Aether's Pawn: Indigo Steelquill, #1

By Gabrielle Harbowy

Indigo Steelquill -- Quills -- left her native realm a thousand years ago and hasn't looked back. A jinn, an inker in the long and magical tradition of her kind, she enjoys the simplicity of life as a tattoo artist in modern-day London. Content to quietly explore the alchemical and magical properties of her ink, she doesn't want anything to do with the local jinn. But her talents make her too useful a tool to be left alone.

 

When a notorious jinn overlord is murdered, all signs point to the leader of a rival faction. But that leader claims innocence, and knows that someone else has access to her signature powers: Quills, the inker who takes blood and magical essence in payment for her magic-enhanced tattoos. So if she didn't do it, then who?

Quills' chase for answers leads her across much of England and into the company of an astute human named Amy Jane (whom she's definitely NOT falling for). Meanwhile, the murdered jinn's followers are out for retribution. She only has five days to find the killer and clear her client's name, or she'll be the one set up to take the fall.

 

"[Harbowy's] ability to create realistic portrayals of otherworldly lives is astounding." - Lambda Literary

 

Harbowy writes with the precision of an editor, and the sensibility and passion of a writer." - Leah Petersen, author of "The Physics of Falling" series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dragon Moon Press
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781774000465

Book preview

Dedication

For my beloved friends from the turn-of-the-century London Goth community. We’ll always have the Purple Turtle, the Dev, and the Elsinore.

Chapter 1

No one with a pound of sense would think to startle a tattooist in the act, but I already knew that Tehru’s lackeys didn’t have a tuppence-worth between them. I was glad, not for the first time, for the subtle warning of the alarm that flashed silently at my feet and drew my attention to the small security monitor. I hadn’t inked an unintended line on a body in all my years, and that was a boast I was determined to keep rights to.

A tap of my boot turned off the warning light; a second tap triggered the lock and wards on my studio door. The two muscle-thick jinn in their matching Armani suits could cool their heels in my waiting room until I was done. My client had paid to get a butterfly inked on her arse, not to have it ogled.

Someone’s about to try the door, I warned her. Just so you don’t startle.

A few moments later when the handle rattled, I was already back to work.

Oi, Miss Quills! More rattling. As if my name were some sort of password that would clear the locks.

Shove off, I called. I’m working.

Tehru sent us.

I don’t care if you’re here on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen, you can wait your fucking turn.

Pounding now, at the door, even though I’d already proven I’d heard them by answering back. Tehru doesn’t like to be kept waiting, Quills.

Such a shame, that.

The client, a blonde little human in a red scrap of a thong and a dress currently hiked up to her waist, lifted her head. If it’s urgent…

I laid my hand lightly on the back of her thigh. It soothes humans, that small touch that tells them where you are. Urgent to them, not to us. I apologise for the interruption. So…on holiday, you were saying? Where’ve you been so far?

Getting clients talking makes them forget their nerves, at least for a little while. The rattling and shouting continued, but I paid it no mind. Eventually they grew weary and settled down to sullen silence. One was pacing, a glance at the monitor told me, while the other had taken a seat and was flipping through an old magazine.

The client’s slender glutes relaxed once the noise stopped, making my job easier. I did wonder what Tehru wanted, but my next half hour had been claimed for a watercolour butterfly, and I don’t shirk out on a client, even a human one. An inker who violates her own rules finds herself without customers, without money, and with an angry mob close on her tail.

Literally, even, since I have one.

While the client told me about St. Paul’s Cathedral and how far in advance she’d booked tickets for the London Eye, I wiped away blood and ink, drawing them into myself. I dipped my needle and started filling the lower bits of the wings.

Watercolours were in vogue, and though they weren’t my specialty I appreciated the glimpse of brightness. It had been black and grey work all day, almost without exception. Feathers turning into flocks of birds; gothic calligraphy; black roses, hearts, skulls, and infinity symbols.

Time to rinse out and change colour, blending red to purple. Nearly done, I told her. You’re a star. You’re doing great. Her muscles flexed faintly, and she responded with a little mew of acknowledgement. It was her first ink, and first-time nerves are their own thing entirely. At least she wasn’t one of the weak-stomached humans. In the old days, back among my own kind, cleaning up vomit had never been part of the job.

I glanced down again, catching a ghost of my reflection in the monitor. Once butterfly girl was gone and I was ready to face Tehru’s boys, my appearance would be rather different, but whilst working with humans, I preferred to look human: dark brown skin swirled with void black ink, black braids, ripped jeans, thick-soled boots polished to a shine. The best way to stay invisible was to give people the experience they expect. Though I didn’t give a dry fuck what others of my race thought of me, at the moment I was rather content with my position in the human world, and looking forward to having another decade or two with it before I had to move on.

