Aliyah

Her head throbbed and her eyes watered. Blood coursed thinly through her veins, and her skin seemed to sting with phantom wounds and phantom spellfrost: ghosts of frozen muscles and fractured bone. She’d suffered a headache and a heavy nosebleed trying to fix everything. Her mouth still tasted of blood.

She coughed as the air cleared. The blue-smoke-scent was fading and smelled all wrong anyway, but the memory of a certain Magician blazed in her mind’s eye—and close on its heels, the impression of a golden vaulted ceiling, framed with exhaustion and fear and blood and pain. She pressed a hand to her head and winced. There was no point in slipping into dreaded memories—she had different problems now. Worse ones? It was hard to tell.

She staggered to her feet, ignoring the swimming feeling in her head. Her magic numbed patches of lingering pain and forced a fresh wave of wakefulness through her body. Shapes solidified in the lingering smoke, faerie forms and human silhouettes alike.

One of the faerie forms strode towards her, scraps of mist shedding off its wings in waves. She tensed—for a moment, she thought that it was the very same one who had attacked her. But no, the faery that emerged from the blue fog was not gold—she was a pearly, iridescent cream colour, and dressed in a loose cloth tunic with an official-looking crest embroidered over the front.

“At ease, human,” the faerie said. “I am Lieutenant Qilin of Glister Hive and I mean you no harm.”

“Have you seen Kionah?” she blurted out.

Lieutenant Qilin frowned, and the spurs around her face twitched. “Kionah…? I'm not sure…a companion of yours? A human?”

“Yes,” Aliyah said, scanning around. “She…oh—over there!”

Kionah sat on the cobblestones, head in her hands. Aliyah hurried over, even as her ears rang and her head protested. Lieutenant Qilin floated some inches off the ground and glided along by her side.

“Excuse me, miss,” Qilin said, “but I will need to ask you a question or two. Required protocol, that sort of thing.”

“What?”

“Those criminals,” Qilin said. She gave a mid-air shrug that started from her spines and ended at her tail-tip. “Were you acquainted?”

“No,” she said as they came to a stop in front of Kionah. “Absolutely not.”

Kionah raised her head. Her glasses were missing a lens; the remaining one was cracked. Several bloody scratches ran up over her cheek, shallow but numerous.

“Hello,” she said, gaze fixing on the Lieutenant. There was a roughness to her voice that had not been there before. “Glister Hive, I take it?”

“Yes,” said Qilin. “I assure you, the ones who attacked you were not our own. Are you aware of their identities?”

“Not aware, no,” Kionah said, and cleared her throat. “We have no idea who they are. There were…four? No, five.” She counted them off the fingers of one hand as she listed them. “One silver, one gold—that one was really tall—one sort of brownish guy, one blue…and a green one, too. Bastard knocked me over the head.”

“The silver one used arrows,” Aliyah added. That particular searing pain stuck firmly in her mind’s eye; a phantom twinge flickered through her gut.

Qilin grimaced, a movement that also involved a twitch of wings and a swish of the tail. “Right, right. And you were attacked without provocation?”

“Sort of,” Kionah said. “The tracker-mark?”

Aliyah’s hand snapped up to the itching spot on her arm. “Oh. Yes, um. We were attacked…earlier. The gold one put this…tracking enchantment thing on me.” She rolled up her sleeve.

Lieutenant Qilin glanced down at the mark with little interest. “I see. Yes, that does look like some sort of spell.” She shrugged, with more nonchalance than Aliyah had expected. “I’m afraid I cannot assist you in that regard.”

“Mm,” Kionah said. She touched the cuts on her face; when her hand came away, it was smeared with blood. “Is City Watch involved? We free to go?”

“No,” Qilin said, already turning away. “You can leave. Do take care, now.”

Kionah winced and rose to her feet, dusting off her hands. “What a fucking mess.”

“Y-yeah,” Aliyah said. The ghostly, freezing touch of faerie spellfrost still lurked beneath her skin. She hurried her circulation along to dispel the lingering chill. “Now what?”

“Now we leave for real,” Kionah said bitterly.

“Really?” a familiar voice cut in. “So soon?”

