The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption by David S Denny Page B

Milly sat down to eat the succulent hams that been part of the booty from a roof top foray into the Upper City. Then, after a meal in silence, they sat sipping strong tea brewed by Dale over an open fire in the floor.
                                Tefkin, minus his flying gear, revealed himself as a wiry and humorous, thirty year old with a weather-beaten face topped by a mat of thin, blonde hair and accompanied by an almost permanent, toothless grin. Dale was a man of a similar age who said little.
    He was slightly heavier built than Tefkin, and his long black, but grey streaked hair, having the effect of narrowing his chubby, reddened face  and  deepening his dark brown eyes. A melancholy man Jonathon thought, a troubled man he felt.
                                Milly was a pretty, dark haired girl with sad, tired blue eyes to which Jonathon's attention had immediately been drawn to when they had first met had. She continually reprimanded the men for speaking out loud, for failing to comply with the speaking conventions of the Whisperer, but her efforts had little effect.
    “Don’t worry little sister, the Tans will never hear us, we're safer her than anywhere else” he laughed. “There’s no way they can fly here like us."
                                Jonathon found it easy to talk to the roof top trio, although Dale, who never seemed to smile, only contributed in a minimal way to the conversation. His expression was always one of deep sadness which caused uneasiness in Jonathon. Despite his mental powers, Jonathon found the route into Dale's mind blocked. The memory of whatever caused the shadow to be cast onto his spirit was buried deep inside him and had been made inaccessible to someone like Jonathon.
                                But there was something more to Dale, Jonathon perceived. He was deliberately concealing something, he had the mental abilities to do so, someone had trained him and his powers of concealment were good enough to thwart Jonathon's gentle probing.
    Dale knew that such an attempt was being made and he knew who was doing it, but, despite an uncomfortable sideways glance at Jonathon, he said nothing.
                                Tefkin, Milly and Jonathon talked of their lives and past while Dale listened politely, entering the conversation only when spoken to or when there was a memory to be shared. Tefkin informed Jonathon that all three Whisperers, as Milly insisted they were called, had been born and lived most of their lives on the roof tops of the city. Once there had been many more, but one by one they had fallen victim to accident or illness.
                                Now these three survived by stealing into the dwellings of Tans or Meks, anyone who managed to rise above the desperate, poverty stricken mires  in  which the majority of the population where submerged. In Dubh wealth and power were shown by the vertical distance an individual lived  above  the  street.  There they where vulnerable to the Whisperer's activities, Tefkin had told Jonathon, and there were rich, easy pickings to be had from the highest dwellings.
                                But perhaps the Whisperers were the  richest and most powerful of all the inhabitants of Dubh, Jonathon suggested, that  their  wealth  and  powers were to be measured, not in material terms, but by their freedom from the  forces  which  ruled  the  city and its society, and because of  their  uncorrupted natures, which brought broad smiles from them from Tefkin and Milly. Dale merely nodded.
                                The Tans knew of the  Flyers,  as  they  called  the  roof top dwellers, and of the others who sought  refuge there  beyond  the  limits  of  their  domain,  but  could  do little