There was never any question of Marroo’s answer when Athesh offered him a job at his father’s funeral, not for Marroo, not really. He was broke, constantly. He’d spent almost four months of pay from his job in the cramped little book store on his first month of rent, even after the long haired and bearded little building manager waived the usual deposit.

“I’m just glad to finally have someone paying for the space.” He told Marroo in a reedy voice. “I don’t see how you can do much to it that hasn’t already been done.”

When Marroo brought the man only a tenth of what he owed for the second month he just sighed and counted out the pittance into one of the drawers on his desk.

“Usually, someone can’t afford their rent, they prefer not to see me at all.” He said as he closed the drawer. His familiar unrolled into a scroll in front of him and he input the amount paid then showed Marroo what remained. “You’ll owe what’s left next month, and anything you don’t pay you’ll owe an additional two percent on each month you don’t pay. Do you understand?”

Marroo nodded and signed where he was instructed, but stopped on his way out the door when the manager called his name. “If it was me, I’d rent the place to you for half what you’re paying,” The manager told him, “But I’m not the owner of the place.” He looked up to meet Marroo’s eyes. “You understand? I’m not the one who sets the rent. I just collect it and tell them who's still got some due.” He blinked and waited for Marroo to react. Finally he looked back at the scroll hovering over his desk and touched it. It zipped back to his shoulder where it spun around it’s clip shaped like a small blue thundercloud sparking with lightning. “Don’t let it get too high.” The manager told him without looking at him. “I’ve seen them… well… It can get unpleasant.”

Marroo made his next payment, and then little more than half on each month that followed.

There was never any question, even when Athesh paid off his debt on the small apartment and a few months of rent. “For Darro’s memory.”

It didn’t make it any easier to tell the cramped little bookstore or it’s owner goodbye. “I can’t say it surprises me,” Jansen said when Marroo told him he would be leaving, “I hoped to have you for a little longer, but you have to make your own way.” He put his book down on the counter and looked at Marroo over his glasses, then snorted.

“Don’t look so serious boy.” He smiled. “I’m sure we’ll see you again. You might have read half the books you put on the shelf, but you still haven’t read all of them.” He lifted his book again and buried his nose in its pages. “Why don’t you take one with you on your way out.” He said from behind the cover. “As a leaving bonus.”

Marroo took two and felt a little guilty about it for weeks after until he returned it and didn’t ask for the usual re-sale the book store offered for returning a book.

His new life, as a courier for Athesh and the Iblanie family, became the heart of his routine. In the mornings he did his breath exercises in his closet sized apartment, then he climbed to the top of the tenements to collect his bike and fly to the tower with the whole world spread out beneath him, open to his cultivator’s senses like the books he read every waking hour he spent alone. When he wasn’t reading or flying for the Iblanie he played cards with the other couriers in their lounge, or sat with them while they drank in the dirty basement saloon they’d made their own, or watched Podmandu fly loops around the others at the playground of towers and wires in the no-man’s land between the major sects.

“What makes you want to be a courier anyways?” Podmandu asked Marroo one day at the top of the playground when Marroo turned down a challenge to race issued to all of the gathered couriers but Podmandu by Cathay. As the clear winner of any race, Podmandu took the exclusion in stride, raised his drink and laughed, then turned to Marroo as the others mounted their bikes and peeled away to loop through tangled pipes and wires that hung between the playground’s towers.

“It obviously isn’t the flying.” He said.

Marroo shook his head.

“Well?” Pod asked when Marroo didn’t go on, “You part of some sect joined the Iblanie and they needed a place to put you or what? How’s a trog, and don’t take this the wrong way, but how’s a trog like you get to be a courier for the Iblanie in the first place? Most trogs I know in the organization are downstairs. Underground or at the gates to the underground anyways.”

Marroo shifted, legs hanging off the wall of the tower where he could see everything going on below at the risk of falling off. “How did you get in?” He asked.

