Aliyah

Aliyah lapsed into a light doze. The cavern lights looked soft and soothing from this far up, almost hypnotic to her tired eyes. She startled back to full awareness as Kionah tapped her shoulder.

“Not far off,” Kionah said. “Stick close, yeah?”

This section of the Undercity was even gloomier-looking than Crow Ear territory, with only faint patches of glowing moss to mark the way. Ramshackle stacks loomed and grew denser the further they walked; Aliyah had the sense that they were delving deeper into whatever oily district this entailed, approaching the core. Urchins scuttled on swaying rope bridges overhead. Shapes moved in the shadows of alleys. Lamps were few and far between; the residents seemed used to living in near-darkness.

Kionah walked with her chin up and shoulders straight, like she had nothing to fear. There were, Aliyah supposed, no witches or forayers here. But glinting eyes followed their progress. Whispers fluttered and echoed, masked by the drip of water and the distant clanking of metal, threads of sound emanating from what seemed like everywhere and nowhere. Aliyah prepared a shield at the forefront of her thoughts despite her exhaustion.

It was almost predictable, that they were stopped. A stone hit the ground at their feet, clacking as it bounced over the chipped cobbles. Kionah looked up unerringly and Aliyah followed her gaze.

A trio of children perched on a rooftop, half-hidden by a crumbling chimney. One of them held a sling in hand, already replacing the stone she’d sent at them.

“You’re not meant to be here,” the one to the left of the slinger said. He sounded equal parts bored and disdainful.

“I’m here to see Elena,” Kionah said. “And if you’re too green to know me, then Kalen’ll vouch.”

There was a pause as the three urchins bent their heads together, speaking in hushed whispers. Aliyah strained her hearing, but the strings of words they used made little sense: stinger and ken and jukrum. Some sort of cant or code.

At last, one of them called out. “Kalen was gotten way back in the spring, missus. City Watch hauled him off and if you knew him you’d know it!”

“I’ve been away for a long while,” Kionah shot back, frowning, and listed off a handful of other names. “Go on, fetch someone. I’ll wait.”

The urchins held another swift conference amongst themselves, before one peeled away and bounded over the rooftops. Kionah sighed, setting her baskets down to stretch her arms. Aliyah glanced at the nearby alley mouth, piercing the shadows with flashes of modified sight, and spotted no obvious ambush—just figures passing in the shadows, laden with parcels and packages.

She leaned in close enough to whisper. “These are your mother’s…employees?”

“You could say so.” Kionah gave a grim, fleeting smile and didn’t lower her own voice. “You can feed a kid on what’d starve a grown man. Once the kid’s old enough to need more than you can give, it’ll either leave or die, and there’s no shortage of more to take its place. You hear that, girl? Make friends and plans. There’s always less time than you think.”

The girl with the sling didn’t reply, but her companion made a rude gesture down at them. They settled in to wait under the pair of watchful eyes. It wasn’t long before the departed urchin was back, with a cloaked companion in tow.

“Kelliver,” Kionah said by way of greeting. There wasn’t anything unfriendly about her tone, but she didn’t sound particularly enthused either.

“Name the place we swapped a lady’s purse for wharf rope and hardtack,” he replied from under the hood of his cloak.

“Pearl tavern. And it was wheat flour, not hardtack.”

He threw back his cloak, revealing a pale, pinched face and a nose that looked to have been broken at least twice. “Sadrava. Where were you?” At the word ‘Sadrava’, the urchin accompanying him gave a start. The trio nudged elbows, whispered amongst themselves, and scampered back onto their rooftop postings.

Kionah snorted, scooping up her baskets. “Let me guess, people running their mouths saying I died? Lead on, I’m here to see mother.”

“She’s occupied. Weaving.”

“Borrow us a room until morning, then.”

He sighed. “Best I can do is one of the lodge roofs.”

“We’ll take it.”

“Won’t be comfortable.”

“I’ll be out of your hair in no time,” she replied.

Kelliver eyed her baskets suspiciously, but made no further remarks. Gathering his cloak about his shoulders, he motioned for them to follow.

===

Aliyah rubbed her shoulder surreptitiously.

The attic Kelliver had shown them had been bare and dusty, without so much as a spare blanket to layer over the wooden floor. Magic could purge the soreness from her muscles, but it did less for the irritation pulsing in her thoughts. She brushed a lingering patch of dust off her sleeve and quickened her pace to keep up with the other two.

