Black Halo

‘Really?’ Sheraptus asked, levelling fingers of his own. ‘You know how this will end.’

‘I do,’ the boy grunted.

‘You want to go ahead with it?’

‘I do.’

‘For your … Venarium?’

‘Not them.’

Sheraptus glanced over his shoulder, towards his cabin, and smiled. ‘Ah, I see. The tall one?’

‘If you touched her …’

‘I did,’ he said, turning his smile upon the boy. ‘There’s more to her than you could know, little moth. There’s more I will learn from her. And I will do it slowly.’

It was a scream that tore itself from Dreadaeleon’s lips: unfocused, angry, wild. The electricity that launched from his fingers was no different, snaking out in a wild, twisting tongue. It was only the sheer inaccuracy of his aim that allowed the sparks to fly past a purple hand meant to ward it off and lash against a shoulder.

The longface hissed and recoiled. It had done no damage that Dreadaeleon could see: barely anything more than a black mark, barely visible against the longface’s ebon robe. He supposed it was the indignity of the blow, an electric slap in the face, that caused Sheraptus’ visage to screw up in fury, his eyes to become two angry miniature suns.

‘Pity,’ he hissed as he raised a hand and levelled it at the boy, ‘that she didn’t see that.’

It occurred to Dreadaeleon that such a blow shouldn’t feel quite as satisfying as it did. Even if it had done any discernible damage, his victory was dampened by the groans heralding the rise of the netherlings.

Slowly, shaking blood from their ears, grinding curses between their teeth, those remaining staggered to their feet with murder in their eyes. His companions remained lost to unconsciousness and the sea respectively. Sheraptus’ fingers began to crackle with blue sparks just as his eyes went alight with red.

He was going to die, Dreadaeleon realised. And all he had done was sully a robe a little.

Still, he thought with a smile, considering he had been in a coma induced by the man’s stare alone just moments ago, this didn’t feel like such a bad note to end on.

His only concern was why it was taking so long.

Sheraptus’ face twitched, neck jerked, as though a gnat were buzzing in his ear every moment he thought to discharge the lethal electricity and reduce Dreadaeleon to a smouldering husk. That same buzzing lingered in the boy’s head, too annoying to allow him to feel fear or a need for flight. It chilled him, burned him, alternating and intensifying with each breath.

Even before he felt the shadow sail over the deck, he recognised the presence of another wizard.

That hardly kept his jaw from going slack as his eyes rose to the sky, followed by a dozen wide whites and two narrowed orange slits. The presence of the newcomer felt an anathema to Sheraptus’ power, bidding the seas to churn and the moon to peer out from behind the clouds and shed light on him.

Beneath a broad-brimmed hat, a pair of hard eyes stared down at the deck from high in the sky. A coat fanned out into leathery wings behind a tall and slender body, flapping to keep him gracefully aloft above the carnage on the deck. At his hip hung a dense tome supported by a silver chain, its cover marked with a sigil of authority.

A sigil of the Venarium.

‘Oh, hell,’ Dreadaeleon whispered, ‘a Librarian.’

‘It’s quite rude to come announcing yourself with that particular presence, sir,’ Sheraptus snarled to the man. ‘Come down and let us speak without you buzzing in my head.’

Not possible, Dreadaeleon recognised. The power roiling from the Librarian was faint, but constant, worn like the easy mantle of authority that settled about his features. It was a power that came from no crown or stone, but from years of practice and merciless discipline.

‘Bralston,’ the man spoke by way of callous introduction. ‘Librarian under the authority of Lector Annis of the Cier’Djaal Venarium branch, unlimited jurisdiction, all treaties foregone, lethal force authorised and pre-absolved.’ His eyes ran over the scene with cool surveillance. ‘I have come seeking a violator of the laws of Venarie. A heretic.’

His gaze shifted from the sweaty boy in a filthy coat before settling on the purple creature with electricity dancing effortlessly on his fingers and the fire burning on his brow and in his eyes. Sheraptus recoiled, offended.

‘What makes you so sure it’s me?’ he asked.

‘Violators are offered a singular chance for absolution,’ Bralston said, descending to the deck. ‘Surrender your body for research and your crimes will be considered absolved.’

