by Louisa Lo
A firefly-eagle, a creature with the body of an eagle and the glow of a firefly, cried overhead. I looked up, following its flight over the palace grounds to the snow-capped mountain just beyond the castle’s walls.
Then I spotted the predator’s target—a white mountain goat making its way up the face of a cliff. I tried to look away, but it was too late.
With momentum on its side, the firefly-eagle hurtled toward the hoofed animal, knocking it off balance. The poor goat fell from the cliff. It landed in the valley where the walls of the palace began, breaking its neck. The firefly-eagle picked up the fresh corpse and went on its way.
Dinner was served.
I shuddered. Though the same scene repeated itself on a frequent basis, it never made witnessing it any less disturbing. Many palace residents liked to make book on the firefly-eagle’s success rate, but I found the scene gruesome. In addition to the whole situation with Eldon, it was enough to make me want to crawl under the covers of my bed and not get up for a week.
I would dearly love to shirk my duties for the night, but I was hoping my work could provide some answers.
Mother had always said that working at the observatory was a gift, but I didn’t have that much faith in the statement. I wasn’t sure what teenage noblewomen from other realms were like, but in my world, they did not often work in an isolated section of the palace on the midnight shift.
But I was different; I was the awkward, never-quite-accepted daughter of Lord and Lady Sebille.
It wasn’t even the hard work that I minded, it was the growing conviction that whatever was going on in my life, working at the observatory was a part of it.
It was in the averted eyes I encountered from servants and nobles alike, the halted forward motion when they realized I was in the hallway heading to work, the slight lift of the corners of their mouths—or in some rare cases—the look of sympathy, hastily masked.
I could take the mockery, but it was the pity that unsettled me the most.
And being unsettled and frustrated was dangerous. Just look at the shameful way I’d behaved when that anxiety blossomed into anger.
I lowered my head and quickened my steps. Though the possibility of encountering anyone at this hour was slim, I didn’t want to take the chance. Not only because my emotions were still raw, but because in the midst of all that restlessness and unease, my heart sang.
It didn’t matter that Eldon wasn’t completely honest with me. It didn’t matter that just hours ago I was ready to cut ties with him once and for all. It didn’t even matter that I’d almost killed him. When he formed the chess pieces out of that energy orb and we settled into a game that kept our minds busy but our souls at peace, I knew that times like that would be no more.
My heart had been glowing, not because I was naïve and optimistic, but because I knew the moment would not last. I wanted to hold onto the warmth that had spread inside me for as long as I could.
My footsteps resounding in the deserted stone hallway, I could tell that I’d reached the east wing by the sudden dimness of my surroundings. Everywhere else, the countless drops of Molten Amber embedded in the walls grew bright to guide night travelers throughout the palace. It was what the Mirage Palace was famous for, and why the gems’ native plane had since gone barren from over-mining.
While the Mirage Palace was a structure of quartz and white marble that any self-respecting fae would deem magnificent, its east wing stood out by its very absence of grandeur and magic.
The east wing had no eternal fountains. No oasis of ever-blooming phoenix orchids. No unicorns grazing in its courtyard. In fact, there was no word to describe this part of the palace except “functional,” which was about the most indecent word one could employ in Dualsing. In this unfashionable part of the palace, the walls stayed dark; the passages had flat, low ceilings; and there was not even a single ornamental statue.
I turned a corner, passed a long row of plain wooden doors, and stopped in front of the last one. I opened the door and went up a long, narrow flight of stairs, aided only by a couple of weak, mounted oil lamps and a shaky set of handrails. Stale air and the burnt smell of animal fat assaulted my nose while the squeaky sound of the rickety stairs amplified in the quiet surrounding. At the top of the stairs was another door, and the observatory I was assigned to lay behind it. The whole place was designed to block any foreign light source that might be disruptive to the monitoring and recording business conducted inside.
I opened the door a crack and asked tentatively, “Mr. Lichen?”
“Come on in, m’lady,” a deep voice boomed.
I entered the observatory, closing the door behind me. Though I’d been coming here for almost a year now, I had never quite gotten over the sense of wonder when I entered the three-story structure. Eldon once told me that the human plane had structures that were similar to this called IMAX theaters, except they weren’t powered by magic, but technology.
In the hushed darkness, the only source of light was from the dome-shaped ceiling above. Mesmerizing bright lines, similar to the ones Eldon created for our chess games but in multiple colors, shaped and reshaped themselves into overlapping patterns on a backdrop of royal blue.
Mr. Lichen got up from the desk at the center of the room, gesturing toward the three heavy volumes he’d already pulled out for me. “Tonight it’s Eglantina-Six, Marigold-Twelve, and Oda-Four. Now that you’re here, I’ll be on my way.”
I nodded, knowing my mentor would have no trouble seeing my gesture despite the lack of light. After a lifetime of working here, he had developed an uncanny ability to see in the dark. I waited until the door closed behind him with a thump before letting out a shaky breath, though whether my reaction was due to the cool air or my assigned task, I knew not.
I reached the desk. “Alina, are you there?”
