Frowning, Bottle hesitated.

Fiddler hissed a curse. "Bottle."

"Well, I was assuming she knows, only has her reasons for not mentioning it, so I was thinking, it wouldn't be polite—"

"Soldier—"

"I mean, she was a squad-mate of yours, and—"

"A squad-mate who just happened to have been possessed herself, by the Rope, almost all the time that I knew her. So if she's not talking, it's no surprise. Tell me Bottle, what manner of flesh did those souls call home?"

"Are you saying you don't trust her?"

"I don't even trust you."

Frowning, Bottle looked away, watched Deadsmell working on Masan Gilani on the slope, sensed the whisper of Denul sorcery… and something like Hood's own breath. The bastard is a necromancer, damn him! "Bottle."

"Sergeant? Oh, sorry. I was just wondering."

"Wondering what?"

"Well, why Apsalar has two dragons in tow."

"They're not dragons. They're tiny lizards—"

"No, Sergeant, they're dragons."

Slowly, Fiddler's eyes widened.

Bottle'd known he wouldn't like it.

Enough to curdle a demon’s blood, those eyes.

Curdle Phantomhive

We are still of use though the gash smells sour,

amethyst rot. We're twitching devices ---

sanded bones and stitches. The worms devour

all that the obsidian knife slices:

meaty scads and sheaves of skin. This butcher's

love of gristle, of grotesqueness, of boils

that one picks at when they wish the blisters

to burst. The mirror knows how darkness spoils

when cast from its surface. We are of use

because we dream. The stone scalpel cannot.

The hand behind it won't. Dreams of clabber.

Dreams of grubs in the lesion. We seduce

all that the suture holds dear: curdle, clot,