Page 107 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

Perfectly justified, as it turned out.

They brought me into the great main hall, which was littered here and there with rubble and dust, and made their way to the ascender room. It was there that they should have been creeping and peeping instead of walking in like they still owned the palace and everyone in it; for they were seen as soon as they saw.

“The queen!” someone yelled.

It took a moment for me to grasp all that I was seeing. About twenty kitchen and household slaves were gathered near the ascender. Over them all, I saw the hunched form of Pulhu the geigon with his ear turned toward two laborers who were working with a saw to cut a link of his massive ankle-chain. They were mostly through it. The person who had said “The queen!” was in fact Xander, Hasp’s lover, the handsome kitchen lad. He carried a gourd held aloft on a stick as if it were the flag of a new nation he was ready to die for. He had blood on his head, so I thought him injured, but then I realized that it wasn’t his blood. What he brandished on the end of his stick was no gourd but the head of Sylvae Mar Mexes, the slavemistress. Her mouth was open as if still silently scolding the very naughty slaves that had beheaded her, her eyes open but as blind as those of Pulhu.

It was all so awkward and strange.

Someone had to speak, didn’t they?

“Hello,” I said from over the minister’s shoulder, offering a little wave.

Hasp’s lover blinked as a drop of blood hit his eye, then waved back in a small and awkward way. I mean, it wasn’t the time for niceties, but we’d always gotten on.

Now the queen did something quite queenlike. She bore herself up to her full height, towering over all the kynd in the room, and shouted in a tone only the very wealthy and powerful and some great actors can manage.

“WHAT do you imagine you do here? GET away from that giant!”

And you won’t believe this if you’ve never lived in a place where the powerful are quite powerful and the weak have less than nothing, but the little mob did in fact back away from Pulhu. The two slaves who’d been sawing at his chains dropped their tool looking as shame-faced as children caught trying to open the sheepcote just for mischief.

“That’s right!” Princess Renata said, bobbing her head for emphasis, making the little bell of Hasp’s that she wore in her hair jingle. The geigon heard that jingle, and a lot of things seemed to happen at once on his wall-sized face: I fancied that he was at once remembering his Galtish friend, the dead old jester, and also understanding that the bells that once adorned his friend now hung on his tormenter. The blind have sharp hearing, so he will have known that sound came from a different place and perhaps had a different timbre from the bells I was forced to wear.

Whatever the truth of his thoughts, the sound of that bell spurred him to stand, grab the chain up, and gave it the kind of yank that only a twenty-five-footer who’d been hauling geezers up four stories for the gods knew how long could manage. The chain snapped at the point it was nearly sawed-through, the end of it whipping up and coming down on one poor slavie’s back and shoulders, injuring her terribly.

Her scream broke the spell the queen had cast over her subordinates.

Now they came at us.

Something flew up then down, striking Her Majesty on the head so she crumpled.

An iron skillet.

Yah, that’d do it.

Renata, panicked, ran into another large room.

The crowd stopped at the sight of the stricken queen, and several of them looked at her with a look I wish I’d never seen. One grabbed one of her great legs and pulled it to one side. Another did the same with the remaining leg, and this a woman besides.

The minister dropped me and said what must have been No or Your Majesty or Fuck-bumble-diddy-O, and rushed to die trying to save the queen being dishonored. He did so—die, I mean, and loudly. If it pleases you to think his sacrifice stopped the queen being defiled by those she’d long been a tyrant to, then think that. Or rather think that, since they’d heard what a good gambler she was, they all wanted a chance to play cards with her. Yes, that’s it. The slaves now played a robust game of cards with the stricken queen of Erydon, the one whose turn it was laughing in the ugliest possible way and saying, “Nai Ponira, nai Ponira,” or “Yes, Mistress.”

I’d been dealt in for a similar card game myself once, albeit with only one other player and my skull uncracked.

I ran and didn’t look back.

I knew I was in the same room Renata had run to, the king’s smaller receiving room. But the pisser was, there had been some collapse in this room, and now one of the beams that ornamented the roofs here just to show the king could afford wood in this dry city of red stone and black sand had fallen, blocking a door I knew to open inward.

Fuck me.

The geigon came in now, squatting to wriggle through the large-but-not-geigon-large door I had just come through. I had no way out but past him. I tried standing still, holding my breath. But I watched him breathe in, filling his nostrils with scent, and then nod to himself. His massive head turned my way. He walked toward me, only having to stoop a little in this palace of high ceilings, and I felt each step and with each step I heard small things rattle on shelves. He squatted down on his haunches, putting each hand on one side of me, though whether to simply cage me or to smash my head like an apple I had no idea.

“Hello, Pulhu,” I said. “It’s me, Kinch. I’m your friend. I brought you blueberries, remember?”

“Yah,” he said in a voice that rumbled my chest. “I like blueberries. Bring me more?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

He nodded and smiled.