As I tidied up, I thought about asking the client if she wanted anything else, just to keep them waiting longer. But I had already proven my dominance and I wouldn’t be able to delay forever. Might as well see what the Underboss of London wanted with me.

The cool interior of the limousine smelled like stale wine and wilted perfume, but a quick peek about in the ultraviolet spectrum showed nothing untoward on the velvet seats.

Go on then, Quills. It ain’t gonna bite you.

No, but neither are you. I tossed my braids. They were tipped with pointed metal beads, just a few of them. Enough to give a nice scratch to anyone thinking to enter my personal space without my say-so.

The thug couldn’t do anything to me without Tehru’s permission, which I knew he didn’t have since he hadn’t broken down my door when I’d made him cool his heels. I considered the car a little longer than I needed to, just to make him sigh and run his meaty hands through his hair. A third companion was already in the driver’s seat, thumb tapping the wheel in time with some song I couldn’t hear.

The goons climbed in after me and shut the door, surrounding us with the protection of tinted glass. I shaped myself into my preferred form under my clothes, losing the boots to hooves but keeping the rest. This was a situation in which I took comfort from being the most intimidating creature present.

What’s your name, friend? I asked the chatty one, my white teeth gleaming through full black lips. He flinched, and I felt a surge of pleasure from it.

Suresh.

I settled back on the velvet, shifting my short fleshy tail out of the way and crossing my legs, letting one hoof dangle.

Jinn are incorporeal by nature, and when we show ourselves, we can do so in any form that pleases us. The form that pleased me most was that of a horned faun. In the literature, human lore may have its share of prominent satyrs, but female fauns are conspicuously absent. Still, I appreciate the form for its beauty, and I fancy it because I consider the mythology that surrounds satyrs to have value as a cautionary tale: When you let your hungers own you, you get careless about everything else and you start showing up in the broadsheets of the day. Whether you’re jinn, human, or whatever.

What’s she want with me, Suresh?

The hulking brute shifted uncomfortably against the bench seat. Not my business, is it?

Tehru was a client, but more importantly, she was at the head of a rather large contingent of jinn who believed themselves to be the superior species on the planet, and who delighted in controlling human affairs. And because she was my client, I knew her secrets. Her insecurities. The things that worried her enough to make her willing to give up some of her blood to me—the payment I require for my work—to shore up her personal defences with the magic of my ink. That meant I wasn’t coming into this meeting unarmed. I had my own safeguards against her strengths, and my weapons weren’t things that could be confiscated from me at the door.

Tehru had never summoned me like this—that is, without preamble—before. Either she was wounded, she needed some emergency magic, or I’d done something she didn’t like. I was curious to see which was the case, but I wasn’t particularly fussed either way. Over the centuries I’d done plenty of things other jinn didn’t like, and no one had stopped me yet.

The limo pulled into the carpark beneath the stately old skyscraper where I’d called on Tehru before. Suresh alone accompanied me. He pressed the call button for the express lift, and we rode up to the penthouse in silence.

Intimidation might work on humans, or on weaker jinn, but it didn’t work on me. I leaned in close to the two-way mirrored wall and made as if to rub a smudge off my left horn, thick and curling like a ram’s. Then I bared my teeth and made sure I had nothing stuck between them. Ladylike, I know, but it’s not always the time and place to be a lady. Just then, it was time to be a jinn who would take no shit.

Suresh cleared his throat while I took my time, and when I straightened and signalled that I was ready, he escorted me through opulent hallways lined with exotic plants and priceless art. The door to the apartment was open, showing a riotous floor-to-ceiling mosaic of stained glass. It gave the room an aquarium quality, the air itself thick with colour. Something else to throw visitors off their game.

Tehru emerged from the shadows in the shape of a slight, dapper human in an expensive bespoke white suit of raw silk, her Arab skin still pale beside my ebony. I kept my faun form, planting my hooves apart and waiting. I wasn’t going to shift down to match her; to do so would be a display of weakness.

Ah, she said sadly, shaking her head. And here I thought you might observe formal decorum. I should have known to expect less from a savage.

I refused to rile. Good evening to you, as well.

Please, darling. She gestured to a quartet of loveseats encircling a carved marble table. Let’s have a chat.

I strolled past the cushioned seats and pulled out the chair in front of her black slab of a desk, sprawling in it like I owned it. "This is business, darling, not gossip over tea. Your associates were in such a rush to bring me here, let’s not mock their urgency by dallying with pleasantries."

She laughed, a tense sound lacking mirth, and came around me to perch on the near edge of the desk. The light stained her white suit pink and violet.

That’s our Quills. You have to own every encounter, don’t you? I’ll get straight to it, then, she said. Zell is dead.

