Aliyah

Interloper, the faery had said, disgust dripping off her tongue.

Her intrusion had explained the tracker-mark, somewhat. The accident of stumbling into the lair beneath the Killing Fields didn’t seem so offensive to her, but perhaps faeries thought differently. She didn’t know what else the faery could possibly care about.

“Look,” Aliyah said as cold sweat broke out over her skin, “I don’t know who you are. I didn’t mean to enter your home. Please leave me alone.” As she spoke, she gathered magic into her clenched fists.

The faery continued as if she had not spoken. “Songian spy. We have questions for you and your masters.”

“I’m not a spy,” Aliyah said, and something itched faintly in the depths of her memory—Jackal’s bygone accusations, an eerie parallel, memories mocking her from across the reaches of time. Treason must reach its feather-thin roots far and wide, if faeries were also concerned about such things. Focus, she told herself. The magic lay in her hands, ready and waiting. But the faery could move so fast…so, not yet. She forced herself to appear calm. She’d get one chance, probably, before getting shot a second time.

“We’ve got nothing to do with the kingdom,” Kionah wheezed. She turned her head to look at the faery, and the cage of arrows followed the movement. Not quite touching her, but close enough that a stray spark might sting. “No interest in schismatist affairs, neither. Leave us be.”

“My superior has requested a meeting,” the faery said, not even moving to glance at her.

Aliyah bit her tongue. Not yet, she told herself. Not yet.

“What a load of hot piss,” Kionah hissed from behind her circle of arrows. “You want a chat? Over cream tea and biscuits? I’ve never heard such bullshit in my life.”

“Come with me,” the faery said, eyes boring into Aliyah’s. “My superior has many questions.”

“You can’t be serious,” Aliyah said, thinking frantically. She needed a distraction, any distraction. “You shot me. Who even are you?”

“You humans and your obsessions with names,” the faery said with a hint of a sneer. She cocked her head to one side. “…Saiph. That is my name in your pitiable tongue. Saiphenora of Shallownest.” She snickered, faceted eyes flashing with inner light. “Does that reassure you? If you come willingly, it will be easier.”

“Easier for you?” Aliyah asked through gritted teeth. She could hurt this ‘Saiphenora’ more than she could hurt her, she reminded herself. She could bend, break, vasodilate—whatever plans the faery had of carrying her off for interrogation, she would fight her way out of. What else was there to do, when backed into such a corner? In fact, it’d probably help if the faery lunged first—but Saiphenora remained still.

“They have ways of—” Saiphenora said, before she was interrupted by a cough.

Behind her, Silas straightened up and swept the point of his scythe forwards, a soft scrape of metal over hardwood. “Get out of my house,” he croaked.

The faery flicked her spines; the cages of arrows crackled in warning.

“Get out of my house,” Silas repeated. “I spared your ally. Leave, before I kick you to the street myself.”

“Bold words,” Saiphenora said flatly. “I am stronger than Curlew.”

Silas sniffed, touched a hand to his nose, and glanced at his fingers with sour scorn as they came away bloody. “I’ve worked with worse. Fought worse than you. Interesting little deterrent you have here. Not very well-made.”

That got her attention. She turned, spines flattening close to her skull.

The arrows crackled, as if puffing up in bravado. Aliyah hesitated for a fraction of a second. Probably not fatal. If Silas and Kionah got shot, she could heal them afterwards. Saiphenora had overlooked pointing any at her for now, in vain pursuit of conversation, so…now.

Aliyah charged.

She almost didn’t make it. If Saiphenora hadn’t angled her body at Silas, she would’ve reacted in time. As it was, Aliyah’s hand barely skidded against her side, injecting a pulse of vasodilation through shining silver chitin. She found analogous vein-structures within and forced them to flare wide. Bodily perfusion dropped. Saiphenora staggered, and didn’t fall.

She did scream.

She screamed a shrill, ear-splitting scream, paired with her circles of arrows plunging towards their captives. Spell sizzled against shield, burnt out or burnt through. Silas yelled something. Kionah shouted. Aliyah struck again, blindly. Her hand caught on one of Saiphenora’s spikes; she felt faery equilibrium pushing back against the wave of distributive shock, equilibrium boosted by something else—a potion? The thing that she’d drunk? She pushed harder, to no avail.