‘No one,’ a nearby netherling snarled, stalking to impose herself between Sheraptus and the Librarian, ‘speaks to the Master like—’

‘Offered and declined. Noted.’

With one smooth movement, Bralston doffed his hat and uttered a word before tossing it gently at the longface. The steel ring within instantly sprouted several glistening thorns that gnashed together with harsh, grating noise. It caught the netherling in the face, her screams muffled behind the leather as its brim wrapped about her head and the headgear’s teeth began to noisily chew.

‘Carnivorous hat,’ Sheraptus noted as the female staggered off, clawing at the garment. ‘Impressive.’

‘Librarian!’ Dreadaeleon called out, finding his nerve and voice at once. ‘Wait!’

‘All involved parties will be questioned pending execution,’ Bralston replied, his eyes burning with crimson as he extended an arm glistening with flame.

‘I recognised two of those words,’ Sheraptus said, matching the Librarian’s burning gaze and hand alike. ‘Oh, my friend, I have so much to learn from you.’

Thirty-Two

MERCY IS FOR THE DENSE

The din outside the cabin was enough to shake the ship. There had been the clash of metal and the roar of battle, a brief moment’s pause before the shuddering wail that caused the panes of glass to crack in their portholes and the doors to threaten to buckle under the pressure. Now, the snarling, roaring, grunting, clanging, hissing ruckus of fighting had resumed in earnest.

Each noise clamoured to be heard over the others, and each told Kataria nothing in their haste to tell her everything.

The din inside her head was still more aggravating. The fear, the doubt and the frustration that twisted inside her skull like so many screws were bad enough without the voice of instinct, of the Howling, of the shict she knew to be speaking to her through it, echoing in her brain.

Survive, it told her. Shicts survive. Shicts preserve. Shicts cure. You are a shict. You have a duty to your people. She found it hard to ignore the voice. Ignore the human. Her duty is to live and die. Your survival is worth more.

Especially when she couldn’t find the will to agree with it.

The will of the unseen shict came with nearly every breath, and was as impossible to ignore as it was to stop breathing. Yet for every time it bade her to look within herself, she found her eyes all the more pressed on the pale, bound figure in the corner.

Asper was still alive, though her shallow breathing and still body did not do much to support it. The priestess did not move, did not speak, did not so much as shiver anymore. The soft weeping and violent trembling had left her body and left her nothing more than a pile of limp bones and skin that muttered the same thing on soft, silent breaths.

‘You let it happen,’ she whispered. ‘I gave everything. I did everything right. You just let it happen.’

What could I do? Kataria thought to herself. How could you not have known what he was? How could you not have known to stay silent?

She is human, the Howling answered her. There is no instinct in her. She survives through other methods that she does not have now. You are a shict. You have instinct. You survive so that all shicts may survive. You have a duty to your people.

The thought was hers and not hers, a dormant, feral logic awakening within her. And it came more and more frequently, with more and more urgency. It was no longer shared knowledge. It was no longer instinct. The Howling was all her people condensed into a single thought.

It was impossible to ignore, yet impossible to grasp. The unseen shict’s will brushed her only in fleeting thoughts, prodding the Howling to awaken and tell her of his location. Nothing more was offered, no advice given or instructions handed down. She racked her mind, searching for a possibility for escape, to reach him.

And then, she would look at Asper, and forget everything.

She would hear the priestess’ sobbing, see the priestess’ agonised tears. She would forget that she stared at a human, one of many. She would forget that Asper should mean nothing to her, forget that she should think of herself, her people, her duty. She would remember Asper was her friend.

That Asper was the reason she was not lying on the floor and sobbing.

And nothing more than that: she recalled no words of comfort, remembered no reassurances of safety. The Howling would speak to her in these moments of lapsed clarity, and it would begin anew.

Survive, it implored as it knew she should. You must survive. We must survive. You must—

Her bones rattled in her flesh as the wooden pillar trembled with the force of the purple fist slamming against it. A harsh, grating growl filled her ears and drowned all other thought.

‘What’s taking so long?’

Kataria felt slightly comforted to know she wasn’t the only one wondering.

