Aliyah

Wingbeats echoed at her back, though she didn’t bother turning to see who they belonged to. The fact they hadn’t shot her yet was good enough. Footsteps followed, too. She flicked her gaze sideways as pair of figures drew closer, wreathed in the tell-tale glow of shielding. One was a grey-haired woman, clutching a sword in bloodied hands. The other was a youth, gripping a spear. Both wore unfamiliar robes in the same style. Exiled acolytes, she guessed. The youth edged nearer.

“Are you a battle mage?” he gasped.

“No,” she gritted out.

“I am,” the woman spoke. She had the solid build of a mercenary, but a patch of blood bloomed across her shoulder. “Or used to be. Norbu still has his magic, but he’s untrained. We’ll stay behind the faeries. Tell us if we are in your way.” She fell back, murmuring what might’ve been a prayer. The youth followed suit.

Aliyah spotted two faeries in Hival sashes out the corner of her eye and focused on optimising her circulation and stride. A dead end loomed ahead, the tunnel choked with rubble. She spotted a narrower passage to the side and hesitated for half a second at the threshold, but plunged onward. She was sure Zahir had been real. That spike of pain had been physiological and a piece of red thread still clung to her sleeve. But were the acolytes an illusion? The faeries? Having an illusionist in the equation stoked paranoia, made her head hurt. But they weren’t attacking her, and if they did, she would handle it. So it didn’t matter for now.

“This leads up to the surface,” Norbu called out.

“We know,” one of the faeries snapped. “Mind your step!”

Aliyah drew more needles from her sleeves, sending them scouting. The tunnel widened, then narrowed even further, steep as a funnel. Only wide enough for one at a time, she estimated. The needles pattered against something smooth and hard, many shapes, possibly limbs: a fort of chitin.

She lanced her breakages ahead. Something crunched. Several pops echoed, but no screams. Only a long, low hiss—many as one, overlapping.

“Unhive,” one of the Hival faeries cried out, and they lunged in unison.

A wall of bodies spilled out. The first faery speared two straight through their chests. The other faery—orange, vaguely familiar, a sullen scout, Sargas?—slammed the butt of his spear down, crushing the skull of a third. But the darkness glinted with dark spines and folded wings, more and more crawling forth with each passing second.

There had to be at least thirty or forty faeries, Aliyah realised, all scratching and biting and not pausing for pain, some crawling across the floor with mangled limbs where her breakages had hit. Sargas slammed the end of his tail into the onslaught. The female acolyte gave a war cry and charged. Norbu came to a trembling halt next to her, readying his spear. Aliyah gritted her teeth. She didn’t have time for this.

Shield up, breakages ready—she filled her eyes with dark-vision and dove into the fray, wresting past the crush of chitin, stepping on heads and backs and shoulders, scraping her palms on spiked spines. She filled whatever she touched with spasms and splintering, the minimum necessary to smooth her way, saving her strength.

A spidery hand latched around her boot; she reached without looking and snapped fingers off at their base. A feathered wing hit her across the chest and she bent it away, hearing ligaments snap. She made it over the crest of insectoid anatomy and half-slid, half-fell down the other side, bumping over a tangle of twitching limbs. Screams echoed at her back. Then she took off running. Zahir had gained more than a minute’s head start on them all; she strained her hearing to almost painful sensitivity as she went, not looking back to see whether anyone had followed.

Wingbeats emerged a moment later, heralded by a soft orange glow. Sargas kept pace with her, looking much worse for wear. Hemolymph dripped down his brow, and he swiped it out of his eyes. “Are—you sure,” he panted.

“Yes.” Her breath came as a hiss; she hardly had breath to spare.

“That was—back there, it was all fodder bodies.” He glanced worriedly over his shoulder. “Tunnel’s plugged. Us two made it over the wave, but the acolytes got stuck behind. Meissa stayed because some false-General came bursting out the wall—” he shuddered, voice shaking. “The General was already injured, I think. She’ll—they’ll be alright.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“Alright,” Aliyah said, banishing Saiphenora’s arrows to the back of her mind. “How do you fight a General?”

