Aliyah

“A tracker mark?” she asked.

A bolt of ice ran down her spine and the mark on her arm seemed to itch even more. The golden faerie had placed it onto her arm; did that mean it knew where she was, right now? Was it following her, lurking on the street outside? A shiver ran down her spine.

“Can you get rid of it?”

“Can I?” Luxon asked as she placed a delicate hand to the mark on her arm. “Hmm.”

Her chitinous fingerpads felt cold and smooth, halfway between metal and glass. Aliyah tried not to flinch.

“It seems some variant of a silly old Hive enchantment. Of course I can! But, ah. Not immediately, I’m afraid. This is a highly unusual order. I will have to brew a custom ointment, order in some reagents, that kind of thing. And,” she said, as she moved her finger to tap on her chin, “there is a price.”

“What kind of price?” Aliyah asked warily, half-expecting her to say something like ‘your left kidney’.

“Seven crests and a crown,” Luxon said with a flourish.

Aliyah blinked at her. Crests? What were crests? Ah, but of course they had different currency here. Was a Glisterian crest more than a Songian crown? Trepidation crept up on her. Whatever it was, it sounded expensive.

“That’s about eight of your crowns altogether,” Kionah said, nudging lightly her with her elbow. “Perhaps a bit more, depending on which money changer you go to. Gold crowns versus silver crowns; confusing, I know.”

“Oh,” she said.

Her mind whirled. How many weeks of work was equivalent to eight crowns? Thirty six minus eight was twenty eight. Was there a cheaper enchantress around? Was she being scalped of her coin? Was this a racket that Kionah and Luxon were in on together? But if it really was a tracker-mark, she wanted the thing off her arm as soon as possible. She felt a coil of dread settle in her stomach at the prospect of seeing that golden faerie again, the memory of an arrow through the stomach, and spears sunk into the backs of her knees.

“How long would it take you?” she asked reluctantly.

“Two days,” Luxon said. “Oh dear, don’t look so nervous! Kionah, you haven’t tangled this poor girl up in anything nasty, have you? But what am I saying, it’s a tracker-mark—from a Hive-unaffiliated individual, no less. Of course something fishy is going on. How intriguing.”

“You’re Hive-unaffiliated,” Kionah pointed out.

Luxon frowned. “Now that’s just not the same. I still have ties to the Hive, however tenuous. Don’t lump me in with those schismatists. Eugh.” She turned to Aliyah. “Have you made up your mind yet, dearest?”

Kionah sighed. “I’ll pay.”

Aliyah froze as she scrambled for the meaning of her offer. “What? Oh, um. No, you don’t have to.”

“I owe you that at least,” she said wearily. “You’re hardly flush with coin at the moment, aren’t you? One good turn deserves another, or so Shasta keeps telling me.”

“Songian?” Luxon asked, wrinkling her nose. “Ahh, the fabled desert kingdom. You’re from there?”

“Yes,” Aliyah said. A pang of longing echoed in her chest, which was ridiculous, really. She’d never felt like it was a real home. True, Zahir’s office had been a haven and Rana’s room had always been comforting, but—

“I have it on good authority that they kill our kind on sight,” Luxon said coolly. “And that they prance around in evil costumes. What’s that like, living in a place that’s just humans?”

“Um,” Aliyah said.

“Aliyah’s not like that,” Kionah broke in. “And keep this information discreet, if you would. We’ve both got people after us.”

Aliyah didn’t like the sound of that. It added credence to the feeling of being hunted.

Luxon’s half-scowl faded into a wince. “Oh. Oh dear, that sounds…aggravating. In need of protective potions, by any chance?”

Kionah grunted. “Some other time, perhaps. You in need of another chariot or some semi-precious gems, you let me know.”

“Of course, dearest. Now, you can pay half now and half at pick-up, or all upfront. Dispelling ointment should be done in two days. Come back at noon, or later. But I close by sundown.”

Kionah fished out a handful of golden coins from her own purse—each of them a little larger than Songian crowns, but thinner, with an intricate crest stamped on both sides—and a silver coin that vaguely resembled a Songian crescent. At least gold and silver were sort of the same here, a minor constant in this kaleidoscope city.

“Excellent,” Luxon said, gathering them up from where Kionah had placed them onto the counter. “All the best, now. I’ll have it ready as soon as possible.”

