Aliyah

Songian soldiers fought below, about a hundred feet down and barely a quarter-mile away. They were grouped into tight grids of shieldbearers and spellcasters. Around them, faeries sliced through the air.

She inhaled sharply. The faeries…she had never seen anything like them before. Not unless she counted the clumsy wooden pantomime creature-costumes at festivals, which didn’t truly compare. It turned out that real faeries were beautiful in shape and form, yet hideous in their violence. Sharp wings and spiked limbs and swirling tails of all colours flashed in her vision; they sliced through the air in sleek, showy movements.

They were humanoid, yes, with two arms and two legs, but sharper and spindlier. Their legs tapered and ended in odd, sharp points, reminiscent of insectoid tarsi. Their hands looked spikier than human hands. They each had a head with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but no hair; instead, bony-looking outcrops swept from their faces and scalps. Not much in the way of clothing either; their shining skins were their only armour, though some wore shielding cloaks or belts equipped with sharp weapons. They lacked genitalia or obvious secondary sexual characteristics. The impression she got was metallic and beetle-like rather than ethereal, all barbed quickness and iridescent carapace.

She tracked one—long feathery tail, a rich shade of blue-green—as it—he? She? They were so androgynous, it was difficult to tell—harried a unit of soldiers along with several others, darting in and out of range, flinging spells and arrows and glowing arrows that looked as if they were spells.

“Must we travel so close to all this?” she half-whispered over to Kionah. She could practically taste the fear welling up in her throat. The paper-illusions and sound-shields all suddenly seemed so fragile.

“I’m not that good of a pilot.” Kionah gestured broadly to their side, where precarious-looking rock-spurs sprouted from the ground and penned them in. “Just for a few minutes. You don’t have to look if it upsets you.”

“What are they?” Aliyah asked.

“The faeries? Magical beings, I guess. Live in Hives, not usually this aggressive. The women have bigger wings—or so Luxon claimed—and the guys are the ones with horns. They count as people, over in Glister.”

Aliyah swallowed and turned back to the battlefield, moving her eyes away from the soldiers closest to them. Further to the North, the battle raged harder, soldiers and faeries alike moving in thick droves.

The barely-visible dots of army skyships looped and dove, crashed and burned. Plumes of dark smoke rose from the flaming wreckages and into the air like rescue beacons, or perhaps funeral pyres. About halfway to the horizon, silvery symbols cross-crossed the skies. She executed a weaker version of her vision-working trick and spared herself some, but not all, of the bone-slurry feeling that came with messing around with such small details.

There were Magicians.

Groups of Magicians sketched magic circles and fifty-foot sigils into the air. They were working on one in particular, a sprawling scrawl of overlapping spell circles with symbols stamped all over it; towering ellipses, rotating runes. One of the Magicians slotted the last symbol into place and the silvery ellipses began to glow a dark red.

It detonated.

Then it detonated again.

Once, twice, thrice. Shockwaves tickled their sails, even this far out.

She dropped her vision-working and narrowed her eyes against the red-hot glare. Her blood felt as if it had crystallized to ice in her veins. Dear stars, they were insane. Half of the Magicians and what looked like most of a spellcaster’s platoon had been engulfed along with the faeries. The winds carried over a burnt-ash smell.

But when the light faded and cleared, the Magicians and the platoon stood unharmed. Only faerie corpses littered the ground.

“What in the hells?” she muttered. Her hands felt shaky and she gripped the side of the boat to steady them.

Kionah whistled softly. “Now that’s how they earn their keep. Motherfuckers.”

Aliyah looked on in disbelief. Even she, poor spellcaster that she was, scrambled to reconcile the power of the explosion with the level of precision required to define an enemy under magical parameters, then to target only that enemy. Granted, the faeries being a separate species may have helped some. But the sheer scale of that blast—where in the world did they get that kind of power?

Another circle detonated, a smaller one. More red light.

The thought itched at her exhausted brain: where was the power coming from?

Faeries falling and fleeing now.

Where—

Rana, drinking vanillin tea.

Farzaneh, handing her a sweet-cake.

