Dust of Dreams

he stood as one defeated.’
    ‘Weary,’ Rystalle murmured.
    ‘Yes, but not from the fighting. He was weary, Rystalle Ev, of its necessity.’
    She considered that, and then nodded.
    Kalt then added, ‘This warrior I will follow.’
    ‘Yes.’
     
    She sat on a pyramid of three stacked canvas bolts, huddled beneath her night-cloak. The shivering would not go away. She watched the glowing tip of her smoker dancing like a firefly close to her fingers. Atri-Ceda Aranict listened to the muted sounds of the Malazan encampment. Subdued, weary and shaken. She understood that well enough. Soldiers had fallen out from the column, staggering as if reeling from blows. Collapsing senseless, or falling to their knees spitting blood. Panic rippling through the ranks—was this an attack?
    Not as such.
    Those stricken soldiers had been, one and all, mages. And the enemy, blind and indifferent, had been
power.
    Her nausea was fading. Mind slowly awakening—wandering like a hungover reveller, desultorily sweeping aside the ashes—she thought back to her first meeting with High Mage Ben Adaephon Delat. She had been pathetic. It was bad enough fainting in a heap in front of Commander Brys Beddict; she had barely recovered from that before she was led into Quick Ben’s presence.
    And now, weeks later, only fragments of the conversation that followed remained with her. He had been a distracted man, but when he had seen the enlivened earth cupped in Aranict’s hand, his dark eyes had sharpened, hardened as if transformed into onyx.
    He had cursed, and she remembered that curse.
    ‘Hood’s frantic balls on the fire.’
    She had since discovered that Hood was the god of death, and that if any god deserved its name being uttered in bitter curses, then he was the one. At the time, however, she had taken the High Mage’s expostulation somewhat more literally.
    Fire, she’d thought. Yes, fire in the earth, heat cupped in my hand.
    Her eyes had widened on the High Mage, astonished at his instant percipience, convinced in that moment of his profound genius. She had no place in his company. Her mind moved in a slow crawl at the best of times, especially in the early morning before she’d drawn alive the coal of her first smoker. Quickness of thought (and there, she’d assumed, must be the reason for his name) was in itself a thing of magic, a subtle sorcery, which she could only view with superstitious awe.
    Such lofty opinion could persist only in the realm of mystery, however, and mystery rarely survived familiarity. The High Mage had formally requested thatshe be temporarily attached to his cadre. Since then, she’d heard plenty of curses from Ben Adaephon Delat, and had come to conclude that his quickness was less sorcerous than quixotic.
    Oh, he was indeed brilliant. He was also in the habit of muttering to himself in a host of entirely distinct voices, and playing with dolls and lengths of string. And as for the company he kept . . .
    She pulled fiercely on her smoker, watching a figure approach—walking like a drunk, his ill-fitting, cheap clothing caked in dust. Bottle’s strangely childlike face looked swollen, almost dissolute.
    Here we go. Yet another incomprehensible conversation between them. And oh, he doesn’t like me being there for it, either. That makes two of us.
    ‘Is he breathing?’ the Malazan soldier asked as he halted in front of the tent.
    She glanced at the drawn flap to her left. ‘He sent me out,’ she said.
    ‘He’ll want to see me.’
    ‘He wants to know how Fiddler fared.’
    Bottle grimaced, looked away briefly, then back down to her, seeming to study her. ‘You’ve got sensitivity, Atri-Ceda. A draught of rum will soothe your nerves.’
    ‘I’ve already had one.’
    He nodded, as if unsurprised. ‘Fiddler’s still losing what’s left of his supper. He’ll need a new tent.’
    ‘But he’s not even a mage.’
    ‘No, he isn’t.’
    She fixed her eyes on him. ‘Are all you Malazans this cagey?’
    He smiled. ‘And we’re getting worse, Atri-Ceda.’
    ‘Why is that?’
    The smile dropped away, like it never really fitted in the first place. ‘It’s simple enough. The less we know, the less we say. Pretty soon, I expect, we’ll be an army of mutes.’
    I can’t wait.
Sighing, she flicked away the smoker, slowly rose.
    The stars were returning to the sky in the northeast. At least that was something.
But someone’s out there. Holding a weapon . . . gods, such a