Four days before Marroo and Podmandu were taken captive at the sub-sect headquarters Marroo reduced to smoking coals, Marroo made his first visit to the cramped book store since Dhret started sleeping with him. She’d been a distraction, for the first few weeks of their relationship, one that made reading the least interesting thing he could do with his free time, but she’d also been far better with Money than Marroo, as he freely admitted, and she’d taken to collecting what little he made as a courier to set aside in a couple of tin cans she kept on a bannister above their bed.

“You wouldn’t save anything if I let you keep it.” She’d said. Which was true. It added a subtle sense of guilt to his visit to the bookstore that Marroo hadn’t felt since he’d snuck his mother’s old books from the trash after his father threw them away. The money in his pocket should have gone into one of those cans marked “Future”, “Present”, or “Rent” instead of the till he used to work at when he’d worked for the store.

“I thought we’d see you again.” Jansen said when Marroo dropped the books he’d brought back to trade onto the counter. The old man smiled as he took the books then put them on the stack to be reshelved. “Been a couple of months.” He remarked. “New job working out for you?”

Marroo nodded and looked through the display windows behind him to a table covered in books out on the street.

“Author coming to do a signing today.” Jansen said when he saw Marroo looking. “Adavkin Bosmoran.” A radiant grin split the old man’s face when Marroo didn’t react. “He’s one of the biggest authors in heavenly adventure fiction. You should stay and meet him, if you can. Might be educational for you.”

Dhret was on duty at the tower and Marroo had little else to do with his day off so he did.

He stood with the little crowd of fans and listened as the author read from one of his books with an enthusiasm that made up for the unremarkable quality of the writing, then he waited for the line of fans to filter past before he approached the table to stare at the books.

They were dense little books with weird dimensions and they smelled new, more of glue than the lives their previous owners had given to them, more like the machines that made them than the adventures supposed to be inside. When Marroo ran his spirit over them with his hand he felt none of the spiritual aura he felt between the pages of the used books in the store behind him.

“Have you read any of them before?” The author asked. He was thin and angular, maybe only a half a dozen years old than Marroo and with a mop of hair that stood off of his head like a brush. His dark skin made the smile he pointed at everyone who approached as intimidating as it was enthusiastic.

Marroo shook his head and the author picked up one of the books to hand to him. “Here’s the first in the series,” he said, “it’s twelve books long so it should give you plenty of reading time.”

Marroo looked at the book in the other man’s hand. It showed the dark silhouette of the ring framed by the core, its title picked out in black as though it were other shapes floating beside the ring to cast their shadow on the worlds below. When things began to feel awkward Marroo took the book from the author and flipped it over to read the back. He knew before he even saw the strangely organized font that he probably wouldn’t read it even if he got it.

On the heavenly plains adepts use their souls to control the world around them. Pandi is a foreigner there, forbidden from learning the secret arts of the ring. Faced by a looming fate he cannot ignore he must descend among the lower worlds to learn the arts that will help him rise above everything he has ever known… if he doesn’t die along the way.

“If you finish the series I’ve got another one I’ve just started.” Adavkin said as Marroo held the book. “It took me around four years to write that series but I learned a lot and I’m hoping to have this new series done in just another year.”

The description sounded… interesting… but when Marroo flipped it over to study the cover he set it back on the table, though he left his hand on it as he studied the other prismatic covers marked by the silhouettes of other familiar shapes he’d grown up watching orbit between the bottom and the core.

“Have you read anything in this genre before?” Adavkin asked.

The cover of the last book in the series didn’t show a silhouette, instead it showed what must have been an artist’s interpretation of the bottom as seen from one of the higher shapes among the heavens, hidden behind layers upon layers of other shapes which picked out the title in a glowing reverse silhouette. Marroo moved to the end of the table to pick it up and looked at it. Adavkin let the silence breath while Marroo studied the world as it might be seen from far far above.

“You really wrote all of these?” Marroo asked. He looked back across the table, covered by nearly twenty titles.

“And more every day.” Adavkin replied. “It’s a job.”

Marroo looked at him and the author smiled. “Did you think it was some corporate thing?”

Marroo shrugged and set the edge of the last book back on the table. “To the Heavens was written that way.” He said.

“Good series.” Adavkin replied with a nod. “That’s one way to make a living, but the guy did that series actually got his start the same way I am.” He tapped the table. “Wrote a series called Draco Adept that isn’t half bad. Something like thirty books all in trilogies. I wouldn’t mind getting the kind of business deal he cut with the organization he orchestrated To the Heavens with, but there’s something to be said for writing what I want on my own terms.”

“You don’t work for anyone?” Marroo asked.

Adavkin shook his head and tapped the book still in Marroo’s hand with a grin. “You buy that book, or get it from the library, and the only person making a profit on that purchase is me.”

Another customer approached the table and looked at the novels spread across it. Adavkin smiled at her as she picked up one of his books.

“How?” Marroo asked.

Adavkin glanced in his direction and gave him a studying look. He lifted one of the books with the ring shown on the cover and slid it towards Marroo. “Tell you what,” he said, “you buy this book and wait for me over at that cafe.” He thumbed a hand towards a cart just down the street Marroo recognized for its sub-par tea and unwashed attendant. “And when this is wrapped up in another hour or two I’ll come and tell you all about it.”

Marroo took the book and waited.

“There’s nothing special about being an author.” Adavkin told Marroo when he finally joined him at the little folding table outside the tea cart. Day turned slowly to night as a Midnight Plain slid above them. The twilight glow of light reflected from the horizon to turnward served as the only remaining source of light, casting the street the occupied deep in shadow while cars and towers glinted far above them.

