Page 75 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

He locked the door now, locking us in, and tucked the key down his undershirt.

The thought of last night, and this morning, and of Galva led away elsewhere struck me now, and I put it away lest I grow melancholic. I had to learn where I was and what the rules were here, so I could break those rules and get us both out and away from here.

One thing the Guild teaches all its midnight scholars is don’t give up. I had been a Prank of that Guild, a graduate of the Low School in Pigdenay, and I had learned that lesson.

We weren’t going anywhere soon, Galva and I, but we were going, by the gods.

In the meantime, Hasp would show me what I needed to know here.

When he woke up, that is.

For coming up the stairs had put a sleep in him, and he had lain back in his bed-dent and unbuttoned his parti-colored doublet to let out his belly. And now he snored. I saw the outline of the door-key under his shirt, and I set about getting this out from under the shirt and around his neck; the cord around his neck was leather, so it was just a question of teasing the knot, which I was expert at. Once I had the key in hand, I gentled it back around his neck and retied the knot.

He snored on, so I did it all again just for the mischief of it.

It wasn’t long before my door was opened by a stooping kynd bodyservant who would be a sort of silent companion for the next months. Not a memorable-looking fellow, except that he was a bit drab for his fine white linen tunic and white silk sash. His fine white trousers of black linen, newly dyed, made his old pink feet look shabby, despite the incongruous gold toe-ring on one. I’ll tell you true, I forgot his name, something spitty and full of consonants, so we’ll just call him Drab. Drab was a patient, slow-moving sort who spoke Arvisk with an unplaceable accent. I never learned where in Central Manreach he was from. Wostra? Unther? Sadunther? No fucking idea, I never heard him speak his true tongue, if he had one. He may have been born under the yoke, for all I know about it.

He gave me my first fool’s outfit then, a gaudy thing of blue, brown, and silver.

“Put this on,” he said.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

He slapped me hard, in a way that put me in mind of the worst of the countless Debtor’s Hand slaps I’d received, putting his heel into it. His face remained impassive. He didn’t give a kark about me one way or another, he was just doing his work. We neither one of us had a choice.

Without wasting more words on me—for what could his mouth say that the palm of his hand hadn’t made perfectly clear?—he pointed at the folded-up nonsense clothes he’d given me. I stripped off and put these on.

“Follow me. You will play with the princess now,” he said, and though I looked back at Hasp for guidance, he snored on, and snoring he was left. Drab locked the door behind me and then walked in front of me.

Down the narrow stair and through the labyrinth of the palace we went, until at last we came to the Lower Garden, which was to the garden on top of the Cloud Tower as a quilt to a playing card. It was a playground of green lawn, silver pools, and thirsty plants; for there was no better way to show wealth in Erydon than by wasting water. And oh what a waste was here. I saw Princess Renata for the second time now, and up close, she seemed no less a spoiled, rich brat than she did at first and far away, laughing as giantkind died before her. The sun found her gold disk necklace and her bun of gold hair again, and she smiled down at me as I was paraded up to her—for at eight years old, she was well taller than my five feet and little. The big eyes of the Erydoni, which often seemed sympathetic (though they rarely were), on her had a mischievous tilt and shone a cold blue green under eyebrows plucked and redrawn in arches. Her bow lip was colored just at the bottom. Her dress was rich verdant, with scales of some fabulous lighter metallic green that gave her the look of an exotic fish.

“His name is Kitch?” she said in Arvisk.

Drab answered her in Erydon, and she fetched him a slap about as hard as he had fetched me, saying, “Talk slavey talk like Hasp. Where is Haspidonny now?”

“Resting, Highness,” Drab said without missing a beat. “Shall I wake him?”

The half-giant princess sighed with great drama, a sigh I would come to know as the I-Shall-Be-Good-Despite-Great-Personal-Cost sigh. She had quite the arsenal of displeased noises.

“No,” she said. “He is sicky-icky, and soon he will be dead. And poor me, I shall have no one to play with but you. And maybe Kitchy-Itchy if he is not sad but merry. Are you merry, fool?”

She gave me a pinch in the side that left a bruise, and gods help me, I found myself wondering if I could beat the hell out of this child in a fair fight. She had three stone on me, at least, and the unnatural strength of a true feral bitch, but I know a thing or two. I imagined getting behind her with my legs crossed at her belly and giving her neck a good-night hug, keeping my head tucked against hers to weather Drab’s shyte-weak punches and kicks ’til she was out and I could sort him. Just a fantasy, I know, for there were guards in sight, there always were, but sometimes a fantasy is all you have to hold on to when some deserving kark can’t be shown the error of their ways.

Fuck, my side hurt.

She had fingers like blacksmith’s tongs.

“Merry? You’ll never meet a more merry, mickle man than me,” I said, with a shyte-eating grin and a bow. When shyte’s all that’s in the trough, grab a ladle and start supping, right? Glory unto cowshyte.

“Oh!” she fair squealed at Drab. “He talks the eastie talk just as pretty as Hasp-a-Rasp! Let us keep him forever!”

Forever, was it?

We’d see about that.

There’s a Guild saying: Better a thrice-bound thief than a fool who thinks he’s free. The idea being that even if you’re well fucked, knowing you’re fucked means you’ve got a chance to unfuck yourself. It means the poor slobs like Drab, or like those who work the mines in Platha Glurris, or labor away on a farm and give most of the butter and wheat to the lord on the hill, are the ones to be pitied. Even a thief wearing a noose is about to fly, or at least sleep without dreams, never again to break a blister to make another fat.

Fuckin’ right, yah?