The door jingled merrily on their way out. The summer drizzle had dried up and now the street baked under rays of unrelenting summer sunshine.

“Now what?” Aliyah asked. The tracker-mark itched away at her skin, on the cusp of burning. She wanted to scratch it off, to scrub it raw.

“Now you do whatever you want to do,” Kionah said, shrugging. “For two days, at least. Then you come back here and pick up your ointment.”

“What? How? I’d get lost.” She had no idea how to get back to the Plum Dove Inn, wasn’t even sure she wanted to go back, considering how Kionah had implied it was pretty much owned by Shasta and his gunrunner gang. The city still felt like a hedge-cut labyrinth tipped on its side, senseless and claustrophobic.

“Well I’m going to go and catch up with a couple of people. You can accompany me, if you like.”

“Accompany you to—was this your plan all along?”

Kionah scowled, looking almost offended. “I’m not putting my personal plans aside just to escort you all over the city,” she said. “You’re free to go. There are some decent guides in the market square back there, Crowfire Whispers or something. They’ll get you back safe and sound.”

“Shasta’s people?” she asked, frowning.

“No relation.”

Aliyah hesitated. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite distance herself from the fact that Kionah was the most familiar face she’d see in the whole city. She’d had a tracker-mark put on her by a faery who’d tried to kill her…wouldn’t it be wise to stick by an actual mage in the meantime? Someone who—unlike her—could cast a decent shield? There were faeries everywhere in Glister, just walking or flying around in public. Which meant that the attackers from the tunnels could be anywhere, hiding in plain sight.

“Who are you going to see?” she asked.

“Mister money changer—forger, I guess you’d call him, too, but he doesn’t forge currency. The coin exchange part by itself is legitimate, if you’re worried about that. And then my old fence—”

“Fence?” she interrupted, thinking of the sort that went around a vegetable plot.

“He resells stolen goods.” Kionah said. “Anyways. Then I’ll maybe shop for new contacts, if I have the time.” She gestured to her glasses and snorted. “These anti-smudging enchantments only last so long.”

Aliyah thought it over for a moment. “So…I could get my Songian coins swapped to Glisterian ones by the money changer if I come with you? Is he—are either of them dangerous?”

Kionah snorted. “Hardly. At most, it might be dangerously boring for you.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

She weighed her choice in her head one more time, more of a private formality than anything else. She was nervous of the criminal crowd that Kionah ran with, but unlike the golden faery, they hadn’t actually tried to harm her—yet.

“Alright,” she said. “Alright, I’ll come along.”

Kionah smiled ever-so-slightly, a twitch of her lips that was there and then gone again. “Keep up now,” she said, and started down the street.

Kionah led her through another suffocating crush of city-goers, people dressed up in flowing silks and tattered rags alike. Merchants yelled with hoarse voices and buskers sang discordant tunes at every corner. The air smelled of sesame oil one moment, then of cloying incense the next.

Her attention whirled to and fro; she felt that maybe she was getting a little more used to the chaos, but she wasn’t quite there yet. Every now and again, something made her jump out of her skin: the unexpected clang of a gong, a shout too close to her ear, the yelps and whimpers of chimera-things in cages. Kionah fended off a couple of pickpocket-children who she didn’t notice until they were almost brushing up against her, and for that she was grateful.

Eventually, they got through to a quieter alley that led into a maze of grotty, water-stained high-rise apartments—or at least, Kionah had said they were apartments. It seemed too quiet to be a residential district, and Aliyah wondered if people only lived here out of necessity. The air smelled damp and musty, like brackish water from the bottom of an unchanged vase: sullen sprigs of greenery rotting from the cut-stem upwards. The paths between the apartment blocks consisted mostly of stone steps, one set after the other, up and down, a jerky route. Mossy arrows and the occasional wooden marker pointed the way, but the names inscribed upon them flitted through her thoughts without sticking.

“Kionah,” Aliyah said, wheezing a little as she followed her up yet another a set of steps. “How do you remember all of this?”

“Memory? Landmarks?” Kionah asked, flashing a frown over her shoulder. “A map, if I’m going somewhere new. I was born here, so it’s not that difficult if I stick to the places I know. How did you navigate Shadowsong?”