Alina, a pixie, zoomed in front of my face with an abundance of energy, her rapid-fire chatter even faster than the beating of her wings. She darted all over the place, doing spins and somersaults, then a mock dive bomb, the lantern in her hand threatening to go out with all the acrobatic moves.
“I-missed-you-how-have-you-been-has-it-really-been-a-day-since-you’ve-been-here-what-are-we-doing-tonight?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Slow down!”
Alina clutched her chest in an imitation of heart failure and took a few deep breaths. “I. Miss. You. How. Have. You. Been? Going. This. Slow. Is. Killing. Me.”
“Well, maybe not as slow as that,” I said dryly.
Taking that as a point of victory, Alina shot up a few feet and did another couple of somersaults with a loud, “Yay-I-am-wearing-you-down!” before settling down on the surface of the desk. She sat, the long-suffering lantern on its side next to her.
“So, how have you been?” she asked.
“Fine,” I lied. No way would I darken the little pixie’s mood with my own problems.
Alina didn’t look entirely convinced, but true to the nature of her kind, she couldn’t hold her suspicion, nor her attention, for long.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” she cried and flew into a half-opened drawer. She came back out hugging an enameled egg, its silver chain dangling off her feet. Her tiny arms could not even cover the entire circumference of the pendant, and the diamonds encrusted on its surface cut into her tender flesh.
I opened my palm and Alina dropped her offering into it right away, rubbing her skin.
“The Eye of Sebille,” she breathed. “As you wish.”
“Did they give you a hard time for retrieving it?”
“On the contrary, once my ma realized I was taking it to you, she was totally all right with it.”
Alina’s mother was pixie to one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. Whatever the reason, they really wanted that piece of jewelry on me.
Maybe wearing it would help me figure out why. In the absence of a lot of leads, one must explore all of them.
By the time I finished securing the clasp behind my neck, A
lina had moved on to examining the thick volumes stacked on the desk. Even standing, she wasn’t as tall as a single one of the books.
“So, new records to update tonight, huh?”
“Yeah. Let’s get right on it.” I pulled at the neckline of my dress, hoping to get comfortable with the heavy pendant between my breasts, knowing full well it was futile. Prolonged wearing of the necklace always gave me a migraine.
I opened the wide book with the word Eglantina on its spine, and by the faint lantern light, flipped the thick, yellowed paper until I reached section six. There were three tables there, one page each, titled using human Greek letters “Alpha,” “Beta,” and “Gamma.” Next to each name, glued onto the page, was a small, intricate, rope-knot charm constructed from a single strand of hair. The first two knots were blond while the third was obviously donated by a redhead.
My job was to update these tables with information gauged from the dome, though I wasn’t told much beyond that.
I thought I had a good idea though. I believed that Alpha, Beta, and Gamma were individuals I was assigned to track—the hair charms certainly seemed to support that theory—and Eglantina-Six was codename for the plane where they were located. Then after I was done with Eglantina-Six, it was onto Marigold-Twelve and Oda-Four, each with their own set of tagged individuals.
In all the time I’d been here though, I’d never been asked to track the whereabouts of those on Eglantina-Six, until now.
I waved my hand at the illuminated patterns on the dome and said, “Show me Eglantina-Six.”
I had command over what was projected on the dome not through fae magic, but human technologies Mr. Lichen imported then reconfigured with magic. Dualsing, despite its fantastic environment and otherworldly creatures, did not stay in the Medieval age as its palace suggested. Its citizens bragged that they took the best of every plane and made it their own.
Stolen goods and all.
The mass juxtaposition of patterns on the dome faded into the background until all but one remained, and another wave from me caused it to magnify. The pattern consisted of lines, circles, and rectangular shapes.
Alina’s face turned upward. “I think we’ve got mountains for this round, don’t you agree?”
Though Mr. Lichen refused to confirm that the patterns were three-dimensional geographic maps, there was no doubt in my mind that they were. In the past year I’d observed over a hundred patterns of layered contour lines, with markers indicating bodies of water and faemade structures.
Or not faemade structures, depended on what plane was actually being observed. So far, I’d seen worlds of water, underground mazes or castles in the sky. None of them were places we’d ever heard the adults discussing.
I’d always shared my speculations with Alina, but tonight some instinct urged me not to tell her my growing suspicion that what we had been working on at the observatory might tie back to the bigger mystery that was my life. I didn’t want to get the sweet pixie into trouble. So I made a noncommittal sound at her comment and bent my head to the book.
“What’s with you tonight?” Alina crossed her arms, pouting.
“I…eh…just want to get the job done and go home, that’s all. I’ve been tired.”
“I tried asking my ma about the patterns, you know,” she said slyly.
That got my attention. “What did she say?”
“She won’t tell me anything.” Alina rolled her eyes. “Just keeps promising that I’ll know when I get older.”
When I get older. Like how Eldon got older and knew. I wondered what it was that everyone seemed to know—everyone except the very young and me.
I wondered if my little friend would start avoiding me too, once she joined the club of knowledge in a few years.
Alina was determined to ignore my excuse for not wanting to talk. She swept her arm over her head, encompassing the entire dome. “We’re looking at some pretty strange mountains. Look how rectangular they all are, no matter how big or small. And those rock faces? They are sheer drops.”
