Aliyah

The shuttlebus trundled along, inching ever-closer to their destination…and to a waiting ambush, if Aliyah had heard correctly. She crossed her legs upon the seat, trying not to frown at Luxon sitting opposite. The carriage was mercifully empty but for the two of them, and mechanical ticking filled every moment of silence.

“If they plan to send people, I doubt it will be many,” Luxon said. She sounded as if she were trying to be reassuring, which only made everything feel worse. At least she was taking her worries seriously; Aliyah suspected this was one of the less unpleasant encounters Luxon had dealt with when it came to Cribellum witches.

The image of Tertius’s cold eyes sent a shiver down her spine. He’d taken Luxon’s shopping like it was nothing. Twelve whole silvers, too, her maidservant’s sensibilities supplied, aghast. People like that were whispered about in the sewing circles—those who kicked over buckets and screamed in servant’s faces were bad enough, but worse were the ones who moved like Tertius did, who prevented people from leaving like Vipsania had. That sort of person was raised so rich and noble they assumed they could get away with anything—and they often did.

They took a Healer, Kionah had said. She hadn’t been paying enough attention at the time. With the way Kionah had acted about healing magic, she had no doubt they’d try to take her, too.

She frowned, swallowing against the tightness of her throat. “If they think I’m a Healer…I think they’ll send more than one ‘Artesia’, whoever she is.”

“Artesia?” Luxon sat up straighter at the name. “I don’t believe that’s any of the Calamistrum’s names and I haven’t encountered her specifically…it could just be someone taking a look. Like when the Hive sends scouts.”

“I can’t afford to let them spy on me.” Aliyah turned to stare resolutely out the shuttlebus window. Her hand came to rest on her forearm. The tracker mark hadn’t itched in quite some time. “My mentor’s still…I need to…”

Was it better for Zahir, that he was in the hands of schismatists rather than spire witches? She really didn’t know, even with Luxon having given her a summary on the Silken circle: their leader was someone called a Chelicera, with counselors below him, titled Calamistrums. And below those were the Cribellums: coven members like Tertius and Vipsania. No mention of how cruel they might be, but what she’d seen had been more informative than not.

She gritted her teeth, touching a hand to the Healer weave. “I guess I shouldn’t have worn this.”

“Perhaps not,” Luxon agreed. “Though that is wonderfully stain-resistant, yes? I sense an affinity in the fibres. Add some shielding capability to it, and it could serve you well.”

Little use that would do her now. Luxon trying to be nice felt both comforting and uncanny; she’d known, very quickly after that initial meeting, that faeries could think and feel much like humans. But having some measure of empathy extended to her tugged at strings of guilt and confusion beneath the anxiety fast welling up: was this anything like the Magicians had shown, with crudely-masked thespians tearing each other apart?

She shook her head and steered her feelings—and the conversation—back on track. Much as she appreciated the attempt at reassurance, there were plans to make and an ambush to evade.

“If they think I’m a Healer, they’re going to want to capture me or something,” she said. “Study me? I don’t know. I don’t want to be anywhere near that.”

“Perhaps,” Luxon said. “But they don’t actually know you’re a Healer.”

“I made it pretty obvious, didn’t I?” she said bitterly, tugging at the loose ends of her Healer-shawl. “I thought if I wore this, I could…have that silver Shallownest faery find me, or something—sorry,” she added hastily. “Not to put you in danger or anything, I just thought…ugh. I guess I’d better stay away from any red at all.”

“Shallownest?” Luxon broke in, spines pricking with interest. “Did she call herself by such a name?”

“Saiphenora of Shallownest,” Aliyah muttered distractedly, then shook her head. “But she’s not here, and those two Cribellum saw instead…do you want me to go somewhere else?”

Luxon hesitated visibly. “Well I don’t suppose you could work it out with Kionah?”

“I don’t know. Where did you send her?”

“Nowhere specific. I did tell her to return by sunfall…”

Aliyah glanced out of the window again and frowned at the stripes of bright sky peeking between the towers and spires. “That’s hours away.”

The shuttlebus juddered onwards. Could she stay here and take the line to its end? She dreaded getting lost. They were turning eyes to the Emporium by the sound of it, and she didn’t want to be there when they arrived. Still, she’d likely have to return eventually. All of her belongings were there. Would it be easier to do under cover of darkness? Even now, she spotted distant specks of airborne broomstick out the window.

“Yes indeed,” Luxon said, her spines drooping. Then she straightened in her seat, snapping her fingers. “But Kionah does have a friend in that questionable young man, doesn’t she? Shasta something-Krell? You could stay at his establishment for a little while, while I wait at the emporium for her return. It will give me time to tinker with the ingredients, too. If they throw rocks at my shop in lieu of trying to catch you…” She sighed. “Well, City Watch will likely turn a blind eye. But at least you would be hidden, correct?”

