The others subsided and Sinter was careful to hide her relief. That damned gum had been in her pouch too long, making it dirty, and she could feel the stuff on her fingers. She surreptitiously brought her hands down to her thighs and rubbed as if trying to warm up.
Kisswhere shot her a jaded look. The damned barracks was hot as a head-shrinker’s oven.
They made a point of ignoring the clump of boots as someone marched up to their table. Badan Gruk threw the bones-and achieved six out of six in the core.
‘Did you see that! Look!’ Badan’s smile was huge and hugely fake. ‘Look, you two, look at that cast!’
But they were looking at him instead, because cheaters couldn’t stand that for long-they’d twitch, they’d bead up, they’d squirrel on the chair.
‘Look!’ he said again, pointing, but the command sounded more like a plea, and all at once he sagged back and raised his hands. ‘Fingers clean, darlings-’
‘That would be a first,’ said the man standing now at their table.
Badan Gruk’s expression displayed hurt and innocence, with just a touch of indignation. ‘That wasn’t called for, sir. You saw my throw-you can see my fingers, too. Clean as clean can be. No gum, no tar, no wax. Soldiers can’t be smelly or dirty-it’s bad for morale.’
‘You sure about that?’
Sinter twisted in her chair. ‘Can we help you, Lieutenant Pores?’
The man’s eyes flickered in surprise. ‘You mistake me, Sergeant Sinter. I am Captain-’
‘Kindly was pointed out to us, sir.’
‘I thought I ordered you to cut your hair.’
‘We did,’ said Kisswhere. ‘It grew back. It’s a trait among Dal Honese, right in the blood, an aversion-is that the word, Sint? Sure it is. Aversion. To bad haircuts. We get them and our hair insists on growing back to what looks better. Happens overnight, sir.’
‘You might be comfortable,’ said Pores, ‘believing that I’m not Captain Kindly; that I’m not, in fact, the man who was pointed out to you. But can you be certain that the right one was pointed out to you? If Lieutenant Pores was doing the pointing, for example. He’s one for jokes in bad taste. Infamous for it, in fact. He could have elected to take advantage of you-it’s a trait of his, one suspects. In the blood, as it were.’
‘So,’ asked Sinter, ‘who might he have pointed to, sir?’
‘Why, anyone at all.’
‘But Lieutenant Pores isn’t a woman now, is she?’
‘Of course not, but-’
‘It was a woman,’ continued Sinter, ‘who did the pointing out.’
‘Ah, but she might have been pointing to Lieutenant Pores, since you asked about whoever was your immediate superior. Well,’ said Pores, ‘now that that’s cleared up, I need to check if you two women have put on the weight you were ordered to.’
Kisswhere and Sinter both leaned back to regard him.
The man gave them a bright smile.
‘Sir,’ said Sinter, ‘how precisely do you intend to do that?’
The smile was replaced by an expression of shock. ‘Do you imagine your captain to be some dirty old codger, Sergeant? I certainly hope not! No, you will come to my office at the ninth bell tonight. You will strip down to your undergarments in the outer office. When you are ready, you are to knock and upon hearing my voice you are to enter immediately. Am I understood, soldiers?’
‘Yes sir,’ said Sinter.
‘Until then.’
The officer marched off.
‘How long,’ asked Kisswhere after he’d left the barracks, ‘are we going to run with this, Sint?’
‘Early days yet,’ she smiled, collecting the bones. ‘Badan, since you’re out of the game for being too obvious, I need you to do a chore for me-well, not much of a chore-anyway, I need you to go out into the city and find me two of the fattest, ugliest whores you can.’
‘I don’t like where this is all going,’ Badan Gruk muttered.
‘Listen to you,’ chided Sinter, ‘you’re getting old.’
‘What did she say?’
Sandalath Drukorlat scowled. ‘She wondered why we’d waited so long.’
Withal grunted. ‘That woman, Sand…’
‘Yes.’ She paused just inside the doorway and glared at the three Nachts huddled beneath the window sill. Their long black, muscled arms were wrapped about one another, forming a clump of limbs and torsos from which three blunt heads made an uneven row, eyes thinned and darting with suspicion. ‘What’s with them?’