Page 64 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

In the language of the half-giants, tinthra means “tree,” xolou means “of the slave.” So the short version, Tinthrax, northernmost outpost of the empire, was where everyone past that border brought slaves to sell. The soil was black here, and the rocks were red. The walls of Tinthrax were so red that it might have been called Erydon, or the Red City, had that name not already been taken by the capital, which lay another ten days south. Erydon was the name of the city people meant when they just said the City, as well as the empire it commanded; it had even lent its name to the people under its weighty baton. I gasped when Tinthrax came into view, like a rust-red crown on a mostly black table here and there spotted with brush and short trees, its handsome road drawing travelers irresistibly to its gates.

Where was there to go but south?

South to the tree with slaves for fruit, and, for the most and least lucky, south to the red city.

“Welcome, Foxfoot!” said Bazl. “Welcome to kingdom of Erydon! Yes, you will pass into slavery here, but at least you will see great things. Look!” he said, and now he pointed right, in the direction of the Thralls, where three red fish-things floated in the sky.

“The fuck are those?” I said.

“Cloud-ships,” he told me. And in that moment, I heard Bazl not as the bronze-nosed Egalitarian slaver freebooting on the steppes of the Giantlands. I heard him as a small boy in Wostra, who would grow up to see sights no other in his town or village ever would. Cities of red stone, giants bigger than houses, and ships that fly.

“Cloud-ships,” I said, and I forgot my peeling skin and my still-sore arm. I was little Kinch á Glurris Na Filleen of Platha Glurris, future Prank of the Guild, and I was learning that some gods are real.

19The Fruit-Tree of Slaves

An unmetered verse for Tinthrax,

which deserves no singer’s voice,

nor measured rhyme.

Town of red walls, northernmost claw

of the clutchers of Erydon,

your hunger for kynd and giants is matched

only by your thirst for tears;

they are your wine, you press them from us

you false masters, you slavers,

tramping in time.

How many races weep

to recall your slave-stones

sun-hot beneath bare feet,

their iron loops nailed deep?

We are your children’s toys,

your nurses, your fools;

we run when summoned,

sleep at your let,

bow at your sandals

as if you command when the sun rises,

when the moon falls.

You do not.