Dust of Dreams

he said.

‘Which flickering eye,’ Sinn mused, ‘is us?’

‘Sinn-we got to get out of here-’

‘If we’re not even here,’ she continued, ‘where did we come from, except from something that is here? You can’t just say, “Oh, we come through a gate,” because, then, the question just shows up all over again.’

The breathing had stopped.

‘It’s coming!’

‘But you can breed horses-and you can see how they change-longer legs, even a different gait. Like turning a desert wolf into a hunting dog-it doesn’t take as long as you’d think. Did someone breed us to make us like we are?’

‘If they did,’ hissed Grub, ‘they should’ve given one of us more brains!’ Snatching her by the arm, he pulled her upright.

She laughed as they ran.

Behind them, water exploded, enormous jaws snapped on empty air, breath shrieking, and the ground trembled.

Grub did not look behind them-he could hear the monstrous thrash and whip of the huge lizard as it surged through the undergrowth, closing fast.

Then Sinn tore herself free.

His heels skidded on wet clay. Spinning round, he caught an instant’s glimpse of Sinn-her back to him-facing a lizard big as a Quon galley, its elongated jaws bristling with dagger-sized fangs. Opening wide and wider still.

Fire erupted. A conflagration that blinded Grub, made him reel away as a solid wall of heat struck him. He stumbled to his knees. It was raining-no, that was hail- no, bits of flesh, hide and bone. Blinking, gasping, he slowly lifted his head.

A crater gaped before Sinn, steaming.

He climbed to his feet and walked unevenly to her side. The pit was twenty or more paces across, deep as a man was tall. Murky water gurgled, filling the basin. In that basin, a piece of the lizard’s tail thrashed and twitched. Mouth dry, Grub asked, ‘Did you enjoy that, Sinn?’

‘None of it’s real, Grub.’

‘Looked real enough to me!’

She snorted. ‘Just a memory.’

‘Whose?’

‘Maybe mine.’ Sinn shrugged. ‘Maybe yours. Something buried so deep inside us, we would never have ever known about it, if we weren’t here.’

‘That makes no sense.’

Sinn held up her hands. The one that had been streaming blood looked scorched. ‘My blood,’ she whispered, ‘is on fire.’

They skirted the swamp, watched by a herd of scaly, long-necked beasts with flattened snouts. Bigger than any bhederin, but with the same dull, bovine eyes. Tiny winged lizards patrolled their ridged backs, picking at ticks and lice.

Beyond the swamp the land sloped upward, festooned with snake-leafed trees with pebbled boles and feathery crowns. There was no obvious way around the strange forest, so they entered it. In the humid shade beneath the canopy, iridescent-winged moths fluttered about like bats, and the soft, damp ground was crawling with toads that could swallow a man’s fist and seemed disinclined to move aside, forcing Grub to step carefully and Sinn to lash out with her bare feet, laughing with every meaty impact.

The slope levelled out and the trees grew denser, gloom closing in like a shroud. ‘This was a mistake,’ muttered Grub.

‘What was?’

‘All of it. The Azath House, the portal-Keneb must be worried sick. It wasn’t fair, us just leaving like that, telling no one. If I’d known it was going to take this long to find whatever it was you think we need to find, I’d probably have said “no” to the whole idea.’ He eyed the girl beside him. ‘You knew from the very start, didn’t you?’

‘We’re on the trail-we can’t leave it now. Besides, I need an ally. I need someone who can guard my back.’

‘With what, this stupid eat-knife in my belt?’

She made a face. ‘Tell me the truth. Where did you come from?’

‘I was a foundling in the Chain of Dogs. The Imperial Historian Duiker saved me. He picked me up outside Aren’s gate and put me into Keneb’s arms.’

‘Do you actually remember all of that?’

‘Of course.’

Her eyes had sharpened their study. ‘You remember walking in the Chain of Dogs?’

He nodded. ‘Walking, running. Being scared, hungry, thirsty. Seeing so many people die. I even remember seeing Coltaine once, although the only thing I can see in my head now, when I think of him, is crow-feathers. At least,’ he added, ‘I didn’t see him die.’

‘What city did you come from?’

‘That I can’t remember.’ He shrugged. ‘Anything before the Chain… is gone, like it never existed.’

