Black Halo (2 page)

It doesn’t just make sense grammatically, but philosophically as well. It doesn’t speak of evisceration, horrific sin or demonic incursion like it’s supposed to, despite the illustrations. Rather, it speaks of freedom, of self-reliance, of life without a need to kneel. It’s really more of a treatise, but I suppose ‘Manifesto of the Undergates’ just doesn’t have the same ring
.

I open the book only late at night. I can’t do it in front of my companions. During the day, I sit on it to make sure that they can’t snatch a glimpse at its words. To my great relief, none of them have tried so far, apparently far more bothered by other matters
.

To be honest, it’s a bit of a relief to see them all so agitated and uncomfortable. Gariath, especially, since his preferred method of stress release usually involves roaring, gnashing and stomping with me having to get a mop at the end of it. Lately, however, he just sits at the rear of our little boat, holding the rudder, staring out at sea. He’s so far unmoved by anything, ignoring us completely
.

Not that such a thing stops other people from trying
.

Denaos is the only one in good spirits, so far. Considering, it seems odd that he should be alone in this. After all, he points out, we have the tome. We’re about to be paid one thousand gold pieces. Split six ways, that still makes a man worth exactly six cases of whisky, three expensive whores, sixty cheap whores or one splendid night with all three in varying degrees, if his maths is to be trusted. He insults, he spits, he snarls, seemingly more offended that we’re not more jovial
.

Oddly enough, Asper is the only one who can shut him up. Even more odd, she does it without yelling at him. I fear she may have been affected the worst by our encounters. I don’t see her wearing her symbol lately. For any priestess, that is odd. For a priestess who has polished, prayed to and occasionally threatened to shove said symbol into her companions’ eye sockets, it’s worrying
.

Between her and Denaos, Dreadaeleon seems to be torn. He alternately wears an expression like a starving puppy for the former, then fixes a burning, hateful stare upon the latter. At any moment, he looks like he’s either going to have his way with Asper or incinerate Denaos. As psychotic as it might sound, I actually prefer this to his constant prattling about magic, the Gods and how they’re a lie, and whatever else the most annoying combination of a wizard and a boy could think up
.

Kataria …

Kataria is an enigma to me yet. Of all the others, she was the first I met, long ago in a forest. Of all the others, she has been the one I’ve never worried about, I’ve never thought ill of for very long. She has been the only one I am able to sleep easy next to, the only one I know will share her food, the only one I know who wouldn’t abandon me for gold or violence
.

Why can’t I understand her?

All she does is stare. She doesn’t speak much to me, to anyone else, really, but she only stares at me. With hatred? With envy? Does she know what I’ve done with the book? Does she hate me for it?

She should be happy, shouldn’t she? The voice tells me to hurt her worst, hurt her last. All her staring does is make the voice louder. At least by reading the book I can look at her without feeling my head burn
.

When she’s sleeping, I can stare at her, though. I can see her as she is … and even then, I don’t know what to make of her. Stare as I might, I can’t …

Sweet Khetashe, this has gotten a tad strange, hasn’t it?

The book is ours now. That’s what matters. Soon we’ll trade it for money, have our whisky and our whores and see who hires us next. That is assuming, of course, we ever make it to our meeting point: the island of Teji. We’ve got one night left to make it, with winds that haven’t shown themselves since I began writing, and a huge, endless sea beneath us
.

Hope is ill advised
.

D
awn had never been so quiet in the country.

Amid the sparse oases in the desert, noise had thrived where all other sound had died. Dawn came with songbirds, beds creaking as people roused themselves for labour, bread and water sloshed down as meagre breakfast. In the country, the sun came with life.

In the city, life ended with the sun.

Anacha stared from her balcony over Cier’Djaal as the sun rose over its rooftops and peeked through its towers to shine on the sand-covered streets below. The city, in response, seemed to draw tighter in on itself, folding its shadows like a blanket as it rolled over and told the sun to let it sleep for a few more moments.

No songbirds came to Anacha’s ears; merchants sold such songs in the market for prices she could not afford. No sounds of beds; all clients slept on cushions on the floor, that their late-night visitors might not wake them when leaving. No bread, no water; breakfast would be served when the clients were gone and the girls might rest up from the previous night.

A frown crossed her face as she observed the scaffolding and lazy bricks of a tower being raised right in front of her balcony. It would be done in one year, she had heard the workers say.

One year
, she thought,
and then the city steals the sun from me, too
.

Her ears twitched with the sound of a razor on skin. She thought it odd, as she did every morning, that such a harsh, jagged noise should bring a smile to her lips. Just as she thought it odd that this client of hers should choose to linger long enough to shave every time he visited her.

She turned on her sitting cushion, observing the back of his head: round and bronzed, the same colour as the rest of his naked body. His face was calm in the mirror over her washbasin; wrinkles that would become deep, stress-born crevices in the afternoon now lay smooth. Eyes that would later squint against the sunset were wide and brilliantly blue in the glass as he carefully ran the razor along his froth-laden scalp.

‘I wager you have beautiful hair,’ she said from the balcony. He did not turn, so she cleared her throat and spoke up. ‘Long, thick locks of red that would run all the way down to your buttocks if you gave them but two days.’

He paused at that, the referred cheeks squeezing together self-consciously. She giggled, sprawled out on her cushion so that she looked at him upside-down, imagining the river of fire that would descend from his scalp.

‘I could swim in it,’ she sighed at her own mental image, ‘for hours and hours. It wouldn’t matter if the sun didn’t shine. Even if it reflected the light of just one candle, I could be blinded.’

She thought she caught a hint of a smile in the reflection. If it truly was such, however, he did not confirm it as he ran the razor over his scalp and flicked the lather into her basin.

