Aliyah

Blackness, and pain fast filtering through.

Rising agony floated its way down to where she drifted along currents of semi-consciousness: like light rays through river-weed, piercing and insistent. Her entire abdomen was ensnared in a tangle of agony.

Stomach pain. Back pain. Familiar pain. Pain that had carved trenches into her memory, a sensation that ebbed, flowed, lit unwelcome sparks in the crevices of her recollection. She hadn’t had to feel this for…years, now. Had it really been years?

The days do unspool like falling thread, she thought distantly. Especially when one isn’t hunched over in agony for days or weeks at a time.

She reached for her healing and didn’t find it. There was a blank space in her core, a polished hollow completely devoid of magic. The loss felt like what the Magician had hit her with back in Shadowsong. This time though, she couldn’t find a trailing thread. There was no tingling at her fingertips, no wisp of power to follow.

She tried to move and almost screamed. It felt as though she had been hit with dozens of spell-arrows and spears. Only now that she’d experienced both at the hands of the faeries, she thought that this was rather worse, because there was nothing she could do to make it stop.

“You awake?” That was Kionah.

She grunted an affirmative. “…Hurts,” she rasped, which encompassed the extent of her thoughts at the moment.

The pain prevented any movement away from where she’d collapsed on the tunnel floor. Purplish map-light cast jagged rock walls into relief. There was a folded-up cloak beneath her head and an unfolded one draped over her useless, unmoving body.

“…Kionah?”

“I’m right here.” Kionah pressed a flask of water to her lips. “Looks like you burnt yourself out.”

“You don’t have to…I can do that. Not that injured.”

She took the flask in her own hand and drank somewhat self-consciously. Putting the flask down, her hand wandered over to scratch at the itching mark on her arm. She tried not to move too much lest the stabbing pains worsened.

Then she rubbed her face and noticed the lack of dried blood on her hand and her clothing. Though, her shirt was still punctured on both sides where the spell-arrow had gone through. Kionah must have stuck a refreshening slip to her while she was out. A small comfort, when her right hip felt like it was being pried out of its socket with a rusty spoon.

“How long was I unconscious for?”

“Not long.” Kionah didn’t sound panicked, but her voice had a fresh hardness to it. “No one’s come after us just yet. But we should go.”

“Go?” she asked, alarmed. “What, right now? I don’t think I can walk.”

Not without screaming, she thought. Not without making enough noise to let the faeries know where they were.

Kionah frowned down at her, half-lit by the glow of the map that lay sprawled open in her lap. “Look, I didn’t much like it either, the first time I used too much and it all just,” she made a flittering motion with her hand, “flew away. I know it feels strange, but I’m sure you can stand and walk, unless you are injured.”

“Not strange. Not injured. Just hurts.” She leaned back against the softness of her makeshift pillow and tried to ignore the stabbing aches undulating throughout her abdomen.

“It’s not supposed to.” Kionah reached for the medicine kit. “You must be injured, then. Where?”

“It’s not because of the burning out. Not—really.” She drew in a slow, hissing breath through her teeth. “It’s, well…I have a sort of…medical condition. I kept it dormant, in stasis, with healing ability. Now, there’s no magic. Time for it to…recoil. Rebound.”

“Rebound?” Kionah asked. Her expression became a touch more pinched.

“The body—there’s a, hm,” Aliyah said. She reached for scraps of memory, for words recited under tutelage. Thinking through the pain was like trying to march through river-sludge. “Equilibrium, the books called it. Rebound is…the same reason you can’t just stop a healthy heart. Or at least, I can’t. Maybe Zahir could? With some trouble. Difficulty. When it’s important, the body—fights back. Rebound.”

“I see,” Kionah said. “There are painkillers in the medicine kit. Would they help?”

“Please.”

Kionah handed her a nutrition potion along with two small, white tablets. She downed them, feeling a fraction better as her hunger eased. Now to wait for the painkillers to kick in. Dimly, she recalled that they might not help, depending on the strength. But it was better than nothing when she was lying here completely bereft of magic.

The back of her neck prickled and she turned her head; Kionah was looking thoughtfully down at her with cool, dark eyes. Her spectacles glinted in the purplish light.

