Page 74 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

24A Bitch and Her Fish

Galva’s last night before she was brought to the Ludus of the Naekroy teu Bazleyus, or the King’s Own Dead, was one of bad sleep in a barracks for new slaves. This place had woven straw mats on the floor next to loops for chains, and the mats were of all sizes, most for kynd, but some for half- and true giants. One already-asleep giant dam with great bruises on her legs took up a huge part of one corner; three kynd huddled as close as their ankle-chains allowed in the corner opposite, talking in hushed tones until, at last, they went to sleep as well. I think they spoke Beltian, but I’m not sure. They had the look of Beltians, like the Erydon, tending to dark hair and greeny tones to their skin, which is made for drinking sun. Hairy backs on half the karks, too, but you should see the men.

At last the Spanth and I reclined on our straw rolls, our feet chained to separate loops near us. That’s one thing I remember about Erydon—there was always an iron loop ready to hold a slave’s chain.

Galva slept before I did. Before long, she moaned and whimpered in the clutch of evil dreams, as I’ve so often seen her do—but I remember this night clearly not only for our strange new circumstances but because this was my last night next to her for some while. She spoke a bit as she walked the land of troubled sleep. It was mostly in Ispanthian, so I didn’t get much of it. I caught Bellu, which was the name of the corvid she’d lost. She also said parra a few times, which I know is stop. I thought about waking her. I’d woken her from nightmares only during the worst of them, for I knew I’d usually eat a punch or slap doing it, and she tended to cry out good and loud as she awoke. She already had one of our cellmates stirring and cursing. After a moment, he sat up on his elbows and said something harsh, probably in Beltian, probably, Shut the fuck up, I’m trying to sleep. I said, “You shut your toothy face-twat,” in Galtish, or Arvisk as they call it here, and I guess the giantess wasn’t sleeping either, because she laughed a great huh-huh-huh, the huge back she’d turned to the rest of the room shaking. That made one of the Belts laugh as well, and soon the other two. Now the one who’d been angry waved a hand at me in not-unfriendly dismissal with a sort of half nod, like, “I have decided not to be your enemy,” and he rolled over with a little jingle of his chain.

If you know anything about bondage, and I hope you don’t, you know this is new slave behavior.

All these games of long-pissing get beaten out of you, and soon you learn to keep quiet, keep your head down, and do as you’re told.

If you live.

This next part of the story is mostly Spanthless, as Galva was led away the next day. When one thing is taken from us, however, the gods often provide another, and so it was here. For while I no longer had the raven knight by my side in this city, I was, for a time, to have another companion to guide me through an even more treacherous wilderness than the Great Dry surrounding us; that of the king’s court and the royal household.

At first, I wasn’t entirely clear on what I had been bought for. I knew it wasn’t to fight. I doubted they knew of my gift for reading any language, or they’d have made swift use of me to translate books, of which these half-giants were quite fond. Because the princess had been amused by me, I thought they might want me for a teacher of some kind, or perhaps a body servant, but that was just my vanity. It should have been perfectly obvious what my new role was to be, having made the princess laugh even in the Palace of Bones.

I knew the moment I saw him that I was meant to replace him.

He was kynd, and older, and sick.

When he said, in Galtish, “How do you do,” I heard in his accent and saw in his black tongue that he was a Galt, like me.

“My name is Haralt, but I’ll be offended if you call me that. In this place and in these days, I’m Hasp. You are?”

“Kinch Na Shannack.”

“Good ring, that. Kinch it is. From the east, yah?”

“Platha Glurris, near the Tattered Sea.”

“I’m from farther north.”

“I can hear it.”

He smiled at that, the great creases in his eye-corners telling me this was no rare expression on him.

And I saw by his coat of many colors and by his tall hat, half-orange, half-purple, that forked at the top into two floppy bits with bells, that he was no teacher, or fighter, or manservant.

“You’re a fool,” I said to him in amusement and wonder.

“The more fool you to find yourself here so young,” said he, with a bow at once graceful, comical, and informed by pain.

“If Mistress will leave this baggage with me?” said Hasp, and Sylvae Mar Mexes turned her chin up, which meant, as I would learn, Yes, but watch yourself. Then she turned on her heel and left us without a word. Though by “this baggage” he had meant me, Hasp took from my hand my sad-bastard bag of personal effects, minus the weapons, which never followed me into the palace, saying, “Follow me, unlucky child of Galtia.”

Follow him I did, and the going was easy enough, as my chains had been removed. Mind, I still bore a looped anklet, which indicated my status and allowed for easy tying-up should that prove needful. I would go barefoot, as did all house-slaves. We went through the kitchen with its scarred tall, block-top tables I could just see over, above which the serious knives and cleavers were hung out of kynd reach. Next, we passed shorter tables, just near a window that gave work-friendly light to a half dozen kynd slaves as they pitted and peeled some stoned fruit with their clever little hands dyed blue by juice. Several of these dams grinned as Hasp went by, and one threw a scrap of peel at him, which he plucked from the air and ate, slapping his palm against his O-shaped mouth after with a funny, rich pop. I followed Hasp down a hall lit by gaslights behind amber, these lights set in big brass fixtures fixed to the walls by screws. I followed him practically through the legs of a true giant carrying kitchen-wards over his shoulder a new-butchered ox calf, and when this giant saw Hasp, he winked at him and laughed. Hasp winked back.

Through a small hidden door and up winding stairs now, too small for true giants, as these rarely came past the bottom floor where all the heavy work was done. If one of these brutes were needed above, they would go one at a time by ascender, to the groaning and grunting of the geigon in the pit. We climbed not to the sounds of chains and labor but to Hasp’s wheezing and the tinkling of his bells. This little man was not at all in good health.

We twisted up three flights of dim stairs and to another hall, also lit by wall lamps.

“Our quarters,” he said, opening a heavy wooden door by means of a key around his neck.

The door opened on a fine apartment with two narrow windows, a comfortable-looking but stained bed with a Hasp-shaped dent in it, and a sort of lopsided couch. A wine-pitcher sat on a table by the bed, and the room was generally littered with masks, musical instruments, juggling balls, and other colorful amusements I could not take in all at once.

We hadn’t the luxury of a lamp here, but several candles of good quality added to the meager spending of light through our arrow-slit windows.

“That’s yours,” he panted, short of breath, for the stairs had cost him, and pointed at the couch, which didn’t look half-bad after the mat on the floor I’d had the night before.