They were finally back at the warehouse, doors locked, the sprite lamp placed on the kitchen table right between them. Serit was drinking something dark from a tall and narrow glass. Whatever it was, their hands weren't trembling anymore.

“Héshe is satisfied with the idea you had and how you played. She says that nobody suspects you of not being human. She has allowed me to send a letter to the wind spirit we'll have to meet and organize the expedition, provided we update her about any progress we make two days before we write to the other representatives.”

They took another sip, gaze lost somewhere outside the window, where the lights on the other side of the city shone in a sea of darkness.

“Were they captured?” Saia asked.

After the match, she'd briefly checked the entrance where the kidnappers had collapsed: they weren’t there anymore, and there was no trace of a fight.

“No,” Serit said. “I’ve called for help, but when we came back, they weren’t there anymore.”

“They did something to the guards.”

“The rain whistle. The human had one hidden beneath his scarf. They threatened me with that too, to make me stop struggling.”

“I looked for weapons, but I only saw the knives.”

Serit put down the glass and rotated it on the table with the tip of their fingers.

“It’s small, it looks more like a jewel than a whistle, and it doesn’t even have a pattern engraved on the surface. It produces a sound that disrupts the receptors with which shilvé’s bodies gauge how much viss is left inside them. They're responsible for sending impulses to our brains when the viss is low.”

Saia remembered what the fallen guards were screaming.

“So they suddenly needed to rain?”

“No, their bodies thought that they needed to rain, and reacted accordingly. When the urge to rain gets ignored for too long, it becomes painful and debilitating. The rain whistle can stop every shilvé that listens to it for at least an hour, which is the average time it takes for the receptors to start functioning well again and for the body to call off the emergency.”

“Who were they?"

“I have no idea, but they sure knew a lot about me. You're the biggest secret of the city at the moment, but they knew how you could protect me and were ready in case you'd try to put them to sleep.”

“It was their tattoos. I had to break their skin.”

Saia mentally shuddered in remembering that. Now that she could look at the situation with a bit of detachment, she was horrified by what she'd seen and done. She hoped she hadn't hurt them too badly, but she couldn't really think of any other solution at the moment.

“Yes, I think I know what you're talking about. They're special patterns that can be traced on the skin and modify the flow of viss inside the body to obtain some sort of constant effect. This one in particular is very rare, because sleeping becomes impossible without someone helping you with their own viss the entire time.”

“But they ran away after I ruined their tattoos, even if they were asleep.”

“They didn't have hair. Probably they had cut it and given it to an external accomplice, so that they could wake them up from afar if they didn't see them come out of the arena.”

Saia nodded.

“The protagonist of the Albatross was a child of viss,” she said after a bit of silence.

Serit nodded distractedly.

“It's weird,” Saia continued. “It’s a rare occurrence in the matches I’ve watched, and yet it happened the day someone decides to kidnap you.”

"It did distract me a bit, I have to concede you that, but I think it's more of a coincidence. Although they had to take their information from someone.”

“Enanit?” she asked. “She doesn’t want us to leave.”

“Maybe, or maybe Héshe, as much as it would pain me.”

“Why would she do something like that?”

Serit shrugged.

“Who knows? The representatives are the most likely candidates, though. Getting a rain whistle would be almost impossible without their help.”

“It costs a lot?” Saia guessed.

Serit finally turned to face her.

“No, it has to be produced from zero and they're the only one with the blueprint. I gave it to them in exchange for this place,” they opened their arms to embrace the room and the warehouse beneath. “And resources to get started on my research about descending on earth.”

“So you... invented the rain whistle?”

They nodded, then smiled.

“My first important invention. They decided to not produce it, though: it's dangerous even for the shilvé who's using it, even if they’re aiming at someone else. Humans and wind spirits can use it without a problem, though, and it doesn't have any effect on them.” They laughed. “That part was a nightmare to explain.”

“And nobody else knows about it?"

“Hilon does, of course. And a couple of my friends from back when I was living on the fourth level.” They laughed again, hit by another memory. “We tried it on each other to see what it was like.”

“What?” Saia thought about the writhing shapes of the guards. “Why?”

Serit shrugged again.

“It was fun, once you were past the pain. It was foolish of me, I should have been more careful. Now I know better, but at the time I couldn't resist showing off.”

A smile creeped out from the corner of their mouth.

"Who am I kidding, I'd probably do the same now.”

Saia looked at the dark liquid left in the glass.

“So it's the representatives? Are you sure of that?”

“If it's not them, it's their staff,” Serit said in a cheerful voice. “Or some hate group, er even religious fanatics. Maybe some jealous scientist? Or even better, one of the many enemies of the representatives, someone who only sees me as a resource to steal.”

They emptied the glass before Saia could even think to stop them.

“In any case, we have to give them the credit they deserve: they didn't want to kill me, just to take me away. They probably needed my expertise for something but didn't like my hourly rates.”

They giggled, clearly pleased with themselves. Saia checked their viss: it was buzzing in some places and flowing peacefully in others, but other than that, everything seemed fine. They were just drunk.

“What if they try that again?” she asked.

“We'll have some extra protection for the trip,” they said, suddenly serious.

They rubbed their temples, blinking through the light of the sphere.

“Thank you for saving me.”

“I only did it because I don't want to be deactivated. If you want to show your gratitude, you could let me go home.”

Serit stood.

“I’m off to bed, now. Tomorrow we'll get the money for the trip and buy mounts and materials.”

“Mounts?” Saia asked.

Serit produced a short laugh.

