Dust of Dreams

  He grunted. ‘Hiding, I expect.’

  ‘I doubt he’d do something like this, Kindly—’

  ‘Oh, never directly. No, but I would wager a wagonload of imperials he’s had a hand in it. He imagines himself very clever, does my lieutenant.’

  ‘If he owns anything he values greatly,’ she said, ‘crush it under a heel. That’s how I took care of the one I sensed was going to give me trouble. That was back in Seven Cities, and to this day he looks at me with hurt in his eyes.’

  He glanced at her. ‘Hurt? Truly?’

  ‘Truly.’

  ‘That’s . . . exceptional advice, Faradan. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Anyway, I was coming by to see if you’d had any better luck finding our two wayward mages.’

  ‘No. We need to get High Mage Quick Ben involved in the search, I believe. Assuming,’ he added, ‘they’re worth finding.’

  She turned away, walked to the window. ‘Kindly, Sinn saved many, many lives at Y’Ghatan. She did so the night of the assault and again with the survivors under the city. Her brother, Corporal Shard, is beside himself with worry. She is precipitous, yes, but I do not consider that necessarily a fault.’

  ‘And the Adjunct has, it seems, desperate need for mages,’ said Kindly. ‘Why is that?’

  She shrugged. ‘I know as little as you, Kindly. We will march soon, away from the comforts of Letheras.’

  The man grunted. ‘Never let a soldier get too comfortable. Leads to trouble every time. She’s right in kicking us into motion. Still, it’d be a comfort to know what we’re heading into.’

  ‘And a greater comfort to have more than one half-mad High Mage to support eight thousand soldiers.’ She paused, and then said, ‘We won’t find ourselves another Beak hiding among the squads. We’ve had our miracle, Kindly.’

  ‘You’re starting to sound as grim as Blistig.’

  She shook herself. ‘You’re right. Apologies. I’m just worried about Sinn, that’s all.’

  ‘Then find Quick Ben. Get him looking into those closets or Whatever they’re called—’

  ‘Warrens.’

  ‘Right.’

  Sighing, she swung round and went to the door. ‘I’ll send Pores to you if I see him.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Kindly said. ‘He’ll come up for air sooner or later, Faradan. Leave the lieutenant to me.’

  Sergeant Sinter and her sister sat playing the Dal Honese version of bones with Badan Gruk. The human finger bones were polished with use, gleaming amber. The legend was that they’d belonged to three Li Heng traders who’d come to the village, only to be caught thieving. They’d lost more than their hands, naturally. Dal Honese weren’t much interested in delivering lessons; they preferred something more succinct and, besides, executing the fools just left the path open for more to come wandering in, and everyone liked a good torture session.

  That was before things got civilized, of course. Kellanved had put an end to torture. ‘A state that employs torture invites barbarism and deserves nothing better than to suffer the harvest of its own excesses.’ That was said to have been from the Emperor himself, although Sinter had her doubts. Sounded too . . . literate, especially for a damned Dal Honese thief.

  Anyway, life stopped being much fun once civilization arrived, or so the old ones muttered. But then, they were always muttering. It was the last career to take up before dying of oldness, the reward for living so long, she supposed. She didn’t expect to survive her career as a soldier. It was interesting to see how it was the green, fresh ones who did all the complaining. The veterans just stayed quiet. So maybe all that bitching was at both ends of life, the young and the old trapped inside chronic dissatisfaction.

  Kisswhere collected up the bones and tossed them again. ‘Hah! Poor Badan Gruk—you won’t ever match that, let’s see you try!’

  It was a pretty good cast, Sinter had to acknowledge. Four of the core patterns with only a couple of spars missing and one true bridge. Badan would need a near perfect throw to top Kisswhere’s run.

  ‘I’ll stop there, I said. Toss ’em, Badan. And no cheating.’

  ‘I don’t cheat,’ he said as he collected up the bones.

  ‘Then what’s that you just palmed?’

  Badan opened his hand and scowled. ‘This one’s gummed! No wonder you got those casts!’

  ‘If it was gummed,’ Kisswhere retorted, ‘then it was from my sister’s last throw!’

