a page and said it was too heavy.

They watched the other children running in a game of hide and tag while Marroo’s brain itched to sink back into the book and Aiza sighed again. “I’m bored.” She said, and looked to Marroo.

Marroo shrugged and tucked his chin onto his knees while he watched the an older girl throwing dirt at a boy who’d knocked her over. He didn’t say anything.

Aiza looked back out at the children then said it again with more emphasis, “I’m bored!” She looked at him again.

Marroo studied her for a moment, bright silver eyes meeting pale purple ones. “I could carry you out there.” Marroo suggested.

Aiza rolled her eyes and looked back out at the children playing tag in the lot. “I don’t want to be carried.”, she said, “Besides, you’d probably hurt my leg, or trip and break my head or something.”

“I wouldn’t.” Marroo replied.

“So certain.” She said.

Marroo just shrugged.

“Pick something else.” She told him.

Marroo thought for a moment, then spotted his book, still open on the bricks next to her and felt the itch in his brain again. “I could read to you.”

Aiza grinned and handed him the book then scooted until she could nestle down with her back pressed to his side. “Begin.” She said with a smile, and Marroo began.

Sometimes they swapped. He read, almost always, first. Then when he got tired she read. She tried to get him to do the voices the way she did, but he couldn’t do the accents without feeling embarrassed so he just used his normal voice and let her fill them in with her imagination. When her leg was better she ran off to play with the other children again, but only when they were playing her favorite games, and only after she’d found him and asked him to read to her for a bit while she lay on her stomach and kicked her legs.

A few weeks before his father woke him in the night and told him to wear black, Aiza brought a book of her own tucked into her robes.

“I stole it from my mother’s top shelf.”, she said when she showed it to him. Her eyes shone the way they did whenever she was contemplating some new mischief. “The very, top, shelf.” She repeated, and grinned.

They climbed into a tree to read it.

The book was about a man and a woman. He was a sword adept in a wilderness village plagued by a feral tribe of cave dwelling men while she was a heavenly princess trapped with them after her aircar crashed into the mountains nearby. When the man found her, pursued and hunted through the wilderness by the cave dwellers, he did heroic things to defend her, and when she was taken into the feral men’s caves he went in after her. He fought, and in Marroo’s opinion, proved that he wasn’t much of an adept, but eventually he won her free and carried her in his arms out of the cave while invisible swords protected them, and when they’d made it safely away she called him her hero and kissed him and…

The last pages of the book made Marroo profoundly uncomfortable and he could feel himself turning red as he looked away.

“What’s the matter?” Aiza asked when she saw that he wasn’t turning pages anymore.

Marroo shook his head but didn’t answer. He closed the book and when he met her eyes found them glinting with a more speculative sort of mischief. She gave him a slow dangerous smile.

“Haven’t you ever kissed a girl?” She asked slowly.

“No.” Marroo felt his face heat and he shook his head. “You haven’t either.” He said, “Kissed a girl, a boy, I mean.”

She cocked her head and seemed to think about it for a moment. “No.”, she said, then gave him a big grin that spread slowly across her face and made his heart race. “Would you like to?” She asked. “Kiss a girl, that is.”

Marroo felt his stomach drop. When he didn’t immediately answer she scooted a little closer to him.

“No.” He said, and felt his face flush a deeper scarlet. He scooted away, and she came after, just as they had when she’d been chasing him for his books.

“Coward.” She said, and grinned.

Marroo scowled. “Don’t say that.”

“Scared of a little smooching?”, she asked and held the book in front of her to hide her grin. The cover showed a shirtless man with too much muscle and with his arm wrapped around a woman’s bare waist. Even upside down, it didn’t ease Marroo’s discomfort. “Come on.” Aiza said, and scooted a little closer again, “I want to be your first kiss. Don’t you want to be mine?” She put a hand on his and looked closely at him.

She grinned at him despite his glare.

“Just, don’t move.” She finally said when he didn’t answer her.

When he didn’t say anything, she leaned in, closed her eyes and planted her lips on his.

Marroo closed his eyes and focused on controlling his breath as he’d been trained. Below them, children shouted as part of a game that sounded too physical for Marroo to enjoy and parents called for them to be gentle while leaves swayed in the breeze, concealing them from view. It was over in a heartbeat and when she leaned away from him she was smiling while her eyes still glinted with mischief.

“Mama says boys always want to be a hero for the girls they kiss. That makes you my hero.”

“I think it just makes you stupid.” Marroo replied.

“Come on.” Aiza said with a mock pout. “Don’t you want to be my hero?”

Marroo wiped his sleeve across his lips. “I don’t want to be anything.” He replied.

She leaned in quickly and kissed him again on his cheek then screwed up her face in a grin. “You kissed me.” She said. “That makes you my hero, which means…” her grin grew wider and she suddenly slid off the branch to land with a thump on the grass below, “that you have to protect me!” She shouted up at him.

“It doesn’t mean anything!”, Marroo shouted down to her.

She made a raspberry noise at him. “Scaredy pants! Come down and help me get the ball!”

Marroo shook his head and Aiza made another raspberry before she tucked her mother’s book into her skirt and ran off laughing to join the game of kicking ball. He remained, alone in his tree, and watched her play.