She wasn’t sure, but she could guess. It couldn’t be worse than a cornered Healer.

“You don’t.” He placed his fingers to his mouth in a grim, soundless whistle. Faint magic rippled the air in waves. “I’ve Hive-called again, little good it’ll do. Best to not fight. Track to their den and mark the coordinates.”

Sargas was a scout. His reasoning rang true. But she wasn’t a scout, and the place Zahir was leading them probably wasn’t a schismatist’s hideout.

“This place reeks of a snare,” he was saying.

“Maybe not. The illusionist was trying to lead me away. But I have to get close enough to break the thrall.”

“What thrall?”

“The mage. I know him. Look for it, if you don’t believe me. The eyes and the spellfire—he’s not doing this because he wants to.”

It’s my task, she didn’t add. You don’t have to follow. But Sargas kept flying alongside, though his spines were drawn flat and tense. There were perhaps a hundred metres before the tunnel split into two; she skidded to a desperate stop, wondering if she was imagining the sound of footsteps echoing from the right.

Sargas sniffed the air. “Rightwards,” he confirmed. “Catching up.”

He still clung to his spear, she noted. “You going to help?” she asked with wary hope.

“That illusionist made a carnage back there,” he spat. “I’ll do what I can.”

“It won’t be that easy,” she warned. “Keep your distance. Stay flying. This mage—you can’t rely on an ordinary shield. Stay away…six feet, at least. No, better twelve.” She wasn’t actually sure. “As far away as you can hit him from.”

They plunged into a deeper darkness. Her muscles burned, but the going was a little easier now, flat instead of an incline. Physiological regulation helped—circulating blood, nudging lungs and bloodflow beyond their usual efficiency—but she tried to conserve her magic. Go fetch, the schismatist had said. She ground her teeth together. Half-taunt, half-lure. She had no real choice but to follow.

The tunnel widened into a proper cavern. Here, she thought, as too-angular shapes loomed out of the darkness. They meant to capture or kill her here, for the crime of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. For being Songian, or a Healer, or of enough potential use: a tool used to subdue or kill. To aid their thievery. It should have been so clear from the beginning.

“Dead dwellings,” Sargas murmured, spines pricked. He hefted his spear with both hands. “I smell many enclosed spaces here. Scattered grottoes, all filled with water.”

She slowed as they entered the main thoroughfare. Rocks crunched wetly beneath her boots. She didn’t need enhanced olfactory nerves to note the smell of damp and rot about the place. The ruins of what might once have been houses slumped silently on all sides. Somewhere far off to the right, she could hear the lapping of a lakeshore.

“Can you sense any of your people?” she asked quietly. Not that there was much point—if she could stretch her hearing to human limits, then surely Zahir could do better. “Schismatists, I mean.”

“Only that human mage.” He sniffed the air again. “Strange. The trail has dispersed. I cannot pinpoint…”

Scent was a biological quality. It could probably be manipulated as easily as skin and bone, if only one thought out the particulars. Would Zahir double back if she stopped following? she wondered despairingly. The faeries weren’t only in the business of hunting her. If they allowed her the opportunity to get close enough to attack, they could lose him and the help he gave them in stealing magic—so, no. Too unlikely to risk trying.

“Fly overhead. If you see him, shout.”

“Easier to signal, like this.” He flashed a golden pattern across his wings, pulsing with lances of light. Then he soared upward, becoming a speck amongst the stalactites.

Aliyah followed, fishing the unlocking charms from her pocket. She considered, then dismissed the remaining needles in her sleeves and prepared an excision instead. Zahir had neutralised the ones she’d aimed at the illusionist; she crammed more power into this attempt, enough for her veins to crackle with the strain. She felt ill at the idea of killing him like the Calamistrum—bulging flesh, throat caved in and blood gushing out—but it probably wouldn’t even hurt, much less slow him down. When she recalled how his spell had struck her sinuses instead of tunneling into her brain, she felt a dim spark of conviction. There was hope yet, some loophole in the thrall. Either a sliver of consciousness she could reach out to…or more likely, the schismatists still needed her alive.

