Dust of Dreams

all. As a question, it didn’t seem a likely fit, not coming from Faradan Sort. In fact, he doubted she even knew anything about his particular curse—how could she? There wasn’t a fool alive who confided in an officer. Especially ones who viciously killed talented, happily married scorpions for no good reason. And if she did indeed know something, then it meant someone had traded that bit of information in exchange for something else. A favour, a deal, which was nothing less than a behind-the-back betrayal of every common soldier in the legion.
    Who was vile enough to do that?
    He opened his eyes and looked around. He was alone in the barracks. Fiddler had taken the squad out for that field exercise, the war-game against Brys Beddict’s newly assembled battalions. Complaining of a bad stomach, Bottle had whined and groaned his way out of it. Not for him some useless trudging through bush and farmland; besides, it hadn’t been so long ago that they were killing Letherii for real. There was a good chance someone—on either side—would forget that everyone was friends now. The point was, he’d been the first one quick enough with the bad-stomach complaint, so no one else could take it up—he’d caught the vicious glare from Smiles, which of course he’d long got used to since he was always faster off the mark than she was.
    Smiles.
Bottle fixed his gaze on her cot, studied it through a suspicious squint. Behind-the-back shit was her forte, wasn’t it? Aye, and who else had it in for him?
    He swung his feet to the floor and—gods, that stone was cold!—padded over to her berth.
    It paid to approach these things cautiously. If anyone was in the habit of rigging booby traps to just about everything they didn’t want anyone else to touch, it was that spitting half-mad kitten with the sharp eye-stickers. Bottle drew his eating knife and began probing under the thin mattress, leaning close to peer at seams and seemingly random projections of tick straw—any one of which could be coated in poison—projections which, he discovered, turned out to be, uh, random projections of tick straw.
Trying to lull me into something . . . I can smell it.
    He knelt and peeked under the frame. Nothing obvious, and that made him even more suspicious. Muttering, Bottle crawled round to kneel in front of her lockbox. Letherii issue—not something they’d be taking with them. She’d not have had much time to rig it, not deviously, anyway. No, the needles and blades would be poorly hidden.
    She’d sold him out, but she would learn to regret doing that.
    Finding nothing on the outside of the trunk, he slipped his knife point into the lock and began working the mechanism.
    Discovering that the lockbox wasn’t even locked froze him into a long momentof terror, breath held, sudden sweat beading his forehead.
A snare for sure. A killer snare. Smiles doesn’t invite people in, oh no, not her. If I just lift this lid, I’m a dead man.
    He whirled upon hearing the scrape of boots, and found himself looking up at Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas. ‘Hood’s breath, soldier, stop sneaking up on me like that!’
    ‘What’re you doing?’ Corabb asked.
    ‘Me? What’re
you
doing? Don’t tell me the scrap’s already over—’
    ‘No. I lost my new sword. Sergeant got mad and sent me home.’
    ‘Bad luck, Corabb. No glory for you.’
    ‘Wasn’t looking for any—wasn’t real fighting, Bottle. I don’t see the point in that. They’d only learn anything if we could use our weapons and kill a few hundred of them.’
    ‘Right. That makes sense. Bring it up with Fiddler—’
    ‘I did. Just before he sent me back.’
    ‘He’s getting more unreasonable by the day.’
    ‘Funny,’ Corabb said, ‘that’s exactly what I said to him. Anyway, what’re you doing? This isn’t your bunk.’
    ‘You’re a sharp one all right, Corabb. See, it’s like this. Smiles is trying to murder me.’
    ‘Is she? Why?’
    ‘Women like her don’t need reasons, Corabb. She’s set booby traps. Poison, is my guess. Because I was staying behind, you see? She’s set a trap to kill me.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Corabb. ‘That’s clever.’
    ‘Not clever enough, friend. Because now you’re here.’
    ‘I am, yes.’
    Bottle edged back from the lockbox. ‘It’s unlocked,’ he said, ‘so I want you to lift the lid.’
    Corabb stepped past and flung the lid back.
    After he’d recovered from his flinch, Bottle crawled up for a look inside.
    ‘Now