Aliyah

When she awoke, it was from dreams of half-blurry sketches of blood and dark, dusty corners with something lurking beyond: something painful and hungry.

Someone was pounding at her door. They were tugging the tassel hung by its side, too; the bell above her headboard jangled its discordant notes. She winced. Her arms felt numb, from where she’d shoved them beneath her pillow. The bell jangled some more. It could not be a matron, surely. Her supervisors would have been sent a notice, at least for the rest of today. Wasn’t that how things usually went? Unless she had slept through the night entirely?

She blinked blearily at the rune-symbol set into her ceiling. It was bright enough for it to still be twilight, or perhaps early evening. And a matron would have unlocked the door and shaken her awake by now.

“Who is it?” she croaked.

“Aliyah,” Rana’s voice sounded through the door, shockingly hard and low. “Open the damned door.”

Aliyah shut her eyes for a moment. Ah. So this was the part where she would try and fail to explain herself. It had seemed like a good idea at the time? Or perhaps, I only wanted to become my own saviour?

“Aliyah,” Rana called again. The fist pounding against her door resumed. “Are you dying? I have been knocking for the past five minutes.”

“Coming,” she called through gritted teeth. Every movement felt as if it were tearing into what felt like an entire map of freshly-forming scabs across her back. She eased herself upright, then off the bed to lurch over to the door. She put her hand onto the handle and hesitated before she unlocked it and pulled inwards.

Rana stood there in all her ink-flecked charm. Her brow furrowed as she frowned. Behind her loomed an unmasked Magician with twisted scar-lines carved into his face, a ridged mess of silvery tissue that trailed over half of his nose and across the hollow slit of one empty eye socket.

Aliyah yelped and reeled backwards, almost tripping over as pain lanced down her back. “Who—who is that?”

Rana flicked her gaze to the conspicuously blue Magician peering over her shoulder, then frowned down back at her. “This is my good cousin Karim,” she said, walking into the room. “You look awful. They did send you to a Mender, right?”

“Y-yes. Yes, they did. Why did you bring your cousin?”

Karim stepped in after her and shut the door behind him with a soft click. “We’ve come to an additional understanding with the Librarians,” he said. His voice was soft and smooth, but it did not sound kind. “Rana thought it best if I were the one to explain.”

Aliyah swallowed, throat tight. “Additional…understanding? I thought you already did. Uh. Magician Cardainne told me that you— um. That is to say, thank you.” Twenty lashes had been no easy ordeal, but half again as much would surely have hurt worse.

“Thank Rana,” Karim said. “I am but a messenger.”

Aliyah glanced over at Rana, who stood leaning against the wall, shoulders hunched forwards.

Rana grimaced. “Don’t, cousin.”

Karim shrugged and fixed Aliyah under his gaze once more. She was reminded of Giltyrzar, a little; there was a pressure behind that stare, invisible hands pushing down on her face and the back of her neck and her eyelids.

“What you did was very stupid,” Karim said softly and without preamble. “Rana’s coin saved you far more than ten lashes. What they do not speak of is more important than what they do; what you hear in a trial is never the whole truth. Understand, little maid?”

She flinched. “Yes. Yes, I will repay her if—”

“No,” Rana interrupted. Her voice was strung tight. “You can repay me by never doing anything like that ever again.”

“I—”

“Librarians accosted me in the middle of the night and tested spell-slips onto me,” Rana snapped, every word dipped in molten coals. “One of them told me that you would be whipped within an inch of your life and branded with a traitor-sign and cast out into the dregs of the city to die. Luckily, I earn money. Thankfully, I got a hold of Karim here to put in a word with Soltani’s uncle, to send money to Soltani, and then to send Cardainne with more coin to be sure that it would stick. But the bribe money is not what makes me angry. No, it is that you would go ahead and do something so foolish, without caring for the consequences.”

Aliyah felt all the blood drain from her face.

Rana paused and took a shaking breath. She trembled visibly, fists clenched tight by her sides. “Did you even think to worry about where the queries of your Lower Library explorations went? I had to run, actually run, down to Samara’s office and ply her with coin to scour your catalogue history in time.”