After seeing what they’d done to him, she was sure they needed her alive.

Sargas’s wings flared gold. She fixed her sights on his position and ran faster.

The charms felt so very small in her hand. If they failed, she’d have to flee and hope that was enough. Sargas didn’t seem in any condition to carry her like Cygnus had. Distantly, she hoped Cygnus wasn’t badly hurt or worse. Sargas’ partner was still back in the tunnel, the acolytes too…and surely the leftover Hive fighters could help if she made it back to the cavern? But though her estimation of Zahir’s strength was hazed with dread and uncertainty, she was sure he’d earned that second-rank. It fell to her to protect everyone else.

If only there were another Healer to help. If only she were stronger. If only—

But there was no time left. Sargas’ signal flashed overhead. Her legs carried her through the twisting, half-collapsed grid of dead houses. Wet, moldy air flooded into each heave of her lungs. Sargas’ light grew nearer and nearer until she was almost beneath him, and then Zahir was here again, cloaked in blood with his back to her.

Here, now. She drew her arm back. He turned.

She sensed a flicker, moments before the air flooded with blinding spell-light, and then her magic flowed with more intuition than knowledge. She wrenched her body into tightly-guarded equilibrium, guarding blood and brain. Black spots peppered her vision; she cycled through photopigments viciously, sharpening her sight as the wave of vasodilation crashed down. She lunged through, the magic parting around her like falling water. Zahir faltered, almost hesitating, before he stumbled out of reach and darted off to the right.

She hissed with frustration. The charms—she had to make contact. Gripping one end of the string gave her about a foot of extra reach. It wasn’t going to be enough if he kept running.

Sargas moved overhead. She rounded the corner just in time to hear the whistle of air, to see the last second of spear streaking down.

Zahir didn’t shield. The spear sank into his torso in spray of blood and spellfire. He wrenched it out without regard, barbed end and all. She called out again, and this time he slowed. He cocked his head to one side, almost turning. Then a circle of red pinpricks sparked around him, here and gone again. He dropped the spear with a clatter and disappeared around another corner.

Aliyah scooped up the fallen spear as she passed it. Still running, she raised it aloft.

“Sargas!”

He peeled away from tracking Zahir and darted down just low enough to grab it before floating back up overhead.

“I’ve only got one more of those left in me,” he called, voice rasping with strain. “From the other side? If I can aim while he’s not turning, and you’re near enough—”

“Yes. That’ll—yes, do it.”

She called up her shielding again, stronger than before, feeding magic into circulation, lung capacity, that eager excision ready and waiting. The spell thrummed all along the length of her arm. Her nose was bleeding a river; she hardly noticed it. She focused on running, on pushing all her effort into catching up with Sargas.

Sargas sent out his beacon again. Zahir drew into view. She saw a flicker of movement above, what might’ve been Sargas’ arm drawing back, and ignored it. There was still an uninjured Healer to deal with, whirling around, one hand clawing up to cast.

The spear hit Zahir from behind. She fired the excision into his leg and felt it shatter bone. He fell then, strangely noiseless as he crumpled.

Three more paces and she slung the unlocking charms, filling them with magic as they struck his shoulder. They discharged in a pulse of sickly green light. The air thickened and soured, singeing her throat and nostrils with the smell of cinders. Then, dispersion. Her ears popped. A miniature shockwave buffeted the air as her spell-discs flaked away, becoming dust.

“Zahir?” she rasped urgently. “Can you hear me?”

He looked up, eyes wide and overflowing with a light like dying coals. He reached up with a shaking hand. There was a pale band around his wrist, writhing with subsurface iridescence. By its faint glow, she saw a hairline fracture.

Three thoughts occurred to her. First, that the charms had failed. Second, that he was still reaching for her. Third: a chill and a stillness, like the very air was holding its breath.

Molten pinpricks sparked in the darkness. She bolstered her shields a split second before he cast. Breakages gouged into her defenses, most of them diverted but fragments slipping through. Her ribs fractured. Nausea boiled in her gut. A screech tore its way out of her throat, more dismay than pain. Her hand went to her belt, closing around the knife.

