Aliyah

By the time they arrived, dawn was nearly breaking. Kionah had insisted on taking smaller streets, and at one point the journey required scrambling over several brick walls. Being drenched in canal-water was hardly suitable on a shuttlebus, but by the time Kionah rang the bell to the door of her alleged ‘fence’, she was two thirds of the way dry.

Aliyah sighed. Much as she didn’t want to, she understood Kionah’s reasoning. From time to time she spotted the silhouettes of what might have been witches overhead. The spires, too, were ever-presently visible up here: spokes of darkness piercing the sky.

The door didn’t open. It was arched and decorated with leafy engravings, set into the front of a narrow, vine-cloaked, three-storey brick house. Kionah tugged at the string again, harder this time. The chime echoed from within, and before long there came thumping footsteps and several sharp coughs.

“Who is it?” a voice called out, hoarse and low.

“Your second-favourite niece,” Kionah said acidly.

Niece? Aliyah thought. Kionah hadn’t mentioned much about her family, aside from the fact she had an awful lot of dead siblings. Aliyah had thought she was an orphan through and through. Or perhaps that had been her own thoughts filling the blanks, reaching for a thread of familiarity.

The door creaked open. A heavyset man peered out, one hand curled around a candlestick. There was a hint of a family resemblance: Aliyah could see it in the keen eyes and the dark hair. He wore a velvet sleeping robe and matching slippers upon his feet.

“Kionah,” he exclaimed, sounding faintly astonished. “Come in, come in. Where have you been?”

Kionah sighed and stepped into the doorway, gesturing for Aliyah to follow. “Long story. Got some stuff to drop off.”

“Back at the sticky business again? Why, I thought you were off helping poor Elena.”

“Mm,” Kionah grunted. “More than you have.”

Kionah’s uncle—and supposed ‘fence’—grimaced, but didn’t seem perturbed. He looked Aliyah over. “And you’ve brought a friend. Hello, hello. Cornelius is the name. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He reached out to shake her hand and paused halfway, wrinkling his nose faintly. “Can I get you a towel?”

Aliyah was at once aware of still being one-third soaked through and—covertly—smeared with blood. She glanced down reflexively; she’d dripped silt-spotted water onto the tile.

“That would be appreciated,” she said, barely able to keep from stammering.

“Just wait here for a moment; I’ll fetch it at once.” He beamed with a familiar, practiced-looking sincerity and took the flickering candlestick with him as he disappeared further into the hall. Kionah sighed into the darkness.

“So,” Aliyah said, after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “Your uncle, huh?”

“Yes,” Kionah said, sounding gloomy. “But don’t get any ideas now. Just cause he’s got a nice house doesn’t mean I’ve got coin to spare. No favours from him, either.”

Aliyah enhanced her night vision and peered into the darkness. The house didn’t look particularly special, but maybe they had different standards over here.

“He got out real good,” Kionah muttered, scraping her boot across the welcome mat. “Got a wife, kids. Antique shop in Teok Heights and everything. Anyway.” She shrugged, setting down her baskets. “We’ll get a decent deal.”

“A deal? On what?” Aliyah frowned at the packages. “Isn’t that stuff for Luxon?”

“Most of it.” Kionah reached into one of the baskets and withdrew a handful of—Aliyah peered closer as she held them out—gemstones? She couldn’t tell what colour they were through the dark, but they were faceted like gemstones, and each one the size of a thumbnail.

“Where did you get those?” More importantly, she thought, what kind of person went around with handfuls of loose jewels jangling around in their pockets?

“Long story. Maia had this whole…plan. We ran into some schismatists and some Cathayan-looking guy—that false Magician. They left a lot of stuff lying around, in a manner of speaking. We scooped it up and scrammed before City Watch burst in. Didn’t get the pearls we were after, but it was something.”

“Any sign of Zahir?” she asked doubtfully. “Or another Healer?”

“Unfortunately not.” Kionah cast a glance down the hall, at the flicker of returning candlelight. “We need to discuss the Maia thing. Spire stuff, too. Talk to you about it later.”

