Nethe

The human child was squalling again, wet little mouth stretched wide open and skin flushed red with tempter. Nethe anxiously bounced it in her arms. It refused to be soothed. Of course it did, it was an infant human. The older ones were hardly more agreeable.

“Khalitas,” she cursed. It was hard to listen for pursuers over the horrible sounds of crying. She looked down at the child. “Hush. Don't you want to see your parents again?” She didn't recognize the flips her voice made into whatever tongue the child apparently knew, but, ugh, at least it had apparently learnt human speech. The situation could have been worse. “If you are not quiet, I will drown you in the river and your mother will not find your bones.”

Someone made a choked sound. There was an elbow in her back, and then Mira was taking the toddler away. At least it had been shocked silent- no, she amended. It was switching registers to hiccupping tears. She met Mira's disapproving brown eyes defiantly, and then looked away. She had made it quieter. She had succeeded.

“It shouldn't be much longer.” Mira was patting the little human's back, but she spoke to Nethe. “Go around to the front and see if the street is empty.” The human that Mira had been coddling was clinging to the older fairy's leg, because everyone always liked Mira. It had been that way since Nethe had came out of her egg and been told to listen to her sister.

Resentfully, Nethe went to do as she was told. This whole operation had her nerves stretched thin. She hated every part of this, hated that she had to get involved. It was dangerous. She did not want to do dangerous things, she wanted to go back to her games and dancing and flights of fancy. But here she was in the stone city's center on her way to the docks with contraband, when all good things ought to be sleeping.

No one was outside. She moved to slip back into the old temple- and the torchlights in the distance began to turn on. Nethe froze. One by one, blue lights fired into life. For a stretch of seconds, her heartbeat began to match the relentless advancement.

And then she remembered herself. Nethe turned and ran, fear overriding her cautious urge to blend into the dark. But her much-begrudged sense of moral conviction kept her from slinking into a cormorant's form and returning to her little cove. She at least needed to sound the warning.

Before she reached the stairs, she met a blue-eyed fairy whose name she had never remembered. His blonde hair was a wild mess. “Did you see-?”

She cut him off. “We are followed, we are found.” She grabbed his arms. “What do we do?” Panic pitched her voice high.

He shook her off and kicked at the ground. He bounded up to the railing above and leapt into the darkness where the rest of their little band must be. She took the stairs, because she was not foolish or strong enough to waste that magic when a fight might be at hand.

She already knew their options. They could flee, abandoning the humans they'd stolen. Or they could fight. And Nethe didn't particularly even want the damn things, someone else could have them and braid their fine hair and cover their little heads in shiny stones. They weren't even old enough to be interesting. It would be best to leave-

Mira passed her, walking down the stairs. She seemed mildly interested at best.

Confused, Nethe stopped.

“We are only spending the night here,” Mira said, sounding infuriatingly reasonable. “We are not trespassing. The lights awoke us. I shall see what has happened.”

Oh. She stared, turning to watch her sister approach the gates. Mira had… if she could pull that off, Nethe would never doubt her again.

The gate levered open with an angry creak. Nethe flinched, drawing her arms to her chest. Two fae spilled down the stairs behind her- that was all of them except one, the last must be trying to quiet the children. Perhaps singing a song of sleep.

She tried to look nearly as serene as Mira did. It was true, there was nothing outwardly suspicious about a band of friends resting in a temple.

“Who is there?” Mira called. Her footsteps echoed, deliberately loud. “Is something wrong?”

For a fae who only had 23 more years than Nethe's meager 30, Mira carried herself with bizarre serenity. They might do this. They might be able to pull this off.

Four figures stepped into the temple, wearing the dark blue of Inclusivists. “Good evening,” one said. Male. “We have heard noise complaints,” said another. Female, high, and friendly. “Is there a party?”

“Oh. I apologize. We thought no one was close enough to be disturbed by our merriment.” Mira sounded just the right mix of embarrassed and dignified.

The male voice laughed. “Preparing for the moon change?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mira said. Nethe could hear the smile in her voice. “We will go to the highlands for the dancing.”

“Lie,” the male voice said. It took a moment to register. It was just as cheerful and friendly as the words before. The disparity was odd.

“What?” Mira began to take a step back- and then she fell. There was a disgusting wet squelching sound.

Nethe registered these two facts as separate, confusing events. It took a second of horror for her to understand that they were connected.

The room exploded into movement. Someone screamed on the stairs behind her, and someone bounded past her into the room and met the authorities with a flash of light. She saw dark hair- ah, the youngling. They were flung with enough force to hit a pillar with a sickening crack.

