There are countless airships in the bay– a row of white sails that stretches across the blue. Their engines make the air shudder and lift, and the people crowded to the edge of the balconies above clutch their shawls or hold down their hats. A man’s paisley tie flutters like a flag in the breeze. Ribbons flutter on the wind, extending in long strings from the railings of a newly launched ship. It comes breaching through a cloudbank and up into view, and the whole crowd roars, cheering as the giant figure carved into the masthead– a medusa holding a stone bird– punches up through the clouds and sends them streaming in white trails across the emerging hull. Its like watching a whale surface from the deep ocean.

The crew are waving, dressed in white, shiny uniforms. This isn’t a crude leviathan hunting ship with a hull full of scar-tissue repairs. It’s a scientific voyage– the name on the ship’s side is the Cassandra.

The shipwatchers wave back and I lift a hand to salute, briefly lost in the splendor of the sun rising against the ship’s silhouette.

Ships are the undercity’s pride. The one thing we build better than anywhere else.

And I used to come here nearly every day to shipwatch. Back when I was little.

I’m not here for that today. I push through the crowds and down the docks, out from the shadows of the undercity and into the cold blustering wind, with the bright sun above, the dizzying blue abyss below. I let my feet lead me past the edges of the island into the rickety maze of wooden platforms that extend from its mouth.

There are cargo elevators going up, dangled from cranes at the edge of the upper city. I hitch a ride, feeling the whole cargo cage shake as we ascend. Some upsider girl is clutching a notebook and trying not to look sick at the feeling of the wind pulling through her hair, trying to carry her out into the abyss that waits for us all.

She catches sight of me watching, with amusement, and the disgust at my existence makes her lip peel back over her teeth like a feral animal, just for a second.

I snort out another laugh, and I look away– off towards the mouth of the undercity.

The whole island used to be a shipyard. A place where they built skyship bigger than anything we could scrap together today. And that’s all the undercity really is– the mouth of the dock where they held the ships in place. Looking up, I could still see signs of ancient saw-arms and machinery reaching out from the sides, their rusting skeletons extending shadows over the city below.

But I’m noticing something else now.

There’s a man in the elevator who’s watching me. He wears a loose vest and a white shirt, suspenders, and shiny black boots. But more importantly, he wears a paisley tie.

I’d spotted that same silver-blue color fluttering in the breeze, back in the crowds.

I was being followed.

It was the elevator that had saved me. I realized that if he was following me, he couldn’t afford to let me go ahead and catch the next elevator; the lifts were so slow I’d have an unbeatable head start. Instead he’d hopped aboard with me and risked being caught.

Robbing couriers was a popular hobby in the undercity. I’d been beaten into the street cobbles more than once. What worried me is this robber looked professional.

I didn’t look directly at him. Didn’t tip my hand at all. I just shift slightly, lifting the metal cylinder of my skimmer high onto my shoulder.

I close my eyes, even, finding calm…

Until I feel the lift jolt to a stop. Instantly I snap awake, grab the railing, and vault over. For a brief second there’s nothing under my boots but sky as I drop from the elevator platform down onto a gantry below. I land in a crouch, letting the impact push me into a spring-loaded stance that explodes up into long, striding steps as I run full tilt away.

The thug is right behind me. He’s no fool– as soon as I moved he shoved his way forward, grabbing the railing and flinging himself after me.

Together we race into the crowd. Its packed in the upper city, a river of bodies in bright clothing moving up and down streets that slant to fit the island’s hilly terrain. The buildings are pastel around me, colored blocks that race past as I duck, weave, and at worst, use my glider as a battering ram to make the crowd part for me.

He’s still behind as I hit the four-way cross of Olympian Street. A constable is yelling from the corner, coming after us, but he’s nowhere near fast enough.

Me and the thug have one thing in common, clearly. We’re professionals.

Together we break through the crowd in the center of the square and into the market beyond. The stalls are full of obstacles; I leap over crates of wine bottles, crash through a display of crystal pendants hanging from the stall’s ceiling, and kick aside crates full of chickens that scream and thrash at the bars in confusion. The thug somehow does more damage; his arm is up across his face as he simply plows through obstacles on the shortest path towards me.

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Something needs to change if I’m going to break free, and ahead, I see a stack of crates set up like a set of stairs, easy vaults heading up towards the rooftops.

Skimmer on my back I kick off of the first crate, grab the topmost with my right hand, and let the momentum of my leap swing me up onto my feet atop the pile. One more kick off, and my boots hit the shingled tile of the rooftops. But I’ve really fucked myself here. The tiles are loose and break free underfoot, and in an avalanche, they go sliding down and shatter against the street below A slippery tile goes sideways and my balance fails– I drop into the side of the rough and bruise my shoulder, my feet slipping out over the edge of the roof.

