Upper Court space had a feeling about it, a feeling that I had learned to be alignment. I wasn’t Lower aligned anymore, but I remembered the feeling, of the walls reaching out to grab me and of my own body hating it. The space remembered that I was once antithetical to it, but it didn’t hate me. Good. So many people, so much movement, it didn’t feel like it would stop long enough to notice. The place was a collage, an idea of a bazaar that someone had painted over again and again. Nothing was distinct enough to place, but if I unfocused my eyes it was like I was looking at fireworks. Tents of all kind interlinked and held themselves up to make a leviathan of cloth and fabric, and creatures buzzed through it, picking at stalls and at other. Only The Hunter kept me in check, her bewilderment forcing me to stay calm.
“They said it would be somewhere in this place. I expected it to be a bit easier to navigate.”
“It’s… massive.” she said.
“Then we should find someone.” she nodded, and we made our way through the jaws of the beast.
There was no sun in the fae realm, but it had the feeling of a hot, late afternoon. Existence was heavy, and the edges of my vision started to blur unless I focussed. We were both ignored, broadly, save for a few odd glances. The denizens of the bazaar were a mix. About half were fairies of some kind, some uniformed, some seemingly civilians, but the other half grew stranger and stranger the longer I looked. Animals and combinations of animals, never the right size, took up double duty as salespeople, hawking unidentifiable wares. Human top-halves paired with every possible hoofed animal, and women with beast heads. Not far from our position was an efrit, arguing with a 6 foot tall serpent. I gestured at The Hunter, ogling the butchered corpse of a rat creature, and pulled her over to him.
“That is an absurd offer!”
“Ahh, but it is worth it” The snake spoke without human lips or a jaw, its mouth shifting into shape on every syllable. Objectively, it wasn’t that different to the way saghir and other efrit talked through their tusks, but it seemed stranger coming from an animal.
“Ahh, a new customer” The snake spoke with an accent I couldn’t place. “I have many wares that would interessst you” The rattle on the end of his tail swept over an arrangement of pots, jars and bottles full of powders and oddly shaped spices “maybe a portion of summer?” he gestured with his tail at a yellow jar filled with small brown stars. “Simply break it off and eat, and you will be in season.”
“I’m looking for something that belongs to me.”
“Ah! Ownership.” the snake had abandoned his other customer, who was leaving in a huff, in favour of us. He conjured an empty pot, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, and began pinching assortments of things into it. A dust that looked like dreams, and a root that crumbled under pressure, “a rarity in our world, yet so common in yourssss.” he hissed. “Difficult to mix, very difficult. Not common. Yet easily within the means of Aleet” he presented the pot, filled toabout a third with a mixture that was equally silver and pink, with streaks of green. “Consume this, and what is yours will be returned.”
I tried to gauge how honest the snake was being, but came away blank. It didn’t make facial expressions. “What’s the price?”
“Ah! You have experience. Truly wise are you. But I do not play the games of politics, I am aligned only to my wares. I request a trade. A thing of equal value.”
The Hunter and I turned away to talk. “If he’s anything like fairies he won’t take money” The Hunter said, “would he take my knife?”
“Trades don’t work like they they want something… conceptual. Last time I traded my alignment, I essentially became a slave to Saghir. Memories, other things like that. That’s what they trade in”
“What so we just give him a memory?” She shuffled in her bag “I don’t think any of mine are useful. What about this?” she pulled out the crescent necklace, the one I had used to change my appearance. “It’s a relic, so it probably has some memory attached to it.” I felt guilty giving it up, even if Francis was dead it was still hers. Though the added complication of ownership did make it useful.
“I accept” Aleet said, extending out the rattle with the jar on it. The Hunter took it, and dangled the necklace off the rattle. Aleet disappeared it behind his wares
“One taste of that, and you will see all that belongs to you, and all the thingssss to which you belong.”
I took a pinch of the powder and inspected it. It refracted light like glass, but was soft, like powder sugar. I’d seen the ingredients he’d put in, none of them had this colouration. It was like it has been mixed in water, chemically changed, though the particles were still large enough to see.
“Go on.” said The Hunter, and I sprinkled it on my tongue. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. But then things glowed. Not everything, and not brightly, but my clothes, my shoes. Things in her pouches that had to be things The Hunter had hidden from me. And in the distance, another, soft glow, moving. “This way” I said, and didn’t wait for her to follow.
There was always a side way that brough us closer to the ring. Such was the nature of the bazaar, I was entirely lost and able to navigate without fail. It was so easy that I didn’t even notice that The Hunter and I had been separated until the second time she didn’t answer my call. I’d emerged into a clearing, of sorts, a gap in the tents large enough that every part of me was exposed to the sunless sky. The ground was baked and cracke, and not connected to the stalls was a woman kneeling on the ground. She appeared human at first, but when she looked at me her eyes were a pure black. She blinked, and crooked her neck, beckoning me.
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“Pathbearer.” she whispered, the voice, childlike with a hint of scandinavian, somehow making it to my ear. “Kneel with me a moment. Please.”