The route to Kionah’s mother wound past crowds of spying eyes. This was, as far as Aliyah could tell, the territory of those without many ways to make a living. Sallow residents peered out of windows and hurried past in droves; Kionah walked the same as Kelliver, but her appearance was at odds with this cramped, hidden corner of the city. Aliyah couldn’t put a finger to it at first—Kionah’s outfit was just as fraying as the hordes of greying urchins—before realising it was her health. The tanned skin and glossy hair couldn’t be bought, unless it was with illusion.

Urchins stared with hungry eyes. One raised a hand in a gesture of recognition, which Kionah returned. Was Kionah the Cornelius to their Kionah? Aliyah mused. She held her shielding cast in mind, but the crowds were thin and everyone—even other adults—seemed to walk skittishly, keeping careful distance.

They clattered up stone steps and past layers of concentric stone walls, all of which were crumbling, before arriving at some sort of compound. It was half-fortress, half-hovel. It looked as if a dozen different buildings had been cobbled together. Rope bridges gave way to overgrowths of moss, in turn melting into makeshift ledges linking the jumble together; square windows opened above round ones, and a brick tower peeked out from wooden foundations.

The inside was worse. The smell of mould and damp tinged the air, and what lamps hung from the creaking ceiling were few and far between. Every so often, they’d pass through a courtyard or corridor where an urchin—they were all urchins in here, tight-mouthed and underfed—would glance them over and let them pass. It seemed an age before they came to a stop before a battered door. Kelliver gestured at the handle and turned away. There were no guards posted.

Kionah nudged the door open a crack and hesitated. “She may be in a mood, you understand.”

Aliyah eyed the musty darkness beyond. “That’s alright.”

She’d spent enough years being shouted at by fussy highborns and gossiped about by sly peers for simple words to trouble her. A different worry lurked in her thoughts: the severity of the injuries, any microvascular complications, anything that required drastic action…she didn’t think she had it in her to amputate anything with Kionah right there, trusting her to be a Healer and yet horrified by her inevitable limits.

Kionah nodded unconvincingly. Aliyah followed before she could change her mind about it.

What light spilled in from the doorway wasn’t enough to see by. She squinted, straining her vision through the dark. The room was empty save for a large mound of cloth heaped against the far wall. She blinked, scanning the rest of the room and even the ceiling before the nest of blankets moved.

From its depths came a quiet, reedy whisper. “Shut the door. Shut it. You’re letting out the dark.”

Kionah cast a glance at her, inclining her head meaningfully. Aliyah closed the door and fed another dribble of magic into her night vision.

The voice snuffled. “Do I hear a-jingling? I told that boy to not bother us with trinkets.”

“Hello, mother,” Kionah said. She held up a bottle she’d brought along. The liquid sloshed, faintly phosphorescent against the backdrop of black. “I’ve brought you some dandelion milk. The fermented one that you like.”

The blankets shifted once more, and a pale, pockmarked hand lifted itself from the folds. Aliyah craned her neck, but she couldn’t make out anything else. Face, limbs, features—all seemed to be hidden under the cloth. The voice was muffled by it, even. “Now, now. Do my ears deceive me? Come, come. Come closer.”

Kionah approached the heap. “It’s me, mother. It’s Kionah. I’m back. I visited earlier. Do you remember?”

The blankets coughed. The hand reached out. “Kio…nah…? Which Kionah?”

Kionah shuddered, the movement almost imperceptible in the dark. “The first one.”

“Kionah…” the voice rasped. The hand shrank back into a crevice of blanket, fingers toying restlessly with a loose thread. “…Still around, after all. Still here. What have you brought me? When did you last come, hm? They’re all out to kill us, girl. The Kelliver boy can’t keep them all in line. The little worms are squirming! Running off! Running away. Just like you!”

Kionah held out the bottle. “Please, ma. I only want you to be well. Have you been well?”

“Ah, well. Well! How polite of you to ask after me.” The hand whisked the bottle out of the air, disappearing back into the blankets. “What a loyal daughter. The boy brings the thread and I weave—I weave the lace, for days and days. Days! You hear me?” The voice tightened into a warbling screech. “Ungrateful whelps. I give them wheat bread and new cheese and good, strong names and they would still gnaw the skin off my bones and use the bones for soup. Like worms, they—”

“I thought Kirrick was checking on you,” Kionah interrupted. “Has an apothecary been by lately?”

