‘All right all right! So maybe I need to make some adjustments, too. I can do that! Easy. Watch me! First thing-I’ll get the captain to give me a squad-’

‘What makes you think you deserve to lead a squad?’

‘Because I was a-’

‘Exactly. A damned Bridgeburner! Hedge, you’re a sapper-’

‘So are you!’

‘Mostly I leave that to Cuttle these days-’

‘You did the drum! Without me!’

‘You weren’t there-’

‘That makes no difference!’

‘How can it not make a difference?’

‘Let me work on that. The point is, you were doing sapping stuff, Fid. In fact, the point is, you and me need to get drunk and find us some whores-’

‘Only works the other way round, Hedge.’

‘Now you’re talking! And listen, I’ll get a finger-bone nose-ring so I can fit right in with these bloodthirsty Bonehunters you’re so proud of, how does that sound?’

Fiddler stared at the man. His ridiculous leather cap with its earflaps, his hopeful grin. ‘Get a nose-ring and I’ll kill you myself, Hedge. Fine, then, let’s stir things up. Just don’t even think about asking for a squad, all right?’

‘So what am I supposed to do instead?’

‘Tag along with Gesler’s squad-I think it’s short of a body.’ And then he snorted a laugh. ‘A body. You. Good one.’

‘I told you I wasn’t dead no more, Fid.’

‘If you say so.’

Lieutenant Pores sat in the captain’s chair behind the captain’s desk, and held his hands folded together on the surface before him as he regarded the two women who had, until recently, been rotting in cells in some Letherii fort. ‘Sisters, right?’

When neither replied, Pores nodded. ‘Some advice, then. Should either of you one day achieve higher rank-say, captain-you too will learn the art of stating the obvious. In the meantime, you are stuck with the absurd requirement of answering stupid questions with honest answers, all the while keeping a straight face. You will need to do a lot of this with me.’

The woman on the right said, ‘Aye, sir, we’re sisters.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant Sinter. Wasn’t that satisfying? I’m sure it was. What I will find even more satisfying is watching you two washing down the barracks’ latrines for the next two weeks. Consider it your reward for being so incompetent as to be captured by these local fools. And then failing to escape.’ He scowled. ‘Look at you two-nothing but skin and bones! Those uniforms look like shrouds. I order you to regain your lost weight, in all the right places, within the same fortnight. Failure to do will result in a month on half-rations. Furthermore, I want you both to get your hair cut, down to the scalp, and to deposit said sheared hair on this desk precisely at the eighth bell this evening. Not earlier, not later. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir!’ barked Sergeant Sinter.

‘Very good,’ nodded Pores. ‘Now get out of here, and if you see Lieutenant Pores in the corridor remind him that he has been ordered to a posting on Second Maiden Fort, and the damned idiot should be on his way by now. Dismissed!’

As soon as the two women were gone, Pores leapt up from behind the captain’s desk, scanned the surface to ensure nothing had been knocked askew, and then carefully repositioned the chair just so. With a nervous glance out the window, he hurried out into the reception room and sat down behind his own, much smaller desk. Hearing heavy boots in the corridor he began shuffling the scrolls and wax tablets on the surface in front of him, planting a studious frown on his features in time for his captain’s portentous arrival.

As soon as the door opened, Pores leapt to attention. ‘Good morning, sir!’

‘It’s mid-afternoon, Lieutenant. Those wasp stings clearly rotted what’s left of your brain.’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘Have 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?’