Aliyah whirled around, just as Maia strode right past her in a swish of red hair and a flurry of skirts. She stopped just short of Kionah, a couple hand’s breadths too close for politeness.

“Where do you think you’re going Kion? You’ve got some explaining to do. What the hells was all that? What happened to your face?”

“None of your concern,” Kionah snapped.

“I saved your hide back there,” Maia said. “I think you owe me a rundown on what troubles you’ve sunk yourself into this time.”

“Look,” Kionah said. “I don’t especially care if you end up floating down the river in a bag of rocks, but perhaps your boss does. Leonora did save my hide once, so for her sake more than yours, I’ll tell you to stay out of it. This is bad business, you hear? Worse than whatever you’re already tangled up in.”

Maia made a disgusted sound. “So you’ve dragged some trouble over from the old kingdoms.” Her gaze flicked, very briefly, over to Aliyah. “That doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to know what.”

“Don’t talk to me about what you supposedly deserve.”

“Fine. Be that way. Also, you dropped this.” She held out the bunch of carnations, stems-first.

Kionah froze and glared at her before snatching the illusory bouquet in one swift motion. “Much appreciated,” she bit out, and shoved the empty pistol back into her waistband. “Come on, Aliyah, we’re leaving.”

“It’s been lovely to see you too,” Maia called out, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Don’t be a stranger, Kion.”

Kionah snorted and walked away, chin held high. Aliyah followed close at her heels, wincing inwardly at Maia’s passing glare. The street lay in disarray; faeries fluttered around in scattered formations, seemingly combing the area for clues under the Lieutenant’s direction. No one paid them any heed as they departed.

She glanced down at her arm. The itch had died down, but the faery-mark was still inked there, solid and mocking. Then she glanced up at Kionah, who was staring straight ahead, fully ignoring the droplets of blood welling up from her cuts. She seemed oblivious to the curious and mildly horrified glances of passers-by.

“Kionah,” Aliyah said. “Is your face alright?”

Kionah pursed her lips. “I’ll live.”

“I could, um. I could fix it, if you wanted? The cuts don’t look too bad.”

Kionah blinked slowly, as if in realisation. “Oh…right. Might want to get out of the main street first—here, this way.”

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They ducked into an alley. Kionah grimaced and brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The cuts ran over both of her cheeks and part of her nose, thin and shallow, most of them in parallel sets of five. There were a few more on her shoulder, where the fabric of her shirt had torn.

“So, um. I’ll just, put my hand on your shoulder if that’s fine.”

Kionah jerked her chin. “Go ahead.”

Aliyah reached out and concentrated on forcing the wounds to fuse shut, even as it made the world swim around her. Fresh skin replacing the lacerations, woven in evenly so there would be no scar…

“Done,” she gasped out. Her mouth felt dry; her nose dripped red. She braced herself against the wall, just for a moment, to regain her bearings. When she glanced up, Kionah was reaching to touch her own freshly-healed face. Her fine features creased in consternation. Aliyah wondered, fleetingly, how she’d made it this far without so much as the slightest visible scar.

“Thank you,” Kionah said, tone gone courtly-cordial. “Don’t overextend yourself on my behalf.”

“It’s fine,” Aliyah said. She wiped her face with her sleeve; it was dirtied already, dusty and spell-scorched from the faerie fight; a little blood wouldn’t make a difference. “You uh, helped a lot, back there. I don’t think I would’ve been fine if I was alone. Also…” She hesitated. “…There’s the problem of the tracker mark. The faeries came because of it. So…what now?”

“I was still going to seek lodgings and protection under the weapons enchanter.”

Aliyah started to shake her head, then stopped when it only served to make her headache worse. “What I meant was—are you still going to keep me around?”

Kionah just blinked and stared at her for a moment. “…What?”

“The faery mark is a problem,” she pointed out, and forced her voice to keep from shaking. “They might come back. So, knowing that—am I coming with you, or not?”

Kionah gave a sharp, startled bark of laughter. “Of course you are. Unless you don’t want to? If they’re going to know where you are anyways, well…it’s still a decent place to stay. Warded.”

“Even if it…” she paused. “Even if it puts you in danger?”