That sounded ominous. She shoved the thought of Sebile to the back of her mind.

Cornelius returned and handed Aliyah a towel, which she used to dab her clothing dry. He’d changed into a patterned shirt and corded trousers, though he’d kept the slippers on. Holding out the candlestick like a paltry beacon, he led them through his foyer and into a darkened parlour. It was only when he activated the lights—golden runes coating the ceiling—that the absurdity of the room settled into focus.

Crates and boxes were stacked high against every available surface, marked with notes and strips of signed paper. Potted purple ivy rambled over stacks of books, glossy with health but in sore need of a trim. Huge scrolls of paper leaned against the furniture, leashed together with coloured cords. One wall was taken up entirely with cabinets, feathers and fabrics piling out from half-opened drawers. It was like stepping into the domain of a poorly-organised bowerbird.

Cornelius nudged boxes aside to clear the way to a pair of velvet settees flanking a low table. He claimed one for himself and gestured to the other, waiting for them to settle themselves before he spoke. Aliyah made sure to layer the towel down before she sat, rather gingerly, upon its edge.

“Well, now. What have you brought for me today, Kionah?” He unfolded a pair of spectacles from his breast-pocket and perched them onto his nose, bobbing his head eagerly.

Kionah dropped her handful of gemstones onto an empty portion of table. Seen under the light, they glinted in shades of purple and gold—though many looked to be flecked with dried mud, and others coated entirely.

“Hmm,” Cornelius said, picking one up. He brushed at the dirt with a fingertip. “I see. Is that all?”

Kionah bristled faintly and reached back into her basket, emerging with another handful of gems. She added those to the pile, too. “What do you mean, is that all? How much for the lot?”

Cornelius tutted, setting the gemstone back down with the others. “Patience, Kionah. If this is all you’ve got, well, I’m afraid it’s a bit of a sorry affair. Citrines and amethysts, a few shadestones—whichever lapidarist cut these didn’t do such a good job, either. I can’t offer you terribly much if you intend on extracting clean outfits from my backend supply.” He cast a meaningful look at Aliyah’s canal-soaked attire.

“How much?” Kionah repeated flatly.

Cornelius tapped his chin. “Three crowns and two changes of outfit.”

“Twenty crowns, at least,” Kionah said, crossing her arms. “Not including the outfits. They’re from the Academy.”

“You should know better, dear. You can’t expect to pilfer through their leavings and get easy coin that way.” He shook his head. “Twenty? No, even ten would be absurd. If they were all shadestones, then perhaps—but no. I’m giving you a respectable offer. Ask any merchandiser on the block. Unless you’ve got some other treats in those baskets? Yes? No?”

Kionah made to speak, but seemed to change her mind at the last moment. She uncrossed her arms and clasped her hands together on her lap, tilting her chin consideringly. “Ten,” she said, after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “I see a dozen good shadestones in that pile, and your noble friends like that sort of thing, don’t they?”

Cornelius pursed his lips. “Very well,” he said, and made to sweep the scattered gems into a pile. Kionah’s hand shot out, closing over his wrist.

“Ten,” she said fiercely, “and we get our pick of your stock. What happened to fair deals with family, eh?”

He frowned. “You know very well I can’t let you loose on the—”

“Our pick of your rag room,” she retorted. “Spires forbid we rob you of your silks and fine wool.”

“There’s no need to be quarrelsome now,” he said, with a wounded air. “You know where to go?”

At her nod, he rummaged in one of his pockets and withdrew a ring of keys. Selecting one, he threaded it off the ring and dropped it into Kionah’s waiting palm. Aliyah squinted. Though not nausea-inducing in the slightest, they did shimmer with hints of runesign.

“I’ll be counting these,” he said, nodding to the pile of gems on the table. “Don’t be noisy. It’s a school night.”

“Of course not.”

