Harbour took us off the path in a direction perpendicular to the lead-up to the fortress, she promised it was quicker. I couldn’t see the path ahead of me, but there was always a clear space to step, a patch of tamped foliage or a half-hidden paving stone that made itself known before I tripped on a root or vine.

Jodie hadn’t been excited about the prospect of taking her spear off Harbour. She stayed behind the fairy, ready to grab her if anything came out of the trees, but Harbour promised that rat monsters like that, shi-shi-shi, were generally quite solitary.

The more we walked, the more vibrant the greenery became. Spiked vines started to curl around the trees; flowers started to burst out of the vines, frozen mid-explosion. Harbour moved through the trees like a cat, barely waiting long enough for Jodie to catch up, and Katrine stumbled until I had her put her arm over my shoulder for the last few hundred meters.

The forest was a thick as it always was, until I pushed through a wall of foliage and came out into a clearing of flat green with the fortress, impossibly large up close, in the center. Jodie was standing about twenty feet away, at Harbour’s back. I thought she was leading Jodie, but as I drew Katrine towards her I saw the semicircle of approaching fairies in armour, silvered spears facing us from behind clean, dinner plate sized disks of metal. She was holding Harbour hostage. The fairies moved like one unit, stepping in time like a phalanx, though they were spread out so the two edges must have been a quarter mile from each other. Jodie was silent, a grim look spread on her face as I fell into formation next to her with a dagger in one hand and my gun in the other, much less organised, but better than nothing.

The fairies stopped about thirty paces from us, and seemed to freeze in place. The entire fortress paused for a brief second, as if the building itself took a double-take, before they went back to their routes, a few peeling off in other directions, presumably with more important orders to transfer now.

“Jodie put the spear down.” I said, she didn’t move.

“Jodie there’s twelve of them and you don’t know how to use that thing,” Katrine said from behind me, “You won’t win this fight.”

“She is correct,” Said Harbour, “The Fifteenth Caste are well trained in the spear. You are holding yours improperly.”

“Someone shut the fairy up.” Jodie said, before dropping her and bolting in the direction of the nearest fairy.

My legs started moving before the thought to chase her formed in my mind. She could’ve taken out the first, the second, probably the fourth if she got lucky, but I couldn’t see her holding her own against twenty, and I wouldn’t see her lose. I caught up to her and dived, pulling her legs together. We went flying and her foot caught me at an odd angle.

When the sun stopped shining so brightly, my vision snapped towards Jodie. She was on one knee, looking up the shafts of more spears than I could count.

Say one thing for the Lower Court, say they were efficient. We couldn’t have been there longer than a few minutes but when the guards brought us into the Atrium of the fortress, it was as if they’d been expecting us days. Three rows of guards closed us off in a square that opened onto a throne made of dripping mercury frozen into some ornate, fractal shape. Clerks worked on notepads, tearing them off into scrolls, fairies in dresses and suits like Harbour’s ran in and out of the room, handing off and picking up those same scrolls.

“What’s the play, what are we doing?” I leaned over to Katrine. I didn’t want to know what Jodie wanted to do.

“Everything here seems made for order. Look, those people there are Harbour’s group, they report to those people in the purple filegree”, she pointed at a group of scribes, taking and writing scrolls. “Just… keep Jodie under control.” she said.

The chatter of the court dried up in the same moment that a single footstep echoed through the Atrium. A figure, ornamented so heavily that I thought he’d topple, made his way to the throne and sat down.

“Visitors?” just one word, and the entire machine shifted. Two guards took me under the arms and dragged me to the foot of the throne, Jodie and Katrine were put next to me and the guards disappeared back into the line. A fairy i didn’t recognise stepped between us with a notepad.

“These humans were found by Harbour, sixth daughter of the fourteenth-”

“That is enough, thank you Priya, Second of the Twelfth, I will hear it from their own mouths.”

The fairy, Priya, nodded, and stepped away.

“Greetings, and welcome to the Hyde Park outpost of the Lower Court of Londinium. My name is Deloran, First son of the Seventh Caste. I would know who you are, and why you have come here.”

None of us talked. Jodie wouldn’t give information away, Katrine would be studying every inch of the man. I was just confused.

“Well?”

“We’re from the human world.” Said Katrine. “We’ve come to negotiate.”

“Negotiations. Of course. That is why were you found holding Harbour, Sixth of the Fourteenth hostage and attacking our guards.”

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“Your guards tried to-”

“It was a misunderstanding.” Katrine interrupted Jodie. “We’re not experienced at this.”

“Inexperience is no excuse for violence. Pathbearer, reveal yourself.”

“We don’t have a Path bearer, or know what that is even.” Katrine said.

