Dust of Dreams

damned cattle-dog. Pretty simple, straightforward. I mean, you know what he really wants to do is rip out your throat. But no games, right? Not Roach, the simpering fanged demon. Well, I thumped Bent on the head which told him who’s boss. Roach gave me a tail wag and then went for my ankle—I had to near strangle it to work its jaws loose from my boot.’
    ‘You collected the dogs.’
    ‘Then I unleashed them both. They shot like siege bolts—up streets, down alleys, round buildings and right through screaming crowds—right up to that door over there. The Azath.’
    ‘How’d you keep up with them?’
    ‘I didn’t. I set a geas on them both and just followed that. By the time I got here, Roach had been throwing itself at the door so often it was lying stunned on the path. And Bent was trying to dig through the flagstones.’
    ‘So why didn’t any of us think of doing something like that?’
    ‘Because you’re all stupid, that’s why.’
    ‘What did you do then?’ Bottle asked.
    ‘I opened the door. In they went. I heard them racing up the stairs—and then . . . nothing. Silence. The dogs went after Sinn and Grub, through a portal of some sort.’
    ‘You know,’ said Bottle, ‘if you’d come to me, I could have ridden the souls of one of them, and got maybe an idea of where that portal opened out. But then, since you’re a genius, Deadsmell, I’m sure you’ve got a good reason for not doing that.’
    ‘Hood’s breath. All right, so I messed up. Even geniuses can get stupid on occasion.’
    ‘It was Crump who delivered your message—I could barely make any sense of it. You wanted to meet me here, and here I am. But this tale of yours you could have told me over a tankard at Gosling’s Tavern.’
    ‘I chose Crump because I knew that as soon as he delivered the message he’d forget all about it. He’d even forget I talked to him, and that he then talked to you. He is, in fact, the thickest man I have ever known.’
    ‘So we meet in secret. How mysterious. What do you want with me, Deadsmell?’
    ‘I want to know about your nightly visitor, to start with. I figured it’d be something best done in private.’
    Bottle stared at him.
    Deadsmell frowned. ‘What?’
    ‘I’m waiting to see the leer.’
    ‘I don’t want those kind of details, idiot! Do you ever see her eyes? Do you ever look into them, Bottle?’
    ‘Aye, and every time I wish I didn’t.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘There’s so much . . .
need
in them.’
    ‘Is that it? Nothing else?’
    ‘Plenty else, Deadsmell. Pleasure, maybe even love—I don’t know. Everything I see in her eyes . . . it’s in the “now.” I don’t know how else to explain it. There’s no past, no future, only the present.’
    ‘Empty and full.’
    Bottle’s gaze narrowed. ‘Like the ram, aye, the animal side of her. It freezes me in my tracks, I admit, as if I was looking into a mirror and seeing my own eyes, but in a way no one else can see them. My eyes with . . .’ he shivered, ‘nobody behind them. Nobody I know.’
    ‘Nobody anyone knows,’ Deadsmell said, nodding. ‘Bottle, I once looked into Hood’s own eyes, and I saw the same thing—I even felt what you just described. Me, but not me. Me, but really,
nobody.
And I think I know what I saw—what you keep seeing in her, as well. I think I finally understand it—those eyes, the empty and full, the solid
absence
in them.’ He faced Bottle. ‘It’s our eyes in death. Our eyes when our souls have fled them.’
    Bottle was suddenly pale. ‘Gods below, Deadsmell! You just poured cold worms down my spine. That—that’s just horrible. Is that what comes of looking into the eyes of too many dead people? Now I know to keep my own eyes averted when I walk a killing field—gods!’
    ‘The ram was full of seed,’ said Deadsmell, studying the Azath once more,‘and needed to get it out. Was it the beast’s last season? Did it know it? Does it believe it
every
spring? No past and no future. Full and empty. Just that. Always that. For ever that.’ He rubbed at his face. ‘I’m out of moves, Bottle. I can feel it. I’m out of moves.’
     
    ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘me puttin’ my finiger—my finger—in there does nothing for me. Don’t you get that? Bah!’ And she rolled away from him, thinking to swing her feet down and then maybe stand up, but someone had cut the cot down the middle and she thumped on to the filthy floor. ‘Ow. I think.’
    Skulldeath popped up