Aliyah saw a muscle twitch in her jaw as she turned away. Kionah picked up her baskets with one hand and beckoned with the other, twirling the key around a finger. Aliyah grabbed her borrowed towel and followed.

The rest of Cornelius’s house wasn’t nearly as grand as his parlour. The dark hall was lined with pictures in frames, some of them oil portraits and others looking as though they’d been painted with bare fingers, colours splotched in the shapes of small palms—Kionah had mentioned children, hadn’t she? She supposed the man must be well-off to lend pigments to them. Kionah ignored the doorways to her left and the staircase to her right, heading straight for the back of the house. There, she slotted in the key to a tarnished door. Aliyah watched quietly as runes washed over its surface.

The rag room was musty and windowless, crammed full of unmarked crates and barrels. A forlorn folding screen perched in the corner. Kionah immediately marched over to the nearest crate and began digging through the pile of fabrics inside.

“Go on,” she said. “Choose something good, and be quick about it. He’ll complain if we’re here too long.”

Aliyah wiped her hands on the towel and bundled it about her shoulders before venturing into the room and searching through a different crate. There were all manner of shirts and skirts and trousers within—most were patched or ripped or frayed in some way.

“Search through the lower layers,” Kionah said. “They hide the better stuff at the bottom. Boots in the barrels. Make sure they aren’t mismatched.”

Aliyah nodded and dug through the layers of shawls and breeches, emerging with a halfway-decent shirt and trousers. She wove her way between yet more crates to fetch a battered, but dry pair of boots. Everything looked plain enough, not likely to attract attention. None of them were red.

She ducked behind the folding screen and changed hastily, wishing she had the luxury of a bath to rid the last traces of blood and canal-water. When she stepped out, Kionah had already dressed herself in two shirts and a moth-eaten overcoat. She held a hair-cord between her teeth as she threaded a belt through the loops of her newly-begotten trousers. The black and white uniform lay in a crumpled heap at her feet.

“Won’t that be too warm, outside?” Aliyah asked, looking at the coat.

“Might as well get my coin’s worth,” Kionah spoke around the cord. “Suggest you do the same.” She sounded strangely agitated.

Aliyah picked a coat of her own from one of the crates and thought her next words over carefully. “Your uncle. He doesn’t seem helpful as he could be. He…is your uncle, by blood?”

Kionah dislodged the pins from her hair. “Yeah, you could say that. Still—family rates. Most of the time.” She paused, looking away as she scraped her hair back with the cord and struggled to fasten it. “You’re one of the Scion. You know how it is. Folks like him, who make it out? Can’t begrudge them that. Can begrudge them when they’re all too happy to build coin off my work with what better connections they have, but won’t give so much as a nod when they see me in the street. Years ago, he—”

She faltered, cinching the cord tight. For a moment, Aliyah thought she might not say more.

“I told you about my brothers? Sisters? There was a bad winter. He looked down his nose at us like we were vermin. The rats in his basement ate better than I did. Could’ve fed the lot of us for a couple silvers, but hey—guess he didn’t want dirty urchins hanging round his doorstep, even if they were family. But sure, now we can sit in his fancy fucking parlour and talk shop. Happy to have an audience, soon as I grew up to be useful.”

“I’m sorry,” Aliyah said, though she didn’t really ‘know how it was’. Sure, everyone heard of Scionsongs who went on to earn real names: Scionsongs who got good postings in the Library or among the Weathermancers or what-have-you. But she’d never actually known any. The closest thing, she supposed, would be the sting of Rana’s ascension to the Lower Library without her. Or maybe—maybe it had been her, in the end. She’d been moderately fortunate enough, until…now.

Kionah shrugged, looking as though she suddenly regretted speaking. “Bring your old clothes. We should burn yours—canal water takes a lot of washing out.” She grabbed her discarded uniform herself, stuffing it onto one of the baskets.

The walk back to the parlour felt marginally longer than the walk there. Kionah paused fractionally along the corridor, features flickering as she glanced at one of the mounted portraits. Aliyah looked at it in passing: a family, painted with delicate brushwork. Both of the children were girls, their hair long and brown and braided with blue ribbons.