Nethe fled into shadow, fear twisting her into near-invisibility. She didn't understand. Surely the humans were not worth this. Not worth this fight, not worth any death, why hadn't the authorities given them a chance to surrender the contraband? It wasn't fair.

“Try that new thing,” the male voice said, still pleasant. The tallest of the blue-clad authorities took a few steps forward and flung an arm out. The youngling skidded back towards her, head lolling behind on the floor.

Oh, no.

Nethe found that she was leaping across the room before she made a decision to do any such thing. Her hands ended in talons, glittering green and black. She wanted to stop the tall fae, but another quick-stepped in front of her, baring fangs.

Fangs?

What?

The sight filled her with a confused sort of revulsion. What need had they for fangs? She could hardly stand to look at it.

Nethe rent her claws down that face from the left eye until one talon hooked on the jawbone. She kicked into the stranger's gut- and could not dislodge her talons. He fell to the side and Nethe went down in a tangle with him. She screeched and struggled, flinging herself to her back and out in an attempt evade any blows while she was caught. None came, or at least none caught her.

She was at the right angle to see the tall fae toss back their long blonde hair, let out a laugh, and make a squeezing motion. White light cracked.

The youngling was suspended in the air, and then they weren't. They were simply gone.

'A banishment?' Cold fear shot down her spine. Who were they dealing with? Anyone who had the raw power to do that- fuck, they should have let them keep the damn humans as their pets. Terror gave her the strength to drag her talon against the dying fae's jawbone with enough force that it broke- her talon, not the jaw. The pain was terrible but she did not care. Nethe struggled backwards and upwards, beating her wings. She was a cormorant-

and she saw the room from above. She saw that the reason she had not died was that the Inclusivists had dispersed, more interested in finding the contraband than in dealing with the thieves. One was coming down the stairs, licking a bloody hand. His jaw was split open in a lazy wolf's smile. Predators. It didn't make sense, who were they?

No.

No, that wasn't the right question at all. Her gaze fixed on the peculiar color of the blood- red, with no glitter or color change when exposed to moonlight.

Nethe understood, in the last second. It was a matter of what they had done, not who they were.

Ah. They… they had never been likely to find the adult humans the small ones belonged to. And the Inclusivists could not let anyone who knew this live.

The screaming had woken others up- there were shouts from outside the temple. She had a moment of hope that someone might come and help, before some invisible force knocked her down. She hit the floor with a sickening bounce of soft tissues, back in a body with arms and legs and a tailbone that was not meant to take such force. Her instinct had her right back up, trying to flee. Something closed around her ankle before she could take wing.

She screamed and looked down. A familiar dark hand with blue nails was holding her in place. Mira wasn't dead. Her bloody mouth moved, her eyes were fixed on Nethe. But whatever she said was silent. It seemed important-

Pain held her. It felt like what she imagined it was to be struck by lightning. White light flashed- or perhaps that had happened first, and she had taken so long to register it.

And then she realized that the room was dark again, full of strange shadows. Why had the torches been put out? Still terrified and confused, Nethe burst back into her familiar feathers at a remarkable speed and went for the sky. She couldn't find it. She barely evaded a collision with a pillar- no, a wall. A wall? She banked hard. Why was there a wall there, the room had been much bigger and open to the sky-

She saw an opening and dove for it. At the very last second she caught sight of a glint-a glint of what, a glint of something. Nethe tried to stop before she hit the forcefield, but it was too late. She burst through it with a terrible crack, but the true cacophony came as the whole invisible wall collapsed. It shattered into thousands of pieces. A high-pitched scream rent the air- from where? From who? She didn't see anyone. Nethe beat her wings, terrified and confused and desperate to reach the safety of the sky.

XX

It was impossible to gauge how long it had taken her to escape the enclosure. It was a wheeling mess of white halls, shining barriers, and red lights. It was no place for a cormorant. She wanted to go back to her little stream and hide in the grasses until this nightmare passed. Nethe found the tallest grass possible to hide in, but it was coarse and smelled unfamiliar.

She huddled into her feathers, shuddering. The night air was colder than she remembered. And there was the unpleasant stretching, crackling feeling along her wing joint that told her she had been cut at some point and the blood had dried out.

That was going to be a mess to clean up. She couldn't reach that properly. She'd have to have her sister- her sister-

She screamed in grief and fear.

A bird's throat wasn't made for that, but she did it anyway, until it was hoarse and she was tired. Exhausted and cold and crackling with her own blood, she huddled until the sun came up and she could see where that banishment had sent her.

