Raz followed Vennir out into the wide dark granite street. The smell of manure hit his nose as soon as his boots hit the stone. Numerous people swarmed along the outer lanes, most of them Catfolk but many not; most on foot, some on mounts such as horses or well-trained riding dogs, more on bicycles made by one of the local factories. Carriages dominated the center lanes, most pulled by horses or giant deer, a few by the more exotic feathered terreg lizards; many needed no animals, only a driver. People parted for Vennir without even realizing they were doing it, but Raz had to jump and dodge to keep up, occasionally skipping over a pile of steaming droppings from someone’s mount. Carriage animals were required to use a manure bag, but individual mounts were not. Eventually he managed to get into the tiny open space just behind the cat without stepping on his tail, and stayed there.

“So, uh, Lord Vennir. Where are we going?”

The sound of clopping hooves, clacking heels, clicking claws, and clattering wheels made it hard to hear, so Raz had to keep his ears focused on the small black creature in front of hm.

“To the tower, of course. That’s where I take all my new Takaran dusk knights for training.”

A few people glanced down as they heard the cat talk, but traffic was too dense for them to stop so their various expressions vanished almost as quickly as they arrived. Raz took a moment to realize what Vennir had said and slammed to a stop.

“Dusk knights?”

Vennir vanished into the crowd ahead of him. Raz shook his whole body, pulled his duffel tight, and bulled his way through the crowd to get to his employer. It took him a minute of hard, fast, dodging and shoving. Then he almost tripped over Vennir.

“Dusk knight?!” he gasped out.

Vennir chuckled and his tail made a sharp swish as he kept walking. “You didn’t think I was going to waste you in an office somewhere, did you? I have enough wits. People who can think while their life is on the line are much rarer.” He snorted. “Also, why would I make you a battle-class for a desk job?”

Raz frowned and pressed his ears down, feeling chastised. It had been a foolish assumption. However… “You are right, Lord Vennir. But all the dusk knights I’ve ever heard of had a much longer resume than me before they were hired.”

“All the dusk knights you may have heard of are about a tenth of the dusk knights I have.” The cat glanced back at him without stopping. “Most of them are not very open about their lives, if they even share it around that they’re dusk knights. Makes it hard to sneak around.”

Raz almost tripped over a small pothole in the road, one that looked more like the result of an explosive bolt than wear from carts. He had to skip to keep his balance, but made it look smooth. A glance around told him that they were in a part of the clan district where three separate mage sects had their compounds. That could explain the fact that someone had used explosive magic outside.

The bridge to another mesa rose up ahead of them. Raz followed Vennir over it to another part of the clan district. The fused granite of the bridge was smooth, with the flowing look of magical construction and little wear. Unlike with the streets, the maintenance crews were quick to repair any damage to something that could crumble into a canyon if neglected.

“I understand. And I know that most of what they do is confidential. But I am not a fool–”

“Debatable,” Vennir said with a smile.

Razavan narrowed his eyes and once again thought of kicking the cat. “I am not a fool to think that I am underqualified. I have snuck into a few places that were guarded, and stolen a few things that were valuable. The dusk knights are known for quite a bit more.”

The cat nodded. “A good third of my dusk knights were hired as promising youths. You will be trained, Raz. You are right that you aren’t ready, but in a few years you will be. That’s what school is for. At least, when you aren’t constantly skipping the lessons.”

“Math and cultural studies are boring. I stayed for the others.”

“You skipped language studies too.”

“Everyone in Takara speaks High Trade already. If I really need a language skill I can just buy it.”

“And he wants to be a mage,” Vennir said to no one in particular. He took a left, cutting down another major street to a bridge leading into Liontown, one of the worker districts. On the other side of the bridge the quality of the buildings dropped noticeably; though most of them were still well constructed and maintained, the materials went from exotic imported items to those that could be locally sourced, such as the dark granite of the mesas themselves.

Liontown covered most of the Kiprik mesa and, as the name indicated, most of the inhabitants were Leonar, largely emigrants from the city of Oroaith to the North. They had lost a war with an ogre horde a few centuries back, and everyone who could had fled by sea to Takara. Since then Oroaith had been renamed Rogath by the new owners and run into the ground.

