Dust of Dreams

those two Dal Honese sisters reported yet?’
    ‘No, sir, not hide nor . . . hair, sir. We should be seeing one or both any time now—’
    ‘Oh, and is that because you intend to physically hunt them down, Lieutenant?’
    ‘As soon as I’ve done this paperwork, sir, I will do just that, even if it takes me all the way to Second Maiden Fort, sir.’
    Kindly scowled. ‘What paperwork?’
    ‘Why, sir,’ Pores gestured, ‘this paperwork, sir.’
    ‘Well, don’t dally, Lieutenant. As you know, I need to attend a briefing at half seventh bell, and I want them in my office before then.’
    ‘Yes, sir!’
    Kindly walked past and went inside. Where, Pores imagined, he would spend the rest of the afternoon looking at his collection of combs.
     
    ‘Everyone’s right,’ Kisswhere muttered as she and her sister made their back to the dormitory, ‘Captain Kindly is not only a bastard, but insane. What was all that about our hair?’
    Sinter shrugged. ‘No idea.’
    ‘Well, there’s no regulations about our hair. We can complain to the Fist—’
    ‘No we won’t,’ Sinter cut in. ‘Kindly wants hair on his desk, we give him hair on his desk.’
    ‘Not mine!’
    ‘Nor mine, Kisswhere, nor mine.’
    ‘Then whose?’
    ‘Not whose. What’s.’
    Corporal Pravalak Rim was waiting at the entrance. ‘Did you get commendations then?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh love,’ said Kisswhere, ‘Kindly doesn’t give out commendations. Just punishments.’
    ‘What?’
    Sinter said, ‘The captain ordered us to put on weight,’ and then she stepped past him, ‘among other things.’ And then she paused and turned back to Pravalak. ‘Corporal, find us some shears, and a large burlap sack.’
    ‘Aye, Sergeant. Shears—how big?’
    ‘I don’t care, just find some.’
    Kisswhere offered the young man a broad smile as he hurried off, and then she went inside, marching halfway down the length of the dormitory. She halted at the foot of a cot where the bedding had been twisted into something resembling a nest. Squatting in the centre of this nest was a wrinkled, scarified, tattooed bad dream with small glittering eyes. ‘Nep Furrow, I need a curse.’
    ‘Eh? Geen way! Groblet! Coo!’
    ‘Captain Kindly. I was thinking hives, the real itchy kind. No, wait, that’ll just make him even meaner. Make him cross-eyed—but not so he notices, just everyone else. Can you do that, Nep?’
    ‘War butt wod i’meen, eh?’
    ‘How about a massage?’
    ‘Kissands?’
    ‘My very own, yes.’
    ‘Urble ong eh? Urble ong?’
    ‘Bell to bell, Nep.’
    ‘Nikked?’
    ‘Who, you or me?’
    ‘Bat!’
    ‘Fine, but we’ll need to rent a room, unless of course you want an audience?’
    Nep Furrow was getting excited, in all the wrong ways, she saw. He jumped round, squirmed, his skin glistening with sweat. ‘Blether squids, Kiss, blether squids!’
    ‘With the door barred,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any strangers walking in.’
    ‘Hep haw! Curseed?’
    ‘Aye, cross-eyed, but he can’t know it—’
    ‘Impable, lees in glusion.’
    ‘Illusion? A glamour? Oh, that’s very good. Get on it, then, thanks.’
     
    Badan Gruk rubbed at his face as Sinter collapsed on to the cot beside him. ‘What in Hood’s name are we doing here?’ he asked.
    Her dark eyes flicked to his—the momentary contact sweet as a caress—and then she looked away. ‘You’re the only kind of soldier a body can trust, Badan, did you know that?’
    ‘What? No, I—’
    ‘You’re reluctant. You’re not cut out for violence and so you don’t go looking for it. You use your wits first and that silly bonekisser as a last resort. The dangerous ones do it the other way round and that costs lives every time. Every time.’ She paused. ‘Did I hear right? Some drunk marine sergeant crossed this damned empire from tavern to tavern?’
    He nodded. ‘And left a trail of local sympathizers, too. But she wasn’t afraid of spilling blood, Sinter, she just picked out the right targets—people nobody liked. Tax collectors, provosts, advocates.’
    ‘But she’s a drunk?’
    ‘Aye.’
    Shaking her head, Sinter fell back on to the cot. She stared at the ceiling. ‘How come
she
doesn’t get busted down?’
    ‘Because she’s one of the Y’Ghatan Stormcrawlers, that’s why. Them that went under.’
    ‘Oh, right.’ A moment’s consideration, and then: ‘Well, we’re marching soon.’
    Badan rubbed at his face again. ‘But nobody knows where, or even