Inside I can hear people screaming, angry. A low-city idiot wrecking their house is the last way they wanted to start their morning.

I haul myself up.

The thug clambers onto the rooftop with a heavy grunt, getting his elbows and arms over and pulling up his dangling feet. He has on good boots, shiny, with a bit of gold trim at the heel. You get boots like that by being very good at your job…

I’m on my feet again, rolling up, moving away backwards.

“Why don’t you give me the package, eh?” He says. A knife slides free from the inside of his jacket. It’s a good knife, too, a simple bone-handled dagger with a mean gleam at its point.

I’m not afraid of him catching me and cutting my throat. Not up here, where I’m at home and he’s clearly out of his waters.

I’m afraid I’ll dodge for the next roof and he’ll throw the dagger straight into my back.

“Because professionals have standards.” I’m edging back, feeling out the edge of the roof and the jump to the next house with the back of my heel. “Mine mean delivering the package. And I bet yours don’t include letting me go home again.”

A mean smirk oozes across his blunt, blocky face. “Yeah. That they don’t.”

“So come on, then…” I lift an eyebrow. “Come and get it.”

His eyes are moving between me and the ground, his shiny black boots moving carefully, carefully across the threadbare roof. He really doesn’t want to have to move quick, not here when a bad slip could leave that dagger in his own throat.

The chimney is at my back, giving me something to dodge behind. The roof is groaning hard, timber buckling. Any second now it’s going to give out underneath us.

And if it drops out from underneath, I can’t bet on me being the first one to recover.

He steps closer…

Closer…

I lunge towards him, which is the one thing he doesn’t expect. Instinct keeps him moving– he swipes the dagger for my throat. But I’m not really planning to tackle him–

I’m going through the hole in the roof.

I duck, drop between the rafters where the tile has collapsed, and land in the house below. My feet slam onto the dinner table and plates rattle as I kick off, dodging through the door. From the thug’s perspective, I’ve just pulled a hell of a vanishing trick–

But he’s a professional.

As I dodge out the door, he’s leaping down from the roof. I dodge into the street, ducking an oncoming bicycle and punching through a crowd of well-dressed scholars, their papers flying into the air as I run through an alleyway, vault a fence, and dash through someone’s yard.

He goes through the fence, shoulder-slamming past.

I really like this guy, honestly. He does good work. And I’ll like him more when I’m a world away.

It’s all downhill from here, a long stretch of winding streets spilling down the hillside towards the island’s edge. Not really hightown or the low city anymore– just an in-between space of shopfronts, warehouses, and tenement buildings. Wagons strain against the rise of the hill, the poor aurochs hauling them snorting and huffing as their massive hooves struggle for grip against the slope of the streets.

I rush past them, swift as the wind. In an open chase I’m well ahead of the thug, and gaining. Too far for the knife to hit me, unless he’s the world’s best overhand throw.

But that fear keeps me sharp– waiting for the knife’s edge to hit me between the shoulders, and pushing my feet to fly faster over the cobbles.

The main street is busy today, and people shout in alarm as I weave around them. Cart-drivers try to hit me as I leapfrog over their shaggy aurochs and run over the tops of the wagons, upsetting crates full of merchandise, wine, squawking chickens. We are a two-man riot laying waste to the orderly morning and there are constables after us now, heavy-handed policemen trying to shoulder their way into our duet, but none of them can keep up.

And then, abruptly, the city stops. A hard edge where the island falls away and the sky keeps going, maybe forever. The blue horizon.

I don’t stop.

The thug can only watch as I let the last step fling me over the guard rails, my foot landing squarely atop them for just a moment before I take the plunge.

The wind greats me like an old friend, roaring a hello in my ears as gravity makes my stomach lurch and adrenaline fill my veins. Beneath me there is a spiral of rough-hewn boulders, an archipelago of float-stone islands too small for anything but grass and moss to grow. Past those last landing points, there’s nothing but the sky and the sea of the clouds.

My skimmer’s wings snap outwards. The main body of a skimmer is a oblong metal tube with two handles and straps for the shoulder. The wings are long, thin, and translucent, like the wings of a dragonfly. They begin to hum as they strike at the air, slowly at first but building faster and faster until they’re a blur of motion. I tug on the straps as my feet swing over the great nothing of the sky.

My fall turns into a low parabolic arc. I sail upwards again, and my boots make contact with one of the little islands, giving me a split-second of runway to build up momentum and kick off.

I bounce from island to island, half-running and half-hanging in the skimmer’s embrace. I turn back and see the thug at the rails, glaring after me, but I don’t have a free hand to wave at him.