Podmandu’s face split with his usual beaming grin. “Isn’t it obvious?” He patted the bike he sat on while simultaneously gesturing out at the other racing couriers. When Marroo just watched them and didn’t say anything again the boy shook his head. “I’m just kidding man,” he said, “It’s a joke, get it?”

“You’re good at flying.” Marroo said.

Podmandu shook his head with an exasperated sigh. “Well break out your brown underwear,” he said, “the man sees the obvious.” Then in a more serious tone. “I am good at flying, but that’s not why the family trusts me with their secrets man. The only reason the up and ups trust me carrying around their secrets is they know my daddy. So, how’d you get in? I mean, I know the family has ties to the down under and dark, but you said you’re not from down there, so what got you up here with us?”

The bikes of the other couriers pulled out of view around one of the towers and Marroo’s eyes lingered there to wait for their return. “Athesh gave me the job.” He said.

“He what?”

When Marroo turned to Podmandu the boy was staring at him openly. “Athesh.” Pod said. He held up a hand as though to mark someone a little taller than he was. “Big guy, baritone like he grew his chest hair when he was two? You know, daddy Iblanie?”

Marroo nodded.

“Really.” Pod muttered and took a drink from his can. “You some kind of big deal or something?”

“No.” Marroo turned back to the playground where the other couriers were finally coming around the far tower and racing back, one of them, Cathay, solidly in the lead. He hesitated. “My father.” He finally said.

“Who’s your daddy?” Pod asked. “Not Athesh.”

Marroo shook his head and looked at his hands. “Doesn’t matter.” He said. “He’s dead.”

Pod fell silent for a moment as the bikes whirled towards the tower nearest them and banked into a hard loop that would have them heading back soon. As they disappeared, Pod lurched from his bike and wobbled towards Marroo until he could collapse next to him and swing his legs over the side of the tower as they’d done during Marroo’s alleged orientation.

“Man I’m sorry.” He said. “I didn’t know.” He put a hand on Marroo’s shoulder.

Marroo looked down at the hand for a long moment before he looked up at Podmandu.

“You want to talk about it?” The boy asked.

Marroo turned back to the racing bikes as the last bike came around the tower and the whole cloud of racing couriers swung towards the tower he and Podmandu shared, for the moment, alone.

“My mom’s dead too.” Pod said. “Of course.” He gave a sort of half laugh. “She was a raging alcoholic, so it’s hard to say how much of a loss it really was. Fought with my dad constantly.” He made a sour face. “Doesn’t make him any less a bastard, but... Well. She was still my mom.”

For a moment neither of them said a word as the breeze sighed through the wires and Cathay shouted insults at her pursuers.

“I’m sorry.” Marroo said at last. “How long?”

“Oh, who’s counting.” Pod replied. “Long enough.” He reclaimed his hand from Marroo’s shoulder and stood up. “Anyways, I’m here man, if you ever want to, you know, talk, or whatever. Catch some air, get away from it all. I’m around, and stuff.”

Marroo nodded and said nothing as Pod weaved back towards his bike. “Thank you.” He added at last, but Podmandu waved a hand.

“Don’t mention it.” He said. “We’re drakes. That means we look out for one another.” He tossed his can over the side of the building and leaned out to watch it fall. “Not like anyone else is going to.” He added, right before the others landed around him in a swirl of spinning gyros and crunching gravel.

“I can’t go.” Cathay moaned a few days later as she clutched her head in the lounge where they waited for summons that would send them scurrying after messages and packages for the Iblanie leadership. Marroo, Podmandu, and a boy called Imlay were the only other couriers with her in the lounge that served as their break room between runs.

Podmandu wobbled to his feet in answer to the summons issued by the little familiar that drifted onto the table between them to unroll in front of them with two names on the display. “They won’t be happy if we send someone else.” Podmandu told her.

“If I have to fly before lunch I’m gonna be sick.” Cathay replied.

“Maybe you should eat something.” Podmanu suggested.

“Eat something yourself fence pole.” She snapped. “What have you had today?”

Pod tilted his head at the door and thought about it while the little familiar zipped in front of him to wait for the two is summoned to follow. “I had a bean sour this morning.” He replied.