She screamed wordlessly, blood wetting her teeth, and stabbed him. There was more resistance than she’d expected.

“Wake up,” she said, twisting the knife into his mostly-healed leg. She sensed muscle rethreading around bone, but she tore at it with magic and flooded every pain receptor she could reach. “Zahir—can’t you—you idiot bastard, what have they done—can’t you hear me?”

He looked at her, but there was no recognition on his face. He tried to stand, but she kicked at his knee, felt it crack. Drew the knife out and stabbed again: the shoulder, this time. She followed through with a downward ripping motion, metal gouging flesh. He cast a faltering breakage; she blocked it and backed away. Her mouth filled with pain and blood. She panted for breath, hacking up salt and iron. Her armour wrapped tight and solid over her chest, but it seemed too thin to face this.

She pointed her hand at his stomach and cast, excise.

Blood soaked through his robes, and finally he screamed. Scarlet lights seethed around his head, more frantic than a nest of drowning ants. He plunged one hand into his own stomach and raised the other straight upwards. Sargas dropped sharply, hitting the ground with a dull thud. Aliyah bit back a scream.

Zahir reached into his sleeve as she poured more of her steadily draining magic into her armour. She gripped her knife, expecting him to draw one of his own. She didn’t have enough left in her for another excision. A good, hard, breakage. Maybe two. She’d aim them at his neck or his skull, whichever was least defended. Then she’d have to run. If only she could use a tracker mark—

He drew a flat object out of his sleeve. Not a knife. Light flared, and then it was burning in his hand: a papery sheet, so thin it wavered in the nearly still air. A symbol flared on its surface, glowing feverishly.

He blinked, posture slumping, and the strange light faded from his eyes.

“Hello, Aliyah,” he said unsteadily. His voice wasn’t the same as she’d remembered. Blood leaked sluggishly from the gaping wound in his torso, so thick it glistened red-black. He coughed, spitting bile. “Good to see you. Listen, there isn’t much time.”

A dozen questions flooded her thoughts; she pushed them away and chose the most important one. “You can’t sustain whatever you’re doing? I can lend you magic.” What little she could give, that was.

“Wouldn’t work.” He coughed hoarsely, shoulders hunching with the strain. “Not the problem, here.”

“Follow me,” she said urgently. “The Hive can try and—”

“No,” he said, straightening with visible effort. He glanced at the burning sheet. There were, she realised, dozens of runes scrawled around the big symbol, copied painstakingly into interlocking circles. “Whatever spell they’re using to keep me like this is too powerful. Learns better than any damn prodigy I’ve ever met. Each set of runes only works once and I’m going to run out very soon. You don’t want to be around when that happens.

“Listen carefully, alright? The faery leader, Iolite, is fixated on the kingdom Library. She’s some sort of alchemist. She seems to think your past misadventures make you a suitable…something. Sacrifice, probably. I think they’ll kill you to open passage. You know, like how the Magicians use blood. You have to warn someone.”

“What—I can’t warn Magicians,” she protested, aghast. “I’d be executed. And I can’t leave you here; I came to free you. What do I care about the kingdom—?” Rana came to mind in a startled flash. “Fine. I’ll have to free you. You could go back and warn them.”

He grimaced. The light from the burning paper cast his face into flickering relief. “You aren’t a Breaker.” He gestured at the bright bands around his wrists and throat. “These things go off faery commands. Intention. It’s like being half-awake. This spell-slip is keeping me lucid because I could activate it in the first place…there was only enough room to negotiate because—because the pain broke through. You inflicted enough injury. Once they find out I didn’t capture you, maybe why as well—the alchemist has truth potions—they’ll stop up the gaps and tighten their hold. No more clever tricks. I won’t be able to do this anymore. I can’t throw the fight next time, either.”

“Throw the fight?” she asked, with half-justified suspicion. None of the breakages had gone for her neck.