Aliyah froze, head spinning at the tide of information. Branding? Cast out of the castle? Even more bribery, and all of her searching had been recorded? What shocked her most of all, though, was sweet, cordial Rana almost yelling at her. Yes, she had made a horrible mistake. But she hadn’t expected Rana to be quite so upset, her expression quite so thunderous.

“I’m sorry,” she said weakly.

Rana had done so much. Her own reasons seemed callow now, brimming over with arrogance and empty greed. Who was she to want to eschew the help she was being given so freely? It had not been worth it. The fact that she had almost died had been her own fault. If only she had been more careful—but no. She wouldn’t have learned anything. Sooner or later, she would have hurt herself and gotten caught. And now she was in even more pain than she would have been if she had not tried to break into the Library.

“No,” Rana said, her voice shaking. “No, I do not forgive you.”

Karim took a step forwards and placed a hand onto Rana’s shoulder. “Easy, now,” he said. “You have been wronged, good cousin; it is true. But I urge you to consider the merits of forgiveness, if only for the wholeness and growth of your own temperance. The Magicians teach that—”

“Leave her alone,” Aliyah said. A fuzzy exhaustion was creeping back into her bones. Had it been almost a full day now, with nothing to eat? She wanted them to speak their pieces and leave, so that she could hide among the cool folds of her sheets once more. “Leave her alone,” she repeated as Karim opened his mouth to speak once more. “She’s right.”

Rana shrugged off Karim’s hand and stared fiercely at the ground. “Tell her,” she said tightly. “And then you may go.”

Karim cleared his throat. “Well. As I have said, an additional understanding has been reached. The Librarians will deny your involvement in any infiltration of the Higher Library. The record will say that the twenty lashes were given for the attempted theft of suitably expensive gemstones during your duties. It is best for your continued stay at the castle that you agree with this. There will be some difficulties with your superiors, of course. But it is the most discreet option.”

Aliyah stared at him blankly. “…Okay? So no one will know? Is that all?”

He scowled. “The people who know the reason behind your sentence—Adjudicator Soltani, the Librarian delegates, Ilya Cardainne—they are not going to say anything. Rana and I are the only others who would be able to match your face to your actions to the twenty lashes that you received. And we will not speak of it, either.”

“Why?” Aliyah asked.

Karim gave her a grim look. “Largely due to my good cousin’s graces. And because this is not a wholly uncommon occurrence, understand? Though one would think that you should have the maturity to understand the consequences better than the usual upstart youth. I need to impress upon you how crucial it is that you do not run your mouth around the sewing circles.”

“I’m not that stupid.” She clenched her jaw. Dizziness threatened to overtake her and she stumbled a half-step back, sat heavily down onto her bed.

“I cannot assume so, based on what Rana has told me,” Karim replied evenly. “So do not waste the opportunity that has been created for you. It’s not my concern if you do, to be sure. But that would hurt my cousin, and she has gone very far for you.”

Karim turned away; Rana handed him an envelope as he did so. Paper-favours? More coin? Just how much had Rana spent to save her? Karim left, closing the door gently behind him. And then she was alone with Rana. Somehow, that felt even worse. The room felt both too large and far too small at the same time.

“Why?” Rana asked dully, looking at the floor. “Just—why?”

“It…was getting worse,” she said. “It was hurting me. I thought there would be answers in the Library, so I—you’re right, it was stupid. But you don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand? Don’t understand? I was helping you with everything I had,” Rana said, still not meeting her gaze. “That just wasn’t enough for you?”

“It wasn’t working. Did you want me to wait forever?”

This time, Rana’s head snapped up and she glowered at her. “Forever? No. A year or two, though—why not? You always were impatient. I never thought that it might get you killed, but here we are.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, cringing inwardly. “I’m sorry for doing something stupid. Thank you for…what you did. I’m sorry that you did it for nothing. I’m sorry you did more. You don’t have to accept what I say. But don’t tell me that you were as hurt by this as I was. It’s not your life.”

“That,” Rana hissed, “is not what I said. I would never. Do not twist my words. Don’t ignore what I really mean.”

