Skybound heat rippled up to a long stone skyway. The covered bridge stretched from one side of the canyon to the other, built-in wind turbines taking the place of railings. They spun between bridge and roof in blurring rows that caught up activated flux particles in the air and funneled them into generators, and effectively fenced off the danger of falling. On top of the skyway, however, where no such protection stood, four thrikes and their riders perched high over the canyon city.

One of the thrikes broke loose from its handler's hold, yanking away with a great see-saw motion of the long beak in front and the crest behind. The man tugged the leather strap tied to its headgear and staggered a few steps before managing to haul the animal to a stop. He casually flung up an arm to deflect the jab from its beak.

Someone laughed over to his left. "No harm in saddling early, Captain."

Thax Tofflar grinned back at her, though he stepped warily back from the edge. At eight hundred feet up, any slip would give him enough of a fall to reflect on his whole life story on the way down. If he cared to waste time doing that. The view of the city coming at him in a rush would be distraction enough, and a fun one, too. Still, he was wet-biscuit crazy to depend on his own two feet at the moment. Thrikeback was definitely the safest place to be.

"As you will, Flantain," he called back over the wind. "But this old gal is saving her strength. We're winning this thing, aren't we, Lopper?"

The thrike snorted at him and stamped its claws impatiently on the stone.

A high-pitched horn tone sailed out over Polescos. It cut through the air mass filling the upper third of the canyon, over Thax and his companions, fought the updrafts sweeping the walls, and skimmed down into the crevices between buildings and rocky pinnacles at the base.

About time, Thax thought, and squinted to the south. Somewhere beyond the bend in the canyon, the second group of riders had hit the halfway point and were circling back for the final stretch. Skyway-hopping made for a fine relay match any day, but this time Polescos was jam-packed with spectators for the annual Pterosaur Exhibition. Thousands of eyes followed the pterosaurs, or thrikes, in the air today. 'No screwing up' was Rib-eye's only rule during the two-day event. Thax smirked. With this many people watching? The sky was his stage.

As soon as the first thrikes swung around the bend into view, no bigger than a scatter of bugs from this distance, Thax seized Lopper's saddle and hiked a boot up into the foot brace. He heaved himself onto its back and snapped the safety line to his belt.

He shouted over to the farthest rider on the bridge. Gleeson's head turned, face hidden behind a slotted helmet, and he held a hand to his ear.

"Safety line!" Thax bellowed again. "What's wrong with you?"

Gleeson gave a saucy salute – the one-finger salute, Thax noted – but snagged the loose wire to hook it onto his uniform.

The thrikes were approaching fast. The two on the west side of the canyon had the advantage for now, as the slope-warmed air lifted them up and forward as if blown on the breath of a giant. The other two tackled a gravity slog nearer the cliffsides, but after the exchange point, the broad plains of the pterosaur grounds were waiting to lift columns of heated air under the flyers. If they dared to navigate the skyscraping columns of stone and maze of catwalks that also cluttered the neighborhood. That's why Thax had claimed this portion of the relay for himself.

"Move, move, move," he chanted as the team colors became visible on the thrike's frontpieces. Green for luck. Green was fallen behind the others, nuts it all. No screw-ups. "Let's go!"

One after another, thrikes blew into range with torrents of wing-blown wind. The four on the skyway took to the air, dropping just hindmost of their teammates to snag the 'batons' in mid-flight. Lightweight steel rings wrapped in colored bands of cloth were released and caught on the arm of the next teammate, who already had one, to total three rings apiece. Only one ring left before the finish line. They clinked in bright colors on the forearms of the thrikers as they flattened themselves belly-first to the saddle and swerved into the most technically challenging part of the match.

