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to pluck him out of the sky. Rough hands gripped his limbs, pulling him towards the city walls. He was picked up and dropped, still entangled, to land painfully on the ground – more bruises to add to those already accumulated that night.
    “It’s only a scrawny lad,” one voice said in disgust.
    “Street-nick by the look of him.”
    Tom was only half-listening. His stomach still seemed to be falling and it was all he could do not to throw up.
    “What’s the likes of him doing up in the Heights?”
    “Who cares? Toss him back!”
    This last was greeted by a chorus of approval and Tom realised that fate was cruelly toying with him, that he had been saved only to be slung over the wall again. A host of hulking forms loomed over him.
    “No, wait,” he yelled desperately. “I know things!”
    That earned him a barrage of laughter.
    “’Course you do, lad. Street-nicks are famous for what they know.”
    “Arkademics and seers, the lot of them,” another voice chipped in.
    “Really, I do.” He started to thrash in desperation, fighting the hands that continued to free him from the netting, unheeding of his resistance. One huge fist closed around his upper arm with a vice-like grip and started to haul him upwards. Somebody else took hold of his feet, before he even thought to kick out in earnest, and he was lifted physically into the air amid howls of laughter, to be dumped on the ground once more, beside the pile of netting.
    His own thrashing probably decided matters. His stomach had been through enough. Tom hurriedly rolled to his knees and started to vomit.
    The wall of onlookers drew back instinctively. “Thaissing good-for-nothing grubber!”
    “I’m not clearing that up.”
    “He’s no thaissing Kite Guard,” another voice said impatiently. “Why are we wasting our time? There’ll be no reward for returning the likes of him. Throw ’im back over!”
    Tom wiped his mouth and swallowed, tasting sourness. He wondered if he could make a run for it, but there was no way through the seemingly solid mass of legs and bodies. He was trapped.
    “Enough!” With that one word, the newcomer quieted the hubbub. “We’re not murderers.”
    “We were only fooling around, Red,” a rather subdued voice muttered defensively.
    The encircling wall of shapes parted and a single figure stepped forward, the first to become readily distinguishable from the dark mass of shifting forms that surrounded Tom. Hands reached towards him. Instinctively, he shrank away but the hands grasped him with unhurried assurance and pulled him to his feet. Tom found himself staring into a be-whiskered face.
    “Hoy!” A sudden shout drew his attention outward once more. He looked up in time to see a long-barrelled weapon discharged. The gun pointed towards what looked to be a pair of ethereal eyes hovering in the air; though Tom only caught a glimpse, so perhaps he was mistaken. Whatever it had been, it immediately distorted into something unrecognisable and was limned with dancing green fire which contracted before vanishing altogether, leaving the night empty and Tom blinking away emerald stars.
    Somebody near Tom hawked and spat. “Snooping little sky breckers!”
    “Come on.” Tom felt a hand on his back, urging him within the city; the man who had helped him to his feet evidently keen to get away from the walls. Others were already making their way inside.
    “What was that?” Tom wanted to know.
    “Somebody from the Heights spying on us. They won’t follow once we’re off the walls.”
    Tom found himself wondering exactly who was being spied upon: these people or him.
    “Who are you?”
    “Individually, I’m Red; collectively we’re the Swarbs.”
    “Swarbs?”
    “The word originally stood for Sanitation Workers and Refuse Burners, work that some of us still do, though now it just stands for us,” the figure replied proudly. Not that Tom was paying that much attention. Memories of the city’s levels verse stirred in