“I’ve had worse,” Kionah said dismissively. “Besides, you can’t possibly expect me to leave you to the streets—trust me, you’d be cutpurse’d before sunset. Luxon’ll get the potion-thing done before you know it, and then…well, then you can choose to do whatever you want. But I hope you’ll consider my prior offer.” She passed a hand over her face and sighed. “Must be nice, always being able to heal yourself. Anyways—let’s go.”

She strode forth with purpose. Aliyah followed and tried to ignore the throbbing headache soaking into her skull. She gritted her teeth and distracted herself with the walking; there was a lot of walking, actually. A lot of ducking through alleys and going up steps and across bridges, weaving through crowds all the while. The city roiled around them, the throngs of merchants and shoppers waxing and waning to the rhythm of invisible, unchartable tides.

At some point, Kionah handed her a buttered roll and a can of something labeled ‘effervescent honey soda’. She accepted the items wordlessly, barely even pausing to consider which shopfront Kionah had snagged them from. Perhaps the criminal association was beginning to rub off on her. Perhaps she was just too exhausted to care. She ate the roll and drank the drink; they helped stave off the weakness in her muscles and the parchedness of her throat, but didn’t seem to help her headache much. They kept walking. She wondered how Kionah could have expected them to run all this way, with the Magician in pursuit.

She took the time to worry about the Magician. He’d cast some sort of rune magic at her, slowing her down enough for one of the faeries to get her with the frost spell. What kind of Magician worked with faeries? A false one for sure.

===

Kionah finally came to a stop by a shopfront; the sign was sun-bleached and weathered beyond legibility, but the window display showed a great very many books. A hand-written placard hung behind the glass, proclaiming the store open in looping calligraphy letters.

“Were we not going to see the weapons merchant?” Aliyah asked. She pressed a hand to her temple and valiantly tried and failed to ignore the fuzzy-headedness that came with spellcaster’s headache.

“He lives here,” Kionah said. “Though the bindery is his partner’s.”

Aliyah squinted. The books certainly looked like books. “Is it a front for the weapon-selling?”

“Far from it.” Kionah rolled her eyes and placed her hand to the door. “All on the side and legal…ish, remember? Don’t look so worried; there aren’t going to be piles of charm-grenades stashed inside. Silas would never allow it.”

A bell tinkled as Kionah pushed at the door and strode through with a confidence in her step that Aliyah wasn’t sure she ought to believe. The room was indeed devoid of charm-grenades, or any other weaponry for that matter. It was warmly lit and lined with shelves and glass cases, all of them encasing richly-bound books. The air was laced with the inoffensive scents of leather and paper and beeswax.

A doorway sat behind the counter, through which she glimpsed part of what looked like a workshop: stacks of cut paper, the edge of a bench laden with pots and brushes, devices fashioned out of cast iron. A man stepped out, clean-shaven and completely bald. A pair of expensive-looking spectacles perched upon his nose, framing dark, hooded eyes. He had a testy look about him, one that suggested he lived in a perpetual state of mild irritation. Aliyah braced herself—she’d had run-ins with his sort. There was no shortage of vexed individuals who liked to look down on maidservants among the kingdom staff and castle residents both.

“How can I help you?” he asked. And then, after a beat: “oh—Miss Sadrava.”

“Hello, Silas,” Kionah said, inclining her head.

He pursed his lips. “I assume you’re here to speak with Laurent?”

“Yes.”

“Be back in a minute. Don’t nick anything, the books are charmed.”

Kionah sighed and muttered something that sounded vaguely insulting under her breath.

Silas headed back into the workshop. The sound of footsteps on a staircase echoed back out to them, then muffled speech, followed by the sound of steps descending—this time two pairs, slightly out of sync. A different man strode out of the doorway. Silas peered out at them for a moment, scowling faintly, before disappearing back into the depths of his workshop.

“Kionah,” the other man—Laurent, Aliyah presumed—exclaimed.

