Aliya expertly navigated her scooter through Sinaveya’s tight maze of desert alleyways with practiced ease, hurtling around the sharp corners at an angle that would have made her mother blanch, had she been there to see it. Her backpack full of contraband was strapped tightly to her body, unlikely to separate no matter what movements she made; the material inside was secured so it wouldn’t rattle around and get damaged either.
She took a short detour to avoid the Sixthday market—it was always crowded with people hoping for a better deal than an established shop would offer them, and if she wanted to go straight through it she would have to dismount her bike and walk. That would slow her down, make this delivery take longer than necessary.
Her scooter was a common sight down here. The desert level was where smugglers and black-market dealers retreated to when the Lightkeepers got a bit too interested in their activities up higher, and that meant it was where Aliya did business too.
The warehouse she eventually arrived at was towards the edge of the City Above; Sinaveya was only three layers deep there, and through the crackling storm-wards she could even see a glimpse of the orange-stained sky. The building itself was like every other building around it—corrugated metal and rotting plywood, painted over a dozen times with tags and murals on top of whatever color it might have been originally. Next to the door was an eye-wateringly-bright, poison-blue dragon, glaring at her with acid-green eyes that followed her movements as she knocked sharply.
After a long minute—which she spent bouncing impatiently on her toes—it opened a crack, the person behind it narrowing a slitted amber eye at her out of the shadows.
“I brought your order,” said Aliya, tugging on one of her backpack straps.
The eye narrowed further before the door abruptly opened fully. “Come in,” said the person on the other side.
Aliya checked that her bike’s lock was properly sunk into the ground, the ward bubble formed neatly over the bike itself, and followed them inside.
The warehouse was dim and gloomy inside, chilly after the warm afternoon air of the city. Her guide led her down a narrow corridor, the sandy floor sloping down beneath their feet; eventually they arrived at another door. This one bore a dragon on its surface, painted outlines glowing and shifting in the dark.
That door opened into a surprisingly spacious area, furnished with an eclectic sort of mismatched furniture, a few figures scattered through it. They were all human, Aliya knew, but none of them quite looked it. Human mages often looked at least a little bit off, especially when they hadn’t been properly trained—and no one growing up on the lower levels of Sinaveya was ever properly trained.
“That was quick,” said one of the mages, nearly a head shorter than Aliya, glowing spots flaring around their eyes. This was Hadar, leader of the rogue mage group the Dragon’s Children, and the one who had ordered the magical conduits that Aliya was carrying.
Aliya shrugged. “Titi had them in supply,” she said.
Hadar raised a sleek silver-glowing eyebrow at that statement, then shook their head. “I suppose it’s all the better for us,” they said, rather than question her. “Show me.”
She obliged, pulling off the backpack and opening it to display the rows of already-shaped crystal rods within. Part of her was eager to be rid of them so she could move on with her day. Part of her was reluctant to part with them; her job as a magic-runner only existed at all because of the Queen of Light’s interdiction of unlicensed magic.
She unpacked the crystals anyway, because this was still her job, and Titi would be very unimpressed if she went home without delivering them.
Afterwards, Hadar handed over the second half of what they owed for the conduits without being asked—they might not have known who Titi truly was in the City Below, but they certainly knew better than to cross her—and then Aliya was quickly shuffled out the door again. She took a cursory glance around to make sure no one was watching before dismissing the ward bubble over her bike with a wave of her hand. Then she hopped on the scooter and headed further out, towards the city limits.
----------------------------------------
Old Man Avidan lived on the very outskirts of the city, half a gardenspan from where the wards sank down glittering into the swirling dust of the desert. Aliya sometimes wondered if they were truly effective, this close, but Avidan said he’d never had a problem with magical anomalies or mundane weather, so she had little choice but to trust him.
His house was a freestanding building, not part of the great city complex; that was a rarity, in Sinaveya. It was built of sandstone blocks and wood, and painted just as brightly as the warehouses—but instead of being the work of many people, this was all Avidan’s own artwork, and he had chosen to depict abstract patterns and shapes rather than magical creatures. As she approached the house on her scooter, Aliya felt the telltale signs of active, friendly magic prickling over her skin, and let herself relax into the sensation.
The air was clearer than usual; she could just barely make out the mountains on the northeastern horizon through the ochre haze. In her periodic Great Warnings, the Queen of Light spoke of wicked wizards and gluttonous goblins and terrible trolls that lived out in the wild, twisted magic of the Mourning Mountains—that was part of why the wards were so strong, she explained, and part of why unlicensed magic was not allowed. The denizens of the wastelands couldn’t be allowed in, after all. Titi said that was all nonsense. Yes, the world-veins were twisted in the Mourning Mountains, but they were twisted in the desert as well—the mountains held no greater risk.
For her part, Aliya was more inclined to believe Titi than the Queen of Light. She’d grown up with Titi, after all, and had seen the tangled web of the world-veins in the desert—and she knew, too, that there was no reason to fear wizards or goblins as a whole.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
She got off her bike outside Old Man Avidan’s door, locking it out of habit more than necessity. Hardly anyone came out here, and most who did knew that Avidan was reputed to be a hedgewitch; he wasn’t someone people liked to cross.
The door opened before she could knock on it, and Avidan smiled at her.
“Aliya!” he said. “Come in, come in.” His pale eyes flitted over her, measuring and assessing. He wore a neatly trimmed gray beard and kept his hair in long, carefully maintained silver ringlets, tied in a ponytail to keep them out of his face.