For someone who grew up in Dualsing, a world comprised of such aesthetically unpleasing rectangular blocks was even less plausible than a castle in the sky.
I knew what those mountains were.
Human buildings.
While the people of Dualsing were quick to embrace the inventions of those non-magical folks, humans’ natural environment was not something they cared about or talked about. To Dualsingians, it mattered not what other planes were like, only what could be taken from them. I only knew what the human structures looked like because Eldon told me about them. Being disabled and at a disadvantage all his life, he had an interest in what many considered the weaker races.
“Let’s get to work,” I told Alina. “Talking is not going to get our job done any faster.”
“All right.” Alina sighed. “I’ll get it out of you later. For now I’ll keep quiet while you get the anchor ready.”
“Thank you.”
I closed my eyes and cleared my mind. Mr. Lichen had taught me the Reveal, a fae ability that could be learned even if one wasn’t born with the natural talent. The Reveal allowed me to see the true condition of something through the visualization of a solid anchor. The anchor didn’t have to be a physical object, but it had to have a personal meaning to the user.
An image of Eldon flew into my mind—his forehead wrinkled in contemplation as it had been just hours ago as he rolled a bishop between his fingers. It made me smile because whatever might come, it was a moment to be cherished. I focused my energy on that transparent bishop, on every line and curve that formed that chess piece.
With my anchor secured and my eyes squeezed shut, I fumbled at the pages of the text in front of me until I had one rope-knot charm pulsing under each palm. The redheaded knot lay beneath my left palm, its position in the text committed in my memory. I bridged the energies between the bishop and the rope knot charms. It mattered not that I wasn’t physically touching all three of them—not when my anchor was based on a memory so recent.
When I opened my eyes and I could still see the bishop, I knew that I’d gotten it. I withdrew my hands from the rope-knot charms.
Without a word, Alina blew out the candle inside her lantern, and I lifted my head and drew the bishop over the pattern on the dome in slow motion as if it were a paintbrush. As the Reveal passed over each section of the pattern, it would fade by a shade or two. And then suddenly the tip of the bishop found what it had been seeking—a spot on the pattern grew bright instead of dim, then another, then another.
By the time Alina gave light to the lantern again with a snap of her fingers, there were three glowing dots above us.
Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.
Dots like these had been in my dreams since I started at the observatory, their bright lights dancing and twinkling in my mind’s eye, their voices whispered of longing. Of not belonging. Like me.
I never told Eldon what I had been working on at the observatory, nor did I tell him about the dreams. Yet it was indeed the dreams that first got me thinking that those hair charms in the record books represented real people. I felt such an unexplainable connection with them, like we were kin somehow. Not kin like how all nobility were related in one way or another, but a deeper tie. Some shared destinies.
Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that I was the only one among my peers who was assigned to the observatory. Maybe I was given the job because there was something in me that made finding my charges easier.
Like recognized like.
And yes, I’d come to think of those whom the dots might be depicting as my charges.
Who are they? Why are they being tracked? Why is tracking them the only time I was ever taught non-talent-based magic?
Something suspicious was happening here.
The dots lit up yellow. That was a good sign, though Mr. Lichen never explained why that was so. If my theory was right, and the pattern was depicting a human city, then Alpha seemed to be on the ground le
vel between two structures, Beta was in a two-story house, and Gamma was pacing on top of a tall building.
Pulling out a jar of ink and a feather pen from the drawer under the table, I began carefully writing down the locations of the three dots on the record book and their relative positions to each other. The tables for Alpha and Beta were only half filled, while Gamma’s were onto the second-to-last line of the page. My next job was to compare the data to the last entry for the trio from three months ago, logged by Mr. Lichen himself, judging from the handwriting.
All three were within the parameters of their respective “home bases,” as directed by the record book, but Gamma was almost at the apex of the boundary due to the height of its current position.
I traced my fingertips over Gamma’s table. I looked up at the dome and stared at Gamma’s glow of light. There was something both fascinating and terrifying about it, more so than any of the other dots I’d encountered. I’d never worked on Eglantina-Six, and by extension, Gamma, before tonight. Yet it was like a forgotten dream, achingly familiar and frustratingly foreign.
I’d come to the observatory hoping for answers, but I was at a loss on how to proceed.
Then I felt the pendent grow hot, and the discomfort that came with wearing it blossomed into a sharp migraine.
And all hell broke loose.
Chapter Five
Eldon
“I SAW.”
The soft words coming from a figure leaning against the passage stopped me in my tracks. I was making my way to General Tok, who was staying at the guest residence. He was most likely already into the third bottle of fae wine and cursing my tardiness to Hell and back, but this was one delay I couldn’t afford to ignore.
Foster, the ne’er-do-well youngest son of a minor noble and an unapologetic gossipmonger, gestured me to move into a shadowy corner off the passage. I did so with deliberate slowness, making sure that no one saw us go in together. Being this close to the central square, there were plenty of fae milling around, chatting, laughing, and politically maneuvering in anticipation of Finny’s so-called celebration. Exotic perfume, worn by both women and men, aimed to beguile the senses of their intended target.