  ‘Hood’s breath,’ sighed Sinter. ‘Look, you fools, we’re all cheating. It’s in our blood. So now we’ve got to accept the fact that none of us is going to admit they were the one using the gum to get a stick. Clean the thing off and let’s get on with it.’

  The others subsided and Sinter was careful to hide her relief. That damned gum had been in her pouch too long, making it dirty, and she could feel the stuff on her fingers. She surreptitiously brought her hands down to her thighs and rubbed as if trying to warm up.

  Kisswhere shot her a jaded look. The damned barracks was hot as a head-shrinker’s oven.

  They made a point of ignoring the clump of boots as someone marched up to their table. Badan Gruk threw the bones—and achieved six out of six in the core.

  ‘Did you see that! Look!’ Badan’s smile was huge and hugely fake. ‘Look, you two, look at that cast!’

  But they were looking at him instead, because cheaters couldn’t stand that for long—they’d twitch, they’d bead up, they’d squirrel on the chair.

  ‘Look!’ he said again, pointing, but the command sounded more like a plea, and all at once he sagged back and raised his hands. ‘Fingers clean, darlings—’

  ‘That would be a first,’ said the man standing now at their table.

  Badan Gruk’s expression displayed hurt and innocence, with just a touch of indignation. ‘That wasn’t called for, sir. You saw my throw—you can see my fingers, too. Clean as clean can be. No gum, no tar, no wax. Soldiers can’t be smelly or dirty—it’s bad for morale.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  Sinter twisted in her chair. ‘Can we help you, Lieutenant Pores?’

  The man’s eyes flickered in surprise. ‘You mistake me, Sergeant Sinter. I am Captain—’

  ‘Kindly was pointed out to us, sir.’

  ‘I thought I ordered you to cut your hair.’

  ‘We did,’ said Kisswhere. ‘It grew back. It’s a trait among Dal Honese, right in the blood, an aversion—is that the word, Sint? Sure it is. Aversion. To bad haircuts. We get them and our hair insists on growing back to what looks better. Happens overnight, sir.’

  ‘You might be comfortable,’ said Pores, ‘believing that I’m not Captain Kindly; that I’m not, in fact, the man who was pointed out to you. But can you be certain that the right one was pointed out to you? If Lieutenant Pores was doing the pointing, for example. He’s one for jokes in bad taste. Infamous for it, in fact. He could have elected to take advantage of you—it’s a trait of his, one suspects. In the blood, as it were.’

  ‘So,’ asked Sinter, ‘who might he have pointed to, sir?’

  ‘Why, anyone at all.’

  ‘But Lieutenant Pores isn’t a woman now, is she?’

  ‘Of course not, but—’

  ‘It was a woman,’ continued Sinter, ‘who did the pointing out.’

  ‘Ah, but she might have been pointing to Lieutenant Pores, since you asked about whoever was your immediate superior. Well,’ said Pores, ‘now that that’s cleared up, I need to check if you two women have put on the weight you were ordered to.’

  Kisswhere and Sinter both leaned back to regard him.

  The man gave them a bright smile.

  ‘Sir,’ said Sinter, ‘how precisely do you intend to do that?’

  The smile was replaced by an expression of shock. ‘Do you imagine your captain to be some dirty old codger, Sergeant? I certainly hope not! No, you will come to my office at the ninth bell tonight. You will strip down to your undergarments in the outer office. When yo
u are ready, you are to knock and upon hearing my voice you are to enter immediately. Am I understood, soldiers?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Sinter.

  ‘Until then.’

  The officer marched off.

  ‘How long,’ asked Kisswhere after he’d left the barracks, ‘are we going to run with this, Sint?’

  ‘Early days yet,’ she smiled, collecting the bones. ‘Badan, since you’re out of the game for being too obvious, I need you to do a chore for me—well, not much of a chore—anyway, I need you to go out into the city and find me two of the fattest, ugliest whores you can.’

  ‘I don’t like where this is all going,’ Badan Gruk muttered.

  ‘Listen to you,’ chided Sinter, ‘you’re getting old.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  Sandalath Drukorlat scowled. ‘She wondered why we’d waited so long.’