“I was in pain. I’m sorry. I don’t—” She faltered, thoughts foggy. That was the trouble. She knew what she wanted to say, though not how to say it. “I don’t deserve your help. You are a better friend than is my right.”

“Don’t do that, either.”

“…What?”

Rana shook her head disgustedly. “Don’t play the victim. Don’t make me feel like I’ve come in here just to kick you in the teeth.”

“I said what I did was stupid, didn’t I? Because it’s true?” Aliyah squeezed her eyes shut, blinked them back open. “It was my fault. You did help me. I’m grateful for that. I’m sorry that I upset—burdened you. I wanted to fix myself. That’s all.”

“Okay,” Rana said. “Okay. You know that you could have told me, Aliyah. I would have said no, because it’s a stupid idea, but I would tried something else. I would have helped some other way.”

“You’ve always been the one to do the helping.”

“So you thought you’d take it into your own hands to spare me further inconvenience?” Rana asked bitterly. “Well done. Your noble ways have clearly turned out well for you.”

She hesitated. It would be easy to lie, yes. To echo the conclusion that Rana had come to on her own. Because the truth was a gnarled, prickly thing, dip-coated in poison: she hadn’t done it because she wanted to fix herself while preventing Rana from worrying. She wasn’t that gracious of a person. She’d done it because she wanted to feel normal again. She’d also done it because she was deeply, irrationally jealous. She’d wanted to be the hero. She’d wanted to feel less…useless and pathetic.

Long gone were the days where they passed notes in class and painted inky pictures side-by-side. Part of her suspected that Rana only kept her around for the memory of it, for the old Aliyah who could clamber up tree branches with her and told fanciful stories through the view of a borrowed spyglass. The Aliyah of now was not the same. Sick. Maidservant. Failure. Cast-off scion-bastard. Hollow but for the bodily suffering, nothing left inside to spin stories and jokes with, the entertaining companion no more. If she were a friend worth having, she’d tell the truth.

And because she was tired, and because it really didn’t feel worth it in the face of several hours upon hours without good rest or so much as a mouthful to eat, she didn’t say anything. After all, she was so tired. Staying silent was just avoiding digging deeper, avoiding widening the chasm between them. All the same, it meant that she went along with the lie. She hated herself for that. She hated the itching sting along the skin of her back even more. Most of all, she hated the memory of choking on wave after wave of iron-dark blood.

Rana crossed her arms and worked a muscle in her jaw. “Did they leave you any food? Water?”

“Uh…” That was not what she had expected her to say. Her mouth felt dry all of a sudden, and her stomach twinged in protest. “No.”

“Okay. Then I’ll bring you something.” Rana pushed away from where she had slumped against the wall. “Listen. I can’t stop you from doing what you want. But if you ever do anything like that again, I won’t be there to save you. I mean it. All the Magicians in the world will not protect you if you try that a second time.”

Aliyah swallowed. “Yes. I understand. Thank you.”

Rana left without replying.

===

Aliyah hesitated, one clenched fist hovering over the door.

It had been a week since the whole ordeal. The cuts on her back itched. A Mender had said they were healing as expected, which didn’t feel fast enough. She still slept on her stomach, but at least she was feeling well enough to return to light work.

And although whispers ran around the sewing circles and though her supervisors gave her dirty looks and despite how she was always paired up with others when cleaning rooms now, it felt…normal, was not the correct word, but perhaps mundane. Yes. Safe and mundane and far-removed from magical Libraries with invisible snares and books that lied to you. Everything wasn’t normal, but it was normal enough. Everything, that is, aside from Rana.

Rana was avoiding her. Aliyah could hardly blame her for it.

A week ago, Rana had returned to her room with a tray full of hot soup and mushroom-bread and a flask of water. She’d left right after Aliyah had stammered out her thanks, which was probably a good thing; with an appetite sharpened by stress and time, she’d devoured the meal none-too-politely before crashing into bed once more. She’d slept for twelve hours straight, blessedly dreamless this time.

The only other time she’d seen her since was a couple of days after. Rana had turned up at her door and thrust a wrapped parcel into her hands. “Yara sends her regards and hopes that you heal up soon,” she’d said, and left.