“How do you know what I am?” I asked, and she held up three fingers, then dropped one. Now that I was beside her she looked into the distance as if I wasn’t there.
“I see your actions. They will be the actions of a Pathbearer. And to ensure those actions, You must know what you are. Such is my reason.” She looked young, but ancient, as if someone had painted wrinkles onto a girl. I’d seen lots of fae, hundreds in the last hour alone. None had been as human as her. But her eyes, voids that went deeper than her head, couldn’t be more inhuman. That meant-
“You’re a crossbreed. You were human once.” I said, careful to phrase it as a statement, not a question, and her two fingers stayed raised. She didn’t move for a moment, as if mourning something in silence, then nodded. “I saw too much and it consumed me. Now I see all, save the things that have happened.” I considered an apology, but her face was as still as her voice. Her eyes, despite being uniform pools of black, sloshed from place to place constantly. Always moments before an event, items changing hands, outburst of laughter or shouting. She navigated the din of the bazaar before it happened.
“What am- what is a Pathbearer?” I asked. My second question.
“The worlds lie parallel to one another. The world of Logic and that of Concept. Earth and Flame. Sea and Sky. All can traverse the worlds, should they choose, yet some of the Earth, and Sea remain in their world, rooted deeper than their bodies, and bring Logic to the Concept. It is a great power, and a terrible danger. It is not the greatest danger.” What is the greatest danger? She tried to incite, but I had only one question left. It wasn’t one I could waste on understanding magic. I prayed a silent apology to Katrine, and said, “Is Jodie safe? Is she alive?”
The woman pursed her lips before speaking, “Her chains are weakening. She will do great things. Terrible things. She may fulfil a prophecy not meant to be fulfilled.”
A knot in my stomach unwound, Jodie was alive. I hadn’t killed her in the blast. She was alive and waiting for me. I nodded a thanks at the woman and left, downing another dose of powder to highlight the ring. It was close, adn another cluster of glowing things was closer. I shuffled through crowds till I could see The Hunter, and whistled at her.
“Where did you go?” She asked, notably, without the threat of a gun or a knife.
“Got separated, I used the powder to find you.” I didn’t give her time to ask more questions. The ring was close.
Close, but unfortunately in the hands of someone all too familiar. Harbour had changed since we’d last met. She wore a sword and a pair of daggers on her back, and she’d lost her dress for some indistinct robes, but thankfully she hadn’t gotten more perceptive. I hid in a crowd of customers moving in her direction, and slipped a knife out of her sheath, digging the point into her robes, but not enough to draw blood. Or ichor. The powder had all but faded, so I couldn’t see it on her person, but I could still feel my ring close.
“Harbour. Give me my ring.”
“I do not have your ring,” she spoke with the calmness typically reserved for those who weren’t being robbed at knifepoint, “Miha does.”
A razor edge hooked the side of my neck as another fairy appeared behind me. The Hunter drew on him and two more drew their swords.
“Hello Chloe. It has been a while” said Harbour.
“Why do you have my ring?” I didn’t let go of her and twisted her around, earning a line of blood on my neck as the sword twisted with me. Its weilder was a tall fairy, with features that probably would have been more distinguishable if I’d seen more fairies.
“Tell her.” The Hunter added, and I dug the knife in for emphasis. Harbour said nothing, but glanced around at her allies. The one to the left of The Hunter lowered her arm and sheathed her sword. A moment later, the rest of them did the same, until The Hunter and I were left with every advantage.
“Give it to them.” the fairy in charge ordered, and Miha produced from within the folds of his robes my ring. It reflected a gleam that had no source.
Tentatively, I surrendered Harbour and took the ring from Miha, The Hunter’s gun still on his head. The only person more confused than me was Harbour.
“But… our mission.”
“Our mission is to ensure the victory of the Lower Court over the Upper. Within that mission we follow the orders we are given only insofar as we approve of them.” She looked at me. “Pathbearer. Know that you are not alone in your disdain of Saghir-Among-The-Jinn. The Unseen are not pawns. I give this to you freely.” I slipped the ring onto my finger and clutched the dagger. “Unseen!”
On her order the fairies disappeared into crowds and behind obstacles. “Shit.” said The Hunter, closing the distance and watching for an attack. I could have explained it, how Harbour could be trusted somehow, or why we were safe, but I was exhausted. My shoulder was worse than ever, and I wanted to go home. So instead, I grabbed her arm and portalled out, back into the real world.
We appeared in an alley at night. It was cold, it was raining, and it smelled of piss. I nearly cried from happiness.
Click. The click of a gun. The Hunter.
“Are you going to-”
“No.” she said, and clubbed me in the back of the head. I fell to the ground, practically knocked out. The woman could hit.
“Do yourself a favour. Stear clear of Grabowski. You'll get yourself killed in her lot. Leave London” She kicked me in the head, for good measure, and ran away.
By the time I came to it was morning, and I’d pissed myself.