The evening of his daughter’s wedding found Thakur coughing at the top of a tower as he watched the night slide over the city through thick banks of storm clouds like some leviathan breaching through the sea. The clouds thundered and flashed as the gargantuan structure passed above them but if the night was affected it gave no indication. It slid forward until it blocked the light leaving Thakur the illumination of the city’s lights, the reflected glow of the bottom to all sides, and the lightning. The night came on at an odd angle this close to the New Year, and from his vantage at the top of the tower Thakur could see other towers to the North still in what passed for daylight beneath the rumbling clouds. Thakur watched the construct move above him and tried to comprehend the scales involved in the thing that he was seeing.

There was nothing like this beneath the city. He’d seen awesome things in his life. He’d walked the tunnels that made up the first three pits. He’d seen pipes and the remains of machinery as ancient as the bottom itself, seen the maps of tunnel systems so complex they had to be drawn out in three dimensions with the map maker’s guesses as to the original purposes of the pipes sketched out in tight script around its edges. He’d seen the fingerprints of history in the caverns, seen his father peel apart molecules and learned to do so himself, watched familiars dance with their reflections above a lake of impossible darkness.

He’d seen wonders, but nothing in the deeps compared, in sheer majesty, to the shapes that moved through the heavens above the ground, shapes that could be so distant that measurement became impossible without some sense of scale.

He thought of Mayanna as he stared up at the night. Remembered seeing one for the first time while they stood side by side at the mouth of the entrance into the underground before everything fell apart.

The Rose Adept’s tower was bigger than the Iblanie tower, taller by almost half, and wider as well, connected to a dozen neighboring buildings by covered walkways and subterranean passages. Thakur arrived as the plains shadow kissed the horizon to turnwards and extinguished the light along that edge of the night, dropping the tower into a proper night.

The roof to the adept’s garden was open, as he’d hoped he’d find it, and he dropped from the roof of the tower to land among the garden beds in a flurry of wind that stirred the half invisible creatures fluttering among them into a storm.

The roses looked like open wounds, in the half light of the storm.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The rose adept stood in front of him as though she’d been waiting for him, invisible, as always, to the spiritual senses he’d come to rely on as his others were corrupted by the icon that empowered them.

Thakur coughed weakly and ignored her. “My daughter’s wedding is tonight.” He said. He met the sparking void where her eyes should have been.

She blinked once, looking, almost human, for the moment that her eyes were closed over their empty sockets before they opened again. “It is.”

Thakur’s spirit tried to slide down his meridians into his chest and he pushed it out, into the lead ball he rolled perpetually between his hands these days. “Where is it?”

She blinked again and turned to fiddle with an irrigation nozzle in one of the beds next to her. “You shouldn’t be there.” She said.

Thakur squeezed the lead ball between his hands and felt it flatten into a tube at the pressure as he kneaded it with both his spirit and his flesh. “I killed to make it possible.” He grated. He restrained his next cough and felt the blood bubble in his chest and dribble from his lips. “I should be there.”

“You should be out making her safe.” The adept replied. Empty eyes turned back to him without reflecting the glittering city scape beyond the balcony beside them.

Thakur prowled the length of the row of flowers while invisible insects fluttered out of his way and small pools of the woman’s darkness gathered at the heart of her roses. “I should be there.” He said again after a moment. He turned back to her. “Tell me where it is.”

She studied him. “No.” She said at last, and turned to her plants again. “It isn’t safe.”

The lead between Thakur’s palms disintegrated into sharp grit as it was overcome by the corruption in his breath. It sifted through his hands to stain the floor of the balcony, but Thakur didn’t reach for another ball from the fraying bullet bag at his belt. His breath circled him as he pushed it through his external meridians to keep it out of his body. “I’m not safe anywhere.” He said, and looked at the woman in front of him.

One of the rose plants next to him rotted to black as his spirit touched it. Its buds kept a bit of their color as they dropped from the shriveled stem, but not for long. One of the adept’s butterflies fell twitching with the bloom it was perched on and the Rose Adept glared at the plant, before turning her glare to him.

“I’m going.” He said as he pulled a new ball from his pocket and pressed his breath into it as he met the darkness in her eyes. “Tell me where it is.”

She didn’t lie to him.

