Black Halo by Sam Sykes Read Free Book Online

a dark brown. There was the sound of drying, snapping, creaking, and when it was over, a patch of fresh wood lay where the hole had been.
    ‘How come you never did that before?’ Kataria asked, scratching her head.
    ‘Possibly because this isn’t ordinary paper and I don’t have much of it,’ the boy replied, running his hands down the page. ‘Possibly because it’s needlessly taxing for such a trivial chore. Or, possibly, because I feared the years it took me to understand the properties of it would be reduced to performing menial carpentry chores for nitwits.’ He looked up, sneered. ‘Pick one.’
    ‘You did that … with paper?’ Asper did not conceal her amazement. ‘Incredible.’
    ‘Well, not paper, no.’ Dreadaeleon looked up, beaming like a puppy pissing on the grass. ‘Merroscrit.’
    ‘What?’ Denaos asked, face screwing up.
    ‘Merroscrit. Wizard paper, essentially.’
    ‘Like the paper wizards use?’
    ‘No. Well, yes, we use it. But it’s also made out of wizards.’ His smile got bigger, not noticing Asper’s amazement slowly turning to horror. ‘See, when a wizard dies, his body is collected by the Venarium, who then slice him up and harvest him. His bones are carefully dried, sliced off bit by bit, and sewn together as merroscrit. The latent Venarie in his corpse allows it to conduct magic, mostly mutative magic, like I just did. It requires a catalyst, though, in this case’ – he held up his thumb – ‘blood! See, it’s really … um … it’s …’
    Asper’s frown had grown large enough to weigh her face down considerably, its size rivalled only by that of her shock-wide eyes. Dreadaeleon’s smile vanished, and he looked down bashfully.
    ‘It’s … it’s neat,’ he finished sheepishly. ‘We usually get them after the Decay.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘The Decay. Magical disease that breaks down the barriers between Venarie and the body. It claims most wizards and leaves their bodies brimming with magic to be made into merroscrit and wraithcloaks and the like. We waste nothing.’
    ‘I see.’ Asper twitched, as though suddenly aware of her own expression. ‘Well … do all wizards get this … posthumous honour? Don’t some of them want the Gods honoured at their funeral?’
    ‘Well, not really,’ Dreadaeleon replied, scratching the back of his neck. ‘I mean, there are no gods.’ He paused, stuttered. ‘I – I mean, for wizards … We don’t … we don’t believe in them. I mean, they aren’t there, anyway, but we don’t believe in them, so … ah …’
    Asper’s face went blank at the boy’s sheepishness. She seemed to no longer stare at him, but through him, through the wood of the ship and the waves of the sea. Her voice was as distant as her gaze when she whispered.
    ‘I see.’
    And she remained that way, taking no notice of Dreadaeleon’s stammering attempts to save face, nor of Denaos’ curious raise of his brow. The rogue’s own stare contrasted hers with a scrutinizing, uncomfortable closeness.
    ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked.
    ‘What?’ She turned on him, indignant. ‘Nothing!’
    ‘Had I said anything remotely similar to the blasphemies that just dribbled out his craw, you’d have sixty sermons ready to crack my skull open with and forty lectures to offer my leaking brains.’
    His gaze grew intense as she turned away from him. In the instant their eyes met as his advanced and hers retreated, something flashed behind both their gazes.
    ‘Asper,’ he whispered, ‘what happened to you in Irontide?’
    She met his eyes, stared at him with the same distance she had stared through the boat.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Liar.’
    ‘You would know, wouldn’t you.’
    ‘Well, then.’ Lenk interrupted rogue, priestess and wizard in one clearing of his throat. ‘If we’re spared the threat of drowning, perhaps we can figure out how to move on from here before we’re left adrift and empty-handed tomorrow morning.’
    ‘To do that, we’d