If vasodilation wasn’t working, she’d try something else: she broke Saiphenora’s arm. Her magic burrowed through chitin and tore into faery flesh. It plunged into the analogous bone armature that held Saiphenora’s body together and forced it to yield with a dry snap. Saiphenora screamed again and jerked out of her grasp with a sharp flap of her wings, loosing spell-arrows from her still-working hand.

A chair flew through the air and collided with her wings, sending her down in a tangle of splintered wood and thrashing limb. Her tail lashed out, heftier than it looked, practically a whipcord of chitin-plated muscle. Aliyah caught it across the ribs and felt something fracture.

Silas flung another chair, then pounced with the clean grace of one used to fighting in quarters far more cramped than this. His scythe flickered and glowed white-hot, losing its silhouette as it morphed into a flotilla of flying knives; arrows flashed and countered, Aliyah stumbled back, feeding magic into her creaking rib as Kionah leapt into the fray, trailing blood from a dozen arrow-cuts.

Saiphenora twirled upwards, plucked another potion vial from her belt, and swallowed it down.

Shield, Aliyah thought dimly, and brought one up moments before another storm of arrows filled the workshop.

When the air cleared, Silas was readier than Aliyah could have guessed—he dropped his shield and crashed daggers-first into the panting Saiphenora. She retaliated with summoned strings of spell-light, fine filaments that looked as if they’d been plucked straight from the web of a Behemoth-spider.

Kionah vaulted over a bench and ducked in as Silas sliced at the encroaching web—she struck at Saiphenora, dodging the lashing length of spiked tail with mere inches to spare.

Aliyah dropped her fractured shield and healed her own ribs, even as her head ached harder with each passing moment. Across the room, Saiphenora whirled into a dance of violence, one arm still hanging limp by her side. As Aliyah watched, though, the broken arm twitched and began to move again. At first jerkily, mirroring whatever her working arm was doing, then with a flex and shake, back to normal—as if it had never been wounded in the first place. Saiphenora used her formerly-broken arm to land a blow on Kionah, sending her sprawling.

Aliyah swallowed as unease settled into the pit of her stomach. Saiphenora was not human, and not a Healer—but to have shrugged off both vasodilation and a broken arm? Aliyah ran through half-formed plans, possible ways of breaking faery physiology without outright killing Saiphenora, and came up with: break more of her limbs, in multiple places, until she stopped moving.

She couldn’t possibly fix every break by drinking more potion, could she? All Aliyah had to do was touch her first. Easier than it sounded, even as Saiphenora fought Silas and made to lunge at her, an arrow nocked and ready.

Aliyah threw up a shield and readied herself.

“Fucking move,” Kionah shouted from across the workshop.

Aliyah gritted her teeth and dug her heels in. Saiphenora wanted to drag her to her leader? She could come and get her herself.

The faery surged forth in a spray of white sparks; an arrow slammed into her shield. The spell-barrier shattered; Aliyah reached out with fingers outstretched and touched upon nothing. Her heart stuttered at the miscalculation, feeling as though it skipped a beat. The moment stretched by like pulled dough, strands breaking in slow motion: miscalculation.

Of course Saiphenora was faster than her, more dexterous, wouldn’t just charge blindly.

She felt a whisper of air ghost across her cheek, the wake of a perfectly planned movement. And then weight and motion followed through, action executed.

Saiphenora grabbed a fistful of her hair and slammed her against the wall.

Air heaved out of her lungs in a sickly rush. Bones fractured. Her scalp stung all over, went taut with pain. She would have screamed, if she had the breath for it. In the precious few seconds it took for her to try reaching up at where Saiphenora’s fist was bunched in her hair, Saiphenora slammed her into the wall, sideways this time.

More hairline fractures. Pain blossomed bright. Aliyah gasped for air, choked on the fast-rising agony, and tried to numb and fix everything in one desperate scramble. The faery tossed her into the wall and summoned more strings formed of pure spell-light, silken-thin and shimmering-bright, string that flew at her wrists and tangled and bound them. She hit the ground, dislocated her shoulder on impact, and—finally—managed to scream.

“Stay back,” Saiphenora called. Aliyah saw Silas and Kionah freeze out of the corner of her eye. “I’ve your friend leashed well down.”

Her eyes watered as she popped her shoulder back in place with magic alone. Not efficient use of her energy, but the pain was too distracting, and it’d get worse if she left it. She tried her ironwood-cutting spell next, which slid off the filament like rainwater off skyfish-scales. More string sparked into existence and blanketed her hands, winding around her shoulders and ankles like packing salt into a wound. Arrows sprouted from thin air and circled her in a mocking spiral.