Aliyah hesitated, recalling the image of Whistle House in her mind: guarded door, warded curtains.  Shasta wanted things from her too, but at least he wouldn’t try to capture her for it…right? On the other hand, would he take this as a favour owed? Still, she preferred her chances there if it came down to Shasta and the spire people.

“I don’t suppose you could come along?”

Luxon frowned, her gaze skipping to the baskets jammed into their seats. “Carrying all this? I’d need to hire a cart.” She tutted. “Not many coins left, after all that. And someone has to wait for Kionah.”

Aliyah sighed. “Right, right. The spire people are all up in those spires, right? They don’t have much of a…a presence down in the Undercity?”

“I am hardly the person to ask about these kinds of things,” Luxon said with a shake of her head. “Though yes, I suppose it would be safer overall. You could get off at Majesty Square—that’s the stop coming up—and take one of the staircase-tunnels down.”

“I don’t know the way,” she started, frowning. “I think Kionah said something about guides, but…”

“Oh, yes!” Luxon’s spines pricked up and she began digging through her pockets. “Certainly, you could hire one for the time being; they’ll certainly get you there faster than on foot. Terribly overpriced for what they are, but—here. Look for the coloured flags.”

Luxon pressed a golden crest into her hand as the shuttlebus creaked to a halt, doors juddering open.

“Buy a guide and lay low at Kionah’s friend’s house,” she said. “I’ll send Kionah for you once she’s back.”

“Wait,” Aliyah said. Panic flitted through her chest as she glanced out onto the bustling station. “What about the schismatists? If they find me and you’re not here—”

Luxon unhooked a set of vials from her belt and placed them into her other hand. “Push the caps down until they click, then throw. It isn’t difficult—good luck. Be careful.”

Outside awaited. Nothing for it, then: she stepped through.

The station overflowed with waiting passengers. She’d barely finished setting foot onto the platform before the shuttlebus doors clanked shut. The carriage departed, just fast enough for her to miss a last glimpse of Luxon.

Alone now, she thought, even if only temporarily. The idea was more daunting than she’d have liked.

She took a deep breath and backed up against a pillar as people hurried past, tightening her fingers around the coin. She shoved Luxon’s vials—three of them, sloshing with pale green liquid—into her pocket, where they bumped up against Kionah’s unlocking charm. After a moment’s thought, she untied the Healer shawl from her shoulders; the red was too bright. She hesitated, glancing across the platform. There was a waste-disposal contraption set into the end. The wise thing to do would be to rid herself of the fabric now. And yet…something stopped her. The false-Magician had shattered Zahir’s keys at a touch; what else of Shadowsong did she have but for this? Stress and guilt and superstition stopped her from throwing it away.

She tried folding the cloth up instead, as small as she could—but even compressed, it wouldn’t fit fully into a pocket. Instead, she settled for looping it into a sash around her waist, then hiding the colour beneath her closed jacket. There—camouflage. And now, to find her way to Whistle House.

Stepping down from the station platform, she glanced left and right—and up—before she merged further into the chattering crowd, searching for flags advertising guide services. She squinted, trying to peer over the bobbing sea of heads. Was that a guide station, on the other side? The square was a flood of barely-organised chaos, sellers hawking trinkets with every step. She tried to steer clear of any pointed hats she saw, but the crowd buffeted her along in a stream, and she soon found herself stumbling against the side of a merchant’s stall.

“Hey,” the merchant snapped, moving a bolt of cloth out of the way. “Watch your step.”

“Sorry,” she started to say. A hand caught her on the shoulder and she startled, almost dropping her coin.

It was a woman, Aliyah registered. Tall and rangy, perhaps a handful of years older than Aliyah herself. Dark hair, matching hat, and gloves that went up to the elbow—did this look like what she imagined an ‘Artesia’ to?

“Sorry about that, sir,” the witch was saying. “We’ll be out of your awning in just a moment.” The witch’s grip slid down her arm, tightening into a cuff of tendon and bone. “Come along. This way.”

Aliyah’s heart rate spiked. She could snap those tendons, break those bones, mangle the muscle and run—but that would be too obvious, wouldn’t it? Even if this witch wasn’t a spire witch, they must have colleagues in common. It was that thought alone which stopped her from pulling breakage and vasodilation into her fingertips.

Her thoughts raced as the witch started to pull her through the crowd. On the other hand, it might not be a good idea to cooperate if this maybe-Artesia witch was taking her to her companions. One witch, she could maybe deal with—but two or three or more?