‘My hair is black,’ he replied, ‘like any man’s from Cier’Djaal.’

She muttered something, rolled up onto her belly and propped her chin on her elbows. ‘So glad my poetry is not lost on heathen ears.’

‘“Heathen,” in the common vernacular, is used to refer to a man without faith in gods. Since I do not have such a thing, you are halfway right. Since gods do not exist, you are completely wrong.’ This time, he did smile at her in the mirror as he brought the razor to his head once more. ‘And I didn’t pay for the poetry.’

‘My gift to you, then,’ Anacha replied, making an elaborate bow as she rose to her feet.

‘Gifts are typically given with the expectation that they are to be returned.’ He let the statement hang in the air like an executioner’s axe as he scraped another patch of skin smooth.

‘Recompensed.’

‘What?’

‘If it was to be returned, you would just give me the same poem back. To recompense the gift means that you would give me one of your own.’

The man stopped, tapped the razor against his chin and hummed thoughtfully. Placing a hand against his mouth, he cleared his throat.

‘There once was an urchin from Allssaq—’

‘
Stop
,’ she interrupted, holding a hand up. ‘Sometimes, too, gifts can just be from one person to another without reprisal.’

‘Recompense.’

‘In this case, I believe my word fits better.’ She drew her robe about her body, staring at him in the mirror and frowning. ‘The sun is still sleeping, I am sure. You don’t have to go yet.’

‘That’s not your decision,’ the man said, ‘nor mine.’

‘It doesn’t strike you as worrisome that your decisions are not your own?’

Anacha immediately regretted the words, knowing that he could just as easily turn the question back upon her. She carefully avoided his stare, turning her gaze toward the door that she would never go beyond, the halls that led to the desert she would never see again.

To his credit, Bralston remained silent.

‘You can go in late, can’t you?’ she pressed, emboldened.

Quietly, she slipped behind him, slinking arms around his waist and pulling him close to her. She breathed deeply of his aroma, smelling the night on him. His scent, she had noticed, lingered a few hours behind him. When he came to her in the evening, he smelled of the markets and sand in the outside world. When he left her in the morning, he smelled of this place, her prison of silk and sunlight.

It was only when the moon rose that she smelled him and herself, their perfumes mingled as their bodies had been the night before. She smelled a concoction on him, a brew of moonlight and whispering sand on a breeze as rare as orchids. This morning, his scent lingered a little longer than usual and she inhaled with breath addicted.

‘Or skip it altogether,’ she continued, drawing him closer. ‘The Venarium can go a day without you.’

‘And they frequently do,’ he replied, his free hand sliding down to hers.

She felt the electricity dance upon his skin, begging for his lips to utter the words that would release it. It was almost with a whimper that her hand was forced from his waist as he returned to shaving.

‘Today was going to be one such day. The fact that it is not means that I cannot miss it.’ He shaved off another line of lather. ‘Meetings at this hour are not often called in the Venarium.’ He shaved off another. ‘Meetings of the Librarians at this hour are never called.’ He slid the last slick of lather from his scalp and flicked it into the basin. ‘If the Librarians are not seen—’

‘Magic collapses, laws go unenforced, blood in the streets, hounds with two heads, babies spewing fire.’ She sighed dramatically, collapsing onto her cushion and waving a hand above her head. ‘And so on.’

Bralston spared her a glance as she sprawled out, robe opening to expose the expanse of naked brown beneath. The incline of his eyebrows did not go unnoticed, though not nearly to the extent of his complete disregard as he walked to his clothes draped over a chair. That, too, did not cause her to stir so much as the sigh that emerged from him as he ran a hand over his trousers.

‘Are you aware of my duty, Anacha?’

She blinked, not entirely sure how to answer. Few people were truly aware of what the Venarium’s ‘duties’ consisted. If their activities were any indication, however, the wizardly order’s tasks tended to involve the violent arrest of all palm-readers, fortune-tellers, sleight-of-hand tricksters, and the burning, electrocution, freezing or smashing of said charlatans and their gains.

Of the duties of the Librarians, the Venarium’s secret within a secret, no one could even begin to guess, least of all her.

‘Let me rephrase,’ Bralston replied after her silence dragged on for too long. ‘Are you aware of my gift?’

He turned to her, crimson light suddenly leaking out of his gaze, and she stiffened. She had long ago learned to tremble before that gaze, as the charlatans and false practitioners did. A wizard’s stink eye tended to be worse than anyone else’s, if only by virtue of the fact that it was shortly followed by an imminent and messy demise.

‘That’s all it is: a gift,’ he continued, the light flickering like a flame. ‘And gifts require recompense. This’ – he tapped a thick finger to the corner of his eye – ‘is only given to us so long as we respect it and follows its laws. Now, I ask you, Anacha, when was the last time Cier’Djaal was a city of law?’

She made no reply for him; she knew none was needed. And as soon as he knew that she knew, the light faded. The man that looked at her now was no longer the one that had come to her the night before. His brown face was elegantly lined by wrinkles, his pursed lips reserved for words and chants, not poems.

Anacha stared at him as he dressed swiftly and meticulously, tucking tunic into trousers and draping long, red coat over tunic. He did not check in a mirror, the rehearsed garbing as ingrained into him as his gift, as he walked to the door to depart without a sound.

There was no protest as he left the coins on her wardrobe. She had long ago told him there was no need to pay anymore. She had long ago tried to return the coins to him when he left. She had shrieked at him, cursed him, begged him to take the coins and
try
to pretend that they were two lovers who had met under the moonlight and not a client and visitor who knew each other only in the confines of silk and perfume.