Page 86 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

“What’ll we do?”

“Get whipped. Now the less I tell you, the more you’ll get it instead of me.”

“Fair play, Husper-bugger. She know what a bugger is?”

“I hope not.”

While this whisperage went on, Drab had helped the princess on with the silk bit, which was of course a hood, and it slid over her head with some difficulty owing to the pins holding her copious golden hair in its princessly bun.

I raised an eyebrow at the sight and then smoothed it out again. At the Low School, how many times had I been told that eyebrow would undo me if I raised it every time something took my interest? More than a few, and though I never fully lost the habit, it’s fair to say I tempered it after one wizened old Famine had shaved my eyebrows off for bannering my thoughts so.

But things in the royal garden of Erydon were about to get painful, so I snapped back to the here and now.

“Tell them the rules, Drabbard,” said Renata, cutting the air with the whipstick whsst, whsst, whsst. It was all I could do not to whimper.

“Fools attend,” Drab said, then, in a kind of singsong.

The Fair Princess Renata

will now do what she oughta,

and exercise her limbs and mind

with the game of Hoodman Blind.

While I waited for the rest of the rules, I shifted my weight, causing some of my many bells to tinkle. No sooner had it done so than the great chonking cunny fetched me such a sharp blow with the whipstick that it felt my calf had caught fire in the shape of a line. I was quite aware that I was all tights below my slop trousers.

“Fucking Kark!” I said, and she whipped that thing at the sound of my voice, catching me a right screamer across the cheek.

“Mph!” I said, putting my energy into not speaking instead of dodging, and she hit me across the front of my thighs so hard and so high that my pizzle grabbed a bollock in each arm and leapt flat against my stomach.

Hasp laughed a wheezy laugh at that, but rolled backward when the stick whipped at him, coming to his feet with a jingle. She moved forward and cut the air again as he went out of reach and she laughed, then growled. I backed away from her, but Drab, who anticipated such a move, shoved me forward with a bit more heft than I’d have given him credit for. I jingled of course, and here she came. So I grabbed Drab and spun, causing him to catch it across his back. I then smiled at him and danced a step or two with him as he sputtered, twice twirling him to catch a stripe, but misjudging the third one and catching it myself, right across the chest. Luckily, my doublet was a bit thicker than my tights, so I wasn’t obliged to go fishing in the bushes for my left tit, though it felt like maybe I should. I gave a roll now, and when I came up, Hasp jingled on purpose so the hooded monster turned this way and that, not sure which jingle-bird to beat to death.

Now Hasp jingled by her, narrowly escaping her swish-whuff-swish, and landed near me. I went to step away from the sound he’d just made, but karking Husper-bugger crouched low and hugged me around both of my legs to keep me standing where I was, also blowing a fart noise out of his mouth. The princess ran over faster than I thought her able and caught me a bleeder across the ear and cheek. She raised her arm to give me a couple more, but Hasp, seeing I’d been really hurt, stood between us and took a couple of hard ones across the back. Now the princess was panting, beating quick little fools being somewhat more of a workout than pulling the heads off ants or pinching newborn slaves to make them cry.

“Sorry, Kinch,” Hasp whispered, then, while the princess had a sit-down and rested for the next round, showed me how to put the garden’s rich dirt in my ankle bells to silence them. The hat bells could then be held to still them or not. While I smothered my tinklers thus, he led the giantess a merry chase. When I was done, I jingled my hat-bells and she came after me while Hasp saw to his anklets. Soon we were both jingling at will and quiet when we wanted, so she was hitting us far less surely—mostly just blows across Hasp’s back that he allowed to land.

I did allow myself a swatting so I could steal the hood from off her head, which I accomplished by climbing her like a rude, sweaty ladder. I sat atop her shoulders waving that silk hood over my head and whistling, which at first angered her and then made her laugh. I put the hood back on her just as she sent me pitching hard to the ground, and I rolled so the hurt of it was little.

But now the great creature was winded and far too slow to catch either of us anymore. Since stumbling around cutting air was less fun than beating all hell out of wee Galts, the Princess Renata soon declared, “I tire of this,” and stood with her hands on her hips, her panting making her silk hood show the shape of her mouth with every inbreath. “Drab, get this off me,” she said, and Drab removed the hood to show her petulant face all screwed up with frustration. One lock of hair had fallen out of her bun, and it bounced and swayed as she stomped toward the palace.

Drab went after, motioning us to follow.

As I left the garden, I saw movement near the pool—the cuttlefish was out of his glass dome and swimming freely in the open pond, among the greeny little fish. He waved a tentacle at me.

I waved back and followed the others in.

The princess was in a real fit, muttering to herself in Erydoni. Hasp later told me she was complaining to the walls about eastie cheaters and how could she be expected to have fun when her little men were running too fast. Although she had given Drab back the hood, she kept the stick, and terrorized the kitchen help even as they bowed and said Bazleya at her, whacking at the fingers of one making bread so that she whomped up a cloud of flour, striking off a pot of jam or sauce so it broke on the stone-tile floor, tipping off a pile of fresh-washed spoons and knives to clatter at the back-leaping feet of a kynd slave girl. “Bazleya, Bazleya, Nai Bazleya,” was all they dared say, pointing their eyes and faces at the floor. Then Renata disappeared out of sight. We heard her screaming abuse, but at who or what I didn’t yet know.

“You can both go back to your room, I suppose,” Drab said and sounded weary enough that for once I didn’t wholly hate him. “I shall have to tell her father about this.”

“Yah,” Hasp said. “Sure and she’ll be in no mood to play after he speaks sternly to her and gives her a sweet.”

We went to our stairs, but I heard the sound of massive chains clonking, and looked by the ascender pit; there was the geigon Pulhu, rubbing at his foot, where just a little blood ran. The stick lay nearby, broken in half. The petulant karker of a princess couldn’t have hurt a thirty-footer whipping him with that stick, so she’d broken it and treated him to the point. One tear had gathered at the corner of his great blind eye, and when he rubbed at it, he oranged his face just a bit from the rust of his chains.

“Oh dear,” Hasp said. “I hate to see it.” Then he turned on his heel and went back to the kitchen, where the domestics were trying to set everything right in the wake of the royal tantrum. He said a kind word to this one, and patted the hand of that one, then asked the third one—his lover, Xander—a question. The young man looked around, then rolled out a barrel of blueberries; Hasp filled his deep hat with these, quickly kissed the lad’s hand, then walked purposefully to the ascender pit. Pulhu raised his huge face at the smell of the blueberries. Hasp stood on tiptoes and gave a funny little bird-whistle. Gently, so gently, the massive creature felt around until his fingers found Hasp. He then put his palm out, and Hasp emptied the contents of his hat. The geigon raised his palm to his mouth and licked the berries off. A small enough taste to him, but a precious one. He ate naught but buckets of purple corn and peas and butcher’s offal most of the time. The sweetness of the blueberries and the kindness of the dying little fool made a fresh tear run down his cheek, cutting a path through that smear of his chain’s rust. He even managed to smile as he listened to that hat jingle away from him.

Back in our room, Hasp unlaced his doublet, held the back bottom hem of it up and away from his arse, then gave a couple of little hops. Three thin leather books fell out onto the floor—so this was how he’d borne the back-whipping.