Marroo slumped as the taste of spiritual corruption faded to the city’s usual levels of decay and rot. He set his back to the placard and closed his eyes though he held tight to the veil he’d wrapped around his spirit.

His hands shook and his lungs burned from the effort he’d put them through during his flight. It was an odd sensation. How long had it been since he’d outpaced his own cultivation and exerted himself physically as well as spiritually?

He couldn’t remember.

A crier caught his attention as he leaned against the placard and recovered. He listened to the announcement for a while before he finally pushed himself to his feet and made his way towards the entrance he’d broken through the wall along one side of the marketplace. He stopped to pick a flyer from the dust before he stepped through the shattered brickwork and made his way slowly through the maze of alleyways he’d taken to get there.

An airbarge thundered low above the city as Marroo retrieved his bike from the side of the smoking building where he’d been ambushed.

There were no ambushers now.

Iblanie emergency services aircars hovered above the burnt out roof while gangs of men in heavy cloaks and gas masks shouted to one another as they cleared wreckage and looked for people in the building below. Glowing barriers floated around the roof’s perimeter and along the edges of the structure, but Marroo’s bike had fallen off the edge at some point in the conflagration. The barrier did nothing to stop him when he slipped through to mount the control seat and kick the gyros into motion. A familiar shot down in front of him to form a glowing X in the air but Marroo ignored it and pedaled into the sky while the air shook from the thunder of the passing barge.

The wind kicked up from the barge found him, an hour later, as he cautiously worked his way through his route. He kept his veil tight as he biked low beneath the cables and passing air-traffic, bumping along just above ground cars and through streets instead of over them as he usually would have. He kept his spirit open, as open as he could with it tucked inside his own flesh, and he felt his way along his route instead of flying blithely along while doing his breathing exercises.

The barge’s wake buffeted Marroo and stirred dust and pigeons from rooftops in equal measure. It took his hair dancing in that wind for Marroo to realize he’d lost another bandanna during the ambush.

The dark of midnight shadowed the core and the upward turn of the bottom as Marroo made the last stop on a route that should have been completed before noon. Shadows cast by the light reflected from one horizon reached from towers and silos throughout the city towards the approaching shadow of night while the barge settle with a low continuous roar into the docks and Marroo brought his bike down on the landing pad of a sub-sect headquarters.

“You’re late.” A guard waiting for him said when Marroo clambered off his bike.

“Sorry.” He took the black box from the guard.

“Yeah, well.” The guard scratched at his thin line of beard and looked at his fingernail pensively. “Made me late for a woman.” He said.

Marroo made no reply. His spirit ached from his constant use of the veil. He lowered it as he slung the box over his bike next to the others he’d collected since the ambush and felt his breath rush through his meridians like molten iron.

He climbed back onto his bike and let his spirit expand until he found the other adept’s aura sitting beyond the horizon like a corrupted sun. He waited for a moment, as he’d done a half dozen times before, to see if it would move, but the adept appeared content wherever he’d stationed himself and Marroo let his spirit circulate for a moment to relieve the ache in his channels.

When he looked he found the guard watching him.

“Good luck with your date.” He said.

The guard snorted, but he waved when Marroo rotated his gyroscopes and hopped into the air. “Don’t let em work you too hard.”

Marroo returned the salute, then pulled his spirit back into his bones and pedaled away into the city.

He took a long circuitous route back to the Iblanie tower.

The ache in his meridians became a nearly physical pain long before he made it back to the tower.

He hunched over the controls of his bike as the tower finally came into view. He blinked sweat from his eyes and forced screaming muscles to push him the last half a mile up to the balcony lined by the other courier’s bikes. He held the veil until he was within a hundred yards, then his spirit gusted from him.

Blades whirled briefly into being at the edges of his aura and his meridians burned as though he was opening them again for the first time. When his breath slowed in his aura he pushed out the perception of his third eye until he could feel the other adepts of the city like thunderclouds beyond the horizon. There was the venom adept, not south so much now, but south and a bit to anti-turnward in the direction of the routes where he’d opened his veil to lure them away. The adept would see him now, but it seemed unlikely he would move so close to the heart of Iblanie power. He’d ambushed him while he was alone. It seemed safe to assume the tower wouldn’t be assaulted tonight.

Memories of his father wading through the bodies of armed men the Iblanie had considered enemies gave Marroo pause as he pedaled his bike up to the landing balcony near the top floor of the tower. His father never feared entering the heart of anyone’s power.

His hands squeezed tighter around the handles of his bike as he angled his gyros for landing.

No, he wouldn’t be safe here, but he might, at least, be able to rest.

He dropped the bike onto the balcony in a row with the other courier’s bikes then slumped against the controls and listened to the bike’s gyros wind down around him.

The ache in his spirit reminded him of his training, when his spirit was still weak and his father spent months driving him through exercises meant to strengthen his spirit by emptying him of breath and forcing him to go on, and he always had, gone on, even when he’d had no better reason to then to show his father that he wasn’t who Darro Bolle wanted his son to become, that he wasn’t a monster, not a killer.

He touched the pocket where he’d tucked the leaflet from the crier in the marketplace to make sure it hadn’t disappeared with his bandanna, then heaved himself off the bike and collected the packages he was meant to deliver to one of the lower offices.