The parcel had contained a packet of iron salts and a jar of chunky green herbal paste that came with instructions to apply thickly over wounded skin. Aliyah had swallowed down a mouthful of guilt; possibly Yara was just being kind, but had Rana paid for these too?

She roused herself from her thoughts and stared hard at the door in front of her, willing herself to knock.

The door swung inwards, and then Rana was there. “You’ve been standing there for ages, haven’t you,” she said bluntly. “What do you want?”

“Oh, I…I brought some cookies?” She brandished the little paper bag in her other hand, the movement shaky and perhaps slightly too frantic. “Lemon-flavoured. I was helping in the upper kitchens and they had some left over and you like sour things, so, um.”

That was a lie. The cookies weren’t seconds or leftovers. She’d gone up there and bought them off the cook. But terrible friend that she may be, she would not stoop to appearing as though she were trying to buy back Rana’s favour.

The very last part, though, the part about Rana liking sour things—that was not a lie. Rana had always loved sour things. As a child, she’d cajoled Aliyah into scaling the boughs of a lemon tree with her to grab the highest-growing, most sun-yellowed of the fruits. And because one of the lower cooks had a sweet spot for them—goddess knows why, they could feign naive charm at will but were young menaces all the same—they would exchange the fresh lemons for candied citrus peels. They’d eat little paper pouches of the stuff with their backs against the smooth, cool trunk of the big ironwood down in south quarter; the one with the best dappled shadows under it’s canopy, the one that had been cut down two summers ago.

Was retroactively realising that one was using a gift to invoke fond memories in someone worse than simply buying back their favour? She brushed the thought away.

Rana stared at her for a moment, expression flickering between puzzlement and unease. “Right. Okay. Come in, then.”

She stepped into the familiar room—mismatched furniture, messy corkboard hanging over the desk, bed in the corner piled high with patchwork pillows—and set the little bag of cookies down at the upturned crate that had served many months as a makeshift table.

Rana rustled around her cooler box for two bottles of rice milk; these, she placed onto the crate. She settled down onto the cushions piled around it.

“So, what’s been going on?” she asked as she reached over and nudged one of the bottles over.

“Uh. Not much,” she said as she watched Rana fiddling with the string on the bag of cookies. “We found a cupboard full of pickled onions in someone’s room the other day.”

Rana looked up from opening the bag and leveled an unimpressed look at her. “Actually, I was wondering about—” and here she waved her hand loosely, perhaps even a little helplessly, “—all that other stuff. Did the ointment work well?”

“Oh,” Aliyah said, feeling her face grow warm. “Um. Yes. Tell Apothecary Yara that I said thanks, if you see her.”

“I will. But are you alright?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. Don’t—you don’t need to worry about me.”

“You make it difficult not to,” Rana said, and frowned. “No offense meant, but you hardly have the strongest constitution. Especially after…”

“Yes, um. I really am sorry. About the Library, that is.”

“Okay,” Rana said, retrieving a cookie and passing the bag back to the center of their makeshift table. “You can stop that. Really. I’m not going to shout at you.”

Aliyah thought of nothing to say to that. She sipped at her drink instead. They ate and drank in uncomfortable silence.

When the cookies were finished, she said, “I’m going to visit Healer Saar-Salai.”

Rana paused, milk bottle raised halfway to her lips. “Who?”

“The Healer who fixed me up after the Library. Your cousin seemed to have forgotten about him, but I don’t think he’d say anything. He actually sort of…gave helpful advice, in a way.”

“And what was this ‘helpful advice’?” Rana asked, arching a single, perfectly-tapered eyebrow.

Aliyah hesitated. No use telling Rana details that she didn’t need to know. “Basically, to not talk too much at the trial.”

“Hm. What are you planning?”

“Bribery? It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “I’m not asking for help, by the way. I just thought I should let you know.”

“What, in case it all goes sideways? Aliyah, I don’t think I can bail you out a second time, not even if it’s a smaller thing—”

“When I said ‘I’m not asking for help’, I meant it,” she interrupted.

“Then why bother telling me?”

