Chapter 10 #4
Hask moves through the Depths naturally, without effort, native to the dark and the cold and the hum of deep magic in a way that makes the upper levels seem foreign on him.
His shadow, Emery notices, and he has been noticing it more and more with the focused attention of learning to read a new language, does not move the way it should.
It lags behind him by half a step, or surges ahead, or pools in corners that Hask is not standing near, and in the thin blue glow of the bioluminescence it looks less absence than presence, something with its own intentions.
Emery does not ask about it. He has seen what Hask can do in Sander's stronghold, the shadows reaching out at his command, the color draining from a man's face as something unseen pulled the life out of him, and he filed it under the broad and useful category of not human, not safe, not my business.
He knows what Hask is capable of. He does not know what Hask is.
The half-mask, the gloves, the layers of leather and cloth that cover him from jaw to boot, all of it suggests a man with something to hide, and Emery has spent enough time hiding himself to know that the things people cover are usually the things that would get them killed if someone saw them.
They reach the compound. The iron door opens at Hask's touch, some mechanism Emery cannot see, probably keyed to Bastian's inner circle, and the warmth and lamplight of the interior hits him, a sudden pressure he was not braced for.
He did not realize how cold he was until the cold stops, which is, he thinks, a metaphor for something he does not want to examine.
Hask pauses inside the door. He reaches up and pulls his half-mask down, and Emery sees his face for the first time.
The jaw is sharp and angular, cut from the same patterned skin that covers the rest of him, pale white bleeding into deep black in abstract shapes that have no business looking natural and yet do.
But it is the mouth that stops him. Too wide.
Far too wide, the corners of it extending past where a human mouth would end, and the lips are black, not dark, not shadowed, but the flat, matte black of something that was never meant to pass for human.
When Hask speaks, Emery sees the teeth. Bone white and too sharp, too many of them, crowding the space behind those black lips in neat, pointed rows that catch the lamplight and hold it.
Umbra.
The word arrives in Emery's head with the quiet certainty of a lock turning.
He has heard of them. Everyone in the Underground has heard of them, in warnings, in whispers, in stories told by people who have never actually seen one and are better off for it.
Beings that look human if you do not look too closely.
Beings whose shadows move on their own. Beings that feed on warmth, on body heat, drawing it out through tendrils of living darkness until there is nothing left but cold.
He thinks about the shadows in Sander's stronghold, reaching out from the walls at Hask's command.
He thinks about the man whose color drained, whose life was pulled from his body through his open mouth in a thin whisper of smoke.
He thinks about Hask's shadow in the Depths, lagging and surging and pooling in places it should not have been, and every piece of the puzzle he has been collecting without realizing it slides into place with a click he can feel in his sternum.
Hask, who has not noticed or does not care that Emery is standing very still and reassessing every interaction they have ever had, says, without ceremony: "You did well tonight."
Emery blinks. The compliment, if it is a compliment, has the understated delivery of rationed praise, sparing and deliberate, with the expectation that the recipient will understand the value of what they have received.
It also has the delivery of a man whose mouth could open wide enough to fit around something Emery does not want to think about, which is a new and deeply unwelcome dimension to their professional relationship.
"Don't strain yourself," Emery says. His voice comes out steady, which is a minor miracle considering the inside of his chest is doing something complicated.
The corner of Hask's too-wide mouth twitches.
Black lips pulling back just enough to show the edge of those bone-white teeth, sharp enough to open skin without effort.
It is not quite a smile. It is the space a smile would occupy if Hask were the kind of person who smiled, which Emery is increasingly convinced he is not, except in the rare and specific circumstances that warrant it.
On a human face, the expression would be wry.
On Hask's face, it is wry and also a reminder that the person Emery has been walking beside in the dark, unarmed and unguarded, could have fed on him at any point during the journey and he would not have known until the cold set in.
"Get some sleep," Hask says. "I'll relay your report."
He turns and walks toward Bastian's study, and Emery stands in the corridor and watches him go and thinks about how strange it is that the most dangerous people he has ever met are also the only ones who have ever told him he did well.