Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  ‘Last rites.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Last rites.’

  ‘No, you’re not—’

  ‘I don’t want to die without absolution.’

  The hand he laid on her arm was gentle. Her arm throbbed beneath his touch, rejecting the warmth of another human being. She fought the urge to tear it away.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ he whispered.

  She knew she couldn’t offer him last rites; he wasn’t going to die. There were no signs of a fatal poisoning; the claws had missed his jugular, and the venom likely wouldn’t do much more than hurt terribly. For all the wretched things he had done, he was going to live … again.

  To offer last rites would be deception, a sin.

  She could have told him that.

  ‘Absolution,’ she said instead, in a gentle voice, ‘requires confession.’

  ‘I …’ His eyelids flickered with his trembling words. ‘I – I killed her.’

  ‘Killed who?’

  ‘She was … it … so beautiful. Just cut her … no pain, no screaming. Sacred silence.’

  ‘Who was it, Denaos?’ Urgency she did not understand was in the quaver of her voice and the tension of her hands. ‘Who?’

  The next words he spoke were choked on spittle. The agony was plain in his eyes, as was the alarm as he looked past her shoulder, gaping. He raised a finger to the cleft tops of the walls. She followed the tip of it, saw them there, and stared.

  And in the darkness, dozens of round, yellow eyes stared back.

  Twelve

  INSTINCTUAL SHAME

  Semnein Xhai was not obsessed with death. She was a Carnassial, proud of the kills she had made to earn the right to be called such, but only those kills. Deaths wrought by hands not her own were annoying. They left her with questions. Questions required thinking. Thinking was for the weak.

  And the weak lay at her feet, two cold bodies of the longfaces before her.

  ‘How?’ she snarled through jagged teeth.

  ‘Perhaps they were ambushed,’ Vashnear suggested beside her.

  The male held himself away from the corpses, hands folded cautiously inside his red robe as he surveyed them dispassionately. His long, purple face was a pristine mask of boredom, framed by immaculately groomed white hair. Only the thinnest twitch of a grin suggested he was more than a statue.

  ‘It is not as though females are renowned for awareness,’ he said softly.

  ‘They’re renowned for not dying like a pair of worthless, stupid weaklings,’ she growled. ‘What did they die from?’ she muttered, letting her voice simmer in her throat. After a moment, she turned to the female beside her. ‘Well?’

  The female, some scarred, black-haired thing with a weakling’s bow grunted at Xhai before stalking to the corpses. She surveyed them briefly before tugging off her glove. Xhai observed her fingers, three total with the lower two fused together, with contempt. Her particular birth defect, like all other low-fingers, relegated her to using the bow and thus relegated her to contempt.

  Her three fingers ran delicately down the females’ corpses, studying the savage cuts, the wicked bruises and particularly well-placed arrows that dominated the purple skin left bare by their iron chestplates and half-skirts. After a moment, she nodded, satisfied, and rose up. She turned to Xhai and snorted.

  ‘Dead,’ she said.

  ‘Well done,’ Vashnear muttered, rolling his milk-white eyes.

  ‘How?’ Xhai growled.

  The low-finger shrugged. ‘Same way we found the others. Smashed skulls, torn flesh, few arrows here and there. Somethin’ came up and got ’em right in the back.’

  ‘I told Sheraptus you shouldn’t be allowed to roam without one of us accompanying,’ Vashnear muttered. ‘If females are incapable of thinking that someone might ambush them in a deep forest, then they’re certainly incapable of finding anything of worth to use against the underscum.’

  ‘And what would you have done?’ Xhai asked.

  His grin broadened as his eyes went wide. The crimson light leaking from his stare was reflected in his white, jagged smile.

  ‘Burn down the forest. Remove the issue.’

  ‘Master Sheraptus said not to. It will infringe on his plans.’

  ‘Sheraptus believes himself infallible,’ Vashnear said.

  ‘He is.’