Well. That was an unexpected punch to the gut. “I don’t tell you things because I want to extort help from you,” she said.

Or did she? Jumbled memories dashed through her mind; hey Rana, what’s this rune, and Rana, can you show me how you wrote that and Rana, do you know any apothecaries.

“No,” Rana said, “Why would you assume that’s what I meant? Did you ask me on account of you wanting me to stop you? Because I don’t know this Saar-Salai, but I can’t let you get exsanguinated on my conscience.”

“I’m just…telling you,” she said carefully. “Since you’ve helped me so much and you should know what’s going on and so you get a chance to tell me if it’s a terrible idea. Actually, I suppose that counts as helping. But also, you don’t have to keep helping me.”

“Excuse me?” Rana sounded hurt. “Of course I want to know. I am going to help you, if I can.”

“You, uh, you don’t have to, though. That’s—the point.”

“In all our years of knowing one another, you have saved me from the ghastly presence of countless sand spiders,” Rana said, almost comically solemn. Then her voice lowered into more serious tone. “Of course I’m going to try and help you, Aliyah. Even if you do stupid things like breaking into the Higher Library and…” She trailed off. “…and almost dying? Is that right? Karim said things. I don’t know how true they were.”

“What things?” Aliyah asked. She managed to keep her voice from shaking.

Rana shifted uncomfortably, her knuckles paling several shades as she clutched at the bottle in her hands. “That they found you in a pool of blood. That you were vomiting the blood out and that they hadn’t salvaged anyone in such bad shape for years. That there was a daemon involved…that sort of thing.”

Ah. She had a choice here, didn’t she? She could lie, she could reassure Rana and make her feel better about it. But she had done enough lying as of late. Or she could tell the truth, which she didn’t especially want to. It would feel like a gratuitous sapping of Rana’s sympathy, considering what had happened. ‘Yes, I did vomit blood while my spell-soaked insides tore themselves apart’ and ‘yes, I did long for death in that moment’. What kind of friend would say that? Misdirection it was, then.

“Kind of,” she said. “Healer Saar-Salai patched me up, though. He seemed alright. So I think it’s worth a shot.”

Rana was undeterred. Her sharp stare pinned her into place. “What is ‘kind of’ supposed to mean?”

“It was, um. A bit like that, but I don’t really remember it.”

Rana stared at her for several moments, forehead furrowing in concentration. “Are you…are you lying to me?” She shook her head. “No, never mind—you are lying to me. You think you’re sharp, but I’ve known you long enough.”

“Right. Okay.” She winced. “Okay, I did remember, and it wasn’t great. I’d rather not talk about it. But the Librarians got me out in time and Saar-Salai did heal me.”

Rana put her bottle down onto their makeshift table with a thump. “Oh,” she said, and her voice was  smaller than Aliyah had ever heard it; she wanted to reach out and grab her hand. She resisted the urge.

Rana sighed. “And there it is. You really could have died.”

“It was all my own fault,” she ventured. “If that makes you feel any better. And I’m fine now. No…lingering effects at all.” The crusted-over wounds on her back twinged on cue. Well, mostly no lingering effects, she thought. Give it another couple of weeks.

“Yes,” Rana said quietly. “It was your fault. And no, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Um. I’m not going to do it again,” she said. “Learned my lesson, no more trips down the mouths of dimensional horrors. Does that make you feel better?”

“Maybe,” Rana said, and sighed. “Look. The opportunity with this Healer; normally, I’d say to lie low for a few months. But in this case, it’s probably best to speak to him before he forgets who you are. Give me a couple of days, though. I’ll ask around. Make sure he isn’t in the habit of stealing spare kidneys and the like.”

“Ah—well, thank you,” she said as guilt pooled low in her stomach. “You really don’t have to.”

“You are my friend,” Rana said. “And truth be told, my only confidante among this crowd of…I hate to say it, but—wishful court climbers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t forgive you. What you did was incredibly stupid.” She paused, looking pained. “But I don’t want to lose you, either.”

“Okay,” Aliyah said. “Th-thank you. And I—likewise. I’d hate to lose you too.”