Oh.

Not Rana. Not Farzaneh. Not them; that was a cold comfort.

Only hundreds of others just like them. Like her. So there was really no going back, now.

Her hands clutched the rim of the boat as she sharpened her vision once more and scanned the field for any sign of other lowborns. She found none—only more circles in the sky and great glowing chunks of summoner’s runestone planted all over the sands. Old-fashioned conduits. So that must be how they gathered the blood-power. Feeling sick, she turned her gaze away and to the skies.

The retreating faeries were headed for the skyships. A barrage of spells were let fly from the decks, but the flocks of faeries ducked and weaved, homing in on several vessels.

Was that one a Healer’s ship? The red colour, that sigil, like an open hand—yes.

Rana was safe—or as safe as she could be. Aliyah replayed the memory of her gulping down the vanillin tea. But what about Zahir?

Zahir was out there, wasn’t he? They would have summoned him and his real apprentices and they would have forced them onto the battlefield. The apprentices would have been deployed at the outskirts to patch up their ‘abysmal standing army’, as he liked to call it. He and many other full Healers would be dropped into the fray, to unravel old scar tissue, to stop healthy warrior’s hearts that fought back with metabolic equilibrium. That was the official strategy, at least how he’d explained it to her when they’d been going over a lesson on cuts and burns, typical battle-wounds, what not to do if one ever found oneself in a fight.

She could almost feel the sunlight of that not-so-long-gone afternoon on her face. She recalled, with chilling clarity, the way he’d given a little laugh and said: “and of course, the very best thing to do is to run away”.

Well she was being an excellent student, then. She was running away. Rana didn’t have that choice. She hadn’t shared it with her. She couldn’t have.

The faeries moved as one, an iridescent oily tide. They attacked the open sailcloth until the canvas tore, striking with spells and claws alike. Emboldened by the growing clusters, yet more faeries swarmed to the ships, hanging on to the masts and decks and sides like flies on fresh meat. The skyships tipped to their sides and fell out of the air—somehow more slowly than they should. Magic struggled against gravity, and gravity won.

Kionah yanked at the wheel of the zephyr-boat, sideways and down, turning them into the mouth of a narrow gorge. Aliyah looked back. Kept looking. She turned away after the third ship hit the ground in a burst of flame.

“The faeries brought down some ships,” she choked out.

“Hm? I’d have expected them to.”

“But—but one of them was a Healer’s ship. Zahir could’ve been on it.”

“Well, good for him.”

“Good for him—!?” She shot an accusatory glare at the back of Kionah’s head. “Aren’t you worried?”

Kionah scoffed. “Worried? About the bloody Healer? You’re joking, right? I’d be more worried about us if I were you. We’re not out of the woods yet, no we aren’t.”

Aliyah tamped down on the sinking feeling in her stomach and fell silent.

Down the deepening rocky corridor they flew, rocketing past walls of ragged stone, patches of desert grass; blurs of grey-green. A dead-end wall rose up before them, clawing at the sullen sky. There was a hole in the rock wall, a yawning and toothless mouth.

Kionah pulled them to a skidding stop, spraying an arc of sand and pebbles across the dull rock wall. She killed the engines and took the spare breeze in her fist. The prow touched gently onto the sand.

“Here,” she said. “There’s a ledge inside, but it drops down into a cave. About a metre, I’d say.”

Aliyah eyed the shadowy opening. “You first.”

Kionah tossed her shortsword down into the hole first, clambered in, and disappeared. There was a light thud and a muttered, oof.

“Everything okay down there?”

Soft white light flared to life in Kionah’s palm; Aliyah could see her silhouette walking around in the underground clearing.

“All fine. Looking for the cache. Are you coming, or what?”

She glanced around and hesitated as her gaze landed on the zephyr-boat. “Are you just going to leave the boat here?” Despite herself, skepticism coloured her voice.

“No one comes down here and if they do, we’ll be long gone. Look, I can’t do big illusions and setting it on fire would draw far more attention. It’s not like it can fit through the hole. Got any better ideas?”

“No. Point taken.”

