Aliyah

“Wake up,” someone was saying, faintly muffled.

She heard the chime of a familiar bell. So very insistent…

“Hey, wake up!”

Aliyah stirred and jerked back into the waking world, thrashing for a second against sheets that threatened to smother her. The little bell strung over her bed jangled louder, and something clanked at her door; it sounded like a master key. Never a good sign.

“Wha—who is it? Am I late?” she mumbled as she pushed at her sweat-soaked blankets. Then it all hit her in a bitter jolt of information, unwelcome synapses firing: faeries, Magicians, Lady Kionah. She flooded herself with magic and flushed the sleep-chemicals from her body as best as she could.

A pale-haired lady had unlocked her door and was peeking through the gap. “Matron Serine here.”

Aliyah frowned and feigned disorientation. “My first shift is uh, wait, is it dawn already?” She felt too tired for it to already be dawn, but she hoped, just this once, that her bodily senses were deceiving her. Some upset of the sleep cycle that left her a touch more tired than her usual dawn equilibrium. Perhaps the Matron was here on an innocent errand, some request demanded of any low-level maidservant. It was rare, but it had happened before.

Matron Serine cracked the door further open; a pair of guards loomed behind her, armed and armoured. So it was happening, then, she thought numbly.

“Something’s going on,” Matron Serine said. “You all have to go down to the main hall.”

“What’s happening? Why are the guards here? Is there a problem?” she blurted out the stream of questions, desperately fishing for clues. Maybe Zahir and Kionah were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t faeries.

“Hell if I know,” Serine said bluntly. “I just ring the bells. Quickly, now.”

Aliyah stumbled out of her bed and slipped on her shoes, grabbing her cloak off the back of her door and wrapping it tightly around herself. The keys at her thigh felt as if they were burning a hole through her skin. One of the guards put a hand on her shoulder and she startled.

“That way, miss,” he said gruffly, pointing her towards the crowd of lowborns heading down the hall. He had a kind face; she wondered if he could guess at what the Magicians were planning.

She joined the crowd. It was flanked by yet more guards, black-pauldroned and silver-speared; her heart sank. No easy way to slip away then, just as Zahir had suspected. Some lowborns, probably early-shifters like her, were dressed in rumpled robes and skirts. Others shivered in their thin nightgowns and chemises, hunched under shared cloaks with their friends. Murmurs of curiosity and complaint drifted around her in waves. She scanned around for Rana and did not find her, daring to hope that the late-night shift would shield her from what was to come as it had shielded her from the execution.

Outside, there was a distant boom. Then several more.

Shrill cries of confusion and alarm erupted among the crowd. The guards ushered them forwards. Some murmured awkward platitudes to the ones who were whimpering with terror. Aliyah felt sick.

She glanced out of the windows they passed and spotted skyships heading towards the mountains. Zahir had likely already been called out to fight.

They made it to the hall, which was milling with Magicians. That was the moment it became fully real to her. A waiting tide of blue cloaks and faceless bird-masks. Secret mountain faeries. No sweet-cakes with Rana tomorrow, or possibly ever again.

“This way please,” said one of the Magicians, herding Aliyah and six others away from the crowd with her outstretched staff.

Wisps of ash-brown hair were escaping from beneath the Magician’s hood and there was what looked like a tea stain on her sleeve. This lady, a human behind her mask, probably as tired as they were from being woken hours before dawn, was leading them to be killed? Her apprentice flanked them from behind, preventing any chance of escape.

Kionah’s words surfaced to the front of her mind—the Magicians move. Perhaps there was a person behind the mask, but for now, the Magician was taking the lead. All of them were. Groups of lowborns were being splintered off the main procession and they were no exception.

Her body prickled with mounting terror as they were led outside, past overgrown rotundas and groundskeeper’s sheds and into the dead part of the desert-rose gardens, blackened with blight. They stopped in front of an open colonnade. Hastily-scrawled runes spiraled up the pale columns. There were lines and circles drawn onto the tiling with blue chalk; an inverted echo of Princess Alhena’s blood dribbling down, steam rising softly from red-soaked salt.

The Magician spoke a word which made Aliyah’s ears ring.

Thin, whip-like coils of runed chains dropped from crevices in the ceiling and surged at them.

