The fortress was on fire, but a little thing like that had no effect on its efficiency. Fairies made detours of rickety silver beams and the bare minimum were diverted to try and stop the flames. But whenever one got doused, another popped up. An occupational hazard, when the fortress was on the edge of the hell.

“These are fairies?”

“Yeah.”

“They look different here.”

“You’ve seen them before?” She hesitated, gauging how much to say.

“We’re not against natural magic, you know. Just your type. Blood magic.”

We entered through an identical side door through a legion of messengers. I expected someone to notice us, send a band of troops to detain us, but aside from a few odd, silvery glances, there was nothing, not until a small, wiry fairy in fuzzy green came up to us and produced a sealed scroll, saying only the words “I am Corral, eighty-third daughter of the Fourteenth Caste of the Lower Court of Londinium, beholden to Saghir-among-the-Jinn. She requests your presence.” before bowing curtly and leaving.

“They know you?” The Hunter asked.

“Long history, not a particularly fun one”

I cracked open the seal along the line of the spear, rendered in far too intricate detail for wax, and opened it. I could only read three words before it started to crumble into ash.

FOLLOW THE TRAIL

The last of the letter hung in the air a moment before it started to drift down the hall. “Follow the trail.” We started after it. It moved just a bit faster than a quick walk, hurrying us down corridors and around corners, weaving through currents of fairies, before dropping us off at the base of a grandiose set of stairs, an upgrade to the dungeons we’d last met in. The ball of ash burned out, remaining as a wisp of smoke for a moment.

“You have a plan, don’t you?” The Hunter said.

“Yes.”

“You’re lying”

“Yes”

“Do we knock?” The Hunter asked. Maybe, if we had been friends, but I had no good feelings for her. I swung the doors open.

I heard The Hunter’s breath stop in her throat. Saghir was wearing even more jewellery now than before, plates of it resembling armour. She almost seemed taller, like a statue, carved out of rich, dark wood.

“You are early.” She said, ignoring my thoughts for once, “I presume you are growing closer to our world. Well done, Pathbearer.”

“You used magic on me.” I matched her stare.

“No. Magic is for your kind.”

“What else do you call brainwashing me into doing your work?”

“Alignment.” She said, as a matter of fact.

Alignment, the things fairies used to control each other. On me? How could that work? Was I still-

“No. It broke once you believed your duty to be fulfilled.” Saghir was impatient. “I know what you seek, tell it to me and be on your way.”

“The ring you gave me. It’s lost. I need it to get back to my world”

“Very well, I will happily-”

“No favours. No alignments.” She pursed her lips, which shouldnt have even been possible through her tusks.

“This world operates on equivalency, not on favours and gifts.”

“Which is why you’re going to give me what you owe.”

“Oh? And what do I owe you, Chloe Nash?”

“Thoughts. Every thought you’ve taken from my mind without my permission. You’ve been granted them, and I want your thoughts in exchange.” She barked a laugh, and sat down at her desk, bringing her down to eye level. Hundreds of metal beads and sheats jingled soundlessly, “Your mind leaks those thoughts like water, perceiving them is no different to drinking from a stream.”

“A stream that is owned. I can’t stop my mind from doing what it does, and you know that. You take advantage of it. I demand payment.” Saghir snarled.

“Very well,” and her mind exploded outwards into mine.

If telepathy with Jodie had been like letting myself float through a lazy river, Saghir’s mind was a storm. A storm that rained fire. A storm where every thought was its own creature, representative and obvious through the second layer of dream logic. A bird with nine golden wings that pecked at the innards of a decaying horse, battle plans against the upper court. I swam past it, avoiding as many of the smaller thoughts as I could, which were too small to see, minute observations that shrivelled and died, lumped together into chimaeras. Far away was a bird with small dark feathers; beside it was a great bear. Both leaked silver that was whisked into the storm. I searched for what I needed, and eventually found it. A cross between a deer and a rabbit, wrought with the same metal patterns as the ring. It was running away from me, and its footprints erupted into light.