Aliyah edged her way over to the entrance, slid inside and onto a small rocky outcrop. She dropped down onto the cave’s floor just as Kionah sighed and started casting her purple un-illusion spell. The watery spell-light illuminated the small clearing, though not the tunnel leading off into blackness on the far wall, which was where she assumed they had to go. She shivered, not simply due to the coolness of the air.

“Aha,” Kionah said, her voice tinged with triumph. The outline of a hefty chest shimmered into view, wedged into a chest-high gap in the rocky wall. Kionah went over and grabbed one end. “Well? Come on over and help me with this.”

Aliyah struggled far more with her end of the box. For all her pale eyes and finely-shaped face, Kionah was no delicate courtling; her movements were smooth and steady, her grip sure. This chest was far heavier than a sodden mop and a full bucket. Aliyah floundered, trying not to squash her own fingers as they set the weighty box down onto the sand with a thump. Kionah dismissed her un-illusioning spell and they were plunged into near-darkness.

“Why did you—” Aliyah made out, before a tiny speck of white light winked into existence, floating over Kionah’s outstretched palm.

Kionah pulled at the glowing dot with her other hand, expanded and shaped it into a coruscating ball before hanging it overhead. Under the glow of the spell-light, she undid the lock—a simple one, old-style, with a tumbler of numbers that clicked into place. She dug through the chest’s contents as Aliyah watched on—neatly folded squares of fabric, more clear packets of spell-slips, expensive-looking little vials—until she found a long, slim black case a little longer than her hand.

“Fucking finally,” Kionah said.

Then she reached into her eyes with the pads of her fingers and pulled out a circle of clear…something, from each. Contact-lenses? Only rich people used those. Then again, Kionah had been a courtesan-lady, and Alhena’s closest.

Aliyah stared. Was it the spell-caster’s headache making her see things? No.

Kionah’s eyes were brown. Not pale blue. Brown, and the whites still a little bloodshot. Sort of a rich, velvety, expensive-and-imported-chocolate-brown, though there was nothing sweet-looking about them. They were even more unnerving than the former unnatural shade now that she knew they’d been hiding under the coloured contacts all along.

Kionah snapped open the case in her hands and plucked out a pair of spectacles, gold-rimmed, old-fashioned, slightly clunky-looking. She put them on. Blinked a few times and glanced around. The lenses flashed with runes for a moment, before clearing.

“What?” she asked, catching the astonished look on Aliyah’s face. “The eyes? Well I had to play into the whole ‘exotic foreign acquisition’ somehow, didn’t I?”

“…e-excuse me?” Aliyah stammered. “I don’t quite follow.”

“Court politics, right.” Kionah hummed thoughtfully as she dug a hair tie out of the chest and began pulling her hair into a neat, tight bun. “How to put this…for most courtesans, just being plainly pretty and of negotiable affection doesn’t cut it. Shadowsong’s gotten a few vaults poorer in recent years no doubt, but they still have the farce of high court to uphold. I’m hardly classically-trained to sing or dance, can’t play a harp to save my life, not clever enough to discuss art but can’t afford to seem clever enough to know politics. Nothing too special about me, which is in itself too suspicious. Easy fix; the court believed that air-headed Alhena might scoop up a silly pretty-face with jewel-eyes. People let on more than they should when they’re a little too drunk and think you’re strangely alluring, but also sort of stupid.”

She sounded almost savagely smug about that last part.

Aliyah frowned. “So you just pretended to have different-coloured eyes for…months? Years? To better spy on people? And no one caught you?”

“One year,” Kionah grumbled. “I use contacts anyways. Easy to stock up in Glister and easier still to hide things with a wealthy benefactor. Though, the worst part was having them in for however long they kept me in those blasted dungeons. Ugh, you’re a Healer, take a look. Any lasting damage?”

“Uh. I’ll have to put my hand on your face to check.”

“Go on. Just don’t stick a finger in my eye and we’re good.”

Aliyah’s field of thought shrank, magic roving from her fingertips over skin to eyelids to thinning tear film, sliding wetly over glossy clear corneas.

