Page 104 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

“But if you call me a cow again, I’ll twist your head off.”

“Fair play,” I said and solemnly held my hand out for her to shake, which she did, I’ll not say roughly. I had a good look at her, as well. Her gold-blond hair, so rare in this part of the world, shone in the strong sunlight. Her forehead glistened with beadlets of sweat.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Kinch-a-rinch?”

“It wasn’t your fault, was it?” I said.

She cocked her head at that, like that shyte wee dog she probably killed out of boredom the day of the first Apocalypse might have.

“What wasn’t?” she said, raising an eyebrow at whatever new game I was playing with her now. But I wasn’t playing a game. Not just then. I meant it. She was a right terror, but how would she have been otherwise in that house, in that kingdom of cunts, as she stumbled toward a crown with her little hands sticky with blood and honey-cakes?

“All of it,” I said, sadder than I think I’ve ever been.

“Well, that’s boring,” she said. “And why do you smell so bad? You smell like kaka.”

“I shat myself with joy to be here with you today.”

“Gross. And why are you speaking so flatly? Where is your merry voice?”

She was ready to give me a pinch. I didn’t want a pinch, though I would deserve this one.

“Why, my merry voice is RIGHT HERE!” I said, brightly and musically. “It thought you didn’t love it anymore, so it HID!”

“Oh, I love it, I do,” she said, crossing her arms and barely fluttering her palms on her arms, which she called tiny-clapping.

Her father said, “Ham dang-a-nab-a-rong pop-pippy,” or whatever, and pointed at the Praxeter, which was probably calling her or both of us to stop chattering and listen to the kark with the glowing circlet of fire.

He was just finishing.

“… bang-a-smack hoop bob-a-robby! Yes, I said bobarobby!” he said, or some such, and gestured at the stage below which the god would now be writing the godwords we had all gathered to read and contemplate. Smoke rose from the slot in the stage, and hilloxen bellowed. In a moment, the great beasts would be whipped to pull the mechanism that lifted the great tablet.

The people of Erydon were staring rapt, as they always did, wondering at the miracle of old shyte-balls Thumos actually bothering to scratch a lesson into the rock for his people every month. Only, the messages weren’t written on rock but clay made to look like rock. And the god’s finger had nothing to do with the smoke that billowed now dramatically out of the slot. Rather, that smoke was produced by some flammable putty, perhaps a cousin of Axaene firejelly, which had been smeared into the words baked into the clay and which now burned and blackened those words.

The hilloxen lowed and mooed under the lash now and strained to pull the great winch. The slab with the graven words, smoking as if freshly made by the finger of a fire god, began to rise.

“Kinch, wake up! You’ll want to see the godwords!”

It wasn’t my fault I was so sleepy.

You’d have been sleepy, too, if just a few hours before you had stolen into the Halfmoon, slunk through the shadows of the amphitheater, which was unguarded, picking the right locks and climbing down the right stairs until at last you found the hilloxen kept underground, the very same ones who pulled the great godsblessed tablet up even now.

So, yah, I was sleepy, and sore besides.

I had nearly strained a nut loose trying to carry the bucket I’d filled with hilloxen shyte, dark from the purple corn fed to them by the ton. The shovel, at least, was sized for kynd slaves, and not so hard to carry in one hand while I dragged the bucket in the other.

I had heard voices, high voices, and skulked about until I found the door leading from the hallway off the underground stables to the space beneath the stage where stood the clay tablets on which the godwords had already been written. The owners of those high voices were kynd slave children, standing on ladders, smearing putty that stank of burning oils into the letters—this by the light of glass lamps held well away from the flammables.

I waited until the children finished their work, of course.

There was no question of a scrawny geezer like me hauling the heavy shyte-bucket up those rungs; it was no easy matter even to climb those rungs holding a shyte-gooped shovel and tucking the gently glowing eye of Thumos under my chin for light, but I did this many times. This work needed light.

But the princess was right.

It wouldn’t do to sleep through this.

For as much as it seemed a bad dream, it was about to get much worse.

This would be a good time to wake up.