Black Halo

Her glare turned violent, face contorting with the audible grinding of teeth as she levelled a bronze finger at him.

‘Don’t you dare speak of oaths like you know any beyond your own to coin, you chicken-legged, cowardly, purse-fornicating, wheel-raping, hairless eater of broken meats!’

‘Uh … all right.’ Argaol rose up, scratched the back of his head. ‘That one I haven’t heard before, I’ll grant you.’ Rather than anger, it was with a furrow-browed curiosity that he cast his gaze at the Serrant. ‘So … what’s really on your mind?’

The Serrant turned her bronze shoulder to him. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘To you, doorknobs are complicated.’

‘Why would you be interested?’

‘Perverse fascination is not interest.’

She stared at him for a moment, expression teetering between appalled and murderous. Like two panes of glass grinding against each other, her face cracked in short order and revealed a look that Argaol had not yet seen on her normally stolid, firm-browed face.

Fear.

‘I worry,’ she said, ‘about the adventurers.’

Argaol blinked. ‘Do they owe you money?’

Her face screwed up. ‘Ah, no.’

‘So …’

‘Well, just one of them, really.’

‘Which one?’

Quillian stared into the waters lapping at the dock. ‘I shouldn’t say.’

‘Asper, then.’

‘What?’ Her head snapped back up with a look of alarm on her face.

‘Don’t look so damned shocked,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘You think you’re the first woman to worry after another woman? It was either her or the shict.’ He furrowed his brow. ‘It’s not the shict, is it?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t think so,’ he replied. ‘That would have been far, far too interesting to hope for.’ He lay back down upon the dock, folding his arms behind his head. ‘Makes sense, though; the priestess is the only decent one amongst them.’

‘Then you share my concern.’

‘Not especially, no. Sebast is due to meet with them any day now. From then, he brings them back to us, they collect their pay and you get to be content that a woman who thinks you’re a fanatical lunatic is safe.’

‘But she’s …’ Quillian paused, looking a little more alarmed. ‘Wait, did she tell you she thinks I’m a fanatical lunatic?’

‘I’m assuming she thinks it. It’s sort of your thing.’

‘My thing is atonement through service to the clergy,’ the Serrant snapped. ‘If I am zealous in this pursuit, it’s only because I’m truly repentant, truly devoted.’

‘Well, wait for her to come back and you can show her your thing yourself. The trip from Teji to Destiny takes only a week or so.’

‘So you say,’ Quillian said, folding her arms. ‘But Teji is part of the Reaching Isles.’

‘Aye.’

‘They’re not called that because they’re convenient. They’ve been lawless and beyond the grasp of Toha’s navy for ages.’

‘What military force can’t solve, gold can. Teji’s a trading outpost. It’s always been a trading outpost. It’ll always be a trading outpost. No pirate is going to attack it if they can save themselves the energy by trading.’

‘Given that we only barely held off Rashodd when you swore you could deal with him and his brigands, I trust you’ll see why I’m not confident in your opinion on pirate thought processes.’ She frowned, staring out to the distant horizon. ‘Have you heard any news, then? From either Teji or Sebast?’

‘None,’ Argaol said. ‘But he’ll get the job done.’

‘If he was going to,’ Quillian muttered, ‘why would the Lord Emissary send a heathen after him?’

‘Ask him,’ Argaol muttered, closing his eyes as he dangled his leg back over the edge. ‘Confess your sinful thoughts about the priestess while you’re at it. I’m not interested anymore.’

The next part was fairly routine: the moment of frustrated silence, the flurry of grunts as she sought to come up with a retort and, finding none, the rattle of metal as she reached for her sword. He didn’t bother to open his eyes, even when he heard the steel slide back into its sheath and the heavy, burdened slam of her feet as she skulked down the dock.

He had just begun to get settled, ready to entice a curious fish with the dark flesh of his big toe, when the footsteps began to get louder.

‘I told you,’ Argaol said with a sigh, ‘I’m not—’

‘You are Argaol.’