The Leonar, like most Catfolk, took considerable pride in their own appearance and that of their property. Stores were all well cared for, many with murals depicting the historical battles that Leonar were so proud of. Wide plate glass windows displayed goods in a few of the larger stores, and many stores had an illusion board out front advertising their most popular products. Sayka’s steakhouse was one such, and the illusion of a freshly grilled saurian steak turning on the board over the front window made Raz’s mouth water. The smell coming from inside flipped his stomach over into a continual growl.

He realized he was slowing down, and tore his attention away before he lost sight of Vennir. The crowd in Liontown was thinner, so catching up was not hard. He did notice a number of the tall, golden-tan Leonar giving Vennir small bows. Supposedly he had helped them negotiate favorable terms with the city fathers when they first came.

As soon as he caught up Vennir looked back at him again. “You will need to sort out some of the issues you haven’t dealt with yet.”

“Like what?” Raz’s stomach growled again. Getting distance from Sakya’s hadn’t helped, as the streets seemed to be lined with restaurants emanating the delicious smell of grilled meat.

The cat paused, then flicked his ears. “Like Niv.”

Razavan stopped dead. This time Vennir actually waited for him, turning around and sitting on his haunches. People passed them both ways, a few bumping into Raz as he tried to figure out what to say. Varied and tangled emotions whirled in his heart, all tied to memories of a small capering figure that looked like a ringtail with shimmering fur.

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“Niv isn’t mine,” Raz said.

“Indeed?”

Raz worked at the memory, at the feelings. A vision of the small creature leaping and cavorting gracefully around his mother as she danced, part of her performance, hit him so hard he could smell his mother’s perfume. Iffriyan roses with a hint of apple. Another vision of his mother, swirling and twirling, somehow never stopping, as the ringtail played a complex beat on a small set of drums, also bit hard. Raz remembered clapping and cheering as he watched along with the other children, all of them amazed at how she floated on the air and seemed to become the beat of the drums.

“Niv was always with her.” Razavan realized the fur around his eyes was a little wet. He blinked and rubbed at the dampness with his cuff. “He was… part of her dance. I know Dad gave him to her, but…” Raz had never known her without the little creature. Couldn’t imagine what her life had been like without him.

“Mira Sefrivayni was an amazing woman,” Vennir said. “The ways she could move, the heights she could leap, even without using her powers, were astounding.”

Raz stared at Vennir, stunned. The cat was not talking as one who merely knew the information.

“Yes, I often watched her performances. I keep an eye on many amazing persons, but I physically attended her dances often. There is something to being there, feeling the beat of the music, watching a being of flesh and blood defy the ground and soar as if they were made of wind.” Vennir stared into space for a moment, then let out a little sigh. “She used so little power in her performances, always to enhance her dancing, not make a mere spectacle. Few dancers that I have ever seen could move to the music as she did. The world is less for her absence.” Vennir glanced at Raz for a moment, then back into space. The silence stretched for a long moment.

Raz did not know what to say.

“I am sorry for your loss, Razavan. There is so much hurt in this world, yet I still feel an ache when I think of her in particular, at how all the people of my Takara were robbed of a treasure. How much worse it must be for her son, to lose in one stroke both mother and one of the most amazing people one could ever meet.”

The world had gone blurry, the hurt inside threatening to burst out in front of everyone on the streets. Raz struggled against it, angry that Vennir had brought all this out in front of the world. It was only after a long moment of fighting a sob that he realized he couldn’t hear anything from the streets around him, and when he wiped his eyes and looked he and Vennir were surrounded by a wall of fog that shut out all sound.

“I say it again, Razavan. Honor her. Take up what she left you. All of it. That’s all we can do with such gifts from such wonderful people: Make sure they do not vanish into the heartless gray roll of history.”

Raz fought a sob again at the thought of taking up his mother’s legacy truly. Not just absorbing the levels, skills, classes, and arete she had left him, but taking up what she had been. It was not just that he didn’t want to be a dancer – what man would want that when he could be a mage or a warrior instead? – it was also the question of how he could ever be as good a dancer as her.

And… what would it even mean to be a battledancer? What even was that?

It was all so confusing.

“You will learn, Raz. Niv will help. Your mother trained him well.”

Raz nodded. He didn’t know what else to do.

After another moment the fog vanished from around them. They were still on the street. Vennir had just put up a privacy field for a moment. The black cat rose and set out along the street again.

