Page 73 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

my tutor in deviltry,

to my own damnation,

and yours.

Beneath us, in Erydon, domes of shining bronze threw back the dying chip of the sun, orange as it was in the west before it flared out and invited darkness.

The size of the city really was impressive.

No bridges, for there was nothing like a river here. The city had wells, perched as it was over a rare aquifer, though not enough of one to serve so many citizens, so many farms, so much livestock, by itself. The land was more verdant here, with farms stretching east, while west the villas of the wealthy climbed Thumos’s Throne, engreening it with terraced vineyards. Erydon itself had three layers of walls around it, and I would never again see walls so thick or sure. A city from the sky is nothing like a city from the ground, nor was this city like any other.

Among its notable features were four sort of elevated walls, but shyte walls, for they were full of arches. They stretched out like fingers all heading for different points in the Thrall Mountains. A faint glittering reflected the sun at their tops, and I would later learn why—these were aqueducts and carried meltwater west from the snow-packed Thralls to this thirstiest of cities.

Now I turned my gaze back from the glinting aqueducts to the city itself.

“Look at that fucking arena. You think that’s for blacksand games?” I said, pointing at a circular stadium in black stone. This was our first view of the Bone Palace. Galva looked at it for a long moment, perhaps thinking that might be her new home. Maybe her final one. I thought I might be going to that arena myself, but not for long. I had no illusions about lasting as a gladiator.

When at last our cloud-ship let out a hiss of sathium and lowered to bump against the airdock at the royal palace’s highest tower, the city was closer but still beneath us and growing dark. Though the darkness of Erydon was not the same as the darkness of the cities of Manreach, which would ever after seem benighted and small, for here was a city that had tamed the breath of the gods below the earth and lit its streets and the homes of the rich with lamps that burned that breath behind glass of pale green or amber.

Sounds rose up from the streets now; drunken yells told me these half-giants weren’t so different from kynd in their vices. Bits of a song made me hope most of the singers were better than that kark.

Slaves tied the Pride of Geryat fast, and we were unloaded, after the other animals. This square, stone tower was a lovely thing, with a garden on it, and benches for stargazing. A brass cage of sorts housed a contraption called an ascender, and, after we crossed a short landing, we were placed on this, in the company of four armed guards. The cage lowered slowly, and we saw other floors, all well lit and well appointed. It was hard to make sense of. Here a statue, there a tapestry, something like an armory. One child about my height watched us go past and called out over her shoulder in their odd tongue, pointing at us. I heard something like a harp on that floor.

Also, as we got closer to the bottom floor, which was underground, I became aware of another sound—a gentle groaning, as of an old man, but louder and lower.

At last, with a rattling of huge chains, the cage settled heavily to a stop, and the door rolled open.

Once the four soldiers with us exited, the last in line motioned for us to follow, and the ascender’s door banged closed.

I could hear a sound like breathing, heavy and slow, coming from something large, nearby but unseen.

We were met by the palace slavemistress. She stood a slender seven feet tall and wore a simple white silk garment. Her white hair stood up in a sort of alarmed pillar, cinched with a netting of white gold and blackglass beads. She carried a baton of blackglass, and her finely shaped shoes of I knew not what kind of leather topped cork bottoms that raised her up another few inches. Two gentle kynd house-slaves of the fetching wine and sending messages sort stood shorter than her, but her half-giant personal guard, at a muscly eight feet tall, made me realize the excited hair and the lifty shoes were in response to a physical trait that shamed her; at six and a half feet tall wearing only stockings, she was short. She was a wee short little Erydoni who’d have had to stoop to get in my miner da’s front door back home. I wanted to laugh, but I was too tired. I did, however, make a sound like huh before I could stop myself. She had seen me look at her shoes. She knew what had amused me. That blackglass baton lashed out and hit me right in the lip Urkus had busted, right over the hole of my absent tooth, and so fast I had no time to duck or lean away from it had I been stupid enough to try. I brought my hand up to where she’d hurt me and squeezed my right eye against the tear trying to wriggle out of it.

She spoke to the two of us not in Arvisk but in Holtish. One of the seventeen languages she had picked up in three decades of processing the refuse of Manreach.

“My formal name is Sylvae Mar Mexes, but you will call me Ponira, which means ‘Mistress.’ You will say this word to me every time you answer me. You will say Ponira more than any other word in your vocabulary. You will say it every time with respect and enthusiasm to know my pleasure, even when you are tired, which will be your normal state of being; even when you are sick, which you will only be rarely if you know what is good for you. I will now ask you if you understand, and you will say, Nai, Ponira, which means, ‘Yes, Mistress,’ as if nothing ever gave you more pleasure to say. Nai, Ponira. Do you understand?

“Nai, Ponira,” I said like a native, just enthusiastically enough not to earn another swat.

Galva didn’t speak.

“Good enough for a first effort,” the slavemistress said to me.

She stood before Galva, looked at her, then gave her a light but surely stinging swat to the cheek.

“I will not work too hard on you, as you will only spend the night with us. Tomorrow, you go to His Majesty’s ludus, where your camel-faced stubbornness will be the sandmaster’s problem, not mine. Follow me to your quarters.”

So saying, she led us away from the ascender so that we could see the huge recess behind it. I now saw the source of the breathing. Standing in a stone recess almost too small for him was the largest geigon I ever saw. He was old, muscled with the terrifying but clearly agonized physique born by those whose labors are constant and heavy. His hair was long and white and thin, little more than a greasy, sweaty veil draped over his ears and head and tied with rope to hang over one shoulder. In his mighty hands he held a chain, each link of which I could have put two fists through, and the end of which he had wrapped around one arm. The chain, like everything around him, wanted a cleaning, for it was rusted and had oranged his arm. The recess he stood in was dark, and its dim lighting owed not just to the brutal simplicity of the task of raising and lowering the ascender but also to the condition of the raiser and lowerer.

The mighty old geigon was blind, his eyes white as milk.

“Good, Pulhu. Yarrin, Madhu, and Soss should be here soon to relieve you. You can get your supper then and bed down,” Sylvae Mar Mexes said in Arvisk, bringing a pleased grunt from the massive slave, which echoed in this stone place and up the chute the ascender had traveled. The giant turned his head toward us and sniffed as we went past, swaying gently as I had once seen an elephant sway in its chains.

Galva and I would soon be separated.

She became famous in this city, for a time.

PART 3Tiger and Fool