“There he is!” Imlay crowed as Marroo entered the lounge carrying the cases. “Did you have a good time there lover boy?”

Marroo smiled vaguely without replying. Imlay sat at the main table in the lounge with Ajap and a boy called Mysander playing cards.

“That’s what?” Imlay touched the clip on his shoulder and consulted the time displayed by the familiar that appeared in front of him. “Eight hours?” He asked. He flared his eyebrows dramatically. “Ten hours overdue?” He waved his hand and the sprite zipped back into his clip. “If you wanted to see your side dish you should do it on your own time. Some of us had to cover your runs.”

Marroo turned away. “I don’t have a side dish.” He said. He pushed across the room still carrying the awkward metal cases slung over his shoulder.

Imlay rolled his eyes. “Or a sense of humor.”

Marroo opened the door and paused with his hand on the frame. “Or a spleen.” He added, deadpan.

Imlay snorted laughter and Marroo smiled vaguely before he pushed on to finish his delivery to the waiting clerks.

Technically, after that, he was finished for the day. His duty shift had ended hours ago while he was still veiled and pedaling through the city, yet he lingered in the tower, playing cards half-heartedly with the other boys still on duty, and reaching out with his spirit for the sense of rot that shifted with the adept beyond his horizon. After a couple of hours, when the adept didn’t feel like he was coming any closer, Marroo tossed in a bad hand of cards and took his bike back out into the city towards home.

Home presented the problem of the tower all over again. Home was not safe, as no place could be safe with an adept after him, yet it was the one place he needed to be safe. He would be vulnerable while he slept, and if the adept new anything about him or about his life, about Dhret, then home would come with other vulnerabilities while he was awake.

He sighed and veiled himself again as he pedaled towards the apartment building despite the ache that seemed to double as he pulled his spirit back through his meridians to press into his own flesh and bones, for what little good it would do. The apartment was dark when he got in, and when he stripped off his clothes and touched the bed covers to make sure he didn’t jostle Dhret as he climbed in, empty.

Marroo’s heart lurched as he whipped back the covers. He kicked at his clothes until he felt his clip disentangle itself. The red light of his familiar only seemed to make the shadows darker before he switched it to its lantern setting and filled the room with a far brighter golden light.

A note waited for him on Dhret’s side of the bed, folded once. His hands shook as he lifted it and unfolded it to read, but it wasn’t a ransom note, not quite.

If you’re with Cathay I’m going to cut off your balls.

P.S. Where are you? I’m going to the saloon to look for you, if you aren’t there I’ll try the playground, if I don’t find Cathay either, don’t expect me back.

He let his veil drop as he left the apartments behind.

He found Cathay first. She was easy to spot from afar while she was on a bike. She drove with a recklessness intended to make up for what she lacked in skill when racing against more talented pilots like Podmandu or even Ajap. With Podmandu gone and Ajap on duty, she was the clear front runner among the bikes racing through the wires and obstacles of the networked towers of the playground.

When Marroo didn’t see Dhret among the whirling bikes behind her, he waited for her to pass the “hoop”, sometimes called “the gate” or “the squeeze” that marked the point where most races started before he circled down to ride along side her at the sedate pace she always set when she wanted people to see that she’d been the victor.

“Marroo!” She said in surprise. They had to shout to be heard over the wind and the hum of spinning Gyros.

“Cathay!” He replied in greeting. “Seen Dhret?”

Cathay let her bike loop her seat upside down and gave him a smile made only marginally less predatory for being upside down. “Why do you want to know?” She asked.

“She left a note said she was looking for you!”

Cathay rolled her eyes and pedaled her seat back to level again while two other bikes flashed by to either side of them. She shrugged and tracked the other racers with her eyes.

“She’s in a snit cause I told her I’d steal you if I ever got bored. She came out here looking for you, and I decided we’d make a girl’s night of it.” She thumbed over her shoulder at the half dozen bikes still crowded behind them trying to get through the hoop, each one crewed by a girl Marroo recognized from the various courier services that came to the playground to fly, not all of them Iblanie.

“No boys allowed, see?” Cathay asked. “That means you too, even if your girlfriend is here, so beat it before we have to chase you out.” She looped her seat aggressively inside the gyros and grinned at him in challenge.

Marroo shook his head. “I’m just looking for Dhret!” He shouted.

Cathay stuck out her tongue and made a raspberry sound before she tried to peel away from him through a tangled web of wires strung with little flags. Marroo swerved after her. When she saw him following she flattened all three of her bike’s gyros to plummet towards the ground and Marroo matched her, then caught himself just as she had through a rolling series of maneuvers that took them on a tight parabola around one of the dark towers then up through the beam of a hovering floodlight erected to let the couriers bike through the wires at night.

When they were side by side again he looked at her and waited.

“Fine then!” She shouted at him. “If you want to be like that.” She rolled her eyes. “She’s probably still sulking in the drake’s nest with the booze anyways.” She flipped and pedaled her bike in a loop over his head. “Your girlfriend’s a boring drunk.” She added from above him, then she dove back into the maze to rejoin the girls milling amongst the lower layers of the playground’s obstacles.