Thax pushed his boots into the braces furthest back, and leaned with every lift and dive and rush of wind that drowned out his whoops. He clung to the reins, chest and shoulders supported by the saddle as it curved up and over the thrike's pumping shoulder blades. Lopper whipped over a catwalk and its wind turbines. She bypassed a towering column of red canyon rock as easily as Thax could sidestep a puddle. Her batlike wingtip would have knocked a donkey-cart off the track spiraling around the column, but a quick tuck to the side left Thax breathless as they nosed just under the piers of a precariously outjutting edifice. Two more cuts and swerves, and the final exchange point slid into view.

He swore sharply.

The bridge was there, one of the simple footbridges that was narrow and flat as a ribbon, but only three thrikes waited. The last green ring rested on top of a short stand for his team zoomer, who was nowhere to be seen. For the final dash, too, Thax grated. He should have arranged for a backup zoomer in case something happened, as something obviously had. Thax tore his thinking back into gear. It was too late now. But their team had to finish with four rings or it didn't matter who was fastest.

He kicked out of his foot brace and pulled forward with a desperate heave, but another look at the ring stopped him. His arm wasn't long enough to reach it from thrikeback in passing, even if Lopper shaved her belly on the bridge. Rolling was impossible, even if he managed to snag the ring upside down, and there was absolutely no way he was going to waste time landing and taking off again. They would never win like that.

Thax dragged a hand over his hair and set his jaw. In halting movements, he unsnapped the safety line and tucked up onto his knees. Wind tore at him, wobbling him for a moment, then he pulled one foot out in front of him.

"Steady, Lop!" he yelped, thrusting one hand down to save his balance.

The last eight seconds dragged on for an eternity as his nerves almost shook his hand loose from the reins. A fizzing sound was coming from his uniform, an almost intolerable distraction. Flux clung thick to the stripping on his jacket and the edges of Lopper's saddle, where the rushing air sent showers of energy particles into triple-banded punchcord sewn into the lining. That stored energy, at least, might be enough to prevent Rib-eye excluding him from future races after what he was about to do. And with the enhancement of the wildly activated flux, he might even succeed.

He hoisted up onto both feet. Pain sprang up behind his knees, and Thax cranked them into a deeper bend as he prepared to jump.

Wet-biscuit crazy. He could hardly focus past the daze of his pounding heartbeat.

Thrikes shrieked and flapped with scrabbling crunches on either side of him, but Thax stuck his full attention to one single, sanity-defying move that he had only ever heard of in stories.

He flung himself forward, one boot shoving down on Lopper's neck both to give himself momentum and to help the thrike swoop dangerously close to the underside of the bridge. Lopper went under, and the reins fell away as Thax went over. The ring caught on his arm, and with a single hard push with his foot Thax lunged as far as he could off the other side.

A split-second terror of a hundred-foot drop, then Lopper slammed up into his stomach with enough force to pop him like a balloon. Thax fought for grip, every bone rattling, and ducked his head against the onrush of wind as he gasped in fits for a breath.

Lopper flapped in fury, driven forward by the other combatants on her flanks. Adrenaline twanged in Thax's ears long before the cheers and roar of the crowd hit him. The stone arch came closer, blurring at every blink, closer…

* * *

To see the world through another person's eyes is, for most people, impossible. To see what he sees is to know what he thinks and, over time, how he thinks. How anyone thinks is naturally a very personal trait, and a very private one. But privacy had never – yet in another way, always – been an issue in this relationship.

Challis had always been called the overbearing one, though she would argue it was often the other way around. After all, Rasalas was the one who first decided to never let her out of his sight.

She lay on her back in the mouth of a little cave, planted in the cliffside. Her legs hung over the brink and drummed against the rock while she stared irritably up at the roof. Her hair was loose from its braids, decorating the ground around her face with dark disarray. Honey eyes the same shade as her skin were partly closed, unfocused, pale in comparison to the heavy brows and scant brown bangs. Ten-a-penny, in north Petchkan, but what drew the eye was a complex patch of vitasnaps under her chin glowing in little pinpricks of orange, each snap pulsing brighter or dimmer with her heartbeat to form a dancing pattern about the size of a leaf on the side of her neck.

