Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,587

repeated.

'Do you know the hag? The witch? The seductress and corrupter?'

Gods, I once tossed her on my knee. He realized of a sudden that he was clawing a hand through the remnants of his singed, snarled hair, unmindful of the snags, indifferent to the tears that started from his eyes. The girl squirmed. He stared over at Corabb, unseeing, then hurried ahead, feeling dizzy, feeling ... appalled. Dunsparrow ... she'd be in her twenties now. Middle twenties, I suppose. What was she doing in Y'Ghatan?

He pushed between Kalam and Quick Ben, startling both men.

'Fid?'

'Tug Hood's snake till he shrieks,' the sapper said. 'Drown the damned Queen of Dreams in her own damned pool. Friends, you won't believe who went with Leoman into that warren. You won't believe who shared Leoman's bed in Y'Ghatan. No, you won't believe anything I say.'

'Abyss take you, Fid,' Kalam said in exasperation, 'what are you talking about?'

'Dunsparrow. That's who's at Leoman's side right now. Dunsparrow. Whiskeyjack's little sister and I don't know – I don't know anything – what to think, only I want to scream and I don't know why even there, no, I don't know anything any more. Gods, Quick – Kalam – what does it mean? What does any of it mean?'

'Calm down,' Quick Ben said, but his voice was strangely high, tight. 'For us, for us, I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's a damned coincidence and even if it isn't, it's not like it means anything, not really. It's just ... peculiar, that's all. We knew she was a stubborn, wild little demon, we knew that, even then – and you knew her better than us, me and Kalam, we only met her once, in Malaz City. But you, you were like her uncle, which means you got some explaining to do!'

Fiddler stared at the man, at his wide eyes. 'Me? You've lost your mind, Quick. Listen to you! Blaming me, for her! Wasn't nothing to do with me!'

'Stop it, both of you,' Kalam said. 'You're frightening the soldiers behind us. Look, we're all too nervous right now, about all sorts of things, to be able to make sense of any of this, assuming there's any sense to be made. People choose their own lives, what they do, where they end up, it don't mean some god's playing around. So, Whiskeyjack's little sister is now Leoman's lover, and they're both hiding out in the Queen of Dreams' warren. All right, better that than crumbling bones in the ashes of Y'Ghatan, right? Well?'

'Maybe, maybe not,' Fiddler said.

'What in Hood's name does that mean?' Kalam demanded.

Fiddler drew a deep, shaky breath. 'We must have told you, it's not like it was secret or anything, and we always used it as an excuse, to explain her, the way she was and all that. Never so she could hear, of course, and we said it to take its power away—'

'Fiddler!'

The sapper winced at Kalam's outburst. 'Now who's frightening everyone—'

'You are! And never mind everyone else – you're frightening me, damn you!'

'All right. She was born to a dead woman – Whiskeyjack's stepmother, she died that morning, and the baby – Dunsparrow – well, she was long in coming out, she should have died inside, if you know what I mean. That's why the town elders gave her up to the temple, to Hood's own. The father was already dead, killed outside Quon, and Whiskeyjack, well, he was finishing his prenticeship. We was young then. So me and him, we had to break in and steal her back, but she'd already been consecrated, blessed in Hood's name – so we took its power away by talking about it, ha ha, making light and all that, and she grew up normal enough. More or less. Sort of ...' He trailed away, refused to meet the two sets of staring eyes, then scratched at his singed face. 'We need us a Deck of Dragons, I think ...'

Apsalar, four paces behind the trio, smiled as the wizard and assassin both simultaneously cuffed Sergeant Fiddler. A short-lived smile. Such revelations were troubling. Whiskeyjack had always been more than a little reticent about where he'd come from, about the life before he became a soldier. Mysteries as locked away as the ruins beneath the sands. He'd been a mason, once, a worker in stone. She knew that much. A fraught profession among the arcana of divination and symbolism. Builder of barrows, the one who could make solid all of