It seemed too mild a comparison to think that Xhai paced the cabin like a nervous hound as she stared at the door. Hounds, as far as she knew, didn’t show nearly so many teeth when they growled.

Hounds, too, had instinct. When they sensed danger, they acted, even in spite of their master’s orders. Xhai clearly sensed danger, clearly wanted to act, but remained in the cabin. She had been given an order and was determined to obey it. As vague as that order might have been, she rigidly clung to it as though it were the word of a god, or whatever equivalent longfaces worshipped.

Him, she reminded herself. They … she worships him.

‘What do you think it is, then?’ Xhai grunted at her. ‘Your pinkies come to take what the Master owns?’

Kataria did not answer, for it was clear Xhai didn’t want one.

‘We should have killed all of you,’ she muttered. ‘Netherlings don’t need pink things.’

Whatever caused Kataria to speak up, she was certain it was no instinct.

‘He seems to disagree,’ she said.

‘The Master needs nothing,’ Xhai snapped. ‘He wants. He wants everything.’ Her gaze became hard and looked straight through Kataria. ‘He deserves everything.’

‘If he had everything he needed,’ Kataria replied, ‘he would want nothing.’

While she had known she should have stopped long before saying that, Xhai’s incoming fist only confirmed that. She jerked her head to the side, saw Xhai pull back knuckles red and embedded with splinters.

‘If he needed any of you,’ she snarled, ‘I wouldn’t have watched all the cold, weak bodies of those he wanted fed to the sikkhuns when he was done with them.’ She sneered. ‘When I drag your body to the pits, overscum, I’m going to make sure you’re still warm.’

‘I’ll go laughing,’ Kataria replied, meeting her scowl with an even stare. ‘Because the thought of a longface who desperately wants to lick her Master’s feet being relegated to garbage removal is just hilarious.’

Xhai’s hand shot out and caught her by the throat as her fist cocked back. Kataria made certain to smile broadly at the longface, knowing this would be the last time she would do so with all her teeth.

‘I DON’T CARE!’

They both glanced to the side as Asper threw herself onto her back, her scream hurled at the ceiling from a face stained by tears.

‘I DON’T CARE ANYMORE!’ she shrieked. ‘YOU LET IT HAPPEN! YOU ABANDONED ME! LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN, THEN! TAKE IT! TAKE ALL OF IT! I DON’T CARE!’

‘So soon?’ Xhai released Kataria and stalked over to the prone woman. ‘You’re not supposed to snap this early. Wait until the Master can do more.’

‘Get away from her,’ Kataria growled after the long-face.

Think of yourself, the Howling insisted. Think of your kin. Think of your duty. You have to—

‘Leave her alone!’ Kataria howled, jerking at her bonds.

She is nothing. You have to survive. You have a duty.

‘Asper!’

‘I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care,’ the priestess sobbed, shaking her head violently. ‘I want it all to end. I don’t care for who.’

‘It doesn’t end now,’ Xhai muttered, rising up and nudging her with a toe from her spike-covered boots. ‘The Master doesn’t want it to. His is the right to—’

She paused suddenly, then leapt backward, astonishment on her angular features.

‘What,’ she grunted, ‘the hell is wrong with you?’

Asper’s arm looked as though it had suddenly contracted and gone through the worst bouts of an infection, the blood pooling in it and painting it red as sin. It was far too deep a crimson to be anything normal, Kataria thought, all the more disturbing as it throbbed, pulsed and tensed even as the rest of the priestess’ body lay unmoving.

‘Take it,’ Asper whispered. ‘Take it all.’

Xhai could muster nothing beyond an alarmed stare, looking to the door with a newfound longing for her master to return. Kataria’s eyes were locked on Asper, struggling to find the words to speak, the question to ask through the murmurings in her head. And yet, even as the Howling spoke with urgent fervour, she could still hear the sound.

Hinges without oil creaked. Something slid through a narrow frame. A pair of feet hit the floor.

She saw the porthole’s window swinging on its hinges and the shadow sliding beneath it, into the darkness at the edges of the overhanging lamp’s light. She only barely saw him, a shadow within a shadow in his black leathers, and only barely recognised him. His face was too long, his eyes too hard. And the smile he gave her as he noticed her staring had never unnerved her before.