“You want to abduct me?” she asked, all-too-aware of the glowing twine digging into her skin, the glow of arrow-points at the edge of her vision. “Let me go, that’s not going to work. If you touch me, you’ll faint.”

“You’ll not have me that easily,” Saiphenora said, turning her empty eyes to look down at her. Her faery limbs looked far more delicate than a human’s, but the spread of her wings more than made up for her build; from this distance, she loomed. “You felt the resistance, hm? Your tricks are not insurmountable.” Her hand moved to her belt, then faltered, halfway through the motion of grabbing something that wasn’t there.

“Looking for something?” Kionah called from across the room.

Saiphenora went very still.

“Mageling,” the faery hissed as she whirled around.

Kionah held something up between thumb and forefinger—glinting glass, a little vial that provoked a hiss of rage.

Saiphenora fully turned her back on Aliyah, shifting into a low stance. Faery wings lit up with shadows of colours, pulsing patterns in the membrane, silvery eyespots blooming into existence. Wings flared wide, and tail lashed with a whip-crack—a full threat display. Ten dozen spell-arrows sprouted from nothing, formed a floating blockade, and swiveled to point at Kionah.

From across the room came a sour cough.

“Now that is just useless,” Silas said, stepping in front of Kionah. He held his daggers ready, a dozen more floating at his back. “Cut your losses, faery. Leave my home in peace.”

Saiphenora hissed, long and low. The spikes along her spine quivered, scraping lightly against one another—another hiss emanated from them, a scratchier, chirruping sound. It reminded Aliyah of locusts. The layered hissing brought to mind a whole swarm of them, all crammed into this one room. The light of the arrows blazed brighter, forcing her to squint.

“I have been instructed otherwise,” Saiphenora snarled.

“If you insist,” said Silas. “Sadrava, stay out of my way.”

That was all the warning he gave. Knives flashed through the air, triggering Saiphenora’s waiting circle of arrows. Aliyah curled up and screamed, tried to shield as the spell-arrows crashed into her, searing cuts and punctures from all directions. She rushed to heal them, frantically patching the sizzling wounds.

Several of the arrows hadn’t gone for her. Instead, they’d melded to the binding spell-filaments and wedged themselves into the gaps in the floorboards, pinning her to the ground. A crude imprisonment, dreamed up last minute by an unhinged faery mind. Aliyah twisted her head, craning her neck to look at where Saiphenora had flown.

Silas seemed to be holding his own. She’d heard stories of dungeonrunners before, from traveling merchants. From what she was seeing, the stories seemed almost true.

It was a matched duel, fought with speed and motion, darting jabs and feints that flowed like water. Shields flared to life and broke again, spellfire silhouettes clashing against one another.

Kionah was trapped against the corner of the workshop, holding a shield in place. Several times, Saiphenora leapt towards her and several times, Silas cut her off, diverted her focus by flinging spell-knives and objects alike—blocks of paper to the face, handfuls of brushes and the contents of ink-pots. Splashes of ink slid from Saiphenora’s eyes without staining, but gave her pause nonetheless. The air seemed to flow cold from that side of the room; Aliyah could make out a faint shimmer if she squinted. …A suppression-field?

No matter. She shook her head to clear it, heaved against the tide of spell-filament tying her down. She wondered if breaking an arm would get her out of this bind—probably not. Her head hurt. Her nose was on the verge of bleeding; she could taste it at the back of her throat, and the sensation made her feel queasy. In other circumstances, breaking an arm might be worth a try. But the twine was tighter than chain, and if Saiphenora was going to prevail and grab her, she needed to be ready—

A door banged open, cutting off her line of thought. Footsteps, shouts, and Laurent bursting in, silhouetted against the doorway. Lengths of rune-rope shot in to join the flying knives and it all formed an arrowhead of its own. A flurry of faery arrows rushed in to counter it, to block Silas from striking closer.

Saiphenora dodged away on a single wingbeat of retreat, flinging herself clear across the room to skid against the floorboards. She cleared the suppression-field and came to a stop mere inches from Aliyah. Then came her shout, an ear-piercing word-that-was-not-a-word, a sound dredged up from the abyss of magic itself.

A wall of white-hot arrows bisected the room, blotting Silas and Kionah and Laurent from view. Hundreds of them—so bright that the workshop looked as if it were bathed in daylight.

