Black Halo

‘What?’ Rashodd shook his head. ‘No, it’s the tall man, the Sainite you’re interested in, he-’

‘What of the woman?’ Bralston pressed. ‘Was she in good health? Did you harm her?’

‘Ah, that’s it, is it? I am certain it is no uncertain blasphemy that you should lust after a woman of the Healer, sir, but I must wonder whose faith, or lack thereof, it offends more.’ At the Librarian’s scowl, he chuckled. ‘Rest assured, she was well, no matter what happened.’

Bralston kept the man’s single-eyed stare for a moment. A moment was all it took for him to breathe in, raise a hand, mutter an incomprehensible word, and swiftly lower his hand.

Rashodd’s face followed its arc, an invisible force sending him to kiss the stone floor with a resounding crack. He lay there, unmoving but for the faint breath that sent his body, broad and unwashed, shivering.

Not dead, then, Bralston thought. Pity.

But it was no longer his concern. Restraint, wisdom, prudence were the watchwords of the Venarium; bravado, haste, fury, its anathema. He had spent enough energy on the Cragsman, wasted enough words. He sneered at Rashodd; there wasn’t even a splatter of blood to suggest his nose was broken. He would live until he was delivered to whomever would lower the axe on his head. That pleasure was not to be his.

Lesser men had pleasures. Librarians had duties.

He had just turned away from the Cragsman when he heard the chuckle. He turned, hardly astonished to see the man rising. Bralston was prepared for that, prepared to put him back down if need be, and more likely prepared to let him retreat and subsequently rot in the shadows.

Bralston, however, was not prepared for the sight of him in the yellow, pitiless light.

‘Is your aim to inflict suffering, sir?’ A pair of hands, three fingers between them, splayed their fleshy stumps, hoisting up a great, tattooed bulk. ‘I lament your lateness, my friend. Lament it.’ He levelled a single eye at Bralston as the other one, a colourless mass surrounded by tiny lines of scar tissue, stared off into nothingness. ‘You see, kind sir …’

His smile was all the broader for the flesh that had been neatly sliced from the left side of his lip, baring dry, grey gum beneath a mass of scab. His grey hair was matted all the more from the dried crimson where his left ear had once been. His face all the more akin to a slab of flesh and sinew for the two gaping punctures where he had once bore a nose.

‘I’ve nothing left to feel it with.’

Bralston’s veneer of indifference cracked; he did not notice, did not care that the shock was plain on his face, the horror clear in his eyes. Rashodd’s black humour dropped, as though he were suddenly aware of the great joke and no longer found it funny. He shuffled backwards, back into the gloom, but Bralston’s mouth remained agape, his voice remained a whisper.

‘You …’ he said softly. ‘Someone … spited you?’

‘You’ve seen this before,’ Rashodd replied, gesturing to his face. ‘I somehow thought you might. You are … a Djaalman, yes?’

‘That’s … yes …’ Bralston said, struggling in vain to find his composure again. ‘During the riots, the Jackals … they spited people, spited everyone they could. There were …’ His eyes widened. ‘When did you meet a Jackal? Are they active outside of Cier’Djaal?’

‘Enough questions from your end, sir,’ Rashodd said, and Bralston did not challenge him. ‘You are an observant Djaalman, yes? Touched your eye in reverence for the Houndmistress. Lady most admirable, she was … culled the Jackals, restored the common man’s faith in the city.’

‘Until she was murdered,’ Bralston said. ‘Her husband and child likely dead, too.’

‘Likely?’

‘They disappeared.’

‘Disappeared, sir? Or fled?’

‘What do you mean?’ Bralston’s eyes flared to crimson light. ‘What do you know?’ He stepped forward brashly at Rashodd’s silence, scowl burning without care. ‘Her murder started the riots, killed over a thousand people. What do you know?’

‘Only what I’ve read, sir,’ Rashodd said, ‘only what I’ve seen, sir.’ His vigour left him with every whispered word. ‘I have heard rumours, descriptions … her husband …’

‘A Sainite,’ Bralston replied. ‘I met him, when the Houndmistress formalised relations with the Karnerians. Tall man, red hair, dark eyes.’ He stared intently at the Cragsman. ‘You … have you seen him?’

‘Seen him …’ Rashodd repeated. ‘Yes. I saw him …’

He ran a ruined hand over a ruined face.

‘And I didn’t scream.’

Before the Librarian had even set foot upon the docks, Argaol could sense the man’s presence. An invisible tremor swept across the modest harbour of Port Yonder, sending tiny ripples across the water, dock cats fleeing and the various sailors and fishermen cringing as though struck.

They parted before the wizard like a tide of tanned flesh, none eager to get in his way as he moved toward the captain with rigid, deliberate movements and locked a cold, relentless gaze upon him.

‘What happened?’ Argaol asked, questioning the wisdom of such an action.

‘Many things,’ Bralston replied. ‘Ktamgi. How far is it?’

‘What?’

‘I am unfamiliar with the lay of this area. Enlighten me.’

‘You’re looking for the adventurers?’ Argaol shook his head. ‘They went that way, but if they survived, they’d be at Teji by now.’

‘And how far from Ktamgi is that?’

‘A day’s travel by ship,’ Argaol said. ‘My crew is already in the city, but I can have the Riptide up and ready to go by then if you need-’

‘I do,’ Bralston said. He purposefully shoved the man aside as he strode to the end of the docks. ‘But I don’t have that long.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Leaving.’

‘What? Why? What happened?’

‘That information is the concern of the Venarium alone.’

‘And what am I supposed to tell the Lord Emissary?’ Argaol demanded hotly. ‘He instructed me to help you!’

‘And you have. Whatever you do next is the concern of anyone but the Venarium.’ He adjusted his broad-brimmed hat upon his head, pulled his cloak a little tighter about his body. He glanced at Argaol briefly. ‘Captain.’

Before Argaol could even ask, the wizard’s coat twitched, the air ripped apart as its leather twisted in the blink of an eye. A pair of great, birdlike wings spread out behind Bralston, sending Argaol tumbling to the dock, and he left with as little fanfare as a man with a winged coat could manage, leaping off the edge and taking flight, soaring high over the harbour before any sailor or fisherman could even think to curse.

Something was happening outside, Rashodd could tell. People were excited, shouting, pointing at the sky. He could not see beyond the thick walls of his cell. He could not hear above the nearby roar of the ocean slamming against the cliffs below. But he knew all the same, because he knew the wizard would act.

‘Just as you said he would …’ he whispered to the darkness.

‘Those without faith are convinced of their righteousness,’ a pair of voices whispered back from a place far below. ‘Faith is purpose. To admit a lack of purpose is to admit that they possess no place in this world. Understand this and the faithless become beasts to be trained and commanded.’

‘It is with a fond lamentation that I make audible that which stirs in my mind,’ Rashodd sighed, ‘but speaking as a man with only time and darkness to his name, I cannot help but wonder if you’re capable of making a point without a religious speech to accompany.’

‘The point lay in the speech,’ the voices replied. ‘You are no beast, Rashodd. Not a beast, but a prisoner, and not much longer.’

‘So you say,’ Rashodd growled. ‘Of course, and it is with no undue distaste that I point this out, I am only a