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the back of his mind.
    Through a parkland row where deer still roam,
    To the solid streets that the Swarbs call home…
    If unreliable recollection served him right, the Swarbs lived on a Row somewhere below the middle of the city, which meant that his stomach-churning fall had carried him more than halfway home.
    “We harvest the sky. It’s amazing what folk from the upper Rows just toss over the walls as junk. Might be useless to them, but some of it’s breckin’ good stuff. Occasionally, we even catch people, like you. Well, no, that’s not true; we’ve never landed anyone quite like you in the nets before. So what is a street-nick doing up in the Heights, in any case?”
    Tom said nothing.
    The big man grunted. “Fair enough. A man’s entitled to his secrets.”
    Tom liked that – being called a man; especially by someone who so obviously was. He remained under no illusion though: he might not be in chains but neither had the Swarbs let him go. What was he then, some sort of trophy? A pet? Whatever they saw in him, he knew that he would have to find a way of escaping from this Red and his cronies sooner rather than later.
    Tylus watched the small figure of the boy fall, though it seemed to grow no nearer the polished wood of the tabletop. He saw the scavenging Swarbs and their array of nets which girdled this section of the walls like a skirt of webbing, saw the plummeting figure strike one of the nets and keep going. The brawny Swarbs strained with arms locked and muscles bulging, attempting to keep hold of the net and the prize within as the cane framework supporting that particular net shattered and gave way. Tylus realised that he was waiting for them to fail or for the netting to break. It seemed impossible their efforts could succeed, such was the force with which the boy hit. Yet somehow the net held. Before his eyes it began to rebound, until the boy was tossed up into the air again, just a little, to come back down for a far gentler landing.
    “He’s alive!” Tylus gasped.
    “So it would seem.”
    The arkademic continued talking. “The nets are elasticated, clearly. They somehow managed to absorb all that momentum, breaking the fall gently, causing no discernable damage and only imparting enough energy back to the faller to make them bob a little in the net rather than shooting them up high again. Quite remarkable material. One day, I really must find the time to discover how the Swarbs developed it.”
    Distracted, Tylus paid the words only cursory attention. The revelation of the boy’s survival lifted his spirits immeasurably and proved far more of a relief than he would ever have expected.
    All he could think was the boy is alive.
    His attention returned to the scene being played out in the air before him, too fascinated to question any longer how he was seeing this.
    A heated debate appeared to be going on among the Swarbs, and Tylus regretted the lack of sound. He could make a reasonable guess at what was being said, though: “Throw him back; it’s only a worthless street-nick.”
    And maybe, “We can’t do that, he’s just a boy. Besides, think of all the effort we put into catching him.”
    Eventually those arguing for compassion must have won out, because the net was hauled in rather than being turned out while still beyond the walls.
    After being dumped unceremoniously on the ground, the boy, freed of the netting, was promptly sick, much to the evident disgust of many there. The Swarbs started to collect the discarded net. One of them, to the very right of the scene, looked up and seemed to stare straight at Tylus, as if suddenly aware that their actions were being observed. He tugged urgently at the sleeve of the man beside him, a figure only half visible – an arm and part of a torso that appeared to be unattached to anything else due to the limited field of view.
    A face and neck then came into view, as the half-seen individual followed the first man’s pointed finger, before