“That’s not food. That’s alcohol!” Cathay leaned a little more over the table and looked a little greener. “Oh, don’t talk about it. I don’t want to think about alcohol right now.”

Marroo studied her then met Imlay’s eyes over the cards they’d been playing before the summons. Imlay wordlessly revealed his hand, a nine and father of hands.

Marroo tossed his hand of lesser cards onto the table and stood up to follow Podmandu out of the lounge.

Podmandu fiddled with his green bandanna as they mounted the stairs after the glowing familiar until it led them to the level of Athesh’s offices. When they stepped inside the familiar swam into the secretary’s clip and the secretary waved them to his desk.

“Where is Cathay?” The man asked. “Isn’t she supposed to be on duty today?”

“She is.” Pod replied. He didn’t say more, and the secretary didn’t ask, he just pulled out two packages small enough for Marroo to hold in one hand and gave one to each of them.

The address written on both boxes was the same.

“These are important.” The secretary told them. “It’s a reminder to one of our smaller sects of where their loyalties lie.”

Podmandu nodded amiably and tucked his box under one arm. “Anyone we should look out for?” He asked.

The secretary looked at him for a long moment, then went behind his desk and sat down. “The usual suspects.” He replied as he riffled through some paperwork. “Though in this case I suspect the Kotem, if there will be trouble.”

“Right.” Pod said. “Easy flying then. They’re couriers aren’t any good.”

“Indeed,” The secretary said, but he was reading through some report on his desk and didn’t seem interested in them anymore. “Just make sure one of you gets it there and collect a receipt.”

“Care for a race?” Pod asked as he hopped onto his bike when they reached the roof.

“If there could be trouble, shouldn’t we stick together?” Marroo asked.

“They gave it to two of us so that if one of us met trouble, the other one could still make it.” Pod said. “But seriously, do you think they could catch me if they wanted to?” Pod grinned and pulled his goggles over his eyes.

“They could in cabs.” Marroo replied. He tucked the box into his bike’s saddle bag.

“Nah,” Pod said, “Then you just dive and lose them in the wires. Really it’s simple. You ain’t got anything to worry about unless they come after you on bikes of their own, and then all you have to deal with is the little kids the Kotem use for couriers.”

Marroo slid into his seat and gave the pedals a kick to get the gyros spinning. “You’ll win.” He said over the buzz of the gyros spinning in their tracks.

Pod’s grin grew by a fraction of an inch. “Sure.” He said. “But it’ll still be fun.”

Marroo shrugged. “Suit yourself then.”

They peeled away from the tower together, but Marroo didn’t try to match Podmandu’s speed and soon the other boy was little more than a silhouette in the distance and a whiff of BO in the wind, occasionally visible as he wove between the towers amidst the morning traffic.

Marroo pedaled steadily after him, even after he disappeared into the forest of towers and flurry of traffic in between.

The landing pad in front of his destination was empty when Marroo arrived. He circled it, staring down at the small, gated manor they’d been sent to while he looked for used his spiritual sense to look for Podmandu.

The air still stank Pod made his descent ahead of Marroo, and Marroo felt his heart drop long before he dropped onto the landing pad alone.

He was unsurprised when the barrel of a sunflare pistol greeted him at the door.

“Make one wrong move and I’ll illuminate parts of you ain’t meant to see the core.” The man holding the pistol drawled. He glared at Marroo, then looked around and nodded towards the hall behind him. “Get inside.”

Marroo slowly obeyed while another door opened and men appeared to drag Marroo’s bike inside.

“Are there any more coming?” The gunman asked as someone else stripped the box from Marroo and tied his hands behind his back.

Marroo looked around instead of answering until the door guard put his pistol to Marroo’s nose. “I asked you something.” The guard hissed.

Marroo met the crimson eyes set in the guard’s dark face, then shook his head.

“Good.” The guard put his pistol away as the others yanked Marroo’s bonds tight behind his back. The gunman pinched Marroo’s familiar clip off of his collar and slid it into a pocket. “The other one tried to lie.”