  Withal grunted. ‘That woman, Sand . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ She paused just inside the doorway and glared at the three Nachts huddled beneath the window sill. Their long black, muscled arms were wrapped about one another, forming a clump of limbs and torsos from which three blunt heads made an uneven row, eyes thinned and darting with suspicion. ‘What’s with them?’

  ‘I think they’re coming with us,’ Withal replied. ‘Only, of course, they don’t know where we’re going.’

  ‘Tie them up. Lock them up—do something. Just keep them here, husband. They’re grotesque.’

  ‘They’re not my pets,’ he said.

  She crossed her arms. ‘Really? Then why do they spend all their time under your feet?’

  ‘Honestly, I have no idea.’

  ‘Who do they belong to?’

  He studied them for a long moment. Not one of the Nachts would meet his eyes. It was pathetic.

  ‘Withal.’

  ‘All right. I think they’re Mael’s pets.’

  ‘Mael!?’

  ‘Aye. I was praying to him, you see. And they showed up. On the island. Or maybe they showed up before I started praying—I can’t recall. But they got me off that island, and that was Mael’s doing.’

  ‘Then send them back to him!’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to be the way praying works, Sand.’

  ‘Mother bless us,’ she sighed, striding forward. ‘Pack up—we’re leaving tonight.’

  ‘tonight? It’ll be dark, Sand!’

  She gave him the same glare she’d given Rind, Pule and Mape.

  Dark, aye. Never mind.

  The worst of it was, in turning away, he caught the looks of sympathy in the Nachts’ beady eyes, tracking him like mourners at a funeral.

  Well, a man learns to take sympathy where he can get it.

  ‘If this is a new warren,’ whispered Grub, ‘then I think I’d rather we kept the old ones.’

  Sinn was quiet, as she had been for most of what must have been an entire day, maybe longer, as they wandered this terrible world.

  Windswept desert stretched out in all directions. The road they walked cut across it straight as a spear. Here and there, off to one side, they spied fields of stones that might have once been dwellings, and the remnants of sun-fired mud-brick pen or garden walls, but nothing grew here, nothing at all. The air was acrid, smelling of burning pitch—and that was not too surprising, as black pillars of smoke stalked the horizons.

  On the road itself, constructed of crushed rock and, possibly, glass, they came upon scenes of devastation. Burnt-out hulks of carriages and wagons, scorched clothing and shattered furniture. Fire-blackened corpses, limbs curled like tree roots and hands like bird feet, mouths agape and hollow sockets staring at the empty sky. Twisted pieces of metal lay scattered about, none remotely identifiable to Grub.

  Breathing made his throat sore, and the bitter chill of the morning had given way to blistering heat. Eyes stinging, feet dragging, he followed in Sinn’s wake until her shadow lengthened to a stretched-out shape painted in pitch, and to his eyes it was as if he was looking down upon the woman she would one day become. He realized that his fear of her was growing—and her silence was making it worse.

  ‘Will you now be mute to me as well?’ he asked her.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. Momentarily.

  It would soon grow cold again—he’d lost too much fluid to survive a night of shivering. ‘We need to camp, Sinn. Make a fire—’

  She barked a laugh, but did not turn round. ‘Fire,’ she said. ‘Yes. Fire. Tell me, Grub, what do you believe in?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some things are more real than others. For everyone. Each one, different, always different. What’s the most real to you?’

  ‘We can’t survive this place, that’s what’s most real, Sinn. We need water. Food. Shelter.’

  He saw her nod. ‘That’s what this warren is telling us, Grub. Just that. What you believe has to do with surviving. It doesn’t go any further, does it? What if I told you that it used to be that for almost everybody? Before the cities, before people invented being rich.’

  ‘Being rich? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Before some people found other things to believe in. Before they made those things more real than anything else. Before they decided it was all right even to kill for them. Or enslave people. Or keep them stupid and poor.’ She shot him a look. ‘Did you know I had a Tanno tutor? A Spiritwalker.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about them. Seven Cities priests, right?’