She could have, he recognized that as he landed on the top of a tower near the manor where the wedding was taking place. Light blazed in the walled off yard beneath him and he could hear faint music drifting through the traffic that circled its walls. She could have sent him anywhere in the city just to get him out of her rose garden and he might not have gone back, but she’d sent him here and, if he couldn’t see his daughters yet, he could at least see that it was a wedding being celebrated in the manor below.

The gates to the manor were close, manned by two guards in fabulous uniforms that watched the passing aircabs. Thakur jumped to the ground to approach them, but stopped when he saw a gaggle of curious pedestrians press close to the gates while one of the guards put out a hand to restrain them. The group was mostly girls, fresh faced and brightly dressed. One of them seemed to know one of the guards and wheedled at him for entrance into the party while the others asked questions about the bride. The guards rebuff was terse, despite his smile, and when the other guard joined him to send them away, the girls went, grumbling and making new plans for their ruined evening.

Thakur backed into the shadow of an alleyway as he listened. He rolled the lead ball across his palm as he watched them go, then ran a hand through the ragged remnants of his beard and watched the guards resume their stations. Each guard wore elegant black robes and gold edged familiar clips at their shoulders beside the badge for their sect. Thakur glanced down at what remained of the ragged robes he’d put on that morning, long decayed by his spirit, then averted his eyes from the gate and he climbed back to the top of the building from which he’d come.

He circled the manor, looking for a prominence that would let him look inside. Some of the buildings around the manor were tall enough for him to see over the walls, but the yard was filled only by dark skinned guests and a few halfbreeds, men and women in bright blue and purple dress, expensive flashing silk and garments that glowed with the presence of their familiars manifested across the cloth as shimmering reliefs of cityscapes with moving traffic or living creatures in landscapes their wearers had probably never seen.

Vasickni was brighter than any light in the manor when he found her.

Thakur spotted her through a chink in one of the manor windows from atop a tower that squatted a few hundred yards from the manor. She wore a red dress, a dark arterial red that made her platinum hair glow like daylight and her dark eyes shine like the lake he’d tended when they still lived underground. The dress was no child’s dress, and she was no child, but when she smiled at the husband Thakur couldn’t see through the chink in the window he remembered sleep cycles in the deeps when he’d cradled the baby she’d been in his arms because she couldn’t sleep or read her stories about other weddings for other girl’s who’d lived fairytale lives in the daylight.

Thakur’s chest ached as he coughed, and blood leaked from his eyes. He should have heard the speech one of the guests gave when Vasickni turned to give her attention to some unseen guest in the room, but he heard nothing over the bubbling in his chest and the cough except the applause that followed before Banya appeared to give her sister a hug. Tears streamed down both girls’ eyes as they embraced, then the man sitting next to Vasickni rose to guide Thakur’s youngest daughter to a seat just behind the bride.

The hand that Thakur saw touch his daughter’s shoulder was dark, but he never saw his face.

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The lead ball in his hand crumbled into grit as he watched and Thakur fumbled its replacement as he pulled it from its bag. He coughed as he turned to look for it but froze when he found a boy standing above him on the raised platform of the roof behind him.

Lightning flashed against the Midnight Plains in the distance as the two looked at one another, silver eyes meeting silver bloodshot eyes.

Thakur coughed, then wiped the blood from his eyes. “What are you doing here?” He rasped.

The boy just stared at him for a moment before looking past him to the glowing manor beneath them. “Same as you are.” He replied. “Watching a wedding.”

Thakur wheezed to keep from coughing and bent to scoop up the lead ball, pressing his spirit into it before he lost it again. He looked at it, then at the boy, but the boy watched the wedding as he stepped down to join Thakur at the railing.

“Anyone you know?” The boy asked.

“Yes.” Thakur replied. He turned back to the wedding and found Vasickni through her chink in the window. “My daughter.”

The boy glanced at him, then the two watched the wedding for a moment in silence. The lights dimmed as the music began, and Vasickni smiled as she took the dark hand offered to her and followed it out of sight into the manor. She appeared again a moment later at the tall windows that occupied the center of the manor’s ballroom, spinning at the center of an empty floor in the arms of a dark skinned boy that smiled as he put his hands around her waist and swayed with her.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Thakur wheezed as blood dripped from his chin into his beard.