As soon as the storm came it was over, and I was back in front of Saghir. She looked no worse for wear, and aside from losing my balance slightly, leaning against wind that was no longer there, I was fine. Unburnt, uninjured. “You have what you need?” She said

“I do.”

“Good. Leave.”

“What was that?”

“That was Saghir, she’s… a very tenuous ally.”

“Not her, you. Your eyes flashed gold and you nearly keeled over.” She said, when we had gotten back out of the fortress.

“Fairies like Saghir are very literal. When I said she had to open up her mind to me, that’s what happened. I was in there.”

“And you know where the ring is?”

I gestured back into The Blight. That was what Saghir called it in her mind. The Hunter grimaced. “How far?”

“Not very. Maybe four hours on foot.”

“I want to do something first.” She stopped, and pulled out the rosary. “In case we don’t make it, He needs his funeral rites done.”

“We can’t stay here.”

She was set on it, though, and I didn’t see a way to avoid it. She started by making a small mound of pebbles and seting the rosary against it. For a moment she didn’t speak, and just breathed. A conscious decision, she didn’t need it in this world. I watched her, silently. Eventually she started a hymn in a language that might have been Arabic, pausing for breath and for emphasis, never louder than a whisper. When she came to an end, she placed the rosary on the ground and gathered the stones to cover it. She bowed her head and prayed in silence. I wondered, for a moment, if this had been one of the ones I’d seen. The one who had been torn apart, perhaps, or one of the other victims of that blast. Death had started to seem unreal to me, like statues. The dead were just meat, and lots of it, but when she memorialised them, she was bringing them to life again, reforming their memory not as guts and broken bodies but as people. A shiver ran through me, and I bowed my head with her. I silently promised, not never to kill, I wasn’t that naive, but I promised to remember. To respect. Nobody deserved to be immortalised as a corpse. Not even them.

“His name was Ahmad.” She said, once she had finished the rites. No last name, she didn’t trust me with it. “Converted to Christianity in ‘08. Though he insisted on doing it all in Arabic. He said that If he was gonna commune with God, he would always do it in his own language.” She paused, and the roar of the flames seemed to quiet to make space for her. “He never said anything about his wife, I think she died. He had a kid, though. Wouldn’t shut up about her, she was everything to him. We don’t get much in the way of families in our line, so we were fine to live vicariously through him. She’s set up with a foster family, good people from what I hear, Ahmad was just an uncle that came to visit every few months.”

I hated it. I hated thinking of them like this, it was easier to leave the mask on, let every single one be just a danger, something to be beaten, by whatever means, then forgotted. My stomach churned with the people I’d left behind. Families, friends, children. Necessities. ‘Reasonable casualties,’ Sid’s voice whispered, ‘the price we pay for safety’.

“Are you all like that?” I asked, after a solemn quiet let the sounds of the world back in, “religious, I mean.”

“Most of us. We don’t get the luxury of falling back on a paycheque. Every one of us believes in something, and God is as good as any.” I got the implication, that we were antithetical to God. that we were unholy somehow. When I thought back to last night, what they would have seen in me, it didn’t seem like the most unlikely conclusion.

“Why do you call it blood magic?” She looked up at me and blinked.

“That’s what it is. You use a person’s lifeblood to cast spells.”

She wasn’t wrong, but I’d only ever used my own. And some Upper Court fairies, but they didn’t have blood. Blood was innacurate, it didn’t hold anything important, except as an electrolyte. I dropped that line of reasoning, it was a technicality. Blood magic implied other kinds of magic, kinds that The Hunter knew about. One of Addie’s rules; never let on that you have as much information as you do.

“All magic has to do that,” I lied, “to some effect.” She scoffed, and got up.

“Nice try.” I decided to drop the subject. We had a lot of walking ahead of us.