  ‘And yet he wastes three females for each hour we waste looking for means to slaughter the underscum when we have always had the answer.’ He pulled a pendant out from under his robe, the red stone attached to it glowing in time with his eyes. ‘Kill them all.’

  ‘That won’t work against their queen. The Master says so.’

  ‘He cannot know that.’

  ‘He has his ways.’

  ‘And they are not working.’

  Slowly, Xhai turned a scowl upon him. ‘The Master is not to be questioned.’

  ‘Males have no masters,’ Vashnear replied coldly. ‘Sheraptus is my equal. You are beneath him and beneath me.’

  ‘I am his First Carnassial,’ Xhai snarled back. ‘I lead his warriors. I kill his enemies. His enemies question him.’

  Vashnear lofted a brow beneath which his stare smouldered, the leaking light glowing angrily for a moment. It faded, and with it so did his grin, leaving only a solemn face.

  ‘Our search continues,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve sent Dech out to find further evidence. We will find her before we lose a Carnassial instead of a pair of warriors.’ He walked past her, his step slowing slightly as he did. ‘Carnassials are killers. Nothing more. Sheraptus knows this.’

  She turned to watch him go. At her belt, her jagged gnawblade called to her, begging her to pluck it free and plant it in his back. On her back, her massive, wedged gnashblade shrieked for her to feed it with his tender neck flesh. Her own fingers, the middle two proudly fused together in the true mark of the Carnassial, humbly suggested that strangulation might be more fitting for him.

  But Sheraptus had told her not to harm him.

  Sheraptus was not to be questioned.

  ‘What do we do with the dead ones?’ the low-finger beside her asked.

  ‘How far behind us is the sikkhun?’ Xhai asked.

  ‘Still glutting itself on Those Green Things we found earlier.’

  ‘It’ll still be hungry. It fights better when it’s been fed.’ She glanced disdainfully at the corpses. ‘Leave them.’

  The low-finger followed her scowl to Vashnear and snorted. ‘He’s weak. Even Dech says so. His own Carnassial …’ She chuckled morbidly. ‘If whatever’s killing us kills him, no one will weep.’

  Xhai grunted.

  ‘Who knows?’ the female continued. ‘Maybe if we don’t come back with him, we’ll get a reward from the Saharkk.’

  Xhai whirled on her, saw the distant, dreamy gaze in her eyes.

  ‘What did you call him?’

  ‘Saharkk?’ The low-finger shrugged, walking past her. ‘It means the same thing.’

  She had taken two steps before Xhai’s hand lashed out to seize her by the throat. Xhai heard the satisfying wheeze of a windpipe collapsing; she was right to listen to her fingers.

  ‘He wants to be called Master,’ Xhai growled. ‘And I don’t share rewards.’

  The low-finger shrieked, a wordless, breathless rasp, as Xhai pulled harshly on her neck and swung her skull toward the nearest tree.

  Kataria felt the bones shatter, the impact coursing through the bark and down her spine. She kept her back against the tree, regardless, not moving, not so much as starting at the sound of the netherling’s brutality. She held her voice and her breath in her throat, quietly waiting for it to be over.

  But she had met Xhai before, in Irontide. She could feel the old wounds that the Carnassial had given her begin to ache with every moment she heard the longface’s grunts of violent exertion. She knew that when it came to Xhai, nothing painful was ever over quickly.

  Her victim’s grunts lasted only a few moments. The
sound that resembled overripe fruit descending from a great height, however, persisted.

  The sound of twitching, chittering, clicking caught her attention. She glanced at the tremendous roach standing before her, its feathery antennae wafting in her direction as it studied her through compound eyes. Long having since recognised the oversized pest for what it was, she did nothing more than raise her finger to her lips. Futile, she thought; even if the roach could understand the gesture, she doubted it could make enough noise to be heard over Xhai’s brutality.

  Apparently, the roach disagreed.

  Its rainbow-coloured carapace trembled with the flutter of wings as it turned about and raised a bulbous, hairy abdomen to her. Her eyes widened as the back of its body opened wide.

  And sprayed.

