A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

did not know.
    Her memories of that time were few and visceral. The
weight on her chest. The seeping cold. The taste of fetid
water in her mouth, the stinging in her squeezed-shut eyes.
And the sounds she could hear, terrible trickling sounds,
like the rush of fluids in the veins of the earth. The thumps
and crunches, the crackling approach of . . . things.
    It was said there was no air in the peat. That not even
her skin could breathe – and such breathing was necessary
to all life. And so she must have died in truth.
    Since then, at night when she slept, she could rise from
her flesh, could hover, invisible, above her motionless body.
And look down in admiration. She was beautiful indeed, as
if something of the child she had been never aged, was immune
to growing old. A quality that made men desperate
to claim her, not as an equal, alas, but as a possession. And
the older the man the greater the need.
    When she had made this discovery, about herself and
about the men who most desired her, she was disgusted.
Why give this gorgeous body to such wrinkled, pathetic
creatures? She would not. Ever. Yet she found it difficult to
defend herself against such needy hunters of youth – oh,
she could curse them into misery, she could poison them
and see them die in great pain, but such things only led her
to pity, the soft kind not the nasty kind, which made being
cruel just that much harder.
    She had found her solution in the two young Bole
brothers. Barely out of their teens, neither one well suited
to staying in the Mott Irregulars, for certain reasons over
which she need not concern herself. And both of them
gloriously in love with her.
    It did not matter that they barely had a single brain
between them. They were Boles, ferocious against mages
and magic of any kind, and born with the salamander god's
gift of survival. They protected her in all the battles one
could imagine, from out-and-out fighting to the devious
predations of old men.
    When she was done admiring her own body, she would
float over to where they slept and look down upon their
slack faces, on the gaping mouths from which snores
groaned out in wheezing cadence, the threads of drool and
the twitching eyelids. Her pups. Her guard dogs. Her deadly
hounds.
    Yet now, on this night with the tropical stars peering
down, Precious Thimble felt a growing unease. This
Trygalle venture she'd decided on – this whim – was
proving far deadlier than she had expected. In fact, she'd
almost lost one of them in Hood's realm. And losing one of
them would be . . . bad. It would free the other one to close
in and that she didn't want, not at all. And one guard dog
wasn't nearly as effective as two.
    Maybe, just maybe, she'd gone too far this time.
    Gruntle opened his eyes, and watched as the faintly glowing
emanation floated over to hover above the sleeping
forms of the Bole brothers, where it lingered for a time
before returning to sink back down into the form of Precious
Thimble.
    From nearby he heard the Trell's soft grunt, and then,
'What game does she play at, I wonder . . .'
    Gruntle thought to reply. Instead, sleep took him
suddenly, pouncing, tumbling his mind away and down,
spitting him out like a mangled rat into a damp glade
of high grass. The sun blazed down like a god's enraged
eye. Feeling battered, misused, he rose on to all fours – a
position that did not feel at all awkward, or strike him as
unusual.
    Solid jungle surrounded the clearing, from which came
the sounds of countless birds, monkeys and insects – a cacophony
so loud and insistent that a growl of irritation rose
from deep in his throat.
    All at once the nearest sounds ceased, a cocoon of
silence broken only by the hum of bees and a pair of long-tailed
hummingbirds dancing in front of an orchid – sprites
that then raced off in a beating whirr of wings.
    Gruntle felt his hackles rise, stiff and prickling on the
back of his neck – too fierce for a human – and looking
down he saw the sleek banded forelimbs of a tiger where his
arms and hands should have been.
    Another one of these damned dreams. Listen, Trake, if you
want me to be just like you, stop playing these scenes for me.
I'll be a tiger if that's what you want – just don't confine it to
my dreams. I wake up feeling clumsy and slow and I don't like
it. I wake up remembering nothing but freedom.
    Something was approaching. Things . . . three, no, five.
Not big, not dangerous. He slowly swung his head round,
narrowing his gaze.
    The