Page 83 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

Galva looked toward our box now, and she looked right at me.

Even as her hand was held up in victory, with her other hand she canted three quick gestures, which I could barely see for the failing light.

But see them I did.

Now the Praxeter spoke, and Renata translated.

“You have seen the blood of the courageous spilled on black sand. Now listen as the chosen sing their song of praise to the great god Thumos, whom they now shall meet.”

A hush took the crowd.

The Praxeter pointed west now, where a line of fire flowed down from the top of the mountain as if in echo of his glowing circlet. The fire on the mountain split into six branches and continued down, looking like a strange, six-tined fork. Those branches stopped now and flared.

We all heard the screaming.

“Those lines are channels of liquid stone on fire, the blood of the mountain!” Renata told me, fanning herself as though she may faint from excitement. “They flowed down to make hats of fire on the six chosen! You can hear them because they’re in brass bells that carry sound! I love it so much!”

She was laughing and crying at the same time.

So was the king.

Fuck these karks, I thought.

And I thought it again when we got to the litter and the little dog wasn’t there.

I never saw him again, and the princess never mentioned him.

She must have said a word to Drab, told him she was bored of the poor thing.

Maybe he was just turned out, taken in by someone else.

That’s the version I tell myself, at least.

Whatever his actual fate, in my mind, I now swore to do exactly what my friend had asked me to do. Galva’s three canted words would become my reason for staying alive in this karkhouse:

Get.

Us.

Home.

29Hasp-a-Rasp

The next months ran together, so it’s hard to say exactly when some things happened. And some things, of course, were a matter of routine.

Throughout much of this time, when he was well enough to do so, Hasp would instruct me in the gentle art of foolery, as he called it. I already had some ease at juggling, but never more than three apples or stones, and never fast or high. He’d had me up to five balls before he died, and he’d even taught me to pass balls back and forth with him.

We’d also done little shows for the king and his court, juggling and singing and telling jokes. The court wasn’t above listening to Arvisk if there was a laugh to be had.

“Tell me, Kinch!” he’d say.

“Aye, Hasp?”

“How are you liking that parrot I bought you?”

“Well, he won’t stop coughing.”

“So he’s sick, then, the poor dear?”