He didn’t look anything like she assumed a weapons enchanter would. She’d pictured someone a little like Silas, only more sinister; someone along the lines of a storybook sorcerer—tall and spindly, peering over the rims of thick spectacles, perhaps caressing a glowing dagger in his hands. Instead, Laurent looked as if he could be somebody’s jolly middle-aged uncle; he was barrel-chested and bushy-browed, greying at the temples and grinning widely.

“Well, well, well,” he said, voice jovial and booming. He leaned across the counter to peer at her. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you for ages! Is my little brother overworking you? How is he, by the way? He seems to drop by even less than you do.”

Kionah rolled her eyes and sighed. “No, nothing like that. I was just…busy. For unrelated reasons. And Shasta’s being his usual self.”

Shasta? Little brother? Was this some sort of Crow Ear outpost? Aliyah furrowed her brow, looked Laurent over more closely and tried to match up the man’s pale complexion to Shasta’s tanned one, his middle age to Shasta’s relative youth. Perhaps brothers in arms, then, or half-siblings.

“Hah,” Laurent said. “That is good to hear. I don’t suppose you’re here to purchase anything? But I see you’ve brought a friend.”

“This is Aliyah,” Kionah said, giving her an expectant little nudge. Aliyah managed to stammer out a jumbled greeting. “We were hoping you had your spare room out for lease.”

His expression grew sober. “Ah. Run into some trouble?”

“Yes,” Kionah said. “Faeries. How much?”

Laurent frowned. “And you didn’t take it up with the Hive?”

“The Hive knows—and I doubt they have the faintest clue.” She made a disgusted sound. “From how the Lieutenant spoke, I don’t think they especially care. Wouldn’t be the first time a gang of pissed-off schismatists tried to beat up random citygoers. But, uh. Let’s just say that this is some personal trouble. Complicated; not Crow-Ear stuff. Also, they know where we are.”

Laurent’s frown deepened and he glanced over their heads—toward the window display and out into the street. “You didn’t give them the drop?” He sighed. “Don’t tell me there’s rabble waiting outside. Bad for business. Silas’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

Kionah sighed. “No, no, it’s…Aliyah, show him the tracker-mark.”

Aliyah winced, then rolled up her sleeve. The tesseracts gleamed oddly under the warm store lights.

“Hmph,” Laurent said. “That’s a spell, alright.” He scratched the back of his head. “But I’m just an enchanter; can’t help you there. Have you tried going to a cursebreaker? Or a potioneer?”

“Luxon,” Kionah said. “You know, the faery one.”

“Ah.” Laurent gave a knowing nod. “That’ll do it. How long do you need the room for?”

“At least two days, perhaps more. How much?”

“I’ll have to get out the special chalks. Hundred-fifty a night. More if I need to refresh it in a week. And if there’ll be any, you know, fighting or property damage involved…”

Kionah nodded tersely. “Alright. I’ll fetch my things from Shasta’s, be back soon. Watch over my companion for me, won’t you?”

Aliyah startled. “Wait, what?” For all that Kionah was involved in disconcerting Crow Ear business, she was still the only familiar thing in Glister.

Kionah sighed. “You look half-dead, Aliyah. The Magician went after you the most and I’d rather you not burn through all your magic again trying to keep up.”

Even more than the dreaded prospect of waiting it out with two complete strangers, Aliyah’s thoughts flashed back to the scratches over Kionah’s face. “But the faeries—”

Kionah sighed again, louder this time. “I can move faster if I don’t have to look out for you.”

Aliyah bit the inside of her cheek. It was true, she supposed. But Kionah hardly looked as if she were in better shape herself.

“You have a concussion,” she said. And if not a concussion, then at least a headache to show for having been hit with a stick.

Kionah set her jaw. “I’m fine.”

“Hey now, you two. Wait just a moment.” Laurent reached round his neck and pulled a loop of braided cord over his head. From it, a wooden pendant swung. “Have to keep safe, yes? I can lend you this, if you do your best to return it in one piece. It’ll keep shielded, faeries or otherwise.”

“Thank you,” Kionah said.

She took the pendant and draped it around her neck before Aliyah could think of anything more to say. The door chimed merrily on her way out.

Laurent sighed and turned to face Aliyah. “Well, well. It sounds like you’ve had a rough time of it, eh? Come in—want some tea?”