“That old quack?” There came a pause and the distinct sound of the bottle being uncorked. “Drunk and drowned in a canal. We’ll find another.”

“Is anything new hurting?”

Kionah’s mother gulped several mouthfuls and smacked her lips, the sound hissing with pained satisfaction. “Ahh. The shoulder, a little. From all the weaving. The little motions. You’ll understand, if you reach this age. Hah! Kionah, Kionah, my dear old daughter! Should you be so fortunate!” She laughed, and the sound dissolved into coughing.

“Let me see.”

Kionah pulled a segment of blanket back and hastily put it back down. Aliyah couldn’t see anything in the darkness and from her angle, but Kionah followed it up with a wince. If she concentrated, she could detect a trace of purulence that had seeped into the air.

“Have you been taking your…medicine as usual?”

“Yes, yes.” The sound of sucking teeth. “All the same. Have you got more?”

“Not at the moment, mother.”

“Ahhh. What do you think this little gift will buy you, then?”

“A gift’s a gift. But I came to ask for a spare room. Shan’t cost you.”

“Spare room? Just you? No. I heard footsteps. There’s someone else here, isn’t there? Sneaking, sneaking about.” Teeth clicked together, half-tutting and half-gnashing. “But you don’t get past me, oh no. These ears are sharp yet. Who is it? Not one of mine, to be sure. Say hello, stranger.”

Aliyah hesitated. “Hello, mistress Sadrava. Sorry, for any…rudeness. I’m just a friend. Passing by.”

A shrill, whispery laugh floated from the depths of the blankets. “Come to steal my secrets, have you? Nay, nay. The weave and the lace and the fine lasses who could not untangle it. Think you’re clever, eh? Mistress Sadrava…Mistress? Pah! Flattery! Think you can charm my patterns out from my belly? You’re just another worm in a different skin. Parchments and words and tongues you think so silver, why you’ve got the same stink about you as dear old Corneel, true bastard he was—”

“She’s one of mine,” Kionah interjected hastily. “And I’ve got no ambitions in this quarter. You know that, mother.”

“Ye—esss,” she enunciated with exaggerated care. “No usurping…I remember. So hungry to be a daughter of Crow Ear, without the good sense to reel in their son. But you always come crawling back to your true blood. Still hungry, still wanting. And you’ll eat my forgiveness like the rest of them.”

“I’m sorry,” Kionah said. “Truly, I’m in trouble this time. I didn’t want to bother you.” She sounded like she’d had practice at sounding like she meant it.

“No usurping. Always so hungry, so fast-fingered, but so predictable. Ah, Kionah, my Kionah-by-blood, my very first Kionah. Spirits take you if you’ve changed.”

There was a pause, and a long, slow, scrabbling sound, like nails tapping delicately over stone. The hand emerged with a key clutched between the fingers.

“The yellow shack. You were there, once. Perhaps.”

“Yes. I remember.”

“Can hardly be certain if I trust Crow Ear more than you, all these years. Not an usurper like some. You say you remember? Yes, I think you remember. You stand here because I say so, sweet daughter. You’ll drown in blood if you’ve come back to eat us.”

“It’s alright, mother.” Kionah sounded weary. “There’s nothing here I’d take.”

“Liar! Lies! All these days you keep begging. Vying for a place? I’ll not die for a year yet.” Her laugh slurred at the edges. “And you’ll follow me, won’t you? Sweet Kionah, we all rot in the end. It’s what you said when you were only little: ‘mother, I want to be just like you!’ You promised, didn’t you? Or are you a dirty liar like the rest of them?”

“No, no,” Kionah said soothingly. “Of course not. I’m here to help. I’ll ask Kirrick about your medicine.”

“Hmm. Mmm, very well. Bring me the materials when they arrive, Kionah. Or get the boy to do it…it makes no difference to me. I feel a vision coming on. Close the door when you leave…Kionah. Remember, you must close it…”

“Yes. I will.” Kionah lapsed into silence, just standing there in the dark.