One of the chains hooked around Aliyah’s wrist and dragged her over to the nearest column, then lashed around to loop over her chest and stomach until she was tightly bound. She twisted and watched, horrified, as the free end of the chain dove into another section of the coils and fused to itself, hissing with magic all the while.

A young boy, a column over from her, was shrieking with fear. One of the other lowborns—a short, stocky girl in a kite-handler’s uniform—was still struggling, digging her feet into the ground as she grappled with the chain hooked around her waist. She turned around to face the approaching Magician and lunged, landing a solid blow. The Magician snarled and shoved her; she lost her balance, tumbling into the column as the chain looped around her with vicious ease.

“What the fuck,” someone screamed.

“Please remain calm,” said the Magician. “This is merely for your own safety.”

She raised her staff and murmured a spell. The screaming boy’s cries cut off as the soft, cloudy sensation of a silence-field settled over them.

The Magician bowed. She patted her apprentice on the shoulder and made a motion indicating he keep watch before departing in a swirl of blue. The apprentice clasped his hands behind his back and stationed himself at the opening of the colonnade, facing the castle proper. Aliyah let out a slow, silenced breath. Neither Zahir nor Kionah had provided any useful advice for this part.

Thanks ever so much, Zahir, she thought grimly. They’ll put you in a room and lock the door, you’ll definitely-maybe-presumably have full use of your hands, so it’ll be completely fine. Okay, okay, enough kvetching. Focus. Check the magic on the damned chains.

The chains flashed with runes, but thankfully not the aggressive, necrotic kind that Princess Alhena and Lady Kionah had been subjected to. What was more, her magic still flowed just fine, though she could see from the efforts of the other lowborns that spells, slicing or corroding or otherwise, merely bounced off the rune-wrought metal. If the Magician had stuck around, perhaps they could have done something, hit her with a spell…but no. There was no key-on-a-string here. The damned chains were probably designed to be taken off after the captive had been bled dry…

She winced and squinted harder at the runes—her knowledge was rusty, but she recognised the major signs for strong magic-resistance, animation, and responsiveness to the designated caster. There were a couple of unknown strings, but she guessed they were for relatively minor functions—structural integrity of the material, resistance to oxidation and suchlike.

Please don’t have any type of horrible adaptive constriction woven in too, she thought. Please, don’t make my life harder than it is already.

There were at least a couple hundred lowborns scattered throughout the castle and the Magicians, though powerful, only barely outnumbered them; she was betting on the fact that every extra function would be extra rune-strings to imbue a chain with, requiring far too many hours when preparing on such a scale. Only one way to find out.

Her left arm was pinned against the column, and her right arm was pinned to her side. She wriggled her right arm experimentally, trying to reach into her pocket for the skin-structure in which the spell-slips were hidden; she couldn’t move much, but the chain didn’t mould itself around the deliberate movement and tighten. That was a relief. Still, it didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t reach into her pocket for the sole thing that could get her out of this mess.

She stared hard at the chain, categorised its shape and form and thought it over. She still had access to her magic, but that wasn’t the problem here; the problem was the chain itself. She couldn’t do magic on the chain. She couldn’t do magic on anyone else; the others were too far away. She could only do magic on herself.

Well. She knew healing magic, didn’t she? She could numb herself well enough, and she could reknit, so she could…there was probably a better solution than this, but she didn’t have the time to find it.

Aliyah gathered her magic, reached into her right arm, and broke it in three places.

She actually blacked out for a second. Then she screamed and swore herself as blue as the damned Magicians. No sound came from her mouth. In a way, the silence-field was a mercy. She had to bend the breaks the wrong way, too, to give herself enough flexibility. Hellgods. Numbing spells only went so far; the physiological equilibrium of her body pushed back against her magic, screaming tinny chemical messages into her brain: pain, pain, pain and hurt, hurt hurt and dear stars make it stop. Her eyes were watering. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

Had the Magician apprentice noticed? No; the silence-field had blotted up her screams. He still had his back to them, on guard for interference from outside.