“What is it?” Aliyah asked, a little harsher than she meant to.

“I was just wondering. If this ‘rebound’ effect of yours is so important, why does healing work at all?”

She sighed. “Because being cut open is away from equilibrium. Your body’s going to try to heal anyways. Healers just help it go faster. ” And here, the explanation flowed easier, because Zahir had always said it like this, in the beginning. She was just repeating it mindlessly. She suspected that she’d always, on some level, copied the motions without fully understanding. “You can win against the equilibrium, anyways. Sometimes. If you work hard enough or work too hard. The resistance is not…infallible.”

“And making the guard faint? What about the rebound there?”

She rubbed at the bridge of her nose as she grasped for the right words. “Rebound resistance is less if the effect is less…’dangerous’, I suppose you would say,” she said. “I could vasodilate the guard, I could vasodilate the faery. It wouldn’t kill them. Unless…hitting their head on the way down or something. But without sustaining, they wake—body vasoconstricts back to equilibrium. They would wake anyway, if you knocked them out by punching or elsewise. So I make them sleep to keep them out longer. But that doesn’t make them sleep as long as real sleep. Body wants to wake. But the magic works for long enough, so...”

“I see. And, your condition…?” Kionah asked delicately.

She clenched her jaw and thought it over for several uncomfortable moments. “The body’s not always right,” she said. “The body can be stupid. Equilibrium doesn’t always mean health. Can’t reset it for real, so I just manage.”

“Ah,” said Kionah. “Well, I apologise. I don’t mean to pry; really, you’ve been such a help through all this. You needn’t speak if it causes you undue grief.”

She frowned. Kionah had sounded…not odd, exactly, but different. There was a distance to her words, a courtly cadence that hadn’t been there before.

“Do you do that on purpose?”

Kionah startled, just slightly. “Pardon?”

“That,” she waved a hand aimlessly, “thing. Where you sound like a normal person one moment and a court lady the next.”

“Hm. Well, it’s not always intentional. I suspect it depends on what the situation calls for.”

“Ah. Royal spymaster. Right.”

“Spymaster,” Kionah said with a decidedly unladylike snort. “Really, if only I were so elegant and conniving in truth. Look here, I don’t mean to seem so distastefully two-faced. I really am sorry if I was prying. You needn’t…you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

“It’s fine. Talking is a distraction.”

“That bad, huh?”

“It’s been worse,” she mumbled. Which wasn’t exactly a lie, but it did a lot to hide how close she was to curling up into a ball and bursting into tears.

A pause. “You’re not…in danger?”

“No.” She cleared her throat. “Not in danger. Never really was. It just causes a lot of unnecessary pain.”

“I see. Is there anything that would help other than the painkillers?”

“Do you have a hot compress?”

Kionah arose and opened the chest, rifling through the contents. “There were some heating pads in here somewhere…ah, there we are.” She withdrew with one in each hand and tossed them over.

“Thank you.”

She caught them, snapped them to activate the crystal embedded within, and shoved one under her back. The other, she dropped onto her stomach, hissing with relief as she settled back down against her makeshift pillow.

She noted Kionah watching with open interest and caught her eye.

“It’s to do with the lunar blood,” she said abruptly. Best to get it out there and over with. “Only it’s…backwards. Tissue grows where it shouldn’t, so it—hurts, more than you’d think. I hate it.”

“I see.” Kionah hesitated, seeming almost unsure of what to say. “And you said this due to the effect of having no magic?”

“Yes. No magic, so the implants—the tissue—it grows back very quickly, very unnaturally. Probably trying to restore itself all at once. Bodily equilibrium hurts. Not bleeding, but—I’m sorry, it might take a few hours before I regain enough magic to make it stop…” She trailed off and clenched her fists as a bolt of pain clawed its way up her side.

“What if,” Kionah began, clearly eyeing the hand that was curled into a white-knuckled grip around the heating pad. “What if I transfer you some magic? Would you be able to walk then?”

“R-really?” She tensed in shock. “You’d do that? Are you sure?”