Maybe-Artesia shouldered her way between a tightly-packed section of stalls. Her grip was too tight. Enchanted, Aliyah realised. The gloves looked more than expensive enough to enable such a working. She had no choice but to follow.

And there was another problem, she realised: the crowd. Even if she dropped the witch right here, right now, could she hope to make it far? The sheer amount of people to weave through aside, all these shoppers and shopkeepers were going to see some strange, foreign-looking girl attacking a perhaps well-known witch. The reasonable reaction would be to subdue her and drag her to the authorities.

She’d have to wait, for now. If she had an opening later—and there would be an opening later, whether she had to make it herself or not—she couldn’t waste it. Confirming suspicions was dangerous, but going along with whatever this witch was planning didn’t seem like a good idea, either. She slipped her coin into her pocket and flexed the fingers of her free hand, eyeing the implements at the witch’s belt: a dozen arrows, little vials, strange metal cylinders, a string of faceted gemstones, and a sheathed knife. All glinted with skittering runes—warded.

A set of arrows, without a bow? That was a clue. Perhaps she could use them like Saiphenora did. The vials were probably potions, their contents liquid and varying in colour. There were half a dozen of the strange cylinders, each the size of a finger. She couldn’t discern their purpose, nor the enchantments no doubt lurking within the gemstones. The knife spoke for itself.

The witch steered swiftly through the crowd, making for an alley entrance. Aliyah tensed, scanning for a way out: a pile of trash cans off to the side, another alley blocked by a wine stall—still too crowded, no good options. Okay, then: a vasodilation inside, out of sight and far in enough that any cries wouldn’t be heard. Then she’d come back out and find a guide. She could do that.

Maybe-Artesia dragged her into the alley, her grip like iron under those fancy gloves.

“Excuse me,” Aliyah said, digging her heels in. She threw her weight into her back too, for good measure; the witch was surprisingly strong despite her deceptively lean build.

The witch turned her head absently, stopping at the resistance. “Hm?”

“Who are you?” Aliyah demanded, trying to sound like a confused citizen. Perhaps trying the guileless route could work here. “I don’t know you. I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

The witch reached up a hand and tapped at a crest pinned to her lapel, bordered with what looked like a motif of spiked spider’s legs. Aliyah blinked; she hadn’t noticed its presence until now—the crest was palm-sized, far bigger than a Healer’s badge, painted black and blending into the darkness of the witch’s cloak. Now that it’d been pointed out, she could barely peel her eyes away; the thing shimmered with a faint oily iridescence, as if bespelled to look threatening.

“Who am I?” the witch said with a thin smile. “You should recognise this face, no? You and everyone along the next half-mile. So. Not a local, are you?”

“You’re part of the Silken Circle?” Aliyah blurted out, thoughts racing. Half a second later, she winced inwardly—should have kept quiet. All that had done was make her look even more naive than she meant to.

“So you’ve heard of us.” The witch gave a self-satisfied nod. “Though not of me.”

“Who are you?” Aliyah asked, stalling for time as she ran through possible escape routes—was this alley a dead end, or did it simply lead to a stronghold of more witches? She needed to incapacitate this witch and blend back into the crowd, find a guide in time, get down into the Undercity and find…not allies, exactly, but better companions than this.

“You may call me Calamistrum Sebile,” the witch said.

Not Artesia after all. And Calamistrum, not Cribellum. That was the second-ranked of the tiers, if her panic-soaked brain was remembering correctly. Higher than Tertius and Vipsania—this was bad. Very bad.

“Now, I must know—what’s your name?” Calamistrum Sebile tapped on her crest again, as if in reminder. Were Silken Circle witches equivalent in importance to Magicians around these parts, especially Calamistrums? They certainly seemed to act as such—or perhaps Sebile was only posturing, knowing Aliyah wasn’t a local and would thus have no way of knowing.

“Scionsong,” Aliyah blurted out. “R-Rana Scionsong.”

Sebile arched an eyebrow. “Very well, Miss ‘Scionsong’. Come along, now.”

She started walking again, grip still firm around Aliyah’s arm. Aliyah resisted reflexively for a moment, then unbalanced. Sebile—however important she may or may not be—possessed a disturbingly disproportionate level of physical strength compared to her sinewy appearance. Probably more enchantment.

“Wait,” she said frantically. “Why—”

“All of your questions will be answered in due time,” Sebile said smoothly.

“But—”

“Hush.”

Aliyah bit back a cry of frustration.

What now? Think, she told herself furiously. Calamistrum Sebile might suspect she was a criminal or a Healer, but she didn’t know for certain, did she?  So why had she picked her out of the crowd in the first place, if the Healer cloth was hidden? Her foreign-ness, perhaps, or simply looking…lost, as that one alley robber had implied, not all too long ago. Or maybe even matching most of a physical description?

