of that in the north, following his own inception. In his opinion, Wraeththu needed to grow up quickly, because otherwise they might destroy themselves before they found out what they really were. He was very selective about who he allowed into Saltrock and although this had been criticised quite recently by an old friend, Seel still considered he was doing the right thing. Now, he thought of that old friend and raised his glass to the others. ‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To Cal and Pell, wherever they roam.’
‘To Cal and Pell,’ Flick said with enthusiasm.
Orien frowned slightly, then raised his glass silently and clinked it against the others. He took a sip of wine, his expression thoughtful.
Seel cocked his head to one side. ‘To old friends, Orien? Can’t you drink to that?’
Orien smiled rather grimly. ‘I find it hard to drink to Cal. But I don’t like the way that makes me feel.’
‘You don’t like him. Admit it,’ Seel said, pouring more wine into his glass. ‘Don’t feel bad about it. You’re not perfect. You don’t have to be.’
‘Was that a claw showing?’ Orien said.
Seel shrugged. ‘You know how I feel about Cal. He’s hag-ridden by his reputation, and your attitude doesn’t help, because you are respected and therefore you affect other hara’s attitudes too. That’s not fair.’
‘He earned that reputation,’ Orien said mildly.
‘Oh please don’t argue about this again,’ Flick said. ‘I’m sick of hearing it.’
‘Be quiet, we’re not arguing,’ Seel said. ‘You must admit I’m right, Orien.’
Orien put down his glass on the table and moved it around a little. ‘Don’t corner me, Seel. We have to agree to differ over this.’
‘You can’t bear it because he was right about Pell,’ Seel said. ‘He found you out, didn’t he? You’ll never forgive him for that.’
‘And you’ll never forgive him for leaving you,’ Orien said. ‘See, I can show claws too.’
‘Right, that’s it!’ Flick snapped. ‘If you don’t stop this, I’ll pour the rest of the wine down the sink. You’ve been over this ground too many times. Let it go, will you.’
‘I can’t let it go,’ Seel said, fixing Orien with a manic stare. ‘I worry about what’s happening to Pell, and that’s got nothing to do with Cal. I worry that you won’t tell me things. I worry that you’re creating a scapegoat in Cal, because that means something might go wrong. Will you ever tell me the truth?’
‘No,’ Orien said. ‘And as Flick correctly suggested, we should drop this. You know why I can’t speak.’
‘No, I don’t actually,’ Seel insisted, grabbing hold of the wine bottle before Flick could snatch it from him. ‘It’s preyed on my mind for months. I can’t talk to you about it because this great wall of silence goes up. We’re supposed to be friends, but you won’t trust me. If you continue to keep silent, I can only think the worst.’
‘It doesn’t matter what you think,’ Orien said. ‘It won’t change anything.’
‘What are you afraid of? Or should I say “who”?’
At this point, Flick thought, a divine mechanism should intervene: fire from heaven should shoot through a window, or a building should collapse outside. Like Seel, he thought Orien had secrets, but he knew Orien would never reveal them. Nagging him to do so always ended up in argument. Seel should let it drop, but he couldn’t, because he and Cal had a history.
As young humans, Cal and Seel had been lovers and they had believed the only path open to them was to cast off their humanity and become Wraeththu, so they could be together for eternity, in complete harmonious bliss, and all the rest of it. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Being har had driven them apart rather than bound them together. The first tribe they had stumbled across, who had taken them in and performed, in their particularly brutal way, the necessary procedures to change their being, had been Uigenna. Not the best choice, but then they’d not had a choice, only desperation. Seel hadn’t stayed long with them. Essentially, his soul was gentle, whereas Cal’s… well, nobody really knew what comprised Cal’s soul. He’d stayed with the Uigenna though, even when Seel had defected to a less rabid tribe, the Unneah.
Seel had never spoken to Flick in great detail of his early Wraeththu life. Flick knew this was because it embarrassed him as much as it pained him. But Flick did know that things had gone really bad for Cal, so bad that even