Black Halo

up as Bagagame began hooting something in their high-pitched babble. A dozen feathery antennae twitched, a dozen compound eyes looked up from their drinking pools, and even from such a distance, Kataria could see her distaste reflected back at her over a hundred times.

‘Gohmns,’ she muttered disdainfully.

‘You don’t like them?’ Lenk’s lip twisted in a crooked grin.

‘We have a history.’ She tried not to remember, but a sudden itch on her face prevented her from doing so. No matter how many times she washed it, she doubted she’d ever get her face clean again. ‘Stupid insects.’

‘It doesn’t seem a little odd to hold a grudge against an insect?’ he asked.

‘I’m entitled.’ She growled. ‘Anything that sprays anything from its anus I dislike on principle. Anything that sprays anything from its anus on my face I’m obligated to hate.’

‘Really,’ he mused, ‘I would have thought you’d admire them.’

‘For what?’

‘Well, you’re always boasting about how shicts ate every part of their kill, right? I thought you’d appreciate them for versatility alone. The Owauku use them for everything: food, milk …’

‘Clothes,’ she added, scratching her loincloth. ‘It’s one thing for a deer or a bear to fulfil those needs. If it comes off a giant rainbow roach …’ She moved her hand up, scratching an errant itch on her belly. ‘They don’t even taste good. What I need is venison stewed in its own blood … maybe a nice, hairy flank right off a pig. Something made of meat.’

‘Insects are made of meat.’

‘It doesn’t seem a little odd to defend an insect so vehemently?’

‘A little.’ His smile was broad, if no less crooked. ‘Maybe I’m not so averse to the various oddities that surround me anymore.’

His lips twitched, something tremulous scratching his mouth, straining to find a place where it could break out. She recalled how many times she had seen his gaze before, bereft of the softness it bore now. His gaze had been something hard and endlessly blue before, something to be avoided.

Quietly, she longed to see those eyes again. They would at least be easier to turn away from. Instead, she was bound by his stare, forced to look at him as he stared back at her with an expression that was terribly human.

‘Maybe,’ he whispered, ‘I don’t want to leave all of them behind.’

Why do you keep doing this? Her voice was growing ever more faint in her mind, but still returned to gnaw at her heart with sharp teeth. Why do you encourage him like this? Even if you wanted this, even if you wanted to be infected, this can’t last. It can’t even last as long as you think it can.

Lenk didn’t see the fear on her face as he looked up. His smile diminished only slightly as he stared at the three half-naked figures approaching them. His wave was weak, his eyes lost their softness; it only reminded her painfully of how he had just looked at her.

‘Other oddities, I’ll be glad to be rid of.’

‘The same could be said of you,’ Denaos muttered as he slunk forward. ‘At the very least, don’t expect me to leave flowers on your grave.’

‘And don’t expect me not to leave something brown and steaming on yours,’ Lenk replied sharply. ‘But I didn’t call you out here to just insult you.’

‘Just insult me? Were you going to kick me, as well?’

‘Not today.’ Lenk patted his leg. ‘I had something to-’

‘You should kick him.’

Dreadaeleon’s voice was as sullen as his frown was long. His eyes shifted irately toward Denaos, who merely sneered in reply.

‘Some gratitude,’ the rogue muttered. ‘This is the thanks I get from you?’

‘For what?’ Asper asked, cocking a brow.

‘For …’ Whatever it was that flashed across Dreadaeleon’s face, only Denaos seemed to catch it. ‘A secret.’

‘Secrets,’ the priestess repeated quietly. ‘I suppose he knows all about that, doesn’t he?’

This time, something flashed across Denaos’ face. His visage shifted, as though he tried on and discarded a mask in a single breath many times over. When he finally chose one, the blankness on his face was as cool as his tone of voice.

‘Everyone knows something about them.’

His eyes flickered and Kataria’s breath caught in her throat, as though he had hurled that sentence like a dagger and struck her squarely in the heart. Her ears lowered, flattened against her head as a thick and awkward silence smothered the air between them, even if it could do nothing to hide the scowls darting from face to face.

And, like the baffled eye of a half-naked storm of scorn, Lenk turned a single raised brow to his companions.

‘Something wrong?’

‘Not at all.’ Kataria spoke up with a swiftness that made her want to kick herself. ‘Nothing, really. Nerves are … you know, worn, from having sand up our collective rear ends for a while.’

‘Six days,’ Dreadaeleon said, nodding, ‘since we arrived.’

‘Since we were shipwrecked,’ Asper pointed out.

‘Yes, we’ve been over this,’ Lenk snarled, rubbing his brow. ‘And now, it’s over.’

A panoply of furrowed brows and confused looks met him.

‘Did I miss something?’ Denaos asked. ‘We don’t have the tome, don’t have a boat, we certainly aren’t paid and, in fact, seem to be poorer by about three pounds of clothing, give or take, since we started.’

‘Not to mention the fact that Kataria has, in fact, told you that netherlings are on the island,’ Dreadaeleon pointed out.

‘And I think Denaos mentioned something about demons, didn’t he?’ Kataria asked.

‘Yes, but when you found them, they were busy killing each other,’ Lenk replied. ‘And none of them saw you, did they?’

A choral attempt at inconspicuousness assaulted Kataria’s ears: Dreadaeleon cleared his throat and appeared to study the sky overhead, Denaos sniffed and spared a momentary sneer, Asper shuffled her feet briefly before reaching for a holy symbol that wasn’t there and resigning herself to casting her eyes downward. The shict couldn’t afford to furrow her brow at them for long before Lenk turned the same scrutinising, expectant stare upon her.

She blinked, then shook her head briefly.

‘No one,’ she replied. ‘The netherlings were busy with the demons, as you say.’

‘And likely the same can be said of the other fish-things,’ Lenk replied, rolling his shoulders. ‘So what’s the problem?’

‘Well, basically, everything,’ Asper interjected. ‘Between the presence of the longfaces, the demons, the lizardmen and the noted absence of the presences of the tome, our clothes-’

‘The gold,’ Denaos added, ‘our dignity, and so forth …’

‘Point being,’ Asper said after shooting the rogue a silencing glare, ‘things certainly don’t look over.’

‘Because you’re not looking at it with the proper perspective,’ Lenk replied. ‘What you’re seeing is the broth, not the meat.’

‘The what?’

‘I wrote about it earlier.’

‘How does that help any-’

‘As I was saying, you’re only seeing what we don’t have: the tome, the gold. We didn’t have a lot of dignity to begin with, so that’s no great loss.’ He offered a weak smile around the circle. ‘But we do have each other. We have our lives. We should hold on to them.’