Nearby, a Rasalas-shaped silhouette stood looking out over the rainforest, one hand resting on the wall though his balance was as solid as if his boots had grown roots into the ledge. He waited there in silence, while Challis thought about whether she had actually wanted him to come find her.

"Any sign of rain?" she asked. The buzzing of the rainforest surrounded her, softening the regular whoosh-whoosh of wind turbines.

"Why don't you look for yourself," Rasalas said in a low voice. He turned his head just slightly.

Challis sighed and clasped her hands together behind her head. So, Rasalas wasn't happy with her either.

"Just thought to ask." She eyed his profile. Then, she looked for herself.

When the swell of pressure in her head faded, she blinked down at a sprawling spread of treetops below as what had been clouding her vision came into sudden focus. The topmost layer of canopy arched and dipped in billowing swells, a static current that followed the rise and fall of the land. Rasalas' eyes could see every shift of individual leaves, every flicker in the shrubbery, every jumping moss frog. A gray fox slipped in and out of shadow. They watched it all, Challis' thoughts melting together with her brother's almost overwhelming quietude even as his gaze flitted toward every movement. It was the psyche of a hunter. The almost perfect stillness of his mind and body gradually drew the landscape up to him, until he was as much a part of it as the tangled vines that wound around and between and through the trees.

Whoosh, whoosh. Four rotor blades, each as tall as a man and bent like a thrike's wing, caged the cave's opening in a large hemisphere to catch the cliff breezes idling past. The slow spin of the turbine wasn't close enough to hit Challis' boots but could have knocked Rasalas' fingers into numbness if he reached out far enough. He focused on these for a moment, then the view spun around as Rasalas turned to face his sister.

"So, do you want to talk about it?" he said, his voice carrying all the pent-up frustration Challis expected. "Yes or no."

Challis was in no mood for yes or no. With some effort she tugged her thoughts forward, her mind reeling until what appeared in front of her eyes was the sight of her brother once more, overlapping his view of her on the ground.

Rasalas gave a sigh that deflated him enough to plop down next to her. From this close, Challis could see dark stubble scrawled unevenly down his face, complementing the mottled stains on his shirt from mud and worse. Crosshatch trousers, threadbare in the back and mended in the knees, tucked their hems into boots that may or may not have been stolen from a pawnbroker who had swindled them one too many times. Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me three times and I swipe your boots.

He tore the string out of the loops on his shirtfront and started wrapping and knotting it through his fingers.

"So," he said again, this time in a softer tone. "Do you need to talk about it?"

The white string danced over Challis' vision as she sat up and wiped a hand across her cheeks. "It won't do any good. Was father still upset after I left?"

"We mucked up the last exchange point in the final relay match of the Exhibition," Rasalas said in blunt. "Rib-eye's going to break out all hell on us. And you're worried about your little tiff with father?"

"Was he still upset?"

Rasalas sighed and cleared his throat. "Maybe not."

"That's nugget, Ras."

He huffed and looked away, his vitasnaps patch pulsing a deep brown that was almost black. He lifted a hand to his neck so it covered the little tattoo, an impulsive action that had become almost natural since the hospital. "How can I possibly hide anything from you?"

Challis reached for her boots, then paused. She turned back and spoke slowly, exaggerating her brother's concerned tone and concerned expression. "Do… you need to talk about it?"

Rasalas grinned, and couldn’t help it. He snorted, then broke into a laugh that sent him rocking back. "That's not fair."

Challis smirked and pulled on her boots. "I know you think you're helping. You’re smarter than you look."

"Thanks. I think. "

"And any useful person would ­–"

Rasalas pushed himself to his feet, all lithe energy, and Challis blinked at the hand offered in front of her face.

"Sorry, I forgot to mention. That thrike in the back shed is about to deliver," Rasalas said with a forced smile. "And you've got the best nerve for it. Save your pouting for later."