Zell was Tehru’s counterpart—her equal, in charge of an opposing and perhaps more powerful faction of jinn. Zell and Tehru had warred, on and off, over the centuries. While Tehru believed in exploiting humans, Zell and his followers believed that if humans were indeed weaker beings, they were still the children of our creator and as such, deserved to be protected like little pets.

When did it happen? I sat back, studying her. Tehru wasn’t showing any emotion, and I wondered if I just wasn’t seeing it because she wasn’t wearing her true face. But then again, I couldn’t imagine Zell’s death causing Tehru any grief.

This morning.

Interesting. Of all the jinn you’d choose to celebrate the news with, why me? Everyone else busy washing their hair?

At that, her pert little face turned grim. I’m afraid I’m not in a playful mood, so please don’t try my patience any more than you must. Do you know Ytara? No? She’s his second; his bodyguard, his bloodhound, and his lover. Vengeance is perhaps the least bloody of her hobbies. She’s taken control of his cohort; a jinn called Fog is her second, keeping the rest in line.

And you want me to…what? I asked her.

Tehru folded her arms across her chest, then unfolded them and leaned toward me. I want you to ask me how Zell died.

I took a slow breath and let it trickle out through my nose. I’m not inclined to obey direct call-and-response orders like the one she’d just given me; every fibre of me screamed to be contrary and refuse to speak the question, only because I’d been asked to. She wanted me to follow her script, probably to help her set up some sort of grand dramatic delivery, but I didn’t think she’d earned my participation in her drama.

I humoured her anyway, but told myself it was more to satisfy my own curiosity than to appease her. How did Zell die, Tehru?

She sat back on the desk, straightening, putting some distance back between us now that she’d gotten what she wanted. But the smirk was gone and only her gravitas remained. They found him turned inside out.

Chapter 2

Jinn are creatures of fire and air, and there are some things all jinn can do. We can all change our form to anything we wish. We can all turn insubstantial and invisible at will, and our visual spectrum is much wider than a human’s, allowing us to see in the dark. Our wounds heal quickly, because our substance is not corporeal. We can eat as humans eat—meat and plants and grains—but what feeds us is not life itself, but the air within the bones. We can love, and feel. We can possess humans, though many of us find it distasteful. We can consume them, but…same. It’s their spark of life and mortality that draws us to them, and it can invigorate us, but it does not sate. We are incorporeal, of and from an aethereal plane of air and fire adjacent to the mortal realm.

Many jinn can come and go between the planes at will, giving the appearance of instantaneous travel. Some of us, however, cannot, due to a particular set of circumstances which have never been satisfactorily explained. Theories abound, of course. We call the event al-Kasr—the fracture.

But that is a subject all its own.

There are other individual differences between jinn, too. Call them powers if you must. Mine is a sort of blood alchemy which I practice by infusing aether—what you might call life force, or elemental energy, or the soul—into ink. I can make tattoos that move, that change image, or that, when activated, turn into physical items or magical abilities. Defences, weapons…what have you. I require blood from my clients in payment so that I can distil a client’s magic and use it to create new ink with new properties. I’m always tinkering about and experimenting.

Tehru’s specialty was turning things inside out. Living or non-living, in whole or in part. It made her especially good at harvesting delicate bits of a larger whole, in addition to it being rather a trademark way for her enemies to die, as brutal or subtle as she wished it to be.

Inside out… I echoed.

His body was turned inside out, she repeated slowly, and continued, and then his organs were turned inside out as well, and arranged artfully around him. It was, I’ve been told, as if someone had opened a pomegranate and played with its seeds.

And you—?

No. I wasn’t the one to kill him. She laughed, presumably mocking the confused crease of my brow. Ytara surely assumes that I’m the only one with the ability to have done the deed. But you and I know that isn’t true, Quills. We both know that there’s at least one other sneaky little jinn with my blood.

I didn’t need her pointed look to know that she meant me. I gazed back, unflinching, and waited for her to reveal her game with her trademark theatrical flair.

You see, laying out the organs, toying with the corpse, it just isn’t my style. It’s amateurish, the sort of thing someone new to the power might do, not the behaviour of someone who has honed it over centuries. Of course, Zell and I shared enough animosity that one could possibly believe I’d let my emotions get away from me and make him a special case, but that’s also just the sort of information that our true assailant might assume will cover his—or her—tracks. Since I’ve been drawn into this mess now, I’m afraid I must demand the return of my blood, and the names of any jinn who might be walking around with it in their skin.

Not negotiable. I sat up a bit straighter and leaned in to meet her. I start telling clients’ secrets, I put myself out of a job and start a war besides. Not that I don’t broker in information as well as ink, but never in such a direct, traceable, amateurish way.