“You'll see.”

The next morning, they ascended on an elevator toward the third level.

“You really have never seen a horse?” Serit asked with their usual laugh as they stepped out of the atrium into the temporary shadow of the morning.

“No. And I don't see animals here, so I don't know how you have seen one.”

“We have a huge zoologic garden with a lot of creatures from earth. The aquarium with your snakes is there, by the way.”

Saia looked down at the bottom of the city. Only some pieces of it were visible between the houses of the first and second levels. She looked for the zoologic garden, expecting a huge building, but there were too many that could fit.

“We can visit it when we come back, if you want,” Serit said.

Saia glared at them.

“Again?”

“Sorry. No being nice, I get it.”

“If you want to be nice, let me go back home. Otherwise, I'm not interested.”

Serit nodded. They guided her through streets that were even more crowded than the ones on the second level.

“I call them 'horses' but they're not actual horses,” Serit said, approaching a building on the outskirts of the level, just under the wall of the fourth one. “They're sprites shaped like horses.”

Saia looked up at the building: it was taller than all the houses around it, and twice as large. The walls were of unusually solid wood, while the bit of roof she could spot from there was made of glass. A menacing man at the entrance made her think of a guard, even if he wasn’t holding any visible weapon. He was well dressed, the border of the purplish-red tunic he was wearing decorated by rows of gold-tinted feathers.

Serit extracted a letter from their pocket and showed them to the man. He raised his eyes twice as he read, once to glance at Serit and once to look at Saia, then nodded and gave them the letter back.

“Welcome,” he said, pushing the door open with an arm and stepping aside.

Saia had expected a luxurious entrance, like the one in the temple: instead, there was a small room of cheap wood with a desk at the center. She barely noticed that there was a person sitting behind it, since her attention was entirely captured by the wall of glass on the other side of the room.

There was a barren field behind it, extending for most of the width and length of the building, covered by a ceiling of glass. There were people running around, each accompanied by a different sprite, all of them bigger than a human. The people were holding long sticks of metal that ended with a fig-shaped tip. They seemed to be shouting orders, and most of the sprites moved accordingly, with different degrees of reticence. They seemed to be enthralled by the metal sticks, constantly reaching for them, to the point the handlers had to keep moving the tips away. They only stopped and allowed the sprites to reach them after they completed a complicated movement in the air.

Serit approached the desk and gave the letter to the receptionist, a thin woman with big onyx eyes and pearl-gray skin.

“The expedition for Ifse? We prepared your steeds as requested, we only need a final confirmation. If there's anything missing or you need to change the order, this visit is the last chance to make your request. Please mind there might be variations of price depending on what you ask us to change.”

She applied a stamp at the bottom of the letter as she spoke, then rang a small bell at the side of the table. Serit took the letter back, unfazed by her words. The representatives were funding half of the total price of the expedition, and from what she could tell, Serit had more than enough to pay the rest. She still didn't know where, though, even after examining the entire warehouse.

A side door opened and a tall man wearing the simple gray tunic of the handlers gestured for them to follow him. They walked down a corridor that traced the perimeter of the field, the wall to the right a series of panels of glass.

“You look like you've never been here before,” the man commented.

Saia realized that she was walking with the face completely turned toward the field, more out of habit than necessity, while her all-around vision informed her of where she was going.

“I haven’t,” she said, then nodded toward a handler and her sprite. “What are they doing?”

“She's teaching it how to follow directions. That one,” he pointed further back, “Is teaching his sprite how to stay solid during the trip.”

The handler in question was riding a sprite that was floating half an armlength above the ground. The sprite’s light flickered and the handler fell straight through it, rolling on the ground like someone used to fall fairly frequently.

“What if it happens while we're flying?”

“If you were a shilvé, I'd just tell you not to worry, you'll just anticipate your next rain-voyage. But even if you're human, the risk is almost nothing. We only choose and train the best ones, the others are sent to the pipes.”

“Sprites can easily change their solidity state,” Serit explained. “They float between solid and gassy, and they can even detach pieces of themselves without interrupting the flux of viss from the fragments to the body and vice versa.”

“And you train them to stay solid?” Saia asked to the handler.

“Exactly. Solid enough to carry someone, at least. We only reward them with some viss if they managed to keep that state while completing the exercises.”

Saia turned her head toward Serit and consciously raised her eyebrows.

“The sprites know how to change their state, they just need to be told when to do that,” Serit said. “Huge difference compared to what we want to accomplish.”

The handler gave them a curious glance, but Serit didn't elaborate further and he didn't ask.

They followed a turn of the corridor, then entered a side door labeled with the number eight.

“After you,” the handler said, holding it open.

There was a luminous vortex in the center of the room, similar to the one under the field of the arena or the temple’s ceiling. The handler clapped twice and the fog started to divide, clearer shapes emerging in the dark room. Now that they weren't confused in the daylight, Saia could see what they were: sleek donkeys with longer legs and shorter ears.

“Three for the cargo, as requested,” the handler said, pointing at them. “And two for the passengers.”

Saia expanded her domain to include Serit.

“My statue,” she whispered in their ears with her powers.

They were a bit startled.

"Better four for the cargo,” they said then, nodding as if to themselves. “And one for the passengers."

The handler hesitated, the smile vanishing from his face.

“This will cost you a bit more.”

“It's not a concern.”

The man escorted them out, back through the corridors and out of the entrance.

“Now?” Saia asked.

“Now we visit the market,” Serit said. “You need to learn the language, at the very least. And to get appropriate clothes."