Lending magic wasn’t a common thing in Shadowsong, or at least, it wasn’t among the lowborns. Rana was better at understanding that kind of stuff, she realised; something about how the tiered nature of vocations kept people separate. Rana had spoken of the levels of vocations within vocations, fighting for advancement and better qualities of life, kept direct collaboration at a minimum.

She hadn’t paid much attention to Rana’s rants about how it was with the Library scribes at the time; it wasn’t like maidservantry had a lot of potential upward mobility. So no one had ever lent her magic and she had never done it either. She almost didn’t believe it, that Kionah—or really anyone for that matter—would lend magic to her. Though, Kionah’s continued safety did depend on her to an extent. But still.

Kionah grimaced. “We’re not the best place for a rest right now. I have a few spell-slips left, but I wouldn’t fancy trying them against the mess back there. So yes, if you could take it so we could carry on…?”

“Okay,” she said. Normally, she would put up some kind of stammering protest, but right now, everything hurt and she couldn’t dredge up the energy for social faux-gestures. Even if she really did feel guilty about accepting. “If you’re sure—then I would be grateful.”

Kionah placed her palm against the back of her hand. “It might hurt, just a little. Ready?”

“Yes,” she bit out. She doubted that any discomfort from the magic could drown out the level of pain she was already experiencing.

Kionah’s palm glowed golden, and then she pushed her magic through her skin.

She shuddered. The magic was light and sweet like honey, bright like a freshly-picked spray of pepper blossom. It prickled a little, and then stung, but as expected, the discomfort was barely there—not when the rest of her body was already twisting in mild agony.

The magic coursed through her like a current. She could feel herself leaning in towards it, craving it: dry hollows pooled with new strength, empty reserves topping up on spring-syrup substitute. She felt as if she were someone dying of dehydration, now gulping down precious mouthfuls of effervescent sugar cordial.

“Enough,” she managed.

The flow of magic cut off.

“You okay?” Kionah asked, as the glow faded from her fingertips.

Aliyah flexed her borrowed magic and felt it respond, though a little imprecisely, as if it knew that there was a mismatch. She took a portion of the magic and directed it to her usual background processes, stimulating endocrine production here, numbing the tissue there, halting and reversing the tissue growth.

“Yes,” she said, almost tearing up as the pain began to fade. “Yes, I’ll be fine. Thank you. Uh, are you? Are you alright, I mean? Thank you, again.”

“Yes. Fine. Will it last you long enough?” Kionah shot her a worried look.

“I think so. I don’t think it’s enough to fight again, but I can walk.”

“Alright,” Kionah said, shooting an anxious glance back at the way they came. “Good. Let’s walk. It’s already quite late, so…I’d like to keep going through the night, if we can.”

“Okay,” she said, even as her overtaxed muscles protested. She could guess at what Kionah really meant. She also wanted to get as far away as possible from that awful faery lair. Her stomach prickled, where she’d been shot.

They pressed onwards.

===

They breached the surface by way of a gradually upward-sloping tunnel, floor and walls transitioning from pure stone to rocks cemented together by hard-packed earth and bits of tree root. Pale green grasses started criss-crossing their path, growing and thickening until they were knee-deep in it. They turned a gentle corner and a circle of light was ahead, plain as day. A brisk breeze brushed their faces. She’d almost forgotten the taste of fresh air. They hurried forwards, almost tripping in the tangles of rough grass snatching at their ankles.

She reached the mouth of the tunnel a couple of steps behind Kionah, leg muscles aching and weary to the bone. Her breath caught in her throat: they looked down the length of a wide, green valley freckled with dark boulders. But it was the bones that caught her eye.

Huge, white bones, sunk into the valley floor and spotted with moss. Jagged vertebrae the size of small chariots blocking their way. She counted the shattered stumps of four sun-bleached ribs arching high over her head.

“What in the hells?” she muttered.

“Uh huh,” Kionah said as she edged over to the rocky slope that led down to the valley floor. “Behemoth. A small one, apparently, though it came with a bunch of others—bits and pieces like this everywhere. A team of mages took them down, oh, seven or eight years ago? Everyone was talking about it back then.”