She followed him into his cozy, cluttered house. Battered, well-read spellbooks lined the shelves, and the walls were painted with detailed murals. Some of them showed Sinaveya in its shining glory, some showed the desert and the mountains, and others depicted scenes from Tauaveya, the City Below. The curtains were all drawn back, letting the golden afternoon sunlight stream inside.
“I brought you pomegranates,” said Aliya. “Titi sent them for you.”
Avidan’s smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “You know,” he said, “my favorite granddaughter doesn’t need a reason to visit me.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled in return. “I’m your only granddaughter,” she said. “And I know, it’s just—you live a bit out of the way, you know, when I’m not already down here.”
Avidan shrugged. “The world-veins are muddled in the sky,” he said. “I can’t feel them as well.” He led Aliya into the kitchen, ducking under a row of pots hanging from the ceiling—Aliya herself was short enough that she didn’t need to—and pulled out one of the chairs for her to sit in. “Show me the pomegranates,” he said. “We can share one, and you can tell me how Tamar has been lately.”
Aliya took a seat and did as he asked. These pomegranates were not surface-world food; they came from Tauaveya, where goblins lived and humans were rare. Tamar was Aliya’s grandmother’s name—she had always called her Titi.
Her grandfather hadn’t lived with Titi for many years, but the two of them still adored each other, she knew. So she shared an underland pomegranate with Avidan, and told him all she’d heard of the Goblin Queen’s doings since last she had visited.
----------------------------------------
Aliya rode her scooter back into the city’s core in the bloody light of the scarlet-gold sunset. Her day’s work was done, and it was time she headed home. Once she was back amongst the towering columns of the urban complex, she made her way to the elevator platform closest to her home. She briefly flashed her ID card to the Lightkeeper stationed at the gate, who gave her a suspicious look but waved her by anyway.
Maybe he thought she was visiting the desert level too frequently, even with her unrestricted pass. She’d been surprised to realize how tight the level-movement restrictions in Sinaveya were, when she’d first come to live with Mama full-time a few years earlier, but at least they took family connections into account when deciding whether to grant them.
As the platform rose between the towering columns of the city’s architecture, the glowing violet sky unfolded around and above her, red on the hazy western horizon. The shining storm-wards stretched over the whole city like the top half of an enormous soap bubble, streaks of electric blue crackling through them. After all these years, the sight still took Aliya’s breath away; Tauaveya was beautiful in its own right, yes, but nothing in the City Below matched Sinaveya’s monument to humanity.
She left the platform on the eighteenth level, stowed her bike in a nearby rented locker—getting it home with her was more trouble than it was worth—and stepped onto the nearest skytrain that would take her home. It was a little later than most people ended their working days, so the train was quiet. Aliya pressed her cheek into the window and looked as far up as she could as the train made its way towards the northern edge of the city. Between the storm-wards and the omnipresent haze of dust and smoke and sand that hung in the air outside of them, it was impossible to see the stars in Sinaveya, but the moon was still there, a pale shining disc hanging above the city.
Aliya got off the train fifteen minutes later and walked the rest of the way home on the solid walkways that ran alongside the sky-paths the train took. A faint shiver ran through her, gooseflesh raising on her arms. The sun was well and truly set by then, and the air was cooling rapidly. Once she arrived, she swiped her key through the lock to let herself into the small apartment that she and her mother lived in.
“Mama, I’m home,” she called out.
“I’m in the kitchen,” Mama replied.
When Aliya entered the kitchen, there were already two candles burning steadily on the windowsill, and she stopped for a moment to relax into the comfort of home. Her mother looked up and immediately sighed.
“Aliya,” she said, “your hair.”
Aliya winced. Her hair was thick, dark, and very curly; sometimes she wrestled it into a braid, and sometimes she couldn’t be bothered. Today, she hadn’t bothered, and it was a tangled, windswept mess.
“I’ll deal with it later,” said Aliya, who knew that if she tried to brush it out now it would only become more unmanageable.
Mama sighed, but let it be for the moment, and together they sat down to for a late dinner. Aliya eyed the challah sitting alluringly on the counter, but she knew that her mother would say something if that was the first thing she took, so she started with the stew and couscous instead. They talked and ate, and the candles slowly burned lower on the windowsill; there, with her mother, she could almost forget the lingering, itching discontent she felt in this city.
Once the meal was over and cleared away, Aliya made a pot of red tea, and was about to serve it for both of them when there was a knock on the door.
She looked at Mama in confusion—she wasn’t expecting any visitors—only to see that her mother looked just as confused as she felt.
“I’ll get it,” she said, and set the teapot down on the table before going to the door.
On the other side there stood a short, broad figure, whose head barely came up to Aliya’s shoulder and whose frame was at least twice as broad as her own. The figure wore a thick dark cloak that cast every part of it in shadow except for the quickly-withdrawn mossy-knuckled hand that had knocked upon their door.
Aliya’s brow furrowed. Titi had made no mention of sending an envoy her way, but this was clearly not someone who usually lived in the City Above.
“I’m sorry to disturb your evening,” said the figure in a soft, sibilant baritone. “Are you Aliya Barzai?”
“I am,” said Aliya slowly.
The figure’s hands raised and cast off the hood of the cloak; Aliya’s vision swam for a moment from the many-layered spell enmeshed in the mossy, rocky skin. On the doorstep of her home in Sinaveya, the City Above, the human city, there stood the most spell-touched goblin man that Aliya had ever seen.
“If you would hear me out, I would have a favor to ask of you, Aliya Barzai,” he said. “I fear I have need of your help.”