He gave her a weary look. “They wanted you alive. Suria didn’t expect you. She only wanted me to lead you away from that big fallen faery, be a distraction. So the intention must’ve defaulted to Iolite’s standing orders. But I think…” He trailed off, free hand digging harder into his bleeding torso. Maintaining enough pain to act freely, she realised with a dull, sick shock. “There could be a sacrificial element, but you could also be the back-up. If they manage to break into the kingdom castle, there are Librarians who’ve been out far beyond the periphery. Not many, but enough. They can still kill you and take your blood and your brain to save for later.”

Her thoughts raced, catching on and then dismissing thoughts of having her sagittal suture pried open, her skull cracking like an egg. “Where are you? I—I know some people. I’ll find a Breaker.”

His expression twisted. “I don’t know. They cover my eyes when we leave, for the first…ten, fifteen minutes? There are different exits, too. Different slopes, stairs sometimes. Too many tunnels. Dimensional, if I had to guess. It’s underground. That’s half the damn city.”

She rolled up her sleeve, showing the tracker-mark. “You know how to place these?”

“No. I suppose you could cut my hands off and slide the cuffs away before reattaching everything.” He said this very casually, as if he’d spent a long time considering it. “But the one around my neck is the most important, and to tell you the truth I’m not even sure I could manage the—necessary procedure.”

Aliyah ground her teeth together, torn between outrage and revulsion. A split-second memory: that bone-sharp crunch, blood soaking into salt. “No. I can’t.”

“Precisely.” He glanced at his near burnt-through spell-slip and pulled out another, setting it alight. “Last one, Aliyah. Any other ideas? Talk fast.”

“I could—” A thought occurred to her. I can lend you magic. Kionah had tracked her down earlier, hadn’t she? She’d said something like, ‘you still have my magic’, back after Whistle House and the Plum Dove Inn. Granted, she’d probably had the advantage of asking around too, but maybe… “I could give you some of my magic to hold. That’d work, wouldn’t it?”

He hesitated. “Only short-range. I haven’t tried it, but the theory says a quarter-mile or so. It’ll last a while but not forever, even if I don’t use any of it.”

“The city Hive are after your faeries. I’ll find help. I’ll hire a chariot and have them drive it all over the city, if I have to.”

He laughed faintly—perhaps somewhat disbelievingly—and extended a bloodied hand. “Or it’ll be…better warning than not. I wish I knew when and where they’ll move, but…”

She transferred the magic, as much as she dared. The pale cuff nudged against her hand as she withdrew, colder than iron, and suddenly she wasn’t sure it could help him at all. She stepped back. If she concentrated, she could sense Zahir’s presence like the flicker of a distant star. It was a strange sort of proprioception. Not so useful as a tracker-mark must be, but it would tell her whether he was close by and still alive.

Zahir sighed. The second sheet was half-burned through. “Be careful, Aliyah.”

“I’m trying to be,” she said heavily.

“Go,” he said. “Your faery over there—”

“Was it vasodilation?” she asked as she hurried over to Sargas’ fallen form. “He’s fine, right?” The glow of his wings had dimmed, and she wasn’t sure whether it was dimming further.

“Yes. I thought—the ones on my end, she seems to have her eyes and ears. The leader calls herself ‘Iolite’, the illusionist is ‘Suria’, there are some others named Saiphenora, Silverwater, Thorn, Curlew…” He listed them off, voice wavering, thready with pain. “The names might be useful if you’ll be asking faery authorities. They could also be aliases. Be careful. Their leader alludes to having spies in the local population.”

“Right.” She curled her hands into fists. “You have to leave now, don’t you?

“Yes. Goodbye, then,” he said, holding out the burning sheet. Ashes flaked over his hand. “Go back the way you came. Avoid the amphora. When you find me, bring backup. Do your best.” He hesitated. “It’s alright if you fail. You can’t save everyone.”

He departed, moving quickly. She watched the darkness swallow his silhouette and sensed the scrap of her magic fade about a minute later. The spellcaster’s headache, half-suppressed by a flood of adrenaline, seeped in and settled like a quilt of crushed glass. Her throat soured. It was only a bit of carefully-applied magic that kept her from vomiting. She knelt and roused Sargas from his slumber.