Faery head swiveled around, turning dead-gemstone eyes to look down at her.

“You can’t hold me without your potion, can you?” Aliyah said. Sweat beaded at her forehead. She sounded braver than she felt. “Why did you even bother asking, if you were just going to attack?”

Saiphenora hissed. Clear fluid dripped from the parting of her mouth and splashed onto the floorboards. Drool? Vomit? Aliyah tried not to shudder.

The faery reached down and grabbed her by the hair—dead cells, unliving tissue that she couldn’t cast through. A loop of spell-twine began spooling into existence between them. Aliyah realised what it was for, moments before Saiphenora moved it against her throat.

“No,” she gasped out as it looped round. “That’ll kill me!” The spell-twine froze in place, and Aliyah spoke faster, seized on that pause, a glimmer of desperate hope. “You want me alive, right? I have to be alive if you want to ask questions. If you use that—I won’t just faint, I’ll wake up brain-damaged, or I’ll die.”

The spell-noose froze in place. Saiphenora considered her with those cold, faceted eyes. For several, heart-stopping moments, there was silence.

“Humans,” Saiphenora said, “are notorious liars.”

“Please,” Aliyah said. Cold sweat chilled her all over. “Please, you’ve already shot me, what more do you want? I would’ve died if I were a normal mage—”

“You wouldn’t.” Saiphenora paused. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have aimed for your head.”

“Yes,” Aliyah said. “Which is why I’ll die if you try this. I’m not lying, I promise. You don’t have to do this, you don’t have to…you could’ve just asked.”

“I gave you the opportunity,” Saiphenora said flatly. Water dripped from her eyes and nose and mouth and trickled down the seams of her joints. “Perhaps this is another opportunity? Your thaumaturge-touched alliances bar the way. Your maligned mind will resist us, naturally. Or so I have been told. Are you saying yes?”

Aliyah traced out the line of not-water trickling from Saiphenora’s mouth as she spoke. Realisation dawned. “No. You can’t make me go, can you? Not unless you kill me. Not like this.”

“I could cocoon you in twine. Carry you by your tresses. Would you risk harming me, in the air?”

“You can’t,” Aliyah said. “Or you would’ve done it already. Wouldn’t have wasted your magic going after Kionah. You need that potion-thing to keep yourself going, don’t you?” She risked a glance away from Saiphenora, to the blazing wall of arrows behind her. “The longer you keep those there, the more magic you’re burning.”

“What would a little mageling like you know?”

Aliyah swallowed and looked the faery in her empty eyes. “I know that you win every fight that you avoid.”

A pause. “Yes,” Saiphenora said, letting go of her hair. She straightened up. “That’s why I like to shoot from afar. Keep an eye when you shelter away from a roof and four walls, mageling. My superiors are…insistent.”

Saiphenora turned and walked away, towards the wall of arrows. For a moment, she was fully bathed in the eye-searing arrow-light—glowed with it, her body charted out in lines of frost. The wall of arrows rippled, and Aliyah realised with slow-dawning horror that each arrow was pivoting on its axis, turning to face out—to where her only allies were standing.

Saiphenora sent the wall of a-hundred-and-more arrows crashing out into the dark. Most sputtered out. Others sparked and twirled, causing chaos, kicking up clouds of loose paper. A diversion, a rudimentary smokescreen for a flash of wing, darting almost flush against the ceiling before dipping out of the doorway.

The papers settled. The spell-twine melted away. Just like that, the faery was gone. Aliyah coughed and picked herself up, aching all over.

Across the room, Kionah dropped her shield. Silas groaned and dispelled his fleet of knives. Laurent hurried to his side.

“Everything alright?” he asked.

“Don’t hover,” Silas snapped, though he allowed himself to be lowered onto a righted step-stool. “Think I pulled something,” he grumbled, rubbing at his shoulder. “I’m retired for a goddamn reason.”

“Where were you?” Kionah asked Laurent. “You missed all the excitement.”

“Led on a merry chase down the temple district. Two of ‘em, lost their tails and came back to see the place lit up like a beacon.” He glanced around the smoking, spell-scorched workshop and scratched the back of his head. “Kionah, this is…”

Kionah winced.

Aliyah felt the skin on her arm prickle in the shape of the tracker-mark and almost winced with her.

“Yeah,” Kionah said. “I, ah, I didn’t foresee this. Swear it on the old man’s grave.”

Outside, it started to rain.