Black Halo

A wasted opportunity, he knew; Lenk had more experience than anyone else with demons. Denaos had reasoned as much when he looked over his shoulder after emerging from the surf the previous night, when he had seen the frogmen swarm over the sinking ship. When he had seen Lenk standing at the railing, staring out.

He hadn’t been sure if the young man was even looking at him, but he had turned away all the same. It would have been madness to go back, he reasoned then; it would have been callous to abandon Asper as she pulled away from him, shivering and nude and huddling on the beach, not so much as blinking as he scavenged a blanket to wrap around her.

And it was better to leave Lenk to die, he told himself. Yes, it was better to stay behind and watch him sink below the sea. You did the right thing … you asshole.

How Lenk had survived, he didn’t know. Why he had gone to Lenk after Lenk emerged from Asper silently stitching him up, he didn’t know. What led to him telling Lenk everything, about his deeper knowledge of demons on Teji, why he had never bothered to tell Lenk, why it wasn’t his fault and why he was glad Lenk was alive and why he knew he should have gone back but didn’t … he did not know.

And when Lenk looked at him, unblinking, expressionless, with absolutely no scorn, no hate, no surprise for what the rogue had done and said: ‘Uh-huh …’

Denaos wasn’t sure why he felt like vomiting afterwards.

‘That’s it,’ he whispered, his voice a hoarse croak. ‘Not hallucination, not madness, not demons. This is all just a manifestation of a guilty conscience, a plague born of shame. How do these things work again? You acknowledge them and they go away.’

He looked up. He blinked once. He sighed.

‘You’re not going away.’

The woman looked back at him and grinned. She didn’t say anything. She never said anything, except when he didn’t want her to, and then always the same thing.

‘Good morning, tall man.’

‘Good morning,’ he replied. ‘How are you today?’

She didn’t answer. She didn’t stop grinning.

‘Me, I’m fine,’ he continued. ‘I’m okay, anyway. Still alive … still healthy, mostly. My tastes are a lot more diverse lately. Not as much curry, but more roaches. Rich in fibre, probably. Good for the bowel movements.’

He cracked a grin. She grinned back.

‘Last night was a little hectic. Sorry I wasn’t there to say hello.’ He smacked his lips. ‘A friend was in trouble. Asper. You’d like her. She’s a priestess. A good one. Went to temple every day before she set out with us, you know. Still prays a lot … or she did, anyway. She’s a little bitter these days, losing faith in … pretty much everything. I can see it in her eyes.’

He glanced up, frowning.

‘I saw it in your eyes a lot. In the beginning, at least, you weren’t sure how to keep going. Not so much towards the end there … and …’ His lips trailed from words to the bottle, sucking out another gulp of whisky. ‘Yeah, it’s cheap. I’m going to have to piss a lot later.’ He chuckled. ‘I think Togu thought it was quality. It was in his cabinet. Maybe he was saving it for something special.’

His nostrils quivered at the scent of smoke.

‘Yeah … that was kind of special, wasn’t it?’ he laughed bitterly. ‘I know you didn’t like fire, but it’s sort of what we do now. He betrayed us, and betrayal …’ He stared at the bottle, wincing. ‘I had to take it. I wasn’t going to, but then I saw this.’

He held up his hand, the thick glove swaddling his skin.

‘I remembered it. I couldn’t leave it. I’m … I’m so sorry.’

His wrist tensed. There was a faint click. Before he could even blink, a thin spike of a blade leapt from the bottom of the wrist, dull and lightless. He stared at it through trembling eyes.

‘A Long, Slow Kiss,’ he whispered. ‘You hated it. You thought it was what was wrong with everything about the city. I … it reminded me of you. Silf help me …’ He winced. ‘No, you hated Silf, too. You loved Talanas. Asper, she’s a Talanite. She does …’

He drew back the tiny latch hidden in the glove, the spike retracting into the leather until it stuck with another clicking sound.

‘I don’t want her to see it. I don’t want her to know anything about it.’ He looked up, stared at her as she grinned at him. ‘And that’s why you’ve got to go.’

She grinned. Her neck continued to weep.