“We’re done,” Kionah announced, setting down her baskets.

Cornelius looked up at their arrival. He’d been examining the gemstones with a jeweler’s glass and polishing the dirt away with a handkerchief.

“Pleasure doing business,” he said, reaching for a chest upon the table.

Opening it, he selected ten silvers. Kionah returned the key before shoving the handful of coins into the pocket of her overcoat.

“I’ll see you around,” she said, and headed for the door. “Give my regards to the girls, if they remember me.”

Aliyah followed and kept her mouth shut.

===

It was a long, trudging route to the temple district, where Kionah showed her the open furnace dedicated to a god of flame and sunlight. Aliyah bundled up her old outfit—was it really hers? It had, after all, been fitted for the princess Alhena in what seemed to be a lifetime ago—and threw it into the roaring fire.

She watched as the fabric burned, and all the blood with it.

She hadn’t thrown in the Healer-cloth. It sat in a damp bundle in the pocket of her coat, slowly soaking through the fabric there. Red as it was, she wouldn’t wear it. But something stopped her from discarding it once more, some fierce and unnameable superstition crawling up her spine, nudging up against her brainstem. She needed to return it. Piece things together, force them whole again.

Kionah had disposed of the uniform, when she thought she wasn’t looking. Aliyah didn’t mind. Simple theft had helped her along this far, and with Kionah by her side it would help her along yet.

The day was early yet, but the sun blazed overhead. There wasn’t a single cloud in sight. The sky seemed exultant, so blue it almost hurt her eyes. They passed an open-air refectory as they walked, overflowing with chatter and the clink of cups and spoons. Several, grubby-looking children had clustered at one table, squabbling amongst themselves. One of them plucked a chunk of meat from another’s bowl, and a fight broke out. None of the acolytes serving food seemed to pay it any mind.

“Are they going to be alright?” Aliyah asked.

“Normal cutter stuff,” Kionah said with a careless flap of her hand. “Free soup at the end of the week. The temples spare what leftovers they can. In spring and summer, at least. Come on, we’ll find a coffeehouse. Maybe near the outskirts. Spawn incoming—might get a good view. Maybe ask again for Luxon while we’re at it.”

“A view?”

Kionah flashed a brief grin. “Oh, it’s a real showy affair. We’ll get a look at it. Hopefully.”

They took a long, articulated shuttlebus to the northern city outskirts, where colourful crowds gathered. The abundance of mage-chariots seemed thicker here, a long procession of gleaming metal clanking its way through the middle of the street.

The buildings began to thin out, leaving only an empty square. She recognised a corner of the spawn market, some distance to the west. Ahead of them, a long, armoured building loomed, rising some forty feet into the air. It was formed from dark, glassy plates and shaped like a shallow crescent, outwardly bowed toward the horizon. The way it overlooked the northern surrounds reminded her of a section of Shadowsong’s outer wall. Glisterian citizens swarmed at the upper levels, and an abundance of faeries hovered in the skies above. There were, a little disconcertingly, plenty of witches too. Small crowds of spectators had formed alongside the base of the building, and a mixture of faeries and witches seemed to be in the business of herding them away.

Kionah ignored the looming building, instead swerving around the perimeter of the open area. They walked down another few streets—Aliyah used her magic to soothe her aching muscles—before coming across a coffeehouse painted in orange and lime-green, some three stories tall. The crowds had thinned here, but they still had to shoulder past a steady stream of citygoers to get inside.

“Rooftop’s full,” the proprietor said, arching an eyebrow at the silver crown Kionah slid over the counter. He had a purple chimera-creature draped around his neck like a scarf. It opened one sleepy golden eye at their arrival, then closed it again.

“Third floor, then. Table with a view and two cold teas?” She added a handful of coppers at the proprietor’s faint frown. “I’ll have an eojube slice, too.”