“I, ah, I didn’t. I just went into the market sometimes.” She cringed inwardly. True, she had been otherwise preoccupied over the years and true, the castle had plenty of gardens and such, but it felt uncomfortable admitting that…disconnect. It was the only place she’d ever been. It still hadn’t ever really felt like home.

“Hm. I suppose that makes two of us. I never explored Shadowsong much either.”

“I thought you got to race a chariot across the salt pan,” Aliyah pointed out as they rounded a corner, all crumbling brick and dots of broken glass crunching beneath her shoes.

“It was a zephyr boat. And well, yes, I suppose. Alhena bloody insisted—” She came to an abrupt stop. “This wasn’t here before.”

A plain grey brick wall barred the way. Kionah walked up to it and put her palm against the surface.

“Hmm,” she said, sounding displeased. She started shoving at it, leaning her full weight against the surface. “Say, does anything about this look funny to you?”

The wall started to crinkle at the edges, wavering where Kionah walked forwards, the whole thing simultaneously shuffling back with her steps and yet staying in place. Aliyah blinked in recognition; here was a type of magic that had no compunctions about making your eyes hurt.

“…Yes?” Aliyah stared, brow furrowed. “It might be enchanted—what are you doing?”

“Testing something,” Kionah grunted. She gave the wall a little kick, then a harder one. It wavered some more, but didn’t budge.

“Testing what? Is…is it working? What are you testing for?”

Kionah gave her ankle a shake and proceeded to ignore her questions. “Come and give me a boost.”

“What?” She stepped forwards anyways, uncertainly. “How?”

“Get on one knee, cup your hands together—no, lace the fingers. No, you have to brace your hand over your knee, it can’t just be floating, I’m going to use it as a step.” She blew out an exasperated breath. “Yeah, like that. Ready? And…hup—!”

Kionah stepped onto the flat of her linked hands with one foot and pushed off the ground with the other. Aliyah yelped and tried not to stagger as Kionah’s full weight pressed down on her palms for a moment. Then Kionah was scrabbling for the top of the wall and hoisting herself up to perch there.

Her fingers closed around nothing; the wall melted.

Aliyah gave a shout of surprise as it came down like a wave in too-slow-motion, bricks warping and turning to mush. Where it sank into the floor, it simply disappeared, as if it never existed in the first place. Kionah tipped forwards against the former, now non-existent, top of the wall. She rolled, shoulder over hip, as she hit the ground. A golden spell-shield burst into existence around her as she scrambled to her feet.

“A-ha!” she crowed, shifting into a fighting stance and glancing around. Her hands started to glow with spell-light. “I knew it! Come on out! You’re such a shitty illusionist.”

Aliyah glanced around wildly, seeing only grimy brick walls—presumably real ones, those—flanking her left and right. A ways further down, a couple of trees peeked over said walls. She followed Kionah’s gaze to the upper branches of the leafy canopies.

A slice of leaf-patterned shadow moved above, then peeled itself away from the boughs. Aliyah flinched and pulled the precursor steps for vasodilation to her palms in a startled rush. The piece of shadow was a silhouette: humanoid, slight build, suggestion of long hair and skirts but otherwise fuzzy at the edges. It moved away from the shadows and she saw that it was covered in a dark green, tessellating leaves and mottled half-light—not perfect, but it blended in with the foliage well enough. If the silhouette hadn’t moved, she wouldn’t have noticed. An icy shiver ran down her back.

The illusionist-silhouette hopped off its branch, slowing its descent with a burst of greenish magic at the last moment to land in a light crouch, only a short distance away from them. Aliyah edged behind Kionah as the silhouette moved, rising up into a straight-backed, close-footed stance. It made a sharp, chopping motion with its hand and then the illusion was dispelled.

In front of them stood the red-haired girl from the teahouse. “Oh, Kion,” she drawled. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Hello, Maia,” Kionah said. She sounded false-sweet and saccharine-vicious in a way that Aliyah hadn’t heard before. “If you want a fight, I’ll be more than happy to oblige. But now is really not the time. Don’t you have better things to do than follow me around? It’s quite off-putting, you know.”

“Believe it or not, my life doesn’t revolve around you,” Maia sniffed, tossing her hair back with one hand. “I’m here all day, for work.”

“Your job is to block the route to Koriannon’s shop now?” Kionah asked. She shifted out of her ready stance and crossed her arms, though Aliyah noted that her shield remained firmly in place.