‘Please.’

She wasn’t answering.

‘Go.’

She wasn’t listening.

‘If I keep seeing you, I won’t be able to keep it hidden. If it’s not hidden, if they know, they’ll … they’ll leave me. I’ll never be able to make things right.’ He looked at her pleadingly. ‘But I’m trying. I’m trying. We’re after this tome – it opens gates. It can communicate with heaven. If I keep it out of the hands of demons, gates stay closed and I can talk to Silf, I can talk to Talanas, I can talk to any of them. Everyone can! They’ll be happy! Everything will be fine again and I … I’ll …’ He swallowed back tears. ‘It’ll work. I know it’ll work. Everything will be fine after that happens. They’ll forgive me. You’ll forgive me … won’t you?’

She did not answer.

‘Say yes.’

She grinned.

‘Please.’

The wound in her neck grinned broader.

‘Say something.’

‘Good morning, tall man.’

His wrist snapped, sent the bottle flying at her. She was gone when it reached her. It shattered against a tree trunk, a rain of murky glass falling upon the sand. Tears of whisky wept silently down the mossy bark.

The man was, Bralston thought, exactly as he remembered him.

Perhaps a little paler, with no more deceitful tan to mask his lack of a Djaalman’s deeper bronze, but beyond that, completely the same. He still stood tall and lanky, long arms and long fingers. His face was still the kind of smooth, scarless angle that made one inherently suspicious of anyone who could maintain such a look for so long.

Bralston winced as he heard the bottle shatter against the tree.

The lunacy, though … that was new.

His eyes had a sunken desperation to them, as though they were trying to burrow deeper into his skull. The reek of liquor and fear was apparent even from the twenty feet Bralston stood, staring from the bushes.

He looked the same, but this was not the same man Bralston remembered from Cier’Djaal.

This was not the man Bralston had seen standing beside her, the Houndmistress, with a smug chin raised high and eyes looking down upon the common man. This was not the parasite who had clung to her elbow at social functions, the insect that cowered behind her while she led the raids against the Jackals. This was not the liar’s martyr that had been mourned with her death when he had disappeared from the palace on the night she was found dead, his blood covering the halls as she soaked in her own.

This man seemed far too broken, far too weary to bear the responsibility for over fourteen hundred dead by fire, stone and knife in the riots.

But there was no doubt. Bralston had seen him before. Bralston had heard the news of his disappearance. Bralston knew this man was supposed to be dead.

But he wasn’t. This man stood here, while his mistress had bled to death. This man stood here, wearing a glove with a hidden blade, the favoured weapon of the Jackals. This man stood here, pleading the air for forgiveness, muttering familiar words, describing familiar crimes.

There was nothing to explain this beyond cold, ugly logic … or a miracle.

Miracles were created by gods.

Gods did not exist.

Bralston narrowed his eyes, levelled his finger at the man from the underbrush. At a word, the electric blue leapt to his fingertip. At another, the man would be ash; a short death, a clean death. It would be over far sooner than this man deserved. But it would be over. Fourteen hundred bodies would be accounted for.

Fourteen hundred and one, he corrected himself as he called the word to mind.

The leaves parted from across the clearing, just noisy enough to keep the word from his lips. He turned and saw her, the priestess, approaching from the underbrush. The word instantly slipped from his mind as a frown found its way to his lips.

She looked exactly the same … as someone else.

There was an emptiness in her eyes, not as consuming as the woman he had seen back in Cier’Djaal, the woman who had desperately tried to fold in on herself, but it was there. In her hazel eyes, he could see dead questions, dead dreams, dead hopes. It had all been replaced with a vague, gloomy wonder.

‘What is the point?’

A question that he knew he could not answer, despite how much he wanted to. A question he knew this man could not answer, despite the way the priestess looked at him as she approached.

And yet … approach she did, with a barely alive question in her eyes.

To the man he was so close to incinerating.

Right before her eyes.

He knew what would happen. He knew that the emptiness in her eyes would consume her wholly, that question snuffed out and leaving nothing but a wonder without an answer. No matter whom she had chosen to place her faith in, faith was all she had left.