  Screaming was her first instinct as the reeking spray washed over her. Cursing was her second. Turning around, dropping her breeches and spraying the thing right back quickly fought its way to the fore, but she rejected it as soon as she felt the tree still against her back.

  At the other side, a body slumped to the earth with a splash as it landed in a puddle of something Kataria had no wish to identify. The sound of Xhai’s growl and her heavy iron boots stomping off quickly followed and faded in short order.

  Kataria allowed herself to breathe and quickly regretted it as the roach’s stench assaulted her nose. The insect chittered, satisfied, and scurried into the forest’s underbrush. Still, she counted herself lucky that the only thing to locate her was a roach.

  A roach that sprays from its anus, she reminded herself, wiping the stuff from her face. And the longfaces almost found you that time.

  She grunted at her own thoughts; the longfaces were crawling over the island, roaming the forest and its edges in great, noisy droves. They were searching, she had learned from the few times they deigned to speak in a language she could understand. For what, she had no idea and she didn’t care. She was on a search of her own, one that could not be compromised by the addition of bloodthirsty, purple-skinned warrior women.

  The Spokesman stick in her hand reminded her of it, with a warm assurance that it had tasted many human bones before.

  She stared down at it contemplatively. The s’na shict s’ha, her father said, often claimed that their famed sticks earned their names for the fact that each one possessed the faintest hints of the Howling. The trees they were carved from drank deeply of shictish blood spilled in their defence. They carried the memories of the dead, perpetual reminders of the duties that every shict carried.

  As Kataria stared at the white feather tied to it, she suspected the power of the Spokesman was likely a lot simpler than that.

  Inqalle infested her mind, in words and thoughts alike. She had slipped in on the Howling, sank teeth into Kataria’s thoughts, and she could still feel them there.

  But this was not such an awful thing.

  Inqalle’s words only persisted because truth was always like venom: once injected, it could not be removed until the proper steps had been taken to cure it. Kataria knew this, just as she knew that what Inqalle had said was true.

  For too long had she been comfortable telling herself she was a shict while acting so unlike one. How could any shict call herself such when she stared for hours over the sea, watching …?

  No. Hoping, she corrected herself. You were hoping that one of them would come up on shore and you could go back to the way things were. Those days are over. You always wanted them to be over, right?

  She didn’t answer herself.

  Maybe … this is a gift from Riffid, she told herself. Maybe this is how you prove yourself to Inqalle. No, not to Inqalle. To yourself. She shook her head. No, not to yourself …

  She looked down at the white feather, frowned.

  Not just to yourself.

  The Spokesman stick was heavy with purpose, eager to be used upon unsuspecting human skulls. It reminded her why this had to be the way. It reminded her of the sensations she had felt in the company of her companions. Former companions, she corrected herself.

  They had infected her, deafened her to the Howling. They had taken something from her. This was how she would take it back.

  She had found their trail earlier. She could follow it, descend upon them when they weren’t paying attention. Two swift cracks at the base of the skull. They would die immediately. They wouldn’t be able to ask her why. She could do it, she told herself. If she could avoid the longfaces’ patrols, she could sneak up on them. She could kill them.

  If you could, the thought entered her mind involuntarily, you would have done it long ago.

  She shook her head, growled.

  Something in the forest growled back.

  She froze, hearing the footsteps. Her ears twitched, angling from left to right, absorbing each noise. Heavy feet fell upon the earth with the ungainly disquiet of a predator glutted. Nostrils drew in deep breaths, sniffing about the woods. The growl, a deep chest-born noise, became a shrill cackle. Gooseflesh grew upon her body.

  The sikkhun, she thought. They said something about a sikkhun. She swallowed hard. What the hell is a sikkhun?

  And in the sounds that followed, she realised she didn’t want to know. She heard a sharp ripping sound; the stench of blood filled her nostrils. Slurping followed, meat rent from bone and scooped into a pair of powerful jaws. Blood dripped softly, hitting the ground with the sound of fat raindrops. A bone snapped, crunched, was sucked down.