She waited until she was sure he had turned his head away before easing her limp, misshapen arm, painstakingly slowly, out of the chain-coil. She had numbed it as best as she could—which was enough to make the sum of the three breaks feel like perhaps just one—but even so, black spots—haloed with dizzying technicolour phosphenes, no less—danced in her vision. She gritted her teeth. Once her arm was out, she knit the bones back together—clean breaks in easy places, thank the stars for that small measure of control. She reattached patches of blood supply, purged as many extraneous pain-signaling substances as she could. The arm remained sore, but at least it was far more manageable.

She used her newly-freed arm to pry her way out of the chain-cocoon and stumbled free.

The apprentice turned at the movement, spellfire sparking in his hand. She rushed him—there was a brief, silenced struggle involving burning and screaming—still silenced— before she jabbed a vasodilation into his wrist. He slumped over, unconscious. She scrambled to her feet, hands blistered and scorched; she healed them hastily, already planning her route down to the dungeons—and then she caught the eyes of her fellow captives.

The six other lowborns were staring at her, their expressions ranging from terrified to astonished to beseeching. One of them was trying to mouth syllables into the silence-field. She froze and swore under her breath.

She wasn’t Zahir. She wasn’t a real Healer. She wasn’t even a real apprentice.

She had just one spare breaker spell-slip and it wouldn’t solve the problem of the six-not-one pairs of eyes staring at her. One-is-better-than-none was hard to believe when the other five were looking you in the face. If only Rana were here, they could have tried linking all six of the chain-runes into one big enchantment to use the spell-slip on, but as it was, she knew next to nothing about runework. The package for Kionah probably didn’t contain similar enchantment-breaking spell-slips, else Zahir would have simply given them to her.

She absolutely did not have the stamina to break and heal five or six arms. The chains were runed, thin and tough and flexible, more like metallic ropes than chains. They formed hard knots nestled close, not a weak link in sight. And from the looks of how the chains had caught some of the lowborns, they’d probably need more than a broken arm to wriggle out. A leg or two, even. Too effort much to even think about.

She still had to sneak back into the castle and down into the dungeon to fetch Lady Kionah.

These six weren’t special. There were so many other lowborns chained up anyway. Numerically, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. They might not necessarily die if the Magicians didn’t push too hard—whereas Lady Kionah definitely would. And so would she, if she were caught. She had many reasons to flee as quickly as possible.

But they were looking at her as if she were some sort of saviour. And it wasn’t an impossible problem—there had to be a way. If she left them here, just these six in particular, it would feel like her fault.

Aliyah pinched the bridge of her nose. Think. Chains. No magic. Bolt cutters, she thought. But where?

There were probably a few in the maintenance cupboards of cleaning cupboards and suchlike scattered throughout the castle. She retraced their steps in her mind, recalled no cupboards along the corridor when being led away from the main hall.

She hurried out of the colonnade, ignoring the feeling of eyes boring into her back as she looked around for any hint of a helpful tool. There were only dead roses and ugly thorns, splintery hedges and grey gravel. She squinted at something in the distance, focused her eyes with her vision-trick until she saw the outlines of sheds. Bone-sand-slurry pounded at her temples.

Okay. Not quite bolt cutters, then.

She cast a silencing spell onto her shoes. She was terrible at them—could only dampen instead of silence—but it was better than nothing when it came to crunching over gravel. She dashed back the way they came, staying in the shadow of the outer wall, hand half-raised and the steps for inducing rapid vasodilation humming and ready in her head. She didn’t know any illusion spells, didn’t actually know how to fight. She fought to stem the flow of adrenaline flooding through her veins, slowed her pulse and breathing as best as she could until she was only slightly hyperventilating.

The groundskeeper’s sheds came into view; three of them, all in a row with locks and chains on the doors. How ironic, how paradoxical, she thought, scowling. But the chains weren’t runed, so she hacked through the nearest one with her strongest metallic-cutting spell, all brute force and no finesse. Thank the stars that there had been a shortage of willing servants to chop ironwood a couple of months back.

She hurried into the dusty interior and glanced around with rising anxiety—there, those things vaguely resembled bolt-cutters. She grabbed them, but glanced around for something stronger—this was a gardening shed and the chains were metal links, not wooden branches. A hacksaw, and that big axe, she decided. She stumbled back outside, staggering under the weight of the axe in particular. She doubted she would be able to swing it for more than a few strokes, but a couple of the other lowborns looked as if they were substantially stronger than her.

