Xacri'aen

Body

Fine-boned and nearly Nu'uman in the face, the drift furthest along in them of any Xacrie. Their bite numbs and their spittle keeps a wound from closing, and they can drink from a sleeper without waking it, taking a third of a pint over an hour from a person who will report only a bad dream and a cold arm.

The rest of the body is standard and is the reason the work is possible at all. They hear a heartbeat through a wall and hear it change when a person begins to lie; they see nothing in sun and everything in near-black; and with the wings wrapped about them at rest they read, to anyone who glances up, as a black-robed cultist standing very still.

Society

They are not soldiers and hold no tier. Where the Xacri'vak hold the line and the Xacri'mor carry word, the Xacri'aen go into the cities to kill, and the trade is bought from the nests by the cults the way torture is bought from the nests by the sunlit peoples. Hanging alone is a taboo among the Xacrie and the Xacri'aen does it anyway, with the nest's consent, which is the only exemption the custom has.

Regard

In a city that tolerates Xacrie at all, a Xacrie goes hooded by day and the common word for one is a hood. The Xacri'aen is the reason children in the belfry quarters are told that a Xacrie can hear them thinking. The nearly-Nu'uman face is the part the cities have not worked out yet, and the Xacrie have not corrected them.