He leaned over to hand her a little plinth with a number on it. The chimera snuffled in protest, adjusting its coils around his shoulder. “Here. Table six. Eat your meal, have your gander and get out, unless you’re wanting to buy more.”

“Could you grab that for me?” Kionah asked, and made to pick up her baskets from the floor.

Aliyah obliged. The proprietor sighed at them, before busying himself with a kettle.

They clattered up a battered wooden staircase and emerged onto an open area built from sun-bleached boards and large, glassless windows, all unshuttered. There was a creaking contraption bolted to the high ceiling, engraved with runes and shaped like a wheel laid on its side. It spun the air in lazy circles, alleviating a fraction of the rising heat. Customers lounged all along the north wall, some holding spyglasses. Discordant conversation floated down from the rooftop above. Kionah found table six, squashed into a corner. Aliyah set down the plinth declaring them the temporary patrons. They shrugged off their stifling coats and Aliyah looked to the horizon.

Beyond the chunk of armoured building blocking the view was a sweep of subtly rising plain, dry earth and scraggy grasses swaying in the wind. The distance shimmered with mirage-water.

“No farmland?” she asked aloud.

Kionah rested her elbows on the table and propped her chin in her hands. “No. The Hive’s up that way, because most of the spawn comes from up there. They usually catch them before they even come in sight. But this one’ll be big enough to see.”

Aliyah squinted. The plain was sloped, the horizon bumpy with its crest. If the Hive was out there, it must be on the other side of that mile-wide hill.

“We don’t have the greatest view from here,” Kionah said, nodding to the armoured building. “That’s saved for the properly paying folk. But look there, we might catch some of the action yet.”

A clump of airborne faeries hovered to the north-east, the colours of their chitin forming specks. The gathering specks formed a shimmering cloud. When Aliyah sharpened her vision, she saw witches too—maybe spire ones, maybe not. Probably not.

A harried-looking serving boy arrived with their drinks and Kionah’s dessert, there and gone in an instant. Kionah nudged one of the glasses over to Aliyah.

“So,” she said, glancing around. There weren’t many other patrons nearby—most had snuck upstairs or gathered at the northmost window—but she lowered her voice nonetheless. “About the spire people.”

Aliyah took a sip of her tea to calm herself. “What about them?”

“Maia knows that you’re a Healer. Too obvious with the false-Magician, I suppose. That job I did for her was a favour to keep quiet. Don’t know when she’ll say anything about it, but it’s best if we get a move-on.”

Aliyah took another long drink. “Okay. I’ve got a question for you.”

Kionah’s gaze sharpened. She dug her fork into her dessert without so much as glancing at it. “Yes?”

“Who is it? Who do you need me to heal so badly, that you’re still helping me?”

Kionah had brought her forkful of eojube slice to her mouth, lips parted to close around it. She frowned, setting the fork back down. “I’m not sure what—”

“You’ve helped me all this time,” Aliyah pointed out. “You’ve brought me food, you’ve paid for Luxon’s help, you’ve guided me around this labyrinth of a city, and you’re still here even though I’ve admitted to killing someone on accident. You must want something very badly. This isn’t kingdom court—it’ll be easier for the both of us if you just tell me. I’ll help, okay? If you help me.”

She wasn’t sure how to reassure Kionah of the efficacy of her help without unraveling her cover story, but the fact that she was sitting here, with this drink in her hand, seemed to count for a lot.

“It isn’t court,” she repeated, when Kionah didn’t reply. “Really. You can ask, even if you think it’s too much.”

“Alright,” Kionah said. She took a deep breath, looking a shade more rattled than Aliyah would’ve guessed. “It’s my mother. Sort of.”

Family relation. Made sense. There was always something, always someone.

“Is it complicated?” She suspected it was. “You know I can’t fix kidney failure or anything like that.”

“I know. You remember when I asked you about draining your magic dry too many times?”

“Oh. Something about teeth rotting, scar tissue coming loose?” She frowned. “I can fix the wounds themselves, but if it’s done something to her bodily equilibrium…I don’t think I have enough magic to shift the whole equilibrium back. Unless you can get your hands on enough magic…” A thought occurred to her. “You know Shasta can collect magic from other people, right? From, um. Donations? Have you tried replenishing her with enough of that?”

