“Do you want your medicine now or later?”

“I’ll take it when we’re queuing. If I’m lucky, it’ll knock me out right before we take off.”

The waves breaking against the harbour were calm this time of year, their gentle lapping overpowered by bickering gulls and the chatter of eager passengers, many marvelling at the sight of the behemoth up close.

Iris had to admit, the sight of the monstrous turbines wasn’t any less impressive the second time around. She thought about being underneath one if it were to fall, a meaningless daydream that was interrupted by a hand on her shoulder.

“Worried about your friends?” Evalyn asked.

“A little,” she said. “It feels like I’m leaving them in the middle of something.”

“Do you feel you’re missing out?”

“No. That’s not—”

“I’m joking,” Evalyn smiled. “They’ve got to work through it, with or without you. As long as you’re there when you’re able to, that’s all you need to do. All right? Don’t be afraid to trust them.”

“Do you trust them?”

“I don’t need to trust them,” Evalyn scoffed. “As long as they lock my office door and clean the place, I’ve got no complaints.”

The line shuffled forward, and Evalyn picked up their suitcases. “Has your hairpiece said anything since we left the station?”

“No,” Iris reported, feeling her heart rate increase at the mere mention. It sat heavy, pinning back one curtain of hair behind her ear. Gaudy enough to catch the attention of some envious women; it had taken a thorough half hour of convincing from Evalyn to even put it there.

If her mother could fuss about flights, she could at least keep one gripe of her own.

“I wish they’d just bore a tunnel through the mountain range,” she muttered right before giving the cabin crew a friendly greeting. Iris handed over their tickets, and they stepped inside.

“Doesn’t change much from plane to plane,” Evalyn sighed as they navigated the velvet carpet, luxury goods advertisements framed on the walls in place of fine art. Iris noted the distinct lack of marble pillars; the liminal space between onboarding and reception took on a more recognisable yet still high class feel.

“Is this a different company?”

“It’s a Geverdian one; read the tickets. A Beak even checked them.”

“Right,” she muttered. She found the hairpiece too distracting, diverting all her brainpower to hyper-focusing on it instead of her surroundings.

“State’s paying for our tickets. Can’t give out government money to foreign competitors.”

The reception came into view, and Iris produced the tickets again, this time taking the chance to read them.

“It says first class,” she said as she handed them over. Evalyn raised her eyebrows.

“Lucky us.”

Her mother was unconscious not long after, jaw hanging limp as though whatever blow had knocked her out cold had also dislodged her jaw along with it. Iris followed a small trail of drool venture its way out of the corner of her mouth and sighed.

Evalyn was keeping her head above the water for her, a buoy on rough seas she could swim towards. Iris appreciated the effort, but when she was alone, she couldn’t help but regress backwards. Even in that moment, she could feel herself sinking.

She got out of her seat and shuffled into the isle, remembering the way Elliot had chosen a direction and gone with it, unperturbed by the decision beyond what mattered in the moment. Iris missed him already, truth be told, and was debating on whether she could spend the few coins in her pocket to phone him.

Left, right, left? Right it was, towards the front of the aircraft.

“Where are you going?” a voice asked, seeping into the crevices of her brain. Her entire body shivered.

“Trying to find a phone,” she answered. “Or someone who knows where I can find one.”

“You passed a staircase to the downstairs amenities seven seconds ago.”

Iris stopped in her tracks, pursed her lips and ground her jaw. She spun on her heels and retraced her steps, finding the staircase and taking it a level down.

The sounds of the mall greeted her before the sights did, and soon the deferential bustle of a wide arcade enveloped her. Shops lined either side, the illustrated posters advertising breezy summer fashion and cultural souvenirs. She looked up, where similar slogans hung from banners alongside chandeliers as clouds rolled past the generous glass windows.

“There is a sign to your left. A phone box sits fifty metres to our right.”

Iris held her tongue and sighed, begrudgingly following the directions. The thought had crossed her mind to leave the hairpiece behind, but leaving the Queen unattended sounded like a valid enough reason for execution.

She passed vacationing customers, the summer levity never rubbing off on her despite the proximity. Enveloped in normalcy only made her feel like an outsider, and the voice inside her head only made things worse.

“There. To your left.”

An Aether line phone box sat in between a cobbler and a handbag store, the gentle curves and unassuming paint job exactly like those on any Excalan street. She tapped her boot against the genuine cobblestone and the intent behind the design made more and more sense.

It certainly felt a little more sincere than her last flight. Like staying in a small town inn rather than a ten star hotel.

She booked it for the phone, confirming it was unoccupied as she scavenged in her pocket for enough coins to pay for a minute and then some. Service a couple thousand metres in the air would come with a markup.

