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“I’m sure you have many questions,” says the man.

“Questions?” Kerik sets down the cup and makes a scoffing sound. “Of course I have fucking questions! You’ve tied me to a chair.” He pauses. “If I ask you questions, are you even going to answer them?”

“I will do what I can,” the man says, acting as if this conversation is nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps for him it isn’t. Perhaps he imprisons people all the time and deals calmly with their bafflement and anger when he offers them tea.

Kerik doesn’t know where to start. His first impulse is to snarl at his gaoler and ask him if he knows that capturing him like this will mean death. But curiosity takes precedence. “Who are you?” he says, his voice tight and angry.

“You can call me Perl.”

“Is that your name?”

“It’s a name that I use.”

“And you are skilled in magic.” Kerik stops and squints at the man and something extremely strange occurs to him. He wants to push the thought away, but he cannot. There is something about the man's stature, even sitting at the table, his bearing, his colouring. He is pale, but oddly so. His skin and hair are the colour of milk and seem to shimmer slightly. Kerik had thought it was part of his own hazy confusion, but it's not that. This man, Perl, looks strange in ways that are hard to define. And there’s something intensely precise about him. The way he sits and moves and speaks all seem to be rigidly controlled. Exact and tight as if he is carefully considering every single thing Kerik perceives about him.

This man is not a man at all.

“Are you a faerie?” Kerik says.

Perl nods. He does not seem offended by the question, although Kerik said it very much like an insult. “I am one of the fae, yes.”

The queasy feeling grows in Kerik’s belly. This situation is even worse than he thought. His captor is a faerie. A fucking faerie. No wonder he looks so frail and ill. He’s an abomination. A thing that all the laws of Zai say should not be.

Claiming faeries are real is frowned upon in Azuria, although not strictly heretical. Many people still believe they existed once, long ago, before men ever came to these lands from The Cradle. And there are a few people — simple minded types, mostly — who think they still survive in the far north, on the isles of Oria and Ulla. But Kerik always knew this to be fancy. Or he did, until a moment ago, when he saw a faerie with his own eyes and knew exactly what he was looking at.

And all Kerik truly knows from the tales he was told as a boy of foul faerie creatures is that they are extremely dangerous to mortal men. And they can do magic. Kerik looks around the dim room. “Then where are we? Are we in your realm?”

“No. As I said, this is Ismagaar. The mortal realm.”

Ismagaar? How did he come to be in Ismagaar? Hundreds of miles from his home in Attar? Kerik lifts his cup again and drains it, wondering for the first time what might be in the tea he is drinking. He remembers more from those old tales. Don’t eat or drink anything offered by a faerie. But it's too late for that. What could it mean for him that he has already drunk a whole cup of this tea?

“What’s in the tea?” he says. “Magic? Something to make me obey you?”

Perl takes Kerik’s empty cup from his hand and places it down beside a silver teapot. He lifts the pot and refills it. The tea is a plain golden colour. “It’s simply bark tea from the Amber Forest,” Perl says as the steaming liquid splashes into the cup. “I thought you might need it. Zakol. It’s very popular in Ismagaar although I do not think Azuria has the taste for it.” He sets down the pot. There’s a small silver honey dish on the table that was hidden behind it. Perl adds some honey to the tea and stirs. “It needs a little sweetness to be palatable, I find.”

Perl offers Kerik the refilled cup.

Kerik looks at it. Is this the truth? This is simply some tea from the Amber Forest? His mouth still feels achingly dry. And whatever the tea truly is, he has already drunk one cupful.

As he reaches for the cup, he finds his invisible binding, once again, extending to allow it. In a sudden rush of movement he dashes the cup aside, knocks it to the floor, and tries to lunge forward to grab Perl by the throat. But he can’t. He certainly means to dive across the table, but all he manages is to shift on the chair, as something seems to wrap around his body, holding him back.

It’s all over in a moment, as if he did nothing at all. The air seems to hum, as if it is charged with something. Here and then gone.

“Please don’t do that,” Perl says, calmly offering the cup again. Although Kerik is sure he smashed that cup on the floor.

Kerik swallows a sour taste in his mouth, before lifting the cup and taking a swig. The tea seems to make his mind brighter.

So he cannot use force to escape this situation. No matter. He has his wits and the charms that have never failed him before. “How did I come to be here?” he says.

“This is the Starlight Tower, named for its position on the edge of the Starlight Sea. You have been in the tower for five years. Since I abducted you.”

Kerik can only stare back at Perl. He barely registers the word ‘abducted’ over the shock of hearing he has been here for five years. “Five?” he says weakly. “Five years?” Five years and he doesn’t remember. More magic. Has this filthy fucking faerie kept him asleep somehow for five years? He can’t even comprehend that. He pushes the thought away. It’s impossible.

“Yes.” Perl sounds a little sad about it.

“You’re lying. I can’t have been here for five years. What about my mother? The Rose Court. Don’t they…? They’d come looking for me.”

“I believe they did. Over time. People have searched for you. But none searched here. You were never found. There are many rumours about what happened to you, but you are now assumed to be dead. Doroth Zain has commended you to Zai.”