She steepled her hands. "Now, I’ll tell you what pleasure I will have: the pleasure of handing you to them on a platter if you haven’t cleared my name by the time Zell’s nearest and dearest finish their grieving rituals and arrive to hunt me down. You always take blood in payment. I wear your ink. While I’d prefer not to reveal it and sacrifice its advantage, I’d say it’s proof enough that I’ve paid."

I tilted my head, studying Tehru’s smug face from a changed angle. It didn’t make the situation any clearer. What do you care if you’re pinned for this? The Tehru I know would bask in the credit and have her minions take care of anyone who didn’t like it.

That’s what I like about you, Quills…your simplicity.

She smiled a patronising smile that made me want to punch her pearly human teeth in. Assume I have reasons, and don’t worry your pretty head about them. And assume I have an alibi. I was at a private concert, with Suresh, Aabid, Emry, and Malia in my party. Hired guards will vouch, as will security tape and an article in tomorrow’s society pages.

How convenient for you.

She stood and sauntered to her window, looking out over London as if she expected something to happen at any moment. No—she shifted and I realised she was studying me in the glass. Indeed. And quite inconvenient, as well. No, if I were you, I’d be more worried about what Zell’s loyalists might do to you once I hand you over. They’ll probably start by flaying you, get rid of that pretty skin with all its stored-up magic. That’s what I’d do. If I were feeling kind, I’d give you a generous dose of Zephyr and make you do the peeling yourself.

That thought set my skin to crawling, but I refused to let her see a reaction. You do know the way to a lady’s affection, don’t you? No. I’ll pass, all the same. If you didn’t like the conditions, you shouldn’t have got the ink. Our transaction’s done. I stood.

She held up a hand, and though it didn’t exert any power over me, I stopped just the same. I’ve bought you some time. When that time runs that out, I’ll be telling Ytara how shocked and disappointed I am to discover that it was you. Unless you’ve brought me a likely substitute before then, you’ve got five days left to live, she said, still watching me.

Can I see the body, or the… What was the phrase? The murder scene?

As if you haven’t already? Tehru said, a bit too archly for my comfort. I felt my temper rising, and with it the urge to sting back. She knew I’d had nothing to do with this, and she didn’t bloody care.

If I were you, Quills, I’d start running—and it had better be towards your relevant clients, and not just to run. My web encompasses this world, and you, my dear, have…let’s call it a pathological resistance to blending in.

I’d gotten the posh limo ride to Tehru’s office, but apparently the courtesy of door-to-door transport expired once the boss was done with me. That was all right. It was a clear evening and the sky was full of the riotous oranges and bruise-purples that reminded me of home. I wasn’t ready to go off to my lair, where I slept, but it wasn’t a bad night for a walk to clear my head. The five kilometres from Tehru’s extravagant place in the financial district back to my Camden Market studio would suit me nicely.

The hardest thing to wrap my horns around was why Tehru should feel so threatened in the wake of Zell’s demise. Plenty of other jinn would have jumped up to snatch credit for it, whether they’d done the deed or not, and been lauded in certain circles. It was all of the win and none of the work. I couldn’t see Tehru—the Tehru I knew—as one to climb up the moral high ground and jump off in self-sacrifice rather than take credit for something laid neatly at her feet.

I turned south to walk along the river. There’s a word for the reflection of the sun when it makes a golden path across the water. It’s not a word in English, but that’s true of some of the best words. I thought about what it would take to make an inking that would let me walk that path like a solid thing, and imagined taking it all the way into the setting sun and away from the petty, contrived battles of jinn with too much leisure and not enough purpose. Realising I hadn’t been thinking about Tehru and Zell made me think about them again. I growled a curse under my breath, and repeated it in a few more languages—both human and not—for good measure.

Walking along, lost in thought, I lost track of time and of distance as well. The unmistakable fry-vat smell of chips and gyros greeted me a block away from the markets, and if I narrowed my eyes I could see the waving fabrics of the clothing stalls through the evening crowd.

Camden Market is a controlled chaos of enclosed shops, open air vendors, and food stands. Every so often London tries to gentrify it and bring in more upscale shops to appeal to wealthier markets, but the market and I have a similar stubbornness in that regard. We might pretend at being what others want us to be for a while, but eventually our own character always comes out.

Camden Market’s character is a confounding maze to the uninitiated and the inebriated alike, frequented by students, goths, and tourists. Basically, precisely the sorts who might impulsively decide they’d like to get some permanent ink under their skin to commemorate something they’ll barely remember once they sober up.

As long as they’re of age, their poor judgement isn’t my problem.

It’s not as if I need to work on human clientele at all. I can glamour whatever money and passage I need, either by looking into their suggestible little eyes or by simply reverting to my natural invisible state. But I like to watch them. They amuse me, and sometimes they’re useful as pawns; unwitting messengers, you could