  ‘He once told me that an untethered soul can drown in wisdom.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wisdom grows by stripping away beliefs, until the last tether is cut, and suddenly you float free. Only, because your eyes are wide open, you see right away that you can’t float in what you’re in. You can only sink. That’s why the meanest religions work so hard at keeping their followers ignorant. Knowledge is poison. Wisdom is depthless. Staying ignorant keeps you in the shallows. Every Tanno one day takes a final spiritwalk. They cut the last tether, and the soul can’t go back. When that happens, the other Tannos mourn, because they know that the spiritwalker has drowned.’

  His mouth was too dry, his throat too sore, but even if that had been otherwise, he knew he would have nothing to say to any of that. He knew, after all, about his own ignorance.

  ‘Look around, Grub. See? There are no gifts here. Look at these stupid bodies and their stupid wagonloads of furniture. The last thing that was real for them, the only thing, was fire.’

  His attention was drawn to a dust-cloud, rising in a slanted shroud of gold. Something was on a track that would converge with this road. A herd? An army?

  ‘Fire is not the gift you think it is, Grub.’

  ‘We’ll die tonight without it.’

  ‘We need to stay on this road.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To find out where it leads.’

  ‘We’ll die here, then.’

  ‘This land, Grub,’ she said, ‘has generous memories.’

  The sun was low by the time the army arrived. Horse-drawn chariots and massive wagons burdened with plunder. The warriors were dark-skinned, tall and thin, bedecked in bronze armour. Grub thought there might be a thousand of them, maybe more. He saw spearmen, archers, and what must be the equivalent of heavy infantry, armed with sickle-bladed axes and short curved swords.

  They cut across the track of the road as if blind to it, and as Grub stared he was startled to realize that the figures and their horses and chariots were vaguely transparent. They are ghosts. ‘These,’ he said to Sinn who stood beside him, ‘are this land’s memories?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can they see us?’

  She pointed at one chariot that had thundered past only to turn round at the urging of the man behind the driver, and was now drawing up opposite them. ‘See him—he’s a priest. He can’t see us, but he senses us. Holiness isn’t always in a place, Grub. Sometimes it’s what’s passing through.’

  He shivered, hugged himself. ‘S
top this, Sinn. We’re not gods.’

  ‘No, we’re not. We’re’—and she laughed—‘more like divine messengers.’

  The priest had leapt down from the chariot—Grub could now see the old blood splashed across the spokes of the high wheels, and saw where blades were fitted in times of battle, projecting out from the hubs. A mass charge by such instruments of war would deliver terrible slaughter.

  The hawk-faced man was edging closer, groping like a blind man.

  Grub made to step back but Sinn caught him by the arm and held him fast.

  ‘Don’t,’ she murmured. ‘Let him touch the divine, Grub. Let him receive his gift of wisdom.’

  The priest had raised his hands. Beyond, the entire army had halted, and Grub saw what must be a king or commander—perched on a huge, ornate chariot—drawing up to observe the strange antics of his priest.

  ‘We can give him no wisdom,’ Grub said. ‘Sinn—’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. Just stand here. Wait. We don’t have to do anything.’

  Those two outstretched hands came closer. The palms were speckled with dried blood. There were, however, no calluses upon them. Grub hissed, ‘He is no warrior.’

  ‘No,’ Sinn agreed, ‘but he so likes the blood.’

  The palms hovered, slipped forward, and unerringly settled upon their brows.

  Grub saw the priest’s eyes widen, and he knew at once that the man was seeing through—through to this road and its litter of destruction—to an age either long before or yet to come: the age in which Grub and Sinn existed, solid and real.

  The priest lurched back and howled.

  Sinn’s laughter was harsh. ‘He saw what was real! He saw!’ She spun to face Grub, her eyes bright. ‘The future is a desert! And a road! And no end to the stupid wars, the insane slaughter—’ She whirled back and jabbed a finger at the wailing priest who was staggering back to his chariot. ‘He believed in the sun god! He believed in immortality—of glory, of wealth—golden fields, lush gardens, sweet rains and sweet rivers flowing without cease! He believed his people are—hah!—chosen! They all do, don’t you see? They do, we do, everyone does! See our gift, Grub? See what knowledge yields him? The sanctuary of ignorance—is shattered! Garden into wilderness, cast out into the seas of wisdom! Is not our message divine?’