“He’s tried. Didn’t work.” There was a sharpness about her tone that didn’t invite further discussion. Aliyah inferred that it had gone badly.

She hesitated, then met Kionah’s gaze square on. “Okay. Then I’ll…‘be level with you’, as you say. I was only an apprenticeling back in the kingdom. I haven’t seen anything like this before. I can’t promise I can fix her equilibrium, but I’ll do what I can for the physical side of things. Just know that it could revert and if it does, there won’t be much more I can do.”

Unless she stayed by Kionah’s mother’s side every hour of every day, but she’d heard whispered tales of siphoners and she wasn’t going to present that as an idea, let alone an option.

“Reversion’s fine. It’s what some of it’d do without your help anyway—just doesn’t get a chance to. You should know that there’s…more.” Kionah trailed off, gaze going unfocused as she turned her head to face the window. “Oh, look. Spawn. Hah. Topical.”

There was movement on the horizon. A cluster of faeries peeled through the air, clumped like an arrow. Aliyah stared and sharpened her vision, pushing away blood-slurry headache.

The Behemoth spawn was a huge, faceless thing. It wasn’t quite as big as the skeleton-oasis they’d emerged from, but it was far larger than anything she’d seen at the market—perhaps taller than a dozen men. Skittering legs with too many joints, a translucent membrane stretched around blackened bones, shadows of organs nestled within. It was large enough that she could make out those details with her bettered sight, could discern the swollen feelers and swordlike quills that hovered above it in a glittering ring. The creature clicked its way in from the horizon with remarkable swiftness, and faeries dove with arrows and spears and spellfire at the ready. The witches didn’t move, much. They hovered in formations some distance off, sending out the occasional spell.

It was an interesting sight, but spellcaster’s headache threatened to encroach upon her temples. She let go of her magic and lapsed back to normal sight. The horizon-fight was still visible, but not as clear—blurry silhouettes interspersed with sparks of spell-light.

“We were talking about your mother?” Aliyah asked, confused. She rubbed at her forehead.

“The spawn are key,” Kionah said slowly. “Or rather, the magic that comes out of them. People use it to make—I don’t know, they call it a lot of names, depending on the refinement and…ugh, we don’t need to get into that. Spawnblood, basically. It’s a drug, I suppose you could say. My mother took it. Takes it. She says it helps with the having lost too much magic, but there are other side-effects. It’s been years.”

“What are the side effects, specifically? I can’t fix brains. She wouldn’t, um. I wouldn’t kill her, but brain damage can be unpredictable so I don’t think you’d want that.”

“Yes,” Kionah said uncomfortably. “Look, it’s fine. Even fixing the superficial stuff…I went to see her when I fetched our luggage. It’s…skin, bruises, that sort of thing. Her teeth, maybe, but I think that’s mostly from the magic-loss thing. She doesn’t eat or sleep much, says her joints hurt. Sometimes she sees things that aren’t there. It’s been years, so she’s been…it’s been getting worse, but slowly. I don’t expect you to save her, but the side-effects don’t help and the kids need her functioning until I can—until someone figures something out. I just thought, if you could improve her health a bit, give her another few years…”

“Okay. If it’s just sores or infections from the drug, I can do that. It’s nothing to do with autoimmunity, right?” At Kionah’s hesitant nod, her thoughts leaped ahead. Theoretically, she knew how to manage withdrawal, even if she wasn’t going to try forcibly purging the brain of tolerance and dependence and risk mangling the basal ganglia. Then she reigned herself in, remembering all your old wounds start to unravel. “But if this drug’s keeping her healthier than she might otherwise be, I can’t promise I’ll be able to get her off it. Fixing equilibrium might be too risky. It’d just be…maintenance.”

