The Cityborn

Chapter One

Panting hard, Alania Beruthi peeked through the barely open door of the servants' staircase and watched the humanoid robot that was supposed to be keeping an eye on her stride past with its peculiar too-careful gait. A moment later she heard a series of thumps. She let out her held breath in a rush and promptly burst into giggles, echoed by Sandi Praterus and Lissa Smilkoni, her best friends, who were crowded onto the off-limits landing with her. Both the same height, both skinny, Sandi pale-skinned, Lissa dark-skinned, they looked like matching chess pieces from opposite sides of the board.

"How did you do that?" Lissa whispered breathlessly.

"Disabled some sensors," Alania said, trying not to sound proud of herself but failing miserably. "Pulled some wires. Lieutenant Beruthi told me I should learn as much as I could about robots since it's the family business. So I did." She rubbed the backs of her knuckles. She'd scraped them badly on the sharp edge of the watchbot's skull hatch when it had moved unexpectedly and she'd jerked her hand back. But she'd washed away the blood, and the skin was already closed; she'd always healed quickly.

"But it fell down the stairs!" Sandi said, sounding slightly shocked. "Won't it be damaged?"

"No, it's tough," Alania said with more certainty than she felt. If the watchbot were damaged, whatever punishment she was already guaranteeing herself with today's escapade would be ten times more severe. "But it won't be able to get up with its sensors disabled. It will just lie there until we get back and I fix them."

"You're terrible," Sandi said, but now she sounded less shocked and more impressed.

Alania grinned at her. "Thank you!" she said cheerfully. "So now the coast is clear. Ready to go?"

Strictly speaking, they weren't supposed to go anywhere. Which was the whole point of this exercise. They were supposed to stay right there in Quarters Beruthi and have a tea party or something. They weren't even allowed to go out into the safe, pristine white streets of Twelfth Tier, although at least Lissa and Sandi weren't completely forbiddenfrom doing so, like Alania.

They definitely weren't supposed to go to another Tier altogether, but that was precisely what Alania had in mind.

Had there been an actual human in Quarters Beruthi to chaperone them, escape would have been far more difficult. But the only human employed in the house of Lieutenant Beruthi was Sala, Alania's private servant, and she was away on one of her four-times-a-year visits with her parents. They lived in Agricultural Compound 27, a hundred kilometers east of the City—a farm that was, oddly enough, owned by Sandi's mother, Lieutenant Commander Varia Praterus—and Sala would be there for another two days.

Alania had sneaked out even on Sala once or twice, using the stairs they were on now to get into the service tunnels beneath the streets and then climbing up into a public building, but before now she'd always limited her adventures to Twelfth Tier. Since she was under constant surveillance whenever she was in the streets, like everyone else, she was perfectly safe, and her guardian's reprimands had been mild, the loss of vid privileges and lack of dessert for a week well worth the break from the mundane. She'd broached the idea of a real adventure today with Lissa and Sandi at her twelfth birthday party a week before, a dreary affair to which all Officers' daughters within two years of her age had, by custom, been invited. As usual, Lissa and Sandi had sat with her at the head table, and that had given them time to scheme. Alania had invited them over today with her guardian's permission, knowing that Sala would be away and babysitting would be a robot-only affair. Now the watchbot was disabled and they were free, as she had never been before in all her twelve years, and she knew a secret she didn't think her guardian knew she knew: he had a private elevator.