Somewhere far away, something rumbled like thunder. Aliyah glanced up as she hurried back. The night sky was clear, with only the thinnest wisps of cloud overhead. She hoped that most of the guards and Magicians were being kept occupied by whatever the so-called faeries were doing. She hoped that Zahir and his apprentices were unhurt. She thought of the vanillin tea and hoped, anti-haemolytic aside, that Rana was not presently chained up by Magicians.

She made it back to the colonnade unscathed, where the six other lowborns were still struggling with their bonds. Aliyah felt the silence-field close over her head as she hurried to the oldest and strongest-looking of them—a tall young man in scribewear—and tried to clip at the exposed part of the chain with the large scissor-tool. The cutting parts kept slipping and she hissed in frustration.

She grabbed the hacksaw instead and started sawing furiously at a link; the chain was so thin, but it took perhaps a full minute before she broke through. She handed the axe to the newly-freed scribe and pointed to the rest of the prisoners before moving onto the next-oldest looking, the girl who had punched the Magician. Her arm felt as though it were burning. Lactic acid, was that right? Yes, the textbooks had gone on at length. Focus, she thought grimly.

Once she was through with the second chain, she turned and saw that the scribe had moved around to the back of another imprisoned lowborn’s column to swing at the restraints. Her right arm, hacksaw still in hand, trembled as she sent replenishments to it, drawing from the rest of her body. Her thoughts were sluggish, signaling an imminent spellcaster’s headache. Someone touched her shoulder. She flinched and scrambled for the steps to vasodilation, but it was only the girl she’d freed, the kite-handler-Magician-puncher.

Magician-puncher guided her out of the silence-field, and away from the colonnade, into a hidden spot by a hedge.

“Are you alright? You’re swaying a bit.” the girl asked quietly. Her voice sounded familiar—a little hoarse, corrosion-damaged. “Here, sit down.”

“Oh,” Aliyah murmured. The magic-use was catching up to her. She sank to the floor in a dizzy torpor, drew up her knees and placed her head between them. “It’s you. You were at the execution today…I mean, yesterday. Uh, can you use the saw? I have to go.”

Magician-puncher cleared her throat. “Hey now, are you sure? You don’t look so good. Stay with us. Nadim can take us to a hiding place in the Higher Library.”

“No, no…I have to go…” She forced her liver into overdrive, pushed glycogenolysis as far as she could. “If you see a scribe called Rana, though, tell her she can inherit all of my stuff.”

“Oookay,” Magician-puncher said as she gently removed the hacksaw from her still-trembling hand. “And who do I say this message is from?”

“Aliyah. She’ll know.”

Magician-puncher took a small package from her pocket and pressed it into Aliyah’s hand.

“Here, Aliyah. Eat. You look like you need it.”

Aliyah looked up and unwrapped it to reveal a sweet-cake. It was apple-and-agave-flavoured and in that moment, also possibly the best thing she had ever tasted.

Her head jerked up at an abrupt crunching sound; footsteps over gravel. The scribe was hurrying over to them.

“Farzaneh,” said the scribe—Nadim, Aliyah presumed.

He glanced down at her. “And uh…you. Thank you, by the way—Farzaneh, I got Irfan free and he tried with the shears, but they broke, so he has the axe for now. Did you have the other—”

Farzaneh-Magician-puncher handed him the hacksaw and Nadim sprinted back to the colonnade.

“Are you sure that you don’t want to come with us?” Farzaneh asked, turning back to her with her brow furrowed in concern. “I mean, I’m sure you’re very capable, but you do look tired.”

“Thank you for offering,” Aliyah said after a pause. The cake, or perhaps the simple kindness of being given cake, had bolstered her spirits. Her blood glucose was as good as it was going to get. “I really have to leave, though.”

Farzaneh helped her to her feet. “Take care, Aliyah. We’ll keep an eye out for your friend.”

In the distance, false-thunder roared. Aliyah’s attention shifted to the dungeon keys. They tingled like blue fire against her skin.

Lady Kionah, she thought anxiously. She still needed to find Lady Kionah.