“They look happy.” The boy next to him said.

Thakur stared at the boy in his daughter’s arms, drank in the details, the sharp cheek bones, close shaved scalp and hard muscles his suit did little to hide. She looked like sunlight, dancing the arms of her shadow, smiling as she stared up at a boy with eyes only for her.

“They do.” He whispered.

“Do you think they’re pretending?” The boy asked.

“No.” He replied, but too quickly. He scowled and felt his eyes move across their faces, looking for chinks that he would never see from this distance. He glared at the boy standing next to him, who seemed lost in his own reverie as he looked down at Thakur’s daughter.

“It would be easy to pretend, in a crowd like that.” The boy seemed to notice Thakur’s ire and he glanced up at Thakur to meet his eyes with a steady gaze.

Thakur coughed and turned away to cover his mouth until the cough subsided. “No one pretends on their wedding day.” He wiped his lips with his tattered sleeve and looked at it before he looked back down at the wedding dance.

“What about the days after, the days before?” The boy asked as he turned back to the wedding. “Do they pretend then?”

Thakur squeezed the lead between his fingers and watched as an old man appeared to tap the boy in Vasickni’s arms on the shoulder. He released Vasickni and she took the old man’s hand to follow him in her first dance with her new family while the old watched from a tower outside. Thakur felt fresh blood drip onto his cheeks but didn’t move to wipe the tears away.

“No.’ He grated. “They, will never have to pretend.”

The boy next to him looked up at Thakur, but Thakur ignored him and watched his daughter dance as other couples joined them on the dancefloor, just one, at first, then a couple, then a dozen, until she was obscured from him by the crowd of other dancers.

“How can you know?” The boy asked.

Thakur looked down at the lead ball in his hands. “I’m her father.” He said, then coughed and felt blood run into his beard and wiped at it with his wrist as he looked away from the boy. “Of course I know.”

The boy hummed his acknowledgement and looked back down at the manor.

Thakur’s spirit churned around the ball in his hand, faster than it should have been. He felt it begin to give way between his fingers and he reached for a replacement. “You shouldn’t be here.” He told the boy as he felt in the bag at his hip. “I’m, sick. It’s not safe for me to be around other people.”

“I know who you are.” The boy beside him replied.

Thakur looked at him, then opened his third eye for the first time that evening and realized why he’d been able to sneak up in the first place.

“Why can’t I feel your spirit?” The breath in Thakur’s ball of lead spun a little faster.

The boy turned and studied Thakur. He kept both hands on the railing as his silver eyes looked over Thakur’s face and Thakur’s spirit accelerated with the beating of his heart.

“Do you know about the reliquaries?” The boy asked.

“The city tombs.” Thakur said. “Outside, beneath the beyond.”

The boy nodded, and turned back to the view. “They call it veiling, something they teach their adepts. It’s why you can’t feel them even when they’re moving around down here collecting the dead.” He glanced at Thakur. “I might be able to show you a bit of my spirit through it.”

Thunder rumbled as Thakur waited. The boy kept one eye on him, but a moment later Thakur felt the warm candleflame of a spirit flicker to life at the boy’s center. “Can you see it?” He asked.

Thakur nodded as his own spirit relaxed. The blood rumbled in his chest as he coughed and he studied the boy next to him in his third sight. There was even less breath there than average for a boy his age.

“You’re a reliquary then.” Thakur said as the ball of lead finally crumbled and he withdrew a new one to circulate his breath through.

“I’m a courier.” The boy replied. “Nothing more.” He shrugged. “Brought a package for the wedding. Wedding present, probably.”

Thakur glanced at the wedding, then behind him where he spotted a bike nestled in amongst the machinery at the top of the roof, half hidden from sight. “The weddings down there.” Thakur replied. “What are you doing up here?”

The boy didn’t answer for a long moment as he watched the wedding and chewed on his lip. “You were alone.” He looked up at Thakur, and Thakur felt the spiritual flame at his center go out as he pulled whatever veil the reliquaries from the beyond had given him back over it. “You shouldn’t be alone on your daughter’s wedding.” When he looked away, it wasn’t back at the wedding, but up the short flight of stairs back to the platform his bike was parked on.