‘It didn’t.’

‘What?’

‘The Chain of Dogs made you, Grub. It built you up out of dirt and sticks and rocks, and then it filled you with everything that happened. The heroes who fought and then died, the people who loved, then lost. The ones that starved and died of thirst. The ones whose hearts burst with terror. The ones that drowned, the ones that swallowed an arrow or a sword. The ones who rode spears. It took all of that and that became your soul.’

‘That’s ridiculous. There were lots of orphans. Some of us made it, some of us didn’t. That’s all.’

‘You were what, three years old? Four? Nobody remembers much from when they were that young. A handful of scenes, maybe. That’s it. But you remember the Chain of Dogs, Grub, because you’re its get.’

‘I had parents. A real father, a real mother!’

‘But you can’t remember them.’

‘Because they died before the Chain even started!’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because what you’re saying makes no sense!’

‘Grub, I know because you’re just like me.’

‘What? You got a real family-you even got a brother!’

‘Who looks at me and doesn’t know who or what he’s looking at. I’ll tell you who made me. An assassin named Kalam. He found me hiding with a bunch of bandits who were pretending to be rebels. He carved things on to my soul, and then he left. And then I was made a second time-I was added on to. At Y’Ghatan, where I found the fire that I took inside me, that now burns on and on like my very own sun. And after, there was Captain Faradan Sort, because she knew that I knew they were still alive-and I knew because the fire never went out-it was under the city, burning and burning. I knew-I could feel it.’ She stopped then, panting to catch her breath, her eyes wild as a wasp-stung cat’s.

Grub stared at her, not knowing whether he wanted to hug her or hit her. ‘You were born to a mother, just like I was.’

‘Then why are we so different?’

Moths fled at her shout, and sounds fell away on all sides.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied in a soft voice. ‘Maybe… maybe you did find something in Y’Ghatan. But nothing like that ever happened to me-’

‘Malaz City. You jumped ship. You went to find the Nachts. Why?’

‘I don’t know!’

She leapt away from him, rushed off into the wood. In moments he had lost sight of her. ‘Sinn? What are you doing? Where are you going?’

The gloom vanished. Fifty paces away a seething sphere of flames blossomed. Trees exploded in its path as it rolled straight towards Grub.

He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged.

The blistering ball of fire heaved closer, huge, bristling-

Grub gestured. The ground lifted suddenly into the fire’s path, in a mass of roots, humus and mud, surging upward, toppling trees to the sides. A thousand twisted brown arms snaked out from the churning earth. The writhing wall engulfed the rolling sphere of fire, slapped it down as would a booted heel crush the life from a wayward ember. Thunder shook. The earth subsided, the arms vanishing, leaving nothing more than a slowly settling, chewed-up mound. Clouds of steam billowed and then drifted, thinning as the darkness returned once more.

He saw her walking calmly towards him, stepping over shattered trunks, brushing dirt from her plain tunic.

Sinn halted directly before him. ‘It doesn’t matter, Grub,’ she said. ‘You and me-we’re different.’

She set off, and after a moment he stumbled after her.

Never argue with a girl.

It was a day for strangers. One was beyond his reach, the other he knew well. Taxilian and Rautos had prised loose a panel to reveal a confused mass of metal coils, tubes and wire-wrapped cables. Muttering about finding the necessary hinge spells needed to unleash sorcerous power, thus awakening the city’s brain, Taxilian began poking and prodding the workings. Crowding behind him, sweat beading his brow, Rautos ran through a litany of cautions, none of which Taxilian heeded.

Last had devised a trap for the lizard-rats-the orthen-and had headed off to check it, Asane accompanying him.

At the top of a ramp and in a long but shallow antechamber, Nappet and Sheb had found a sealed door and were pounding at it with iron-headed sledges, each blow ringing like a tortured bell. Most of the damage they likely inflicted was to their ears, but since neither had anything to say to the other, they’d yet to discover it.

Breath was exploring the Nest itself, the now empty, abandoned abode of the Matron, finding nothing of interest, although unbeknownst to her residual flavours flowed in through her lungs and formed glistening minute droplets on her exposed skin. Vague dreams of producing children dogged her, successive scenes of labour