“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he roared back at her in Stone, over the rattle of the elevated train down which he ran, leaping from car to car. Within the cars, screams and shouts—panic at heavy footfalls on metal roofs. “They needed help. The Lady willed me to go. I don’t see why you’re so mad about this.”

That brought her up short. In surprise she almost let an overhead pylon strike her in the face. “You don’t see why I’m so mad about this. You don’t see why I’m so mad?” She spotted him two blocks back, climbing a skyscraper. She leapt off the train, wings spread, but by the time she brought herself around he’d vanished again. She flew forty stories up a jewel-faceted tower and perched at its peak, steadying herself against one of the needlelike protrusions Tara called nightmare antennas. Terrors clawed at Aev as she held it, like a kitten testing its claws. Not for the first time Aev wondered what exactly had broken inside Tara Abernathy’s mind that let her judge her way of life normal.

Where, in the streets below, in the alleys and dead ends, in the shop windows and blacktop street ball playgrounds, where was her wayward son?

She remembered her debates with the Lady about carving him. We’re strong, Aev had said, almost too strong, and fierce. Perhaps we need a young one who’s fast, who can move unseen in shadows, a king of infiltrators and sneaks, a messenger no door will bar.

Should have made him clubfoot and slow, and ironed out that infuriating spark of personal initiative.

(Not really, but some days she wished.)

There. Two skyscrapers over, by a tower with a starburst logo and the legend GRIMWALD HOLDINGS—Shale was a winged black slice against garish ghostlit colors. She launched herself into space, mouth wide to drink the moon.

He hid in shadows, so she searched every shadow. He flew and she flew faster. He reared and she doubled back. No crowd could conceal him, no bolt-hole was deep enough to hide.

But he was fast. She’d carved well, with the Lady in her hands.

And he must have known this would happen, that midway through the chase her rage would unclench and leave her simply running, flying, as she had done centuries ago when Alt Coulumb was a small town and she its sole guardian. He must have known, because when she cornered him on a low roof between two skyscrapers near Uhlan and Brakenridge—when she slammed into him and they tumbled together on gravel, spinning, tearing gouges in tar paper, a ball of claws and teeth, and she ended the tumble on top, legs pinning his wings to the roof—he bared his throat to her and said, with an imp’s smile she never could harden herself against, “Good chase, Mother.”