Iris stepped through the door, shutting out the miniature world and leaving her with a muffled version of it. She breathed, counting the holes in the dial.

Her eyes flicked from zero through to nine, and then back again. Back and forth, back and forth.

Elliot’s face wafted around in her head; how through smiling eyes he would tell her everything she didn’t want to hear, and then try to give her every mercy, every shoulder to cry on she could ever ask for. Like bad medicine encased in honey.

And suddenly, her hand could no longer reach the telephone.

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Picking it up was just another minute in bed past her alarm, or another day she went about refusing to study for a test. Whatever that was, calling him was only another instance of it.

She let her hand fall.

“Are you not using the phone?” the hairpiece asked.

“No. Sorry, I guess.”

“No, I was merely trying to be helpful—”

“Don’t start, please,” Iris scoffed, exiting the booth.

The floor under her feet bobbing up and down was finally getting to her, and the chatter grated against her ears.

A staircase. One of those seldom-travelled staff access staircases would do.

She’d seen the city through the window minutes before their landing, the glittering skyline from the ocean looking as though a mirror was reflecting the stars into the desert. Still, it only made her stick to her stomach.

The journey into the city was swift and discreet compared to her flight. Heavily tinted windows dulled the synapse-searing neon signs to something more tolerable, but even then, she refrained from looking outside.

Evalyn looked worse for wear, but at least the medicine had worn off. Scanning her surroundings as ever, Iris assumed her mother was taking stock of how the city had changed since their last visit. Little if going by first glance.

They left the lights and towers behind, pulling into a district of the city that slept at a reasonable time. It was dark, save for the occasional lit window and streetlight. The place—if ignoring the haze of illumination in the sky—respected the night. There stood the Geverdian Embassy; a small, three-storey building, parked next to two office blocks.

“Get used to it,” Evalyn said, stepping out of the car. “It’s how we’re going to be travelling for the foreseeable future.”

As long as there was a warm enough bed. She prayed for at least that much.

The building’s modesty, barely being more than the office blocks on either side of it, spoke to the state of the cross-national relationship. Still in its infancy, and clearly not of much national concern, the building hid its faults with pleasant wallpaper and a passable paint job.

“We’re mainly here to help stranded tourists,” their guide said. A Beak, as were most working at the embassy. Some humans fluttered about as paper mules, never able to amount to much more in a country where being paid a living wage was already remarkable.

“We’ve picked up more…stimulating work in recent years, but we don’t get called the hermit kingdom for nothing. Here we are.”

The first floor wasn’t so much divided into rooms as it was into sections. The place they had come to was a group of desks in a room of many, quietly labelled ‘foreign operations’.

Two people were waiting for them: a stocky, bearded man whose face looked permanently crumpled and strained, and a slender woman with short hair and a few years on Evalyn, sitting atop one of the many desks.

“Are you mediating the meeting, Your Majesty?” Evalyn whispered as they approached.

“I already have,” she said. “Everyone knows their role already. Yours is yet to begin.”

“Understood,” Evalyn said as she gave a curt smile to the two awaiting them.

They shook hands, then turned to Iris and did the same. They exchanged no names, offering no greetings beyond the initial acknowledgement.

“We’ve conducted reconnaissance under the Queen’s orders for the past few weeks,” the woman began, standing up from her desk and towards a well-worn, in-use cork board. “All off the books, considering our lack of leverage this time around.”

“Letting these greedy bastards know we’re on the back foot at the moment would only make things harder,” the man interrupted, rubbing the bridge of his nose and turning back to the board.

“Anything useful?” Evalyn asked as Iris scanned the corkboard, trying to make a sense of it. Photographs connected by string to notes and receipts painted a picture of a flow of consciousness, likely the process that resulted in the conclusions she and her mother were to receive.

“We’ve found that the F.S.A. has pivoted their strategy since,” the woman continued, reaching for a set of photographs on the desk. “We’ve caught wind of expanding operations overseas, to other nodes along the human trafficking trade.”

She passed the photos to them. “Hardly surprising, seeing that’s all that’s left of their last plan.”

Iris watched Evalyn flip through the photographs one by one, a grim expression looming across her face. She handed back the photographs before Iris could see for herself. The woman noticed the gesture, eyes passing over Evalyn, then towards Iris. She took the cue and placed them face down.

Perhaps they saw it as a mercy, but it only tempted her imagination to fill the gaps with the worst it could muster.

“So they’ve expanded?” Evalyn continued, to which the woman nodded.