Sargas groaned. “Ksssssrrr…where…?”

“Wake up. The mage ran off, but we have to leave.”

Sargas made a dazed, affirmative sound and struggled to stand. His wings brightened a faction, but he coughed out a spurt of hemolymph. She grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him upright. He was surprisingly heavy despite his spindly faerie frame.

As they half-staggered, half-jogged back the way they came, a memory pierced her thoughts. It had seemed innocuous at the time. They’d been talking in the armchairs facing the windows. It had been sunset. Long slices of golden light had broken through the shadows on the other side of the room, piercing the blueish gloom to illuminate the far wall.

Zahir had said, apropos of nothing: “if it ever comes to a choice of life and death, you should kill rather than die.”

She could still picture him steadily not looking at her. He’d turned towards the dying light at the window and picked at the fraying cloth cover of a book.

“You cannot save everyone, but you can save yourself. That is always what I have taught you. It doesn’t matter who they are.”

The turn in the conversation had started stressing her out. She’d latched onto what she’d thought of as the most uncomfortable part of it, back then: “you think I should kill people?”

“Only if you must. Wound or kill, whatever is enough. Do what’s necessary.”

“Come on Zahir,” she’d said, shifting in her seat. “Where’s this coming from? It’s not so dark talk for a Healer, but I doubt I’ll need to kill anyone in the course of my maidservant’s duties. The castle’s incredibly safe. Unless someone tries to steal my good mop again—maybe then I’ll reconsider.” She’d forced a laugh.

“I’m speaking hypothetically.” He was still picking at the wilting book. “This is all hypothetical unless you—let’s hope you don’t—find yourself needing to make use of the advice.” His voice had sounded distant. She’d wondered what sort of sordid courtly trouble it would take for it to come to that. Short of stealing into the Library again, that was.

“That sounds extreme,” she’d scoffed. “And hypocritical. If I ever felt the need to stop you because you concocted a plan to bring down the kingdom, like in a story or something—you still think everyone should always kill, even if it were you?”

“Yes,” he said. His mouth curved into a slight smile; soft as an open wound. “Even me.” And then he’d said something else in his usual manner, a light and easy exit onto less morbid topics.

She realised, now, the other layer behind the lesson: he might kill her to save himself, and unhesitatingly.

Well, she thought grimly. That excision had certainly got him. If she could learn to wield her magic better, it wouldn’t have to come to that.

Ahead, a glint of light pierced the darkness. She tensed, readying her shield. A trio of faeries appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, backlit by softly glowing wings.

“Meissa,” Sargas mumbled, eyes fluttering shut.

“Sargas,” the faery from earlier cried out, hurrying closer. “Are you alright?”

Sargas hissed as she took his weight, forcing him to lean on her shoulder.

“The mage slipped away,” he said heavily. He gestured at Aliyah. “This mage, Ah…something-song…she was able to resist the quelling sleep.”

A different faery looked at her keenly. “Mage Scionsong. You got a good view of the mess back there?” Her voice was sharp and steady, as clear as a bell. “Meissa tells me you tried to bring down the illusionist. You should come to the meeting.”

Aliyah frowned. “Meeting? What meeting?” And how did this faery know her name? “Who are you? Have we met?”

“Your friend spoke to me,” the faery said. “A certain ‘Miss Sadrava’? She was quite intent on finding you. My apologies for not introducing myself. I am General Nephele, and there’ll be a meeting about this terrible situation tomorrow morning; we don’t have an embassy here, so Luxon offered to host. I believe you’re acquainted with her too?”

A General? That was as high-ranked as a Magician, wasn’t it? Aliyah ducked her head and gave an uncertain half-bow, muscles still stiff and reeling from the fight.

“Of course. Yes, I’ll…I’ll be there. If there’s anything I can do to help…” And anything you can do to save Zahir in return…

“We’d be pleased if you attended,” General Nephele said gravely. “These are perilous times for us all.”