Dalliance woke uncharacteristically early the next morning, all the tea he had consumed at Effluvia's prompting coming back to haunt him. Once up, it became clear he would not be able to return to sleep. So Dalliance went exploring.

  The Imperial Shard ended abruptly a scant thousand feet east of the Citadel, falling away into a rocky, craggy cliff face, below which—far below—he could see the ocean moving past them at unthinkable speed. Little islands climbed across his vision as dots, the inverted bowl of the world passing from below to above, behind the sun, emerging again where it wasn't occluded by other shards or clouds.

  Dalliance found himself wondering, for the first time with any real conviction, just how fast the Imperial Shard had to be going—recalling how he had believed, as a younger boy, that the world turned around the sun, rather than the sun hanging stationary while the shards themselves orbited around it.

  It was humbling, if you really thought about it, the scale of what the gods had made.

  He decided simply to look, and see: the glory of creation, made on purpose, hewn as a haven for fleeing mankind. The scale of it. The complexity.

  Dalliance was the wind.

  These days it cost him only four thaums to cast—a steep discount from where he'd begun, even if the skill itself was only half-mastered. He spent a lot of time as the wind, these days.

  It was peaceful, hanging in the nothingness as nothing, above the nigh-infinite drop to the world below, watching the cliff face move beside him. Chasms as grand as cities defined the texture of the stone from which the gods had hewn the flying island.

  Dalliance, as still as the wind could be under these circumstances, noted their passage as just another facet of the generalized awe and peace of the moment.

  He didn't owe anyone anything, or need justifications. He was just himself, apart from the world.

  And then he saw the hole.

  When baking flatbread, Dalliance had seen on occasion bubbles which, having formed in the dough and been baked, would upon a bite leave a hollow cavity. He had always liked those—smooth-skinned on the inside. He liked the texture.

  The hole was like that, but into the granite, just a few miles south and down from the capital city.

  As he flowed into the cavern, Dalliance had the sudden joyful thought that for any other mage, this would be surpassingly expensive to approach. The wind was simply too fast for a mage-kite, and too far down for other conveyance. Dalliance had been surprised to learn that transformation into the wind was more faerie magic than mortal. The spell existed, but there were not many who even knew it, and this part boggled his mind even more: fewer still who would want to, or who would enjoy casting it.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  And so as Dalliance became human again and touched down on the cavern floor, he knew it was entirely plausible that he might be the first boy ever to have set foot here.

  The cavern was simple in its arrangement—a stony concavity perhaps a quarter mile in depth and half that in height and width, the floor flowing up to the walls along a smooth, deep-gray gradient. Striations in the rock did little more than lend figment to shadows. Nothing moved. In the roar of the wind, nothing else could be heard. A crack, vertical and massive, scarred the back wall.

  Dalliance pictured a wizard tower planted smack in the middle—an extrusion of stone, grand and pointed, smoke rising from the inevitable proliferation of smokestacks with which wizards are always depicted, perhaps a little colony of servants' homes and shops clustered around the base like so many mushrooms. He had wanted to be a geomancer once. Or at least an architect, with magic. He shook the thought away.

  It was a shame. Just a few buildings—that was all he wanted from his magic. And then he could maybe, with friends, make a happier life where no one could touch them. Neither imperial tax assessor nor auditor nor goblin.

  And then what, he wondered. Eat rocks?

  Suddenly irritated at his own feelings, Dalliance began the trek up and inward toward the cleft in the rock.

  There was a light inside

  Deep, deep inside the inky blackness, it was no longer inky black but slate gray

  The roar of the wind cut off abruptly as he entered the crack, and he could hear the echoes of his footfalls once more.

  Each one felt lonely.

  Earnest would like this, he thought in a fit of whimsy. Explorers in the dark.

  He would be back.

  Earnest wasn't easy to find these days, the street corners on which he performed his temple duties changing seemingly at random. Today, Dalliance found him just off Ascent Boulevard, in the shade of a general goods emporium, with only moments left before he'd need to head to class.

  But his friend didn't greet him with a smile. Instead Earnest straightened mournfully at Dalliance's approach, and greeted him with devastating news.

  Charity had taken a fall. She was in the House of Healing, but couldn't have visitors just yet.

  The cave, and its mysteries, were abruptly the furthest thing from Dalliance's mind.

  She'd been out riding with Sterling, and while he might not have been the world's biggest fan of the arrangement, he'd expected the capable pair to get along just fine, especially given the presence of Forthrightly, her guardian and chaperone.

  "Do we know what happened?"

  His friend shook his head. "Fall. House of Healing. That's all I know. I'll be there after my shift, and the gods be good to her until then."

  "Yeah."

  Far above, the clock on the Citadel chimed the hour.

  He had to get to class. He couldn't skip his classes—he had skipped too much already, the previous day, which had been a mistake in itself.

  "We'll talk."

  "Go."

  Rushing through the city, the boy who was a breeze flew through busy thoroughfares, up building faces, out across the waters of the Imperial lake, through the gate to the hidden tower where his Practicals class was held.

  He felt nothing of wonderment at all.