“Diversifying their operation instead of putting all their eggs in one basket. The thing is, in theory, this practice should need more recruits, but there hasn’t been a corresponding spike in humans deserting their masters.”

“Guerilla groups make do with a little, but this is too much.”

The woman nodded. “It’s likely they’re drawing locally from wherever their new operations are based. This is all to say that they’ve bounced back in a big way, and have the potential to work internationally now.”

“Which makes the idea that they’d go for revenge not so farfetched,” Evalyn concluded. “So, any evidence that they’re responsible?”

The woman shook her head. “That’s where we were hoping you’d come in. Her Majesty barred us from working on this any further since it might involve some strong-arming, but…”

The woman waltzed over to the corkboard, tapping her finger on an address pinned high above her. “This is one of their few remaining safe houses, a garage on the outskirts of the city. Spirit runs the place, but most of the employees are F.S.A. and they run the place like it’s their own.”

“So we just go there, look for answers?” Evalyn asked, and the woman nodded.

“That’s the score. Bring back what you find, and we’ll piece together your next steps.”

Evalyn gave a curt smile and nodded. “Sounds like a plan,” she said, before reaching for their suitcases. “Anything else? If not, we might go get some shut eye upstairs.”

“Just…one more thing,” the woman said, her eyes wandering from Evalyn down to Iris. This time, she addressed the words to her.

“Are you the one that Colte spoke about? The child that caused an uproar in the council.”

Iris watched the woman’s face soften, eyebrows upturned. The sincerity behind the question was there, but her eyes flicked to Evalyn for confirmation. Her mother looked at them; a wry smile adorned her face before she averted her eyes.

Iris nodded. “Yes,” she said, wondering exactly how much the woman knew.

“Oh…may I?” the woman asked, an arm outstretched to her shoulder as she crouched at Iris’s level. Iris nodded for a lack of a better response, and the woman pulled her into a hug.

Over her shoulder, she watched the stocky man, unable to look away, his expression equally softened.

“You’re doing so well, darling,” the woman said. “You might never meet them, but there’s people out there rooting for you, all right?”

Iris’s mind returned to the phone booth and the call she swore not to take. It was as if the world just had to get back at her for taking one step forward.

She held onto the woman’s coat, face half submersed in her shoulder, but not enough to hide any tears. She held them back, eventually croaking a few short words.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

The woman pulled away, a small smile across her face. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that.”

She stood up, and waved, the man following suit not long after. Evalyn took Iris’s hand, her eyes tainted red, and they turned to leave.

Their room, with four plastered walls and a mattress thicker than paper, still couldn’t shake the air of a holding cell. Barebones, white decor wasn’t a deal breaker, nor was it exactly unfamiliar territory, in fact, she was well versed in what a room did for her psyche.

The light above her head flickered, and she resolved to go to sleep as soon as possible, passing the time before her head hit the pillow by staring out the window.

“Not going to read your book?” Evalyn asked.

Iris shook her head.

“All right…I’m going to shower, then. Let’s hit the hay when I’m done, all right? Don’t be afraid to get a head start, either.”

Evalyn, carrying a bundle of clothes, left Iris in her pyjamas by her lonesome. She continued to stare out the window, forgetting to give an answer before the door to the bathroom closed.

Iris exhaled, and her cheek found the cold windowsill as the rest of her body relaxed, hanging from the ledge. She had a view south, where without moonlight, the dunes were only vague charcoal sketches on a black canvas, framed by sparse city lights.

“May I talk to you about something?” the hairpiece asked her from her bedside table. Iris jolted at first, but she gritted her teeth, calmed down, and gave in.

“Sure.”

“The woman who hugged you then,” the hairpiece started as Iris felt the faucets run water under the floorboards. “I understand she’s wanted to meet you for a while.”

The expression that seemed to melt once business was done. It was as sincere as expressions came; the hairpiece’s words weren’t hollow, a lie purely to console.

“How do you know?” Iris asked, still somewhat suspicious.

“When those in the Council who dealt in such matters called for your execution, word spread through back channels and hearsay.”

The hairpiece certainly had a manner of speaking, so frank it was almost refreshing.

“I received many letters of protest from those whose ears it fell upon; most Aether infused like yourself, and one of them, her. Their threats of insubordination were a great aid in convincing those council members to back down.”

Iris watched the hairpiece out of the corner of her eye, the slow vortex encased in the jewel swirling so steadily Iris wondered if the voice was her own creation.

“They are out there, rooting for you, as that woman said. It is unfortunate that you may never learn their names.”

“If it’s unfortunate, then do something about it,” Iris said, crashing onto the bed and turning the covers over her face. The fabric shield seemed to work, as no more words got through to her.