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that the skybastards always need doing: collecting and processing Hiram’s Golden Prolific.
    Lane hopes like hell that the Empyrean never expected the raiders to send an attack force, even a small one, to take over some nowheresville corn processing facility. If it were a supply depot? Or a big town? Maybe. But Fort Calhoun was compromised. The people taken. Turned into those . . . things .
    It’s a dead place now.
    And hopefully unprotected.
    Lane leans forward, looks out the window in the white tower. A tower once used as some kind of prison, it seems: level after level of cages. Ornate, beautiful cages. Brass and iron. It occurs to him only now, at this moment, that they look like birdcages. The Empyrean see themselves as skyborn, and so that is a fitting cell for a creature of the clouds—but why would they jail one another? Not an enlightened idyll, apparently. Here a small voice reminds him that not all the Empyrean are the same, but that is a hangnail he dare not pull unless he wants to unzip the whole thing in a gush of blood and guilt.
    “Mayor,” Lane says. The word still sounds strange to him.
    Killian says as much himself: “Mayors and cities and Pegasus blah blah blah. It doesn’t feel right on my tongue, none of it. We’re the Sleeping Dogs, my love. Rebels. Revolutionaries. Beasts with teeth . Not some poncey, preening, prancey-fancy horse with oh-so-precious wings. It’s a ding against morale. You should’ve called it, I dunno. Wolfthorn City . Or, or, ahhh. Hounds . . . ridge. Dog . . . towns . . . ville?” He snorts a laugh.
    Lane gives Killian a look and rolls his eyes.
    “Well, what the hell,” Killian protests. “That’s not my job, is it? Naming things. You’ve got to find a proper namer for things like that. You can hire one of those now. Since you’re the mayor and all.”
    Past the window, the people of Pegasus City continue their work—breaking things, fixing others, building whole new structures. Industrious like ants. Heartlanders have come from all over to join the Sleeping Dogs (though some folks call the raider group the “Woken Beast” now instead) because they know that this is a safe place. The walls that have gone up around the fallen Saranyu flotilla have yet to fall. The Empyrean have tried to penetrate the defenses and get past those walls.
    But they haven’t succeeded yet.
    And soon, when the raiders get their own corn processing facility, they’ll get this city in the air. The ground will no longer be their only home. And the skyborn will piss their very lovely trousers in fear when they see a Heartlander flotilla hunting them.
    Lane turns and points. “I told you, I called it Pegasus City because we’re . . . we’re subverting this place. It was theirs. Now it’s ours. The Pegasus is their thing. Or was. And now it’s our thing. Best of all, it’s a promise. This baby’s gonna take off, and then the Empyrean better worry.” Before Killian can say anything else, Lane jumps ahead: “And tell me, my love , exactly what is your job around here?”
    Killian offers a cheeky grin. “Moral support? Sense of humor?” The former captain stands with a wince, clutching his side, then saunters over. He walks a pair of fingers up the opening in Lane’s crimson jacket, trailing them across the cleft in the shirt, across the young man’s smooth chest. “Midnight kisses? Lusty satisfaction and—”
    With a scowl, Lane pushes him back. “No. You’re my first mate. That job description does not include getting high on Pheen day in and night out.”
    “I sacrificed,” Killian says, his playful demeanor pivoting suddenly to dour and grim. He lifts his shirt, shows the irregular constellation of scars across his chest. “I gave up things. For us. For the Heartland. For you . We got out of Tuttle’s Church, and I didn’t ask to sit and rest. I demanded we move . I said we come here and we take this place. And we did. But that . . .” His voice breaks.