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Yes, the levels above seemed well built, the walls solid and sturdy. No reason to think it would all come down at the careless toss of some child god. These kinds of thoughts, well, they could only make a man angry. In ways every child would understand.

He walked with his huge hands balled into fists.Advertisement

Sheb was fairly certain that he had died in prison, or come close enough to dead that the cell cutter simply ordered the bearers to carry him out to the lime pits, and they spilled him down on to a bed of dusted corpses. Searing pain from the lime had roused him from his fevered oblivion, and he must have climbed his way out, pushed through the bodies that had been dumped on top of him.

He recalled struggling. Vast, unshifting weights. He recalled even thinking that he had failed. That he was too weak, that he would never get free. He even remembered seeing swaths of red, blistered skin on his arms, sloughing away in his frenzied thrashing. And a nightmare instant where he gouged out his own burning eyes to bring an end to their agony.

Mad delusions, of course. He had won free. Had he not, would he be alive now? Walking at Nappet’s side? No, he had cheated them all. Those Hivanar agents who brought the embezzlement charges against him, the advocates who bribed him out of the Drownings (where, he knew, he would have survived), seeing him instead sent to the work camps. Ten years’ hard labour-no one survived that.

Except me. Sheb the unkillable. And one day, Xaranthos Hivanar, I will come back to steal the rest of your wealth. I still know what I know, don’t I? And you will pay to keep me quiet. And this time round I won’t get careless. I’ll see your corpse lying in a pauper’s pit. I swear it before the Errant himself. I swear it!

Walking at Sheb’s side, Nappet held on to his cold, hard grin. He knew Sheb wanted to be the bully in this crowd. The man had a viper’s heart, a stony knuckle of a thing, beating out venom in turgid spurts. One of these nights, he vowed, he’d throw the fool on his back and give him the old snake-head where it counted.

Sheb had been in a Letherii prison-Nappet was certain of it. His habits, his manners, his skittish way of moving-they told him all he needed to know about ratty little Sheb. He’d been used and used well in those cells. Calluses on the knees. Fish Breath. Slick cheeks. There were plenty of names for men like him.

Sheb had got it enough to start liking it, and all this bitching back and forth between Nappet and Sheb, well, that was just seeing who’d be the first one doing the old cat stretch.

Four years’ back-breaking quarrying up near Bluerose. That had been Nappet’s sentence for that little gory mess back in Letheras, the sister’s husband who’d liked throwing the frail thing around-well, no brother was going to let that just sidle past. No brother worth anything.

The only damned shame was that he hadn’t managed to kill the bastard. Close, though. Enough broken bones so that the man had trouble sitting up, never mind stalking the house breaking things and hitting defenceless women.

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Not that she’d been grateful. Family loyalty only went one way, it turned out. He forgave her quick enough for ratting on him. She’d walked in on a messy scene, after all. Screams aplenty. Her poor mind was confused-she’d never been very sharp to begin with. If she had been, why, she’d never have married that nub-nosed swaggering turd in the first place.

Anyway, Nappet knew he’d get Sheb sooner or later. So long as Sheb understood that between them he was the man in charge. And he knew that Sheb would want it rough, at least to start with, so he could look outraged, wounded and all that. The two of them, they’d played in the same yard, after all.

Breath stumbled and Nappet shoved her forward. ‘Stupid woman. Frail and stupid, that’s what you are, like every other woman. Almost as bad as the hag back there. You got a swamp drying out in that blonde hair, did you know that? You stink of the swamp-not that we been through one.’

She shot him a glare, before hurrying on.

Breath could smell mud. Its stench seemed to ooze from her pores. Nappet was right in that, but that didn’t stop her thinking about ways to kill him. If not for Taxilian, and maybe Last, he and Sheb would have raped her by now. Once or twice, to convince her about who was in charge. After that, she knew, they’d be happy enough with each other.

She’d been told a story, once, although she could not recall who had told it to her, or where they had been. It was a tale about a girl who was a witch, though she didn’t know it yet. She was a seer of the Tiles long before she saw her first Tile. A gift no one thought to even look for in this small, wheat-haired child.

Even before her first bloodflow, men had been after her. Not the tall grey-skinned ones, though the girl feared them the most-for reasons never explained-but men living in the same place as her. Letherii. Slaves, yes, slaves, just like she’d been. That girl. That witch. pqdm.com