They walked in silence after that, Raz continuing to wrestle with memories and emotions. Liontown quickly passed and from one side of a street to the other they entered the Warrens. The awful smell of fermenting meat and fish, only somewhat moderated by the sweet dense smoke of Orkish pipeleaf, filled the air. Where the buildings in Liontown were all at least two stories high, with many high-quality five-story apartment buildings, those in the Warrens were universally under three stories. Most of them looked like they had seen better days, all were clustered together too tightly, and without exception they were full of Orks. Mountain Orks, Bronze Orks, some Deep Orks, but all of them Orks.

Raz knew that those he was seeing – mostly women, as the workday wasn’t quite over and the men would be out providing manual labor – were only a fraction of the population of the Warrens. The majority lived in tunnels underground, out of sight of the city authorities as they preferred. He had heard that the only real visit the Warrens ever received from officials was a yearly inspection by an engineering crew to make sure tunneling wasn’t threatening the integrity of the mesa, plus the inevitable visits from the tax men, who spared no one.

One old Ork woman stared as he walked past, chewing on a pipe stem with her tusked mouth as two entirely naked children wrestled at her feet, a curl of smoke wafting up over her head. Raz was pretty sure one of the children was a girl, and she appeared to be winning. A group of toughs, young men who for whatever reason weren’t out working, eyed Raz and seemed to be contemplating whether they needed to rough him up. It might have been his imagination, as there were quite a few people out and it was still the afternoon.

Then again, Orks.

Past the Warrens rose the shining buildings of New Kefrinna, an entire, rather large mesa inhabited primarily by Gnomes. Aboveground, at least. Raz relaxed as he crossed over another bridge into the peaceful neighborhood and listened to the continuous noise of countless workshops, many leaking steam from small stacks that came out the side at the workshop level before turning up. The omnipresent smell of manure was much less, as the Gnomes had their own street-sweepers keeping the pavement clean, and the sharp, invigorating smell of steeltree smoke was everywhere.

New Kefrinna, named for the still-existing city of Kefrinna where the majority of the Gnomes hailed from, had writing on every square inch of wall within six feet of the ground, mostly posters advertising this or that contraption, seeking laborers with particular skills, or laying out manifestoes on new inventions and taking credit for them. The shop windows were all filled with shiny things, from weapons and armor to mechanized plows, and in many cases were set into buildings that were quite tall, at least for such a short people.

Beneath Raz’s feet he could feel the rumble of forges and more small-scale manufacturing. The Gnomes controlled the surface of New Kefrinna, but the Dwarves lived in the mesa itself, all the way to the level of the river and possibly below. The balconies opening out in the side of the mesa covered it with so much carving that the whole thing looked like a single piece of worked stone when viewed from its neighbors. The two neighboring mesas looked the same. Unlike with the Ork tunnels, the city engineers would never consider bothering the Dwarves to see if they were keeping everything shored up properly, though the tax men, of course, still made their visits.

After a long walk with the smells of Kefrinnan sausages and Dwarven ales tugging at Raz’s nose, they left the Gnomish district and entered the Guild district. Buildings quickly climbed in height, going from at most eight stories to at least ten, and sometimes higher. The styles in which they were built seemed to have nothing in common, with each clan, company, guild, or department seeking to stand out from the others. One building would be covered in fine bas reliefs depicting the activities of the particular guild, while another would be dark polished stone and lightly-silvered plate glass windows, flowing upward with powerful, unbroken lines. One building, which sat on an island in the street that split the road into two separate ways, was decorated with what Raz knew to be actual dragon bone and monster tusks and scales. The Adventurer’s Guild Headquarters for the entire region. Right beside it was the regal, imposing form of the local Prism, headquarters for the agents of Tantho and the now-dead Johadon, glimmering in six colors of stained glass in numerous shades and tints.

Raz followed Vennir past the flashier buildings, as well as the stalls selling street food at their feet, the smells of the most enticing cuisines of half the Ring tearing at him as he went, to one building that was almost as tall as the tallest, yet deceptively simple. Black basalt, smooth but with a matte finish so that it seemed to suck in the light. Tinted windows that looked equally dark. Wide, low black steps leading up to three pairs of dark wooden doors. Over the doors, the crescent smile of Vennir, done in silver and looking like a sliver of the moon on a dark night.

Vennir ascended the stairs and turned back toward Raz. Raz just stopped at the bottom and stared. He had been here before, mainly to get the blessing of Quick Wits that he had, but he had never been past the first floor. Much of what went on above was a mystery, as Vennir did not share lightly the secrets of his organization.

“Here we are. Your new home,” the cat said. “Let’s get you checked in.”