Adelie

The Quatre Nouvelles Tours de Loudon were the centrepiece of Le Rempart, the elite business district of Loudon. They looked stunning in every promotional picture, especially the glossy helicopter shots that pervaded the Imperial League's TV coverage. As she got out of the taxi in the shadow of the South Tower and waited for the driver to haul her two oversized suitcases out of the trunk, though, Adelie was less impressed.

From the ground, the reflection of the grey sky robbed the sheet glass facades of much of their colour, and the plaza under and around them was a sad attempt at making a park entirely out of concrete and carefully-contained flowerbeds still just struggling into bloom. High above, the best architectural engineering in the world held aloft the long, flat grandstand-stables of the racing stadium, slung between the pairs of towers so that the whole thing looked like two giant letter Hs with their tops flared outward, facing one another.

Petunia came round the car to stand with her, also craning her neck back to look up at the towers. "Are we really going to be working all the way up there?"

Adelie tried not to think about it too hard. During the race, Soot's stable would be fully open to the hundred-metre drop. There were catch-nets and she wasn't supposed to get within six feet of the edge, but the wind up there was going to be awful. Feeling her voice waver, she said, "At least we get a nice hotel."

She could almost see Petunia twitch. For race weekend, the QNTL's owners, who were also the race operators, made the whole top part of the South Tower available for team personnel effectively free. Tenebrae's money situation was so tight, though, that even that had been a stretch. The team manager had agonised all through the flight about the need to take a taxi, though she'd still tipped the driver generously before getting out.

The car pulled away, and Adelie and Petunia began the task of hauling the suitcases over to the lobby. Petunia had all her things in one modest shoulder-bag, but Adelie's cases contained mostly equipment for the race, the kind of thing that professional teams would be bringing in bespoke vans with all their other gear.

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Glass doors slid open quietly to swallow them. The lobby inside was vast, all black marble and chrome, with reception desks clustered near the building's central pillar. Adelie had expected it to be swarming with team personnel, but it was almost deserted. Petunia noticed her hesitation and turned.

Adelie said, "Are we in the right place?" Briefly, the absurd thought that they'd come on the wrong day swam out of the depths of her mind.

"Yeah, I think so." Petunia looked around. "Isn't that Nikita Coro?"

An impossibly tall, willowy figure was emerging from one of the elevators. Gold hair and neatly-folded crownfeathers shone under the lobby's ceiling spots. Ze wore white capri pants, a cream three-quarter sleeved blazer with dark beading on the cuffs and lapels, and an open-necked white blouse. Zir shoes were simple white pumps, expensively pale, and if having zir shins and the tops of zir feet bare chilled zir it didn't show in how ze walked.

Ze noticed Adelie and Petunia and waved, picking up zir pace across the wide lobby floor. Adelie felt rooted to the spot, but Petunia hitched her bag higher up on her shoulder and visibly relaxed, delicately returning the wave. Coro walked up to them, looking down from well over a head of height advantage, and smiled. "You're Phoebe's friends, right? Petunia and Adelie?"

Petunia nodded while Adelie struggled for words. The team manager said, "Yeah, that's us. It's nice to meet you, uh-" She finished, holding out her hand.

Coro grinned, the expression incongruously childish on zir high cheekbones. "Call me Niki. Phoebe just messaged me and asked me to come down and meet you."

"Messaged you? She shouldn't be on her phone," Adelie said, surprising herself with the force of it.

That drew a laugh from the young star-in-the-making. "Because she's flying here on Phoebe again?"

"It's not like we have any other way of getting him here." Petunia sounded a little plaintive.

"Soon maybe." Niki smiled, as brightly as any top-flight idol Adelie had seen, "Soot's a hell of a dragon for a little guy and he's going to love it here." Ze gave the quickest hint of a wink. "Lot of talk about all of you in the paddock this afternoon."

"Is that good?" Adelie peered up at Niki.

"You're new to the IL, ha?" Zir arm shifted and for a second Adelie thought ze was going to pat her on the head. "Rookies don't set purple sector times on their debut. I didn't. Lyonne didn't. Feran, maybe, but he's a world champion now. Everyone wants to see what your Soot can do." Then zir stance opened up. "Come, let me show you where the registration desks are, and the teams elevator. Stables three hundred feet in the air sound good, but getting the gear up there is a pain."