Adavkin took a loud sip from his tea a few droplets spilled from the overfull cup and he grimaced as he set the cup aside. “It’s easy to write a book.” He said as he wiped at the spill on his shirt. “It’s turning the books you write into income that’s the hard part, and even that just takes time, and practice.” Adavkin glanced at his tea, but pushed it aside as though to dismiss it and leveled his gaze on Marroo.

“If you’re serious, that is.”

Marro had felt heavier gazes than this scrawny artists on his shoulders before but it didn’t make it any more comfortable to sit beneath it.

“Is that something you’re thinking of pursuing?” Adavkin asked.

Marroo looked at the book sitting on the table top in front of him. He’d started to read it while he waited for Adavkin but the opening chapters had been bad enough that he’d been forced to set it aside and do his breathing exercises instead. The icon of the sword still hummed in the world around him, sharp with memories of his father and his father’s far heavier gaze.

“I know… what I don’t want.” Marroo replied. He looked at Adavkin.

Adavkin shrugged. “Well, there are worse paths than the author’s path.” He said. “It isn’t glamorous or exciting like the cultivation schools or working for a sect, but, well, this is Iblanie territory, apparently.” He gestured to a flag draped from the tea cart that made its allegiance, and protection, very clear. “I’m not fed by any particular family or sect. I’m fed by my fans, and I have fans across a dozen different territories, even a few very high ranking ones in the Kotem family.” He smiled.

“I go where I please, and everyone, everyone who likes me anyways, is glad to see me because I’ve told a story that they want to share.” He put a hand on the book in front of them. “That to me, is more valuable than all my income. I’m free, and I can give what I make to anyone I want, across any territorial boundary.” His grin widened and he winked. “Although, like I said, I wouldn’t mind accepting a sponsorship if one was ever offered. I’m not quite big enough yet for that kind of thing though.” He glanced at his forgotten tea, but left it there and leaned back to wait for Marroo’s response.

Marroo looked at the book and remembered his spirit reaching out as he did his breathing exercises while he waited. He felt more when he did his exercises now. As a cultivator he’d been able to feel the world around him as a spiritual texture wherever he moved his spirit. His aura touched the road and he felt the warmth and the roughness of the cement, smelled the tar in it and felt the density of its compacted weight, when he touched the cup of tea in front of him he tasted its fragrance and felt the smooth texture of the cup’s glazed finish. As an adept though, that spiritual sense had been untethered from the touch of his breath.

He sensed all aura’s now in much the same way. He felt the tension in the springs of a cushion across the street behind the walls of an apartment, and the humming efficiency of machinery that operated behind the cold boxes when he and Dhret went shopping at the corner store. Blades glowed brightest in that vision. Blades and the sharp edges that could become blades.

Normally his spiritual sense only gave him a picture of the world for about fifty yards around him. In empty environments, or when he pushed, he could sometimes feel as far as a hundred yards before the noise of the city’s aura became too thick for him to effectively penetrate, but when he stopped focusing on the things his spirit sensed, when he relaxed and opened his spirit to the world without looking for detail, he often thought there might be no limit to the distance his spirit could truly see.

He felt the other adepts in the city when he reached out, at least those who, like his father, either did not know how to, or did not choose to, veil themselves as the Reliquary adept had taught Marroo after his father’s death.

They glowered over the city like distant thunderclouds, shifting around Marroo like vast beings that looked towards him from across the horizon. He could not name them, could not even name them by the icons that they’d touched, but he could feel them, and he knew them by their texture and the points they normally occupied across his inner compass of the city beyond the Iblanie territory.

A pendulous weight to turnward along the track of the Midnight Plains, a low hum from the North, a texture like nails dragged across chalkboard from the south which seemed to wax and wane in concert with some pattern Marroo could only vaguely follow, and far to antiturnward, almost so far that Marroo could not feel it, a sense of something flickering like a candle flame and casting spiritual shadows from the towers that stood between him and the source of that light.

A fifth had joined that pantheon of distant aura’s before Marroo’s father died, one that masked itself behind the stench of corruption that always rose from the city’s trash heaps and drainage ditches and difficult to find amidst the noise as a result, but still there, still always present as a reminder of his father and the fate that waited for Marroo if he followed his father down that path.

These were the auras of the gods for this little part of the world. Deities who shared more in common with natural disasters than the minor deities, spirits, and ancestors sometimes prayed to in household temples or market shrines. No givers of gifts, but, like his father, fulcrums of destruction, permitted to rule what they did not destroy but only by virtue of their ability and willingness to destroy it. Their auras might be invisible for people like the author that sat in front of him, but to Marroo they were reminders of his own place in the city’s pantheon of adepts, a sharp storm of razors that spun near what he thought of as the heart of the city. They were the future Athesh offered him when he brought Marroo to the basements of the Iblanie tower, the future Dhruv tempted him with when he sent him to the brothel instead of about his duties, and the future he’d tried to hide from as a bookstore clerk and then as a courier for the Iblanie in the first place.

“How do I do what you do?” Marroo asked.

Adavkin grinned. “There’s no secret to it.” He said. He leaned forward in his chair. “All it takes is time. Time, and a little guidance.” He smiled. “If you’re serious about this that is.”

Time was something Marroo thought he’d have, until Podmandu got them captured by the sub-sect of the Iblanie family. Until he was no longer just another minor employee of a major family. Until he found himself fleeing from the adept who’d appeared just before his father’s death.

There was no fleeing from an adept.