The voice was deep, resonant, full of presumed authority. He cracked one lid open.

The other shot up like a crossbow bolt.

There was no doubting the man for a wizard: the long coat with many pockets and heavy book hanging from his belt left no room for doubt. But the size of the man, his broad shoulders and healthy frame, contradicted any impression he had ever had of the faithless magic-users. Whereas the other wizards he had known were thin and sickly, the tan vigour of this one, a Djaalman, he thought, suggested at least normal vitality.

Then again, he reminded himself, you’ve only known the one.

Apparently unwilling to wait for a reply, the man turned his head, atop which sat a rather impressive-looking hat, to the massive three-masted ship not far away. He squinted a pair of blue eyes at the bold black lettering on its hull.

‘That is the Riptide,’ he said.

‘You can read,’ Argaol replied, his shock fading and general contempt seeping back in. ‘I’m thrilled for you, really. Run along home and tell your mother.’

‘The priest told me to seek you out. We are to leave for Port Yonder at once.’

‘So I hear,’ Argaol muttered, easing back. He made a gesture in the general direction of the city. ‘The crew’s out on leave. They’ll be back tomorrow morning.’

‘I will go out and find them,’ the man said sharply. ‘Be ready to leave when I return. My duties demand a swift departure.’

‘I have duties of my own,’ the captain replied coolly. ‘Chief among which is catching my lunch today.’

He wiggled his toe and added, silently, As well as making a point that I won’t be cowed by any overzealous bookworm. Too late, Argaol tried to remember if mind-reading was a wizard trick.

‘You’re not a man that visits Cier’Djaal much, are you?’

‘I’ve been once or twice.’

‘Not enough to know that the Librarians are the arm of the Venarium.’ His eyelid twitched. Crimson light poured out in flickering flames. ‘The duties of the Venarium supersede the necessity of lunch.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen that trick before.’ Argaol waved a hand dismissively. ‘I know enough of wizards to know they have limits. Tell me, Mighty and Terrifying Librarian, do you know how to pilot a ship?’

‘No.’

‘I see. And do you have enough wicked hoojoo, or whatever it is that makes your eyes do that, in you to move a ship the size of the Riptide by yourself?’

‘I do not.’

‘Then it would seem the duties of the Venarium can wait until I catch something scaly and full of meat, then,’ Argaol muttered. ‘Round up the crew, if whatever weird stuff you do allows you to do that, but neither the Riptide nor myself are moving until I get some nice, salted fish in my gut.’

‘Terms accepted.’

The sound of footsteps did not come, as Argaol anticipated. Rather, there was the sound of cloth shuffling. It was unusual enough that it demanded the captain open his eyes again in time to spy the man pulling a piece of paper folded to resemble a crane from his coat pocket.

It rested daintily in the man’s dark palm for a moment before he leaned over and muttered something, as if whispering a secret to it. His eyes flashed bright, as did the tiny smear upon the crane’s parchment. It fluttered briefly in his palm, imbued with a sudden glowing life, and leapt into the air.

Argaol watched it, at a loss for words, as it glided on a trail of red light, descending into the waters of the harbour. It vanished without a splash, its glow dimming as it slid beneath the green-and-blue depths.

Behind him, he heard Bralston take two steps backward.

The water erupted in a vast pillar of foam, forcing up with it a cacophonous explosion that tore the harbour’s tranquility apart. The fish, their mouths gaping in silent screams, eyes wide in unblinking surprise, tumbled through the air like falling stars. They seemed to hang there for a moment before collapsing, flopping in their last throes of life, upon the deck and into the sea.

Argaol blinked, saltwater peeling off his brow, and turned to Bralston. The wizard smiled back at him, then gave a gentle kick to the flopping creature at his insultingly dry feet and sent it skidding to Argaol.

‘I’ll be back within the hour,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can’t find you some salt.’

Fourteen

THE MANY CORPSES

When he discovered it, Lenk christened his vessel the Nag.