Thinking about it logically, Cribellum Vipsania could send more than one message through that spell of hers. There was only one main line out of the spawn market station, and Vipsania knew where Luxon lived—she’d know the direction they’d go. From there, it’d be a simple matter of notifying spire allies along their territory…but only if they were that intent on finding her, that was. If her guess was right and they were that determined…it didn’t bode well for her immediate future.

The Calamistrum dragged her onwards. Where were they going now? The alley down which she was being pulled was flanked on both sides by high stone walls and the stained backs of houses. They encountered no pedestrians, passed no crossroads. There was only the occasional rusted pipe or lump of rotting fruit to mark their progress.

Spire-person Sebile might be, Aliyah doubted she was being taken up there, the way things were looking. Did Sebile intend on taking her to some hidden outpost? It was her best guess, given the grime and general unkemptness of their surroundings.

They’d gone far enough. She vasodilated.

It didn’t work.

Sebile’s glove flared with runes, darting from fingertip to elbow. Aliyah froze as she came to a sudden stop. Her head whipped round, and her mouth split open into an approximation of a grin—teeth bared, eyes blazing.

“Fleshcrafter,” she said. “I knew it.”

Not just enchanted for gripping, after all.

Aliyah yanked away, but Sebile’s fingers cinched tight. Casting a breakage did nothing; more of those spiraling runes sparked up the glove, and the magic didn’t make it through. Recognition sparked—these were similar to the runes worn by the second wave of forayers in the shipwreck. Precautions. Probably not against Healers specifically, but mages in general—if she couldn’t get her casts past the barrier, then…

“Don’t even try it,” Sebile warned. “I’m not here to hurt you. Come politely, and we’ll talk in a civilised manner.”

That was hardly an option. She disarticulated the bones of her own hand instead, using the split second of unnatural fluidity to twist out of Sebile’s grip. Phalanges glided and ground past one another. It hurt—a lot. Possibly more than breaking her arm had. She screamed reflexively and ran back down the alley, molding her hand back into place as she went.

Sebile tackled her down from behind, knocking the air from her lungs. Gloved fingers scraped over her wrists. Aliyah poured strength into her own muscles and twisted in hope of keeping Sebile from wrenching her arms behind her back.

“You little bitch,” Sebile panted, managing it anyway. Her shoulder dislocated at the impact, a split-second of pain that she shoved away with numbing.

Sebile tried to force her fully onto her stomach. Aliyah used more magic on herself, pushing her muscles to maximum efficiency. The less leverage the Calamistrum had, the more easily she could do something about those damned gloves.

‘Easily’ being a relative term, of course. Sebile was straddling her legs, making it impossible to kick. She could try pulling the gloves down, but her hands were too trapped. She thought of using her teeth, instead.

She sent a fresh jolt of magic to her muscles and lunged up at an improbable angle: a painful headbutt that allowed her to sink teeth into the fabric of the glove—and some of Sebile’s arm, too. Flesh and fabric scrunched in her mouth as she tugged, wrenching her head sideways at the effort.

Sebile screeched as the glove tore along the seam, stitches popping in unison. Indented tooth-marks started to bleed as she yanked her hand back. Aliyah took advantage of the disorientation and headbutted her again. It was—barely—enough for Sebile to tip backwards. She sent a surge of strength to her muscles again, shoving at Sebile with her freed arm. Her hand met the front of Sebile’s coat, and her magic pushed through—more difficult than usual, like walking against a windstorm, but it did go through. Sebile fainted and fell into false-sleep.

Aliyah scrambled upright, gritting her teeth as she popped her shoulder back into its socket. Her nose felt close to bleeding. No headache yet, but it’d probably start on the next cast. Was getting into all these awful fights helping her stamina? No good practice like hands-on practice, as Zahir used to declare.

Zahir. That note. That ship. The schismatists.

Frustration welled afresh. She had no time for spire people hunting her down. The adrenaline had her blood pumping with anger more than anything else; a bunch of faeries trying to abduct her was more than enough. And now they hadn’t had the courtesy to come when she wanted them to.

She cast a last glance at Sebile’s unconscious form and froze.

Something glowed at Sebile’s lapel: a dot of spell-light where the crest was pinned. It flared brighter, and Sebile started to stir—what? That couldn’t be right. False-sleep wasn’t meant to wear off that quickly. Sebile gave a weak, bleary groan. Spell-light flickered sluggishly in her palms before rousing into a brighter glow. Before Aliyah could take so much as a step closer, a shield crackled to life over her crumpled body.

A minute of warning was better than none. Aliyah turned and ran.