Page 100 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

I was numb, if you want the truth of it.

I finished my business and trousered up.

I paced the room almost like Bully’d just done.

When I got tired of pacing, and then tired of sitting and staring at the door, and after I’d petted Bully for a bit and rubbed his belly as he purred hard, I told him goodbye and took my knife and skeleton key and made my way out the door.

I was back not three hours later.

I saw three things on this doomed outing.

The first was expected; the goblins were being housed on the second floor of the palace, with Erydoni guards outside, two big, observant karkers in blackglass armor. One of them noticed the door to the sathium tunnel open—happily, he hadn’t seen me open it, and I’d only opened it a crack, so he could put it down to carelessness rather than mischief. Of course, I’d had the good sense not to close the door again when I suspected he saw it open—but I’d had to slide backward like a mouse from a cat so the darkness would hide me from his peeping inside, laying my body over the gently glowing eye of Thumos I’d pried out again. I’m glad the Erydoni sense of smell is no better than ours—a dog or a goblin would have known I was there—but then, it would be hard enough to smell anything over the scent of goblin, which was strong despite the closed door and the ambassadors’ efforts to damp it.

This was the fifth door I’d opened, and there was no doubt this was where the biters were, for all the good I could do with the information. I was a thief, not an assassin—with time to plan, I could have come up with a way to get inside their quarters, maybe even managed to steal this or that. But to kill them all as well? I couldn’t outfight them. I’d never manage to catch them sleeping unless I drugged them. And what such drug would work on their kind, and how could I obtain it here, as a slave? I have rarely in my life felt so helpless as I did that evening, lying in that tunnel, wet as it was with … wait, wet? I tasted the bit of moisture under my now-damp sleeve—salt again!

One thing they teach you at the Low School is not to scorn the Crumbs of Fortune. Plans collapse, inspiration fails, luck runs dry. When you’re dead, you can give up if you like, but only then. Fortune offers cake to some, crumbs to another. Try for the cake but take the crumbs. I had a strong feeling that the time had come for me to find out why salt water was getting in these pipeways—I could do fuck-all here besides waiting for the guards to drop dead and the goblins to unlock their door and go to sleep.

The water wasn’t just on the bottom of the tunnels—the walls and ceilings were also damp. But I found nothing dripping, no likely source. Also, the traces began to dry even as I skittered through the maze, so whatever had happened had done so recently. It was in the cellar that I found the wettest trail, which I took to mean the freshest, but I have since realized that I was mistaken in that. I slowly opened the door on the lowest level and saw more moisture on the floor.

Carefully, so slowly, I left my safe warren, wrapped the glowing citrine eye of Thumos in my shirt to dark it, and crept along to see where the moisture led. It took me to a huge room whose occupant, too large for a door, lived shackled to the wall with chains I’d be hard-pressed to lift a link of. It was the sad-bastard quarters of the geigon who worked the lift, and who opened and closed the main gate to secure the palace. He slept on his back on a rude nest of hay. Not so far away from him was his food-trough and a water-bucket near a spigot. Did these massive karkers drink salt water? I doubted it, but goblins did, so what did I know? I climbed the bucket to the top, dabbed a finger in and had a taste. Foul and greasy, nothing I’d give a friendly donkey, but fresh, not salty.

The giant breathed in such long breaths I thought three of me could fit in one lung of his. I watched him for a good while, thinking about the life this poor biggun was confined to. There was likely nothing stronger on two legs in all the world, but here he was in even stricter bondage than myself, and only because I was small and clever. We were like a fox and a bull, I thought, but that got me thinking about the woman I’d once called a wolf and whom the city thought a tiger. And that threatened to wreck me, so I decided it was time to move. As I approached the door to the sathium tunnels, my heart caught in my gullet and my stones drew up into my kidneys. I’d have squawked with fear if I hadn’t had squawks and eeps thrashed out of me by the Guild.

The door to the sathium tunnel opened by itself.

I scurried back to the water-bucket and hid on the far side of it, which put me closer to the giant than I’d have liked, close enough not only to hear his long outbreaths but to feel them and smell them also. Stale grain, tooth-rot, and unhappiness. I would likely be in for some unhappiness myself if he woke up with me creeping near him, though maybe his blindness would save me if I made a dash for it. But what was coming out of that door? I heard something slither and something else drag. I had to look. I peeked as slowly as I could, keeping low.

I had to stifle another gasp.

You won’t believe me, but it was that karking cuttlefish, Quiggles Karking Silversides. And dragging a sack behind him, too. He was coming toward Pulhu, which meant toward me.

My only chance, it seemed to me, would take me closer still to the giant. I steeled myself and crawled backward into the stinking nest of hay he slept on, wishing I had a god I could ask to keep the biggun asleep. Fothannon Foxfoot would be enjoying himself at my expense too much to help me out of this one.

If I thought his breath was strong before, I near died of it now. It was hot and awful, and only slightly better than having my arms pulled off and shoved up my fundaments, but I bore it.

He woke then, only a moment after I’d buried myself half under him.

He said a word then.

He said, “Friend.”

He shifted and sat his great weight up.

The cuttlefish clambered into his lap like a cat, pulling the sack up behind it.

Fruit.

The thing had raided the kitchen and brought the giant berries, and apples, and melon, which it fed to him with its tentacles as sweetly and generously as I’d once seen its kraken cousin viciously take men and women from their boats to murder. Pulhu sighed with pleasure, a rumbling sound not unlike a purr, and the cuttlefish touched a tentacle to his cheek. I was moved by this, who wouldn’t be, but I didn’t think my own warm feelings would save me if either of them realized this odd, stolen friendship was being spied on. As I saw it, I could wait it out or make a mad dash. Had I not felt desperate to find a solution to the goblin problem, I would have waited. This tenderness between such different creatures loosened parts of my heart I hadn’t realized were so tightly bound. And the thing couldn’t stay out of the water forever, could it? Krakens couldn’t, nor common octopi.

But again, who knew?

I had to go.

I ran for it.

Running had been a mistake.

I was faster on the hoof than the cuttlefish, but it was with a great chill that I realized that once we got to the tunnel, I was going to have to out-crawl it. Had I thought of that before I ran, I wouldn’t have run. Had I thought of it before I made the door to the tunnel, I would have kept running and taken my chances meeting a servant, a guard, or Sylvae Mar Mexes the slavemistress. But I only knew how far in the shyte I was when I got into the tunnel and realized my desire to go faster was not translating into going faster. I still had the eye of Thumos in my hand, and I thought about dropping it to go faster, but then thought of a better use for it. The creature was gaining on me; I could hear it, I could smell it. At any moment, I would feel around my ankle the cool, moist tentacle of Quiggles Silversides, the master of my fate. If you can’t run, you have to fight or negotiate. I didn’t like my odds against the thing with only a not-so-sharp little knife; he, she, or it was slightly larger than me, and had a bastard of a beak somewhere in all that slick muscle, not to mention eight or ten tentacles—I hadn’t had the luxury of counting—any one of which was probably strong enough to choke me or besuckered enough to snatch a nut off me.