“Nonsense, humans couldn’t survive as long as you did in the wilds without a Pathbearer, and the shishishi showed clear signs of one of you. So where do they lie, if you tell us, we may spare them yet”

“Look, I don’t know what a Pathbearer is, I don’t know who you are and I don’t know why you’re being a dick,” Said Jodie, “but we came here to look for allies. The RWHS is hunting people like us to extinction, and if our magic comes from this world, that should be something that pisses you off. If not, we haven’t hurt you, just let us go.”

The room was silent, save for the scratching of nibs echoing off the arches.

“Welcome, daughters of Shuhalla. If this is the state of your emissaries, Pathbearerless and lacking in the barest of tact, then the Lower Court wants nothing to do with your order. Harbour, Sixth of the Fourteenth, will arrange your return. Until then you will be confined within the outpost jails. You are dismissed.”

Two guards, the same as before or different, took me under each arm and dragged me. I could hear Jodie kicking, behind me, but it made not difference as we were dragged down a series of corridors, stairs, and more corridors.

The jails were far enough below the ground that my ears would have popped. We each got our own jail cell, a little more spacious than the toilet on a train, three featureless stone walls and a cage making the fourth, Katrine on my left, Jodie on my right

“We should’ve brought Addie.” Said Katrine

“Yeah no shit.” said Jodie

“He’ll get here eventually.” I said. Deloran said he’d have someone travel to the hideout, find Sid, have us transferred back. It was humiliating, but fairies couldn’t lie. Could they? I shifted closer to Katrine’s cell. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her murmuring to herself.

“Katrine?”

“Hm?”

“Fairies can’t lie, right?”

“I don’t know. For now, assume that they can.” Neither of us spoke for a few moments, then in a whisper, I leaned over, speaking to the corner

“Is Jodie okay?”

Katrine hesitated, then replied

“Jodie needs Sid, this is a lot to go through without her.” So that’s what it was. I thought about Sid, unnerving in how easily she did the things she did. Means to an end. The end was stopping a genocide, with her line of thinking the means allowed her pretty much anything. She was my leader, I had to follow her in this, else I’d be plucked off the streets by an unmarked van in weeks, but she terrified me. I didn’t like thinking about that.

“What’s a Path-bearer?” first Harbour, then the entire court had been shocked that we didn’t have one

“I don’t know, but they said the rat monster had been attacked by one. So it stands to reason than it’s one of us. What a Path-bearer is… your guess is as good as mine.”

I thought back to the rat monster. Shifting, pulsating flesh shrinking back into place under my hands, softening. It didn’t feel like magic, it felt like I was ripping magic from it. And then Deloran had called us daughters, daughters of someone. It was too much to think about. I sighed, and rested my head against the wall.

“We’re fucked, aren’t we” I said to nobody in particular

“No” said Saghir

The Efrit had been waiting silently, unseen in the stairwell.

“Oh don’t worry it wasn’t long.” She replied to my thought.

Jodie was on her feet in an instant

“Let us out of here before we break out and fucking-”

“Guthrie! Calm down, I know her.” Jodie looked at me quizically, asking questions I didn’t have time to answer.

“What are you doing here, Saghir?” The Efrit shrugged

“Waiting for you, of course. Apologies for the circumstances, of course, the nature of my alignment means I spend much time with the Thirteenth Caste. But you’re here, and I would like to recall my favour.”

“Favour?”

“That ring you wear. You owe me a debt, I would like to call it in.”

I went to say something, say no, say that we could talk about debts and favours when we weren’t rotting in a hole under Kensington Palace, but when I went to speak my voice stuck in my throat. I tried to say it again, but I couldn’t get the air in my throat to form the word ‘no’.

“What have you done to me?” I asked instead.

“Me? Nothing,” said Saghir, “but a favour promised in this world cannot be broken.”

“I didn’t promise any favours!”

“You did by implication when you accepted the ring.”

I glared at her, seven feet of tusked onyx dotted with burning gold, reflecting light from a nonexistent source.

“Fine. What do you want?”

“The Jinn are, at this point, aligned with the Upper Court in this war. I among them cannot break my connection, but at this moment I find myself aligned with the Lower Court. I charge you to alter the alignment of the Jinn so that we may all lie together.”

I tried once again to protest, but a flash of white pain behind my eyes stopped me.

“Okay. we can do that, just get us out of here.” Saghir raised an eyebrow

“Are you asking a favour of me?”

I hesitated

“We can’t do what you want us to if we’re stuck in a hole” Said Jodie, seemingly trying to bore holes in her with her gaze

“It’s in your interest, to have us back in our world.” Said Katrine, “it doesn’t count as a favour.”

Saghir smiled. “I like you, Why do you keep around daughters of Shuhalla?”

Katrine didn’t have time to respond before we woke up in a tree.