When the sun came up, she wished that it hadn't.

Weak yellow light came over what was clearly a city. But it was nothing like any city that she knew. It was not built of sparkling stones or mossy knolls. There was no central palace as far as she could see. It was…

Oppressively angular, she decided. The streets stretched out in long, straight lines as far as her eyes could see. They met at perfect angles with a second set of streets. The buildings were impudently tall, with the same oppressive regularity of shape and -windows, those forcefields were meant as windows, she belatedly realized. Not traps. How mundane. She ruffled her feathers, perturbed. No one must learn that she had been thwarted by windows.

At first, she thought that the place was frightfully underpopulated. The morning sun was at the optimal placement, halfway into view, and yet the streets showed only a trickle of movement. There should have been laughter and sunning and trips to bathe in good sweet rivers, but instead a few dour souls trundled up and down the streets.

She heard bird's voices and went to seek them out. She didn't recognize the souls that she found, nor did they answer her. They were… so small, with beautiful bright bellies and gray wings. They cooed, fluttered, and hopped in the morning light.

She pitched her voice to theirs, trying to find their language. It was one of her gifts, she must be able to do it, but they did not respond to her. All she garnered was a few disinterested looks and a few moment's attention from one benignly kind soul who attempted to smooth her feathers.

Eventually, heartsick and lost, she gave up on them and flapped her way to a high point to watch the city move. She found a body of water, though it was hard to say if it was an ocean or a large lake.

Nethe was not quite brave enough to approach the people walking about, but one surprised her by walking onto the rooftop where she perched. Struck still by her caution, she watched him.

He startled when he saw her, and said something that had to be a curse. She tuned her ears to his words-

“Great bloody bird, probably going to shit on the radiator.”

Offended, she sat up straight. She certainly was not. She might shit on him, however, except that it would prove her to be the rude guest.

The human gave her a mistrustful look and went to open some kind of metal panel. From her angle, she could not see what he was doing.

That did not interest her much. The crucial thing was that she now knew where she was. Sort of.

'This is where the humans came from?'

The longer she watched, the less sense it made to her. More and more of them flooded out into the world, in dark colors and clothes that covered almost all of their parts. They all seemed to have destinations and plans and be at peace with them, if not pleased. It was completely foreign to her, but it was clearly an example of what humans did when left to their own devices, so it must be what they liked.

What had possessed them to leave this place?

Irritated, she wheeled around the sky to glare down at them. She knew that she really ought to find some clean water and bathe her wounds, but her adrenaline must have been blinding her to the pain.

If they were perfectly content here, they should have stayed here. She had thought- there must have been some desperate circumstance that drove them to where they were clearly unwanted. Even the friendliest of fae had not been willing to accept more than that some humans might adapt to live among them.

..and some of them, clearly, had been doing that because they wanted to know what humans tasted like. If Nethe had possessed a nose at the moment, she would have wrinkled it. What a foul notion. It was unnatural. Anything intelligent enough for speech was not for eating, no matter how curious you were. Eating was quite fun, and Nethe had enjoyed both times that she had tried it. But it was not necessary. There was no excuse for that kind of greed...

Oh. Oh, oh, oh. She had a spark of realization. It had not been about taste.

Food had power, as much as age did. If eating sun-ripened berries could make a fae quick or strong, what might the flesh of another intelligent being do? And a sudden source of unwary humans must have been tempting, as much as the general ignorance and apathy of fae towards the newcomers had concealed the crime.

Well. She turned her face to the sun and wished that it was hotter. At least Mira had been right, about everything. Right to act, although it must have been far too late. How long had that been happening? Months?

Whatever had been drawing the humans to her island, it didn't matter anymore. If she could dissuade them from going, of course she would, but they were stubborn.

...And although she did have some pride as a fae, it might be better not to let on that she was anything other than human. If rude people had been eating humans, then the humans might be unfriendly to her.

It was a hard thing for such a young fae to decide to be responsible, and she bitterly resented it. But someone should probably report this to the queen, and unfortunately, she was the someone who knew about the problem. At least for consolation, there were a few fae who Nethe would quite like to see fed to Maeve's pets. Were she stronger or a bit more bloody-minded, she would try to hunt them herself, as was proper.

Justice would have to suffice where vengeance was warranted.

She flapped her wings to get off the ground, resigned to flying until she found an open window so that she might steal some drab human clothing to disguise herself. Ugh. She hated being a good citizen.