  And with every breath it could spare, the thing let loose a short, warbling cackle.

  She folded her ears against her head, unable to listen anymore. Slinking on her hands and feet, she slid into the underbrush, leaving the sikkhun to its gruesome feast.

  Yes, she thought without willing, so gruesome. Good thing you’re about to do something as civil as murdering your companions, you weak little—

  She folded her ears further, shutting them to all sounds, within and without, as she softly crept away.

  *

  Tracks told stories.

  This was the accepted thought amongst her people. A person spoke to the earth through his feet, unable to lie or hide through his soles. The earth had a long memory, remembered what it was told. Earth remembered. Earth told shict. Shict remembered.

  Kataria remembered finding his tracks in the forest, almost a year ago.

  Long, slow strides, she recalled, heavy on the heels and the toes alike. He was a man who walked in two different directions: striving to go forward, always held back.

  She had tracked him, then, certain that she was going to kill him. She tracked him now, certain that she had to.

  And what’s different this time? she asked herself. You went after him, attempting to kill him. You wound up following him for a year.

  Because, she told herself, that was a time when she did not know what it was to be a shict. This time, she knew. She would prove it.

  She had found their tracks shortly after. The earth was moist and dry at once, torn between whether it wished to continue living or not. It made the stories hard to hear. Those she recognised in the tracks were simple tales: anguish, pain, misery, confusion, hunger. But those were common enough, especially to those humans she had once called companions.

  No matter. They all had to die, eventually. The other humans would be a nice warm-up before she stalked and killed her true quarry. She would have liked to have started with Lenk, though, suspecting that he would be the hardest to kill. He was the most agitated, the most paranoid, the most cautious.

  Oh, and that’s why he’s going to be hard to kill? she asked herself. Right. He’s just so crafty and clever. This entire ‘stalking’ is a farce. If you showed up in front of him and waved, he’d wave back and smile and say how good it was to see you as you clubbed his brains out.

  No, she told herself, he liked her, but probably not that much.

  Right, she agreed with herself, but the point is, you know this is just a stalling tactic. Pretending to stalk him? Pretending to
track him? Go run around the forest screaming his name if you think he’s alive. Wait for him to come out and then embrace him and then crush his neck. If you really wanted to kill him, you wouldn’t even have to try. But …

  She snarled inwardly, opened her ears wide to let the sounds of the forest drown out her own thoughts.

  You also know this forest is dead. Nothing’s going to make you stop thinking, dimwit.

  She sighed. No wind sighed back. And from the dead wind, no trees rustled in response. And from the quiet trees, no animals cried out in response. And all around her, the verdant greenery and blue skies and bright morning sunshine yielded no sound, no life.

  Barren forests weren’t unheard of. Plants, inedible and intolerable to animal palates, often thrived where those on two and four legs could not.

  Except for roaches, apparently. She flicked away a dried trace of anal sputum.

  But there was something different about this forest, this silence. This silence lingered like a pestilence, seeping into her skin, reaching into her ears, her lungs. It found the sound of her breath intolerable, the clamour of her twitching muscles unbearable. It sought to drive the wind from her stomach, to still the noisy blood in her veins.

  She shook her head, thumped it with the heel of her hand, scolded herself for being stupid. Silence was uncomfortable, nothing more. It wasn’t a disease. He was. He was the one that needed to be cured, not her. It was him that was the problem.

  So the problem is him, she told herself. That makes sense. That’s what Inqalle said. The greenshicts … no, no. They’re the s’na shict s’ha, remember? Greenshicts are what humans call them. The problem is him. Kill him and you’re a shict, right? Right.

  Because that was what a shict was, she told herself, pressing forward and following the tracks. A shict killed humans. That was what shicts did. Her father said so. Inqalle said so. Her mother …

  Her step faltered. The earth heard her hesitation.

  Mother, she told herself, asked you what a shict was.

  She stared down at the Spokesman stick in her hand, at the white mourning feather tied to it.