And he decided, lowering his finger, that fourteen hundred and two lives was too many to give this man credit for.

Bralston would wait, then. Wait until she found herself with a cause. Wait until he found himself alone. It would be a monumental task, to keep himself from killing this man, this traitor, this murderer, this liar.

But he was a Librarian.

He could wait.

*

Denaos was a man of many fragments, Asper decided as he whirled on her. The masks he had worn, delicate porcelain facades that guarded him, had begun to crumble in different areas. The visage of the cynic, the sarcastic, the indifferent was gone from his face.

Caught without his masks, his face quickly tried to find a new one to don.

At the jaw, there was a clench of animal fury. Around the eyes, weariness and desperation. In the furrow of his brow, worry that bordered on panic. Which of these was the face that lay beneath them all, she was not sure. Nor did she care.

This wasn’t about him.

She knew exactly why she stepped forward, however, under his wide and wary stare, before his tense and trembling form. She knew exactly why there could be no stepping back, no retreat back to contemplation and prayer.

That sort of thing never got anyone anywhere. This she knew now.

‘You don’t look well,’ she said.

‘Thanks, I haven’t been sleeping well,’ Denaos replied.

‘You didn’t sleep at all last night.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I didn’t, either.’

Not for lack of trying, she knew. Exhaustion had come to claim her several times. Her eyes had fallen shut only as long as it took to see grins in the darkness, hear her own shrieks and hear no one reply back.

I asked … I begged … it was my moment of uttermost need. I always believed that—

No, no, NO! She gritted her teeth, forced the thoughts down her throat and into her stomach. No more dwelling on it. No more fear. If you fear, you start wondering. If you wonder, you ask why. Her frown broadened into a bitter gash. If you ask, no one ever answers.

She was keenly aware of the absence of a heavy weight that had once been upon her chest. To leave her pendant, her symbol, was blasphemous, at least as much as the suggestion she made by unlacing the front of her robes. The Gods, she was aware, would not approve.

This wasn’t about them, either.

Bitterly, she hoped they were watching right now.

Though what was happening, she wasn’t so certain of anymore. Nor was Denaos, it seemed, as he backed away from her like a hound beaten, glancing about nervously, hoping for a reward and fearing a lash, too scared to sit still, too curious to run outright. That was fine, she thought; his input was not needed.

This was her decision.

His back struck the tree and his eyes stopped their fervent flutter, focusing on her as she approached him. Her legs did not tremble as she feared they might have. Resolve flooded her body, turned to iron in her blood, so heavy that, with one more step, she tripped and was sent falling into him, her arms flying out to seize him.

His body was cold, she thought as her hands slithered under his vest, his flesh clammy and sweaty beneath as she pressed against him. She had expected him to be warm. His breathing was quick, erratic and hare-like. As she leaned up, thrusting her lips at him like weapons, she hadn’t expected him to pull back, his eyes fighting against the urge to close and give in.

‘You don’t know what you’re—’ he began to whisper, silencing as she pressed a finger to his lips.

‘I do,’ she replied. ‘I know exactly.’

He pulled back again, but she was swifter. She forced her lips upon his, pried his apart with her tongue. They came loose willingly enough after a time, as she had known they would. The man was, after all, a felon. He wanted this as much as she did. His reluctance was only due to her forwardness.

She confirmed this as his tongue came out to touch hers, hers wrapping about his, searching his mouth with a purpose she wasn’t aware of. His body trembled; she pulled him all the closer. He made a soft moan; she drowned it with a chest-borne growl. She could feel him staring at her; she shut her eyes tighter. She didn’t want to look at him. She just wanted to—

She was spared thinking of an answer as she felt his arms deftly slither up between them, breaking her hold. His hands lashed out with a fury normally reserved for combat, slamming against her and knocking her back. The iron resolve left her, a rush of leaden weakness flooding her and sending her crashing to the ground.

And when she met his gaze, it was not a look normally reserved for companions that he struck her with.

‘I don’t know what happened to you on the ship before I got there,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t even exactly know what happened after. But no matter what it was, you don’t want this.’