Aliyah glanced between the two, uncertainty tensed in every muscle. The fear of the mystery illusionist had passed; Kionah seemed pretty confident that Maia wasn’t going to hurt them. But that left her with the prickling, acute discomfort of being the unwanted bystander to what was starting to sound like the beginning of a deeply personal argument. It wasn’t like she could say anything, could she? She settled for just standing there instead, resisting the urge to scratch at her itching faery-mark. Eyes on Maia and vasodilation at the ready, just in case.

“Yes! As a matter of fact, it is.” Maia raised her chin and smiled a small, self-satisfied smile. “Koriannon and his people have been having issues with the rabble. Obviously, they asked after help. Twilight Mermaid sent me.”

“What, because you’re the cheapest of the bunch?” Kionah asked, and snorted. “Let us through.”

Maia wrinkled her nose. “No. Be nice.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Go on. It’s not me who has to see Koriannon.”

“I will burn your pretty little eyebrows off with spellfire if you don’t get out of my way,” Kionah said.

“Tsk, tsk. You were always so aggressive, Kion.” Maia smirked and then laughed, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth as she did so. “I guess I liked that. But not today I don’t. I’m on the job, so unless you want Twilight Mermaid onto you, you need to ask. Nicely.”

“Please let us through,” Kionah said through gritted teeth.

“Did your mother dearest never teach you your manners?” Maia mocked. “I suppose it’s only expected from the future beggar-queen herself. Try again.”

Kionah’s shoulders tensed, and the slightest flare of spellfire glowed at her fingertips. Then she curled her fists, quenching it. “Enough,” she said. “I’ll go and find someone else.” She turned away. “Come on, Aliyah.”

Maia laughed again, from behind the flat of her hand. “You’ll have to. He’s closed.”

Kionah stopped. Turned around. “Pardon?”

“Like I said, he’s closed for the week. So are a bunch of the other ‘feiters, by the way. All of the good ones, at least. You’re welcome.”

“Closed? Then why are you here?”

Maia sighed and crossed her arms. “Because they wanted me to be, even so.”

“Ah,” Kionah said, quieter and with more trepidation than Aliyah had anticipated. “So that’s how it is.”

“Bad things going around,” Maia said with too-bright cheer. “It’s always like that, you know?”

“Yes,” Kionah said. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to keep trying to bait me into begging for details?”

“There’s some strange stuff happening, alright?” Maia huffed. “New people to the territory. Foreign ladies, going around asking things of the ‘feiters. Big work. Too big. Taken and not paid for by other…interested parties, apparently. Everyone’s on edge and I’m taking over for Octavia because someone got the drop on her a couple of days ago.” She hesitated, then lowered her voice. “I’m really freaking out, okay? Come on Kion, you gotta help me out here.”

“What,” Kionah said, and then laughed. “So that little display at Shasta’s was supposed to endear me to your sisterhood’s predicament?”

Maia pressed her mouth into a tight, hard line. “Ugh. I missed you, Kion. I really did. But this is serious, and I’m getting the creeps from waiting here all day.”

“Then leave. Koriannon can afford to hire someone else, I’m sure.”

“You know that’s not how it works. Nora’s doing her best, she really is, but we’re running ourselves to the ground over here—”

“Can’t keep your ill-gotten territory? Poor Nivale, should’ve seen it coming. Little pissing groups like yours fall to pieces all the time. I don’t know why you’re even surprised.”

“Twilight Mermaid isn’t a ‘little pissing group’, much as you’d like to believe it,” Maia said, bristling visibly. “We’re on our way up and you’d do well if you gave us a chance. I know you can help. You haven’t signed on with Shasta or anything, have you? Everyone else is shoring up for trouble and us honest folks are being left in the dust. Octavia needs more healing potions and some of the girls have families; we need you and I think you need us.”

“That’s really just too bad,” Kionah snapped. “Perhaps you should have thought about that before you tripped and fell headfirst onto Rhoswen’s—”

“Kion,” Maia pleaded. “People are saying there are faeries involved.”

Aliyah’s ears pricked at that, a shiver of ice washing down her spine. Was it just her imagination, or was the faery-mark on her hand itching harder? Then it blazed, hot and fierce and burning—

“Stuff that,” Kionah said, and then a wall of fire-bright arrows rained down upon them.