It seemed fitting enough to name it after a dying beast of burden, anyway. Though he couldn’t quite recall any diseased mare he had ever seen in as pathetic a condition as his former ship, spared no indignity by the Akaneeds or whatever god had sent them, was in.

Its two pieces had washed ashore together, lying upon the beach like wooden skeletons of long-deceased sea beasts. Their shattered timbers reached up, as if in plea to an unsympathetic sky, desperate for something to pull them free of the sand they sank farther into with every rising wave. Their reeking, rotting ribs clouded the air with unseen stench, and what remained of a sail flapped in the breeze, trying to escape this crumbling hell and flee upon the wind. Through the dunes, a dying river snaked from the distant forest to serve as a resting place for the wreckage, slipping through its shattered wood as it emptied into the sea.

Lenk could take some macabre solace in the fact that it had found a use as a battlefield for beach vermin. Crabs and legged eels slithered and scuttled in and out of its cracks and holes, desperately trying to avoid the watching eyes of seagulls and screaming in salty, silent breaths when they were caught by probing beaks.

Unable to bear their tiny despairs, Lenk turned his attention to scanning the wreckage, searching for anything of value. He supposed it would have been too much to hope that some supplies might have run aground with the Nag’s corpse. Of course, if anything edible had come ashore, it was likely devoured by one of the many combatants that crawled around the rubble.

Or, far more likely, Lenk thought, spirited away by some god who isn’t content to smite me with disease and despair. Any divine favour I might have enjoyed came exclusively from Asper’s presence, and she’s …

He winced, trying not to finish that thought.

‘Dead?’ the voice finished for him.

‘I was trying to avoid that conclusion,’ Lenk muttered.

‘What purpose is born through denial of the inevitable?’

‘Hope?’

‘Purpose, not delusion.’

‘I find myself hard-pressed to argue.’ Lenk stalked closer to the ruined vessel, ignoring the resentful glares the seagulls shot him and the sword he carried. ‘Still, there might be something here … some clue …’

‘What could you possibly find here that would make you realise anything you don’t already know?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe they left something for me to find.’

‘Such as?’

‘I said I don’t know.’

‘One would think that clueless futility is also a delusion.’

‘One would think.’

‘The indulgence can’t be healthy, you know.’

‘Given that my leg is a festering mass of disease and I’m having a conversation with a symptom of insanity, I’d say I’m well beyond concern for health, mental or otherwise.’

‘Did you ever stop to think that perhaps my presence is a blessing?’

‘In between you causing me to look like a lunatic in front of people and telling me to kill people, no, that thought hadn’t occurred to me.’

‘Consider this: You’re currently searching through rotting timber when you should be seeking medicinal aid. The captain sent his mate to pick you up. You and the tome, do you recall?’

‘I recall the giant, man-eating sea snakes that complicated matters a bit.’

‘Regardless, even if you’ve lost the tome, there would be medicine, supplies aboard the ship they sent. We could recuperate, recover, and then search—’

‘For the others …’ Lenk muttered, scratching his chin. ‘You’re concerned about them and my well-being. Does the fever affect you, too?’

‘The tome. We must find the tome. As for the others … stop this. They are weak. They are dead. We must concern ourselves with our well-being.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I know that this ship was wood and metal and the snakes destroyed it. What chance does flesh and bone have?’

‘I survived.’

‘Because of me, as you continue to do. Because of me. Now take heed and listen.’

‘There’s still a chance. There has to be something here. Something that can—’

‘There is something here.’

‘Where?’

The voice didn’t have to reply. Lenk didn’t have to look hard. He spied it, struggling to break free in the flow and flee into the ocean. His eyes went wide, a chill swept over his fevered body. Suddenly, the sun dimmed, his blood ran thin in his body, and his voice could barely rise from his throat.

‘No …’ he whispered.

Kataria’s feather, floating in the water, pulled by the flow as the smooth stick attached to it held it captive.