Thakur turned back to the wedding to look for Vasickni but she was gone, and the only other person he recognized amidst the crowd was his youngest, sitting in the chair behind Vasickni’s original seat looking wistful as she leaned forward to watch the dancing.

The boy paused halfway up the stairs and looked down at Thakur. When he didn’t move on, Thakur turned to look back up at him and found two silver eyes shining with reflected light against his dark silhouette.

“Some couples,” the boy began, “They…” He looked away, up at the sky where thunder rolled through twisting clouds cast in gray by the thin light of light to the North of the Night’s Shadow. “You seem, like a good father.” The boy said. He glanced towards the wedding then back to Thakur to give him a searching gaze. “Do you think they will end up like you?”

“What makes you ask that kind of question?” The Adept asked.

The boy compressed his lips and looked away. He shook his head. “No reason.” He said, and took one step up the stairs towards his bike. “Just, thinking…” He looked back to the wedding and remained there for a moment, watching the people dance.

Thakur caught flashes of his daughter’s hair as she danced amidst the dark tide of her new family and he remembered teaching her how to dance, when she was a teenager desperate to hold hands with the boys she met at the sect’s social functions, remembered holding Manyanna’s hands hands as they spun and the girls followed beside them in the family room.

The boy turned to go.

“Thank you.” Thakur told him without turning around.

The boy paused. “What for?” his tone carried enough weariness to seem like he’d lifted the world on his shoulders.”

“For stopping to say hello.” Thakur replied. “It was nice, not to be alone.”

“Yes. Well.” The boy took the rest of the steps to climb onto his bike. “I hope we don’t see each other again.”

He heard the boy’s bike this time as its gyros spun to life and it lifted into the air while Thakur sat, and coughed, and watched his eldest celebrate her wedding while his youngest sat in the sidelines waiting for a wedding of her own.

Thakur found the Rose Adept in her library when he returned to her tower. Thunder boomed in the sky as he rode the elevator up to her level and brushed off the guards that tried to stop him from entering. She closed the book she was reading as he stepped in and dropped onto one of the expensive couches next to her, facing the wall sized window opposite the shelves of books.

Lightning flashed past the window with a world splintering crash as he watched, followed, as though instigated by the lightning, by a sheet of rain that hissed as it sang against the window pane. When he looked at the false adept her empty eyes were still trained on him.

He coughed and wiped his lips with wrist. “Don’t you ever sleep?” He asked.

More thunder boomed outside as lightning danced in the clouds overhead, turning off the rain as though with a switch.

“Don’t you?”

Thakur looked at the lead ball spinning in his hand.

“Who have you arranged for Banya to marry?” He asked her. “When I’m gone?”

“No one, if you have not completed your task.” She replied.

He looked at her. “And if I do?”

“Your daughter is a pretty woman, for a refugee, but there are men who find such abnormalities attractive, even among the powerful, and particularly, for some reason, among those who have some contact with the pipes. I’ve found someone who will have her, and from the same family as her sister, high enough that neither should feel inferior to the other so long as they survive the Iblanie.”

Thunder growled in the clouds as drizzle fell in a haze outside.

“Have they met?” Thakur asked.

“They have.” The adept replied.

He sat on a couch opposite her, and they both listened to the drizzle hiss against the glass while the clouds dragged the thunder to turnwards caught in the wake of the passing Night Plain.

“Have you decided to take your duty more seriously?” She asked.

Thakur wheezed as he watched the lightning flash and mulled over the plan half formed in his mind.

“I’ll need to know, the names of the Iblanie leadership, pictures of them, if you have them, and their home addresses.”

A familiar flashed to life from the clip on the Rose Adept’s shoulder. She scrawled quick instructions into the display the familiar offered her then sent it off and turned her empty eyes back to Thakur’s. “What do you have planned?”

“I can’t say.” Thakur wheezed, “but, when it is done, either the adept will be dead, or the Iblanie will be in no state to threaten my daughters.” He met the sparkling void where her eyes should be. “Will that be enough?”

A coughing fit took him as she considered and he fought to match her gaze until the ache in his chest became too much and he had to double over and hack up mouthfuls of bloody phlegm onto his robes while his spirit churned and fought to re-enter his body through his open meridians.

He tore a strip from his decaying sleeve as the cough subsided and used it to wipe at the blood stains across his front while the woman watched.

“I think that it will have to be.”