Sand-Blocks formed the outside walls of the apartment complex they both shared. The blocks were little more than a combination of sand and some kind of glue wrapped all around with a mesh of steel wire meant to hold the bricks in place. There were hollow spots in the wall as a result, vents in the brick that reached down a couple of feet wherever the lips of the building had crumbled or the mortar had fallen away. In one such place the mortar for the bricks laid across the top to seal those gaps hadn’t fallen away but had been cut with a measured application of breath so that Marroo could hide his father’s sword in the gaps beneath and then replace the block without anyone thinking to look.

He felt the breath stirring in the sword as he pulled it from its hiding place and carried it up to the top of the utility box where Dhret waited for him. He felt the geist inside, just beneath the physical plane, as he sat cross legged in front of her and set the blade across his knees.

He ran a hand along its sheath without speaking as Dhret watched him.

“This is my father’s sword.” He said.

He glanced up at Dhret but she just watched him.

He looked down again. He started to pull the blade from it’s sheath but stopped when he felt the icon press into his spirit despite his veil. He twisted the blade so that light from the obscured core ran down its edge like fire, or blood.

“He killed, thousands, of people, using this.” He said.

He snapped the sword back into its sheath and looked up to find Dhret looking at the sword instead of him.

He looked back down at the sword. “He took me with him, a lot of the time, when I was old enough.”

After a moment of silence he spun the blade around and offered it to her, hilt first.

With better control of her breath she might have been able to project a bit of it with a strike, but without an open extremis meridian, let alone an open core, she wouldn’t be able to sense the memories that lurked within. She took it gingerly and handled it as though it would bite her as she spun it around and held it in both hands, its point towards the sky.

“How old was old enough?” She asked as she looked up at the sword.

Marroo shrugged and ran a finger through grit trapped on the top of the utility box between rust patches. “I was ten the first time he killed someone in front of me. Took me with him on a hit. Someone for the family. Man and woman… child.” He looked at his finger now red with rust, then up at his lover. “The child couldn’t have been older than me.”

She studied him, dark eyes following the contours of his face while she continued to hold the sword pointed above her.

“This is why you won’t stay with the family?” She asked.

He shook his head. “My father was a monster.” He said as he turned back to the rust on the roof. “Not just to me. Athesh used him that way, used what he could do. They’ve already tried to use me the same way. If I stayed, they’d try to do it again.”

He ground his finger into the rust and felt the metal creak beneath the pressure of his finger before he let up on the pressure and just looked down at it instead.

“He ruined his life following the sword.” Marroo said. “I won’t let him, or the family, ruin mine.”

He looked up at her.

They locked eyes for a moment before she looked back up at the sword. She tilted it down to offer it to him and he took it and set it back across his knees while the Sword Icon pushed against his spirit like a living thing.

“I tried to get rid of it.” Marroo told her. “Couple of nights ago.” He ran his hand down the sheath again while he felt the Icon squirm within him. “It’s all I have left, of his memories.” His fingers came to rest at a nick in the leather of the sheath that he picked at for a moment before he looked up at her. “I can’t get rid of it. But if I have a choice, I’ll never use it.”

Dhret looked at the sword in Marroo’s lap, then looked up at him.

“What if, someone you know, asked you to use it?” She asked.

Marroo frowned and looked down at his sword hand clenched around the handle. “Never ask.” He told her. He flexed his hand, pulled it loose from the sword and flexed it a few more times before he looked at her. “If you love me. Never ask me to use this.” He squeezed the sword sheath in his off hand as she looked away.

He hesitated, then set the sword aside. “It wouldn’t solve anything, even if I did.” He told her. “Killing people only makes things worse.”

“I do… love you.” Dhret replied. “I meant it.” She looked up and met his eyes.

Marroo felt his spirit reaching for the sword next to him and he slid it behind him before he turned back to Dhret. She met his silver eyes but they just looked at one another while he waited.

“I... “ She looked at her hands. “Thank you.” She stretched and looked at the horizon, then met the silver eyes that still stared at her. “You’ll be late.” She said lamely.

“I know.” He replied, and turned his eyes to the finger he’d returned to running through the grit across a rusty patch of the roof. He pulled his finger away from it and set it in his lap, then looked at Dhret again.

She looked away from him. “What?” She asked.

Marroo shrugged and looked away.

Dhret sighed and started pulling her hair into a ponytail at the back of her head. “How can you go from talking like a normal human being one minute, then go mute in the next?” She asked.

Marroo smiled, but didn’t answer and she curled her ponytail around one hand.

“It’s... I…” She screwed up her face and chewed on her lips as she pulled her ponytail out then let it go and rubbed at its root with the tips of her fingers. “I don’t know how to tell you.” She said. “It’s complicated.”

Marroo nodded, and returned to rubbing his finger through the grit. “You don’t have to tell me everything.” He said after a minute. “I don’t need to know, but, you know, now, why I can’t stay with the family, and I know you want a better life. I want you to have it.” He looked up at her again, saw her, as she’d been last night, twirling and smiling in the dance hall while the storm boomed outside. “You deserve that life.”

Her face twisted into something resembling a smile, or the closest she could get while chewing on her lip at the same time.

“But I can’t make that life with you if there is something holding you here that I don’t know about.” He finished.

She looked away. In the silence that followed between them, a hole opened in the clouds and orange daylight shot down to warm the roof they sat on while the breeze stirred the loose hairs around Dhret’s head and made his own hair dance where it had grown long since his last haircut.

“It will be hard, making it without a family.” Dhret said at last. None of the simple happiness of the morning remained in the expression she showed him as she turned back to him. In its place, the girl of the night before had been replaced by a woman contemplating a future she never thought she would have to face.

Marroo drew a decisive half circle in the grit in front of him. “We’ll have each other.” He replied.

She snorted. “Are you even nineteen yet?”

“No.”

She looked away. “I will be, just after the new year.”

“I can take care of you.” Marroo told her. Silver eyes met her dark ones, and she seemed to weigh him.

“Not with your book.” She told him.

“No.” He looked back at the grit. “Not yet, anyways, but there are other ways.” She didn’t look away when he looked up at her. “I can take care of you. I’ll show you.”

Dhret looked down at the hands she’d settled on her lap. “I suppose you will.”

The wind filled the silence that followed. Aircabs buzzed and hummed in the sky around the apartment complex, most of them moving in a highway column that had formed to the North, headed in city towards the towers that served the import organizations the Iblanie charged for the “protection” they offered.

“You’re going to be late.” Dhret said again after a while.

Marroo scraped the small pile of rust grit he’d collected in front of him away with a finger, and nodded. He scooped up the sword behind him as he stood.

“Marroo.” He turned halfway to the edge of the roof, to find her looking at the edge of the building instead of at him. “The family, is, actually, family, for some of us.” She said looked up at him. “That, can complicate things, when we try to leave.”

He nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

He stopped again when he’d jumped down from the roof and stepped on a flower pot to crane his neck back over the edge. “The tournament allows for spectators.” He told her. “Would you like to come and watch?”

She turned to look up at him, and she smiled again, if not as simple in the happiness she showed as at the start of the day, at least something close. “I would.” She replied.

He smiled back. “I’ll come and get you.”

She called him back before he left and leaned off of the roof to pull his face up to hers. “I love you.” She told him, and kissed him. “I mean it.”

He grinned and kissed her again. “I love you too.”

Then he was in the sky, with the wind buffeting his bike while the clouds flew by overhead and the passing night made a black line against the umber haze of the turnward horizon.