Aliyah waited anxiously, wondering if the dandelion milk had been soporific enough. Was her mother going to kick them out? She started counting in her head. A minute passed, then two. The air trembled with a faint snore.

Kionah knelt and beckoned, peeling back a section of blanket. “Careful. Here.”

Aliyah crept over the creaking floorboards and touched a finger to the clammy wrist emerging from the gap. She pushed the body into false-sleep and sent her magic scouting, tracing over skin and veins and slowly-mottling organs. The mouth was ringed with sores and the eyes were infected, membranes leaking mucous. There were scabs over the arms and legs—hundreds of them. They formed where too much exogenous magic bruised through to the surface. Most of it circulated wildly through blood and lymph, turning every cell into an artificial reservoir.

Beyond that, she wasn’t sure how to unlink it from the body—wasn’t sure it was a good idea, either. It was as she’d suspected: Kionah’s mother was caught in a delicate balancing act of her unnatural wounds against an equilibrium that thought it should come undone. Finding what could be fixed without upsetting the balance wasn’t difficult, but she could tell it’d be time-consuming. She told Kionah so.

“That’s fine. We’ve got until afternoon before anyone’ll visit, if not more. Do what you can. I don’t expect you to, you know, make her perfect like the kingdom Healers.”

“Did they really?” she asked, delving tentatively into the first of the skin lesions. “Fix everything, I mean.”

“For Alhena? Most things, as far as I could tell. I’m sure she wasn’t born with that face.”

A long silence followed as she healed the lesion shut and waited to see if her work would unravel. The exogenous magic—the so-called spawnblood—accepted the changes without trouble, but she suspected it’d continue in its damage as soon as she left, rewriting the lesions over months, if not weeks. She healed the skin and moved on to assessing the infections, the scarred liver, the atrophied muscles. It didn’t take long for her to become immersed in her workflow, to create a list of priorities and assign them a risk level, to start on a task and cordon off the rest to wait. She was about halfway done when Kionah spoke up.

“How are you coming along?” Her tone was polite, restrained, faintly uneasy—Aliyah blinked into the darkness. It was a strange realisation, that Kionah couldn’t see what was happening the way she could.

“It’s working,” she said cautiously. “I’ve fixed up the skin. You can take a look, if you want.”

Kionah lifted a corner of the blanket and exhaled gently before setting it gently back down. “Thank you. That’s…well, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“It’s alright,” Aliyah said awkwardly, blinking back the start of a headache.

She set back to work as a silence descended once more, vaguely aware of Kionah taking a step closer to observe. The darkness crowded in on all sides, but it mattered less now. It was helpful, even. She felt anchored, elbow-deep in magic, and the darkness meant she wasn’t sure how many hours had passed by the time she was finished.

“It’s done,” she said, rising unsteadily to her feet. “I couldn’t fix the muscles properly, but she’s got enough to do whatever you said—weaving? Her hands were in better condition than the rest of her. More fruit and meat in her diet would be good. Less alcohol. I used magic to help, but the real nutrients would be better. And maybe, um…if she can, she should get out from under those blankets more often. It’s not good for her skin.”

“How much time?” Kionah murmured.

“I’m sorry?”

“How much time do you think she has left?”

She thought over her next words carefully. “If she continues like this? My fixes will hold for at least a few weeks, but because of the spawnblood combined with her environment…I really can’t say for certain. You said she’s been stable for a long time, but it’s not a healthy way to live. If she gets an infection, it’ll be much harder to fight off. She should be careful around other sick people and even more careful in winter.”

“I see,” Kionah said quietly, but Aliyah wasn’t sure she did.

She ushered Aliyah through the door and for a few moments, they stood silent and blinking at the suddenness of such meagre light. Kionah was first to break this new silence.

“Alright,” she said, shielding her eyes with a hand. “I’ll get in touch with Luxon, fetch us some supplies—for the urchins, and for you if you’re still set on rescuing your master. We’ll figure something out. Now, do you want some food? They say hunger is the best sauce, but I happen to think the four-spice special at Zenith’s is better.”

Aliyah gave a weak laugh. “Right. Um, I noticed the food bribery thing, you don’t have to—”

“Cheer up, I’m offering. You look like you’re going to pass out.”

She touched a hand to her temple. “I won’t. I know I won’t.”

“Still. Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes,” Aliyah agreed.