“You’re fine, I think. Just looks a little dry.”

Kionah blinked and rubbed her eyes as Aliyah withdrew. “Eesh, you’ve a heavier touch than old Quillwort. Tingles something fierce.”

Aliyah scowled. “I’m sure Healer Quillwort has had far more practice than I.”

Kionah rolled her shoulders back in a loosening motion and cracked her knuckles. “Stop whining, apprenticeling. We need to get dressed and to get walking.”

Kionah handed her a bundle of clothing—a long-sleeved linen shirt with matching pants and a belt, a plush woollen jacket, leather boots that went up to the mid-calf. All varying shades of dark beige and grey, soft and lightweight, finely made.

“Try them on,” Kionah said. “Alhena was taller than you, but they should fit well enough.”

Aliyah was suddenly aware of the desert dust coating her maidservant’s uniform, the warden’s soup-stain on her skirt, and the fear-sweat still sticking the fabric against her back. She edged her way behind a large outcrop of rock, feeling slightly foolish even as her sensibilities screamed at her to preserve her privacy. Her stomach lurched as she tugged on the dead princess’s clothing. No, that was ridiculous, she scolded herself. It was not dead princess’s attire. Alhena hadn’t ever worn these, she’d just bought them. So yes, she’d intended on wearing them, but that wasn’t the same.

If Alhena was still alive…would Aliyah be dying now, her blood fueling the Magicians as Alhena and Kionah escaped? No, Zahir would have still given her the anti-haemolytic. Probably. So then Rana would be dying. Unless she’d have given the anti-haemolytic to Rana regardless, in which case she’d be the one getting drained to death. Would a half-dose have sufficed? Would she have tried to save Rana, if she didn’t have another way out? She liked Rana, but the Magicians scared her to death and she wasn’t that altruistic or pathetically self-sacrificing, was she?

You cannot save everyone. Not even her only friend?

There was no point agonising over a hypothetical that had never come to pass. She stopped thinking, rolled up the dangling sleeves and trouser cuffs. She unraveled the wilting sheets of skin melded to her thighs before fastening the trousers, which had buttoned pockets to deposit Zahir’s keys and the lone spell-slip into. She cinched the belt tight and rolled up the trouser hems, just once. The boots were a little too large for comfort, so she stuck with her own.

When she stepped out from behind the rock, Kionah had changed out of her borrowed cloak, nightgown, and presumably torture-bloodied underclothes. She wore similar garments, only with two pouches of spell-slips clipped to a shiny leather belt. The naked shortsword was tucked there too. There was a map in her hands.

To call it a map would not have done it justice; it was clearly a working of high enchantment. Layers of pale purple spell-light hovered over the expanse of paper, tracing out an intricate maze of caves and tunnels, twists and turns. A path was outlined in red.

“Hold this for a minute,” said Kionah, furrowing her brow. She thrust the map unceremoniously into Aliyah’s hands.

Aliyah startled a little, the sturdy paper—was it paper? It certainly felt fibrous, but also oddly smooth and glossy, as if it had been magically treated—wobbling in her grasp. She passed a finger hesitantly through a band of light, felt nothing as the lavender beam fluttered over her skin. It felt oddly wrong to hold—a magical map that seemed like it had been spat out of the depths of the Higher Library, something that ordinarily, only the highest of highborns could get their hands on. If Rana were here, her eyes would be as round as saucers.

Stop thinking about Rana, she scolded herself.

Kionah was fiddling with something on the inner side of the chest’s lid, muttering under her breath. Then there was a click, a flash of spell-light, and then the chest rose slowly into the air as if on invisible wings.

“There,” Kionah said, taking the map and spurring its glow with a gesture. “That’ll follow us now. I’ll light the way.”

Aliyah eyed their floating luggage and considered the merits of walking for the next however many days it would take to get to Glister. “I don’t suppose we could sit on that.”

“Alhena told me to test it and no, it didn’t work. Regrettable.”

“How long will it take to reach the city?”

“Five or six days, depending on how quickly we travel.”

Five or six days, Aliyah thought gloomily. Too much time to run into trouble for her liking.