Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,88

uninvited guest, and something tells me you will come to regret it.

Selush of the Stinking House was tall and amply proportioned, yet her most notable feature was her hair. Twenty-seven short braids of the thick black hair, projecting in all directions, each wrapped round an antler tine, which meant that the braids curved and twisted in peculiar fashion. She was somewhere between thirty-five and fifty years of age, the obscurity the product of her formidable talent as a disguiser of flaws. Violet eyes, produced by an unusual ink collected from segmented worms that lived deep in the sand of the south island beaches, and lips kept full and red by a mildly toxic snake venom that she painted on every morning.

As she stood before Tehol and Shurq Elalle at the threshold of her modest and unfortunately named abode, she was dressed in skin-tight silks, inviting Tehol against his own sense of decorum to examine her nipples beneath the gilt sheen – and so it was a long moment before he looked up to see the alarm in her eyes.

'You're early! I wasn't expecting you. Oh! Now I'm all nervous. Really, Tehol, you should know better than to do the unexpected! Is this the dead woman?'

'If not,' Shurq Elalle replied, 'then I'm in even deeper trouble, wouldn't you say?'

Selush stepped closer. 'This is the worst embalming I've ever seen.'

'I wasn't embalmed.'

'Oh! An outrage! How did you die?'

Shurq raised a lifeless brow. 'I am curious. How often is that question answered by your clients?'

Selush blinked. 'Enter, if you must. So early!'

'My dear,' Tehol said reasonably, 'it's less than a couple of hundred heartbeats from the midnight bell.'

'Precisely! See how flustered you've made me? Quickly, inside, I must close the door. There! Oh, the dark streets are so frightening. Now, sweetie, let me look more closely at you. My servant was unusually reticent, I'm afraid.' She abruptly leaned close until her nose was almost touching Shurq's lips.

Tehol flinched, but luckily neither woman noticed.

'You drowned.'

'Really.'

'In Quillas Canal. Just downstream of Windlow's Meatgrinders on the last day of a summer month. Which one? Wanderer's Month? Watcher's?'

'Betrayer's.'

'Oh! Windlow must have had unusually good business that month, then. Tell me, do people scream when they see you?'

'Sometimes.'

'Me too.'

'Do you,' Shurq asked, 'get compliments on your hair?'

'Never.'

'Well, that was pleasing small-talk,' Tehol said hastily. 'We haven't got all night, alas—'

'Why, yes we have, you silly man,' Selush said.

'Oh, right. Sorry. In any case. Shurq was a victim of the Drownings, and, it turned out, an abiding curse.'

'Isn't it always the way?' Selush sighed, turning to walk to the long table along the back wall of the room.

'Tehol mentioned roses,' Shurq said, following.

'Roses? Dear me, no. Cinnamon and patchouli, I would think. But first, we need to do something about all that mould, and the moss in your nostrils. And then there's the ootooloo—'

'The what?' Shurq and Tehol asked in unison.

'Lives in hot springs in the Bluerose Mountains.' She swung about and regarded Shurq with raised brows. 'A secret among women. I'm surprised you've never heard of them.'

'It would seem my education is lacking.'

'Well, an ootooloo is a small soft-bodied creature that feeds through a crevice, a sort of vertical slit for a mouth. Its skin is covered in cilia with the unusual quality of transmitting sensation. These cilia can take root in membranous flesh—'

'Hold on a moment,' Tehol said, aghast, 'you're not suggesting—'

'Most men can't tell the difference, but it enhances pleasure many times... or so I am led to believe. I have never invited one inside, since the emplacement of an ootooloo is permanent, and it needs, uhm, constant feeding.'

'How often?' Shurq demanded, and Tehol heard suitable alarm in her tone.

'Daily.'

'But Shurq's nerves are dead – how can she feel what this ottoolie thing feels?'

'Not dead, Tehol Beddict, simply unawakened. Besides, before too long, the ootooloo's cilia will have permeated her entire body, and the healthier the organism the brighter and more vigorous her glowing flesh!'

'I see. And what of my brain? Will these roots grow in it as well?'

'Well, we can't have that, can we, lest you live out the remainder of existence drooling in a hot bath. No, we shall infuse your brain with a poison – well, not a true poison, but the exudation of a small creature that shares those hot springs with the ootooloo. Said exudation is unpalatable to the ootooloo. Isn't nature wonderful?'

Grainy-eyed, Bugg staggered inside his master's home. It was less than an hour before dawn. He felt drained, more