She picked her way down after Kionah, steadying herself against the floating chest that remained by her side. She glanced back up at the enormous remnants every now and then; it was hard not to. The unfamiliar, almost grotesquely gargantuan contours of bone practically begged for inspection. Not too far off was a cracked-open fragment: outer sheath peeled back, showing off insides that seemed to overflow with a honeycomb of crumbly-looking trabeculae.

“So these…Behemoth things,” she ventured. “Are they…common, over here?”

Kionah shrugged. “More common than past the Killing Fields, I guess,” she said. “I don’t know, I’m not a witch. I just read the papers. The city has the help of the faerie Hive, so it’s not as scary as it seems.”

“I see,” Aliyah said.

It did make sense, how it could be easier for the city to coexist with faeries if they could unite against a common enemy. Back in Shadowsong, it had felt like the kingdom against the world: the kingdom was safety, and the rest of the world was formed from faerie folk tales and the poison-mists beyond.

They reached the grass-coated valley floor. Kionah swerved around a dark boulder and Aliyah stared as she realised that it was too perfectly round to be a piece of natural stone. She brushed its surface with a fingertip; it was hard, made of rock, but eerily smooth apart from the occasional thick splinter of white embedded into it. The white bits were bone, she realised. Fragments of the impossibly large skeleton rotting into the valley floor. Her skin crawled.

“What are these?” she asked. The bone-fragments indicated something unsettling; had they used as some sort of projectile? Judging by the state of some of the bones around them, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.

“Huh? Oh, those things. Not sure. I think a witch made them.”

She withdrew her hand and shuddered, stepped away. “How close are we to the city?”

“Not that far. You’ll be able to see it soon. Let’s rest for a bit at the edge of the valley, I’m dead tired.”

“Alright,” she said, secretly grateful for the prospect of reprieve.

They picked their way around enormous vertebrae, skirted through trees and fallen ribs and part of a jawbone with a couple of carnivorous-looking teeth still attached. Little blue wildflowers had sprung up around the jawbone, their heads dropping with morning dew. The grass thinned out at the mouth of the valley; when she looked out to the horizon, she saw barren ground stretching all the way to spires in the distance. Dawn light pierced the sky, cool blue and pale bronze snuffing out the stars. Clouds the colour of buttermilk streaked overhead; the breeze ruffled her hair and felt good on her face. She breathed in deep; something like exhilaration and relief filled her lungs.

The floating luggage chest left her side to settle onto a flat bit of grass. Kionah sat herself down onto its lid and groaned.

“Holy fuck,” she muttered. “That fight took a lot out of me. Must be out of shape.”

“You did, ah, send a lot of your magic my way,” Aliyah said as she sank down by her side. She scratched absently at the faery mark on her forearm. “You might be doing better than you assume. Thank you again, by the way.”

“It’s fine. Are you good? Your ah, medical disease thing…”

“Yes. I’m used to it. I’ve got it under control.”

Kionah coughed awkwardly. “Good, good. Perhaps you should try those potions that stop—well, no. I suppose they’d be too expensive. And unnecessary, if you always had your magic with you before now. Then again—” Kionah frowned. “How did you manage before you had Healership? You said you picked maidservant over kite-handler, no mention of healing work following your testing.”

Maidservant over kite-handler. She’d mentioned that days ago, back before Kionah had set that awful, water-wicking tunnel of roots on fire.

“Oh. You were listening?”

Kionah’s smile was small but sharp. Spymaster in blood, if not in name. “I’m always listening.”

“It’s a long story. And not a very nice one.”

“I don’t mind.” Kionah laced her fingers together and brought her arms out in a stretch. “I need a break, anyhow.”

That was true, Aliyah thought ruefully. She felt it herself, physical exhaustion mingling with the sensory high of being above-ground again. She felt fresh and alive and perhaps even a little giddy, but her body was exhausted from walking. “If you promise you won’t use the information against me,” she said, only half-jokingly.

“Hah. We are hardly still in court turmoil, are we? But very well.” Kionah put her hand mock-solemnly over her heart. “I swear on my father’s shallow grave.”

Well, why not? She wanted to rest. And it would distract her from the itch on her forearm, the ominous faery ring of tesseracts. She cleared her throat, and began.

“So, uh, about two years ago…”