Kionah shook her head. “Like I said, it’s fine. It’s not even really about her. I mean, it’d be nice. But it’s been years. We’re not close. It’s just…” She shifted in her seat. “It’s also—sorry, I know this is a lot of ‘alsos’. But she’s got all these kids working for her. Purse cutters, you know? Urchins. They’re all in this great big fucked-up rookery together and I…” She trailed off, biting her lip. She wouldn’t meet Aliyah’s gaze, either. “I can’t stop them, but not everyone’s a lost cause. I know you can’t heal too many and have people find out, but if I blindfold…no, if I knock ‘em out and bring them in one by one…? Could you, maybe, get through a couple dozen or so?”

“I can try. It’ll depend on how bad it is.” She wondered how bad it had been, for Kionah and for the six siblings who hadn’t made it. “But about that ‘knocking out’. Blows to the head are—”

“I know. Figure of speech. I’ll buy some light sedatives off Luxon—you can make sure they’re properly asleep, right?” She pushed at her dessert with her fork, cutting it into pieces and moving it around the plate. “In exchange…well, I don’t know if or when Maia’ll squeal. She owes me for getting her and Hortensia out of there, but that’s nothing solid and we can’t be too careful. Mother probably still has a few hideouts on the underside. I’ll ask.”

“Thank you for the offer. But like you said, I don’t want those spire people realising there’s a fleshcrafter around. How are you going to explain a bunch of kids all magically healed?”

“A ritual,” Kionah said, sounding entirely serious. “The result of something miraculous. Trust me, I grew up with kids like these. A few props to see when they wake and they’ll spin tales, believe anything—it’s not like you leave evidence, right?”

“Really?” She felt doubtful. People could be superstitious without being as stupid or as gullible as one might assume.

“Really. It’s what they believe in once they’ve got nothing else. Whispers and omens. For every kid who dies trying to ride a spire-line, there’s ten more who think it’ll give them wings.”

“Well, if you’re sure. Thank you, again.”

“Mm. Though I must add, it depends on where we’re doing this. If those faeries of yours show up, I don’t want them near the kids.”

Aliyah blinked. “If they come, I’ll—I mean, I’ll lead them away. As part of the plan.”

“Your plan, huh? It sounded a bit better when you had Luxon next to you. Not much, mind, but a bit.”

“Yes,” she conceded. “But it’s me they want, not your mother or her orphans. Look, I’m not going to ask you to fight that Saiphenora mage for me again or anything. But you helped, with the shielding. I could be better at that—a lot better. You’re good at noticing illusions, too.”

“I’m not much of a teacher. And the illusion thing is what happens when you spend too much time dealing with Maia. I could tell you about the sort of…the skeins and the layers and all that crap, but that’s my way of sensing without thinking. I’m not sure it’d work for you, without so much practice.”

“You think it’s like learning Healer stuff? Like you need something…extra, to start seeing it?”

“Maybe. Something like that.”

“We could trade,” Aliyah said doubtfully. “I could…try to teach you sewing? Needles? I’d try to show you healing, but it didn’t work with Rana, so…”

“Hmm. It’s alright. Not all of us are so lucky, Aliyah. I’d rather trust you to do it yourself.” She fell silent and dug into her dessert.

Lucky? She thought she’d explained this already: the Library, the pain, the almost-branding and banishment. Not that she’d trade it for what she knew of Kionah’s youth, but still…Aliyah hid her frown and glanced out the window. Far on the horizon, the Behemoth spawn flagged and stumbled, legs crumpling under its own weight. Distant spears of spell-light intensified, growing thicker with each passing second, until the horizon seemed to flash with hundreds of meteors. The volleys flared with every colour under the sun before equalising to ice-blues and green-golds. It backlit hundreds of tiny silhouettes—witches and faeries and spears flying into the thing’s body.

A barrage of faint booms traveled in across the plain. Several silhouettes sent up a shower of green flares. Whoops erupted overhead, shouts and cheers blanketing the rooftop. Aliyah watched as the creature swayed and toppled, falling to its final end beneath the sweating summer sky.