Page 91 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

“YES,” he roared. “Fuck YOU! And go AWAY!” He flicked his hand at me like I was a bug he wanted to kill but couldn’t reach, and then, and I wasn’t expecting this, he reared back and slammed his bony head into the metal table he was working on, making a great SPLANG and, if I wasn’t mistaken, denting the table. I now saw what had to be other dents on it. This karker was even madder than his, what, brother? Roommate? He gritted his black teeth at me—not at all to be mistaken for a smile this time—and stood there, breathing hard. All the others just went about their work, ignoring his tantrum so completely I had to think there had been harsh consequences for gawkers.

I got the message and started to melt away.

“Wait,” he said, as if he hated himself for saying it, and for what he was about to do.

I waited, but fuck if I was getting closer to the big red monster unless he said, “Come here.”

“Come here,” he said.

I walked closer, but not too close.

I saw now where a pinkish-red trickle of blood traced its way down his pebbled hide, which now looked almost purple with his recent rage. He had mashed a bit of the flesh of his brow, just below where the last of it gives way to bone. And, gods gathered, that bone was scarred and hard and lethal-looking. The blow he’d dealt the table would have killed me seven times if I were twice as big.

“What is your pleasure, Zherit Dayborn?”

He stared that one piggy green eye at me for a long moment, turning it away only to throw a warning glance at the bellows-giant, who found something farther away to do.

He looked back at me, used his bony head to motion me closer.

He touched me with his finger, brushing something from my shoulder that hadn’t been there in the first place, as a bully will, be they giant, kynd, or cyclops.

Zherit was a fucking bully, and I hated him.

“Opium.”

He fetched the key made by his other self and held it out to me. But as reached for it, he drew it back and fixed me a look. The look said, “Play me falsely and there’ll be one less of you.” I nodded in a way that said, “I accept your terms and so agree.”

He offered it again, and I snatched it smooth and fast and made it disappear.

And then I disappeared as well.

Getting opium would be no easy matter, as it was dear, and coveted, and kept close as such things are—but nor was it beyond my talents. Now that I had found the through-ways for the sathium pipes that wound through the palace like bones through a fish, I had hidden passage to any hall I cared to visit. And with this key, I could get quickly through any door whose lock was sized like the lock on my door. Quickly is the golden word here—I could pick these locks as well, but that takes time. Counting a hundred heartbeats doesn’t sound so long if you’re sitting on a stool with a mustache from your beer. But for a slave out of his quarters, crouched in a half-lit corridor in the royal palace, thirty heartbeats seems time enough to marry, have a child, and start a garden.

I would pay the cyclops.

But first I would see a tiger’s sister born.

33Whiskey and Cake

I take you back to the Palace of Bones now, one of many times I would be brought along with Her Highness and the royal entourage. I’ll sprint past the deaths of this true giant, that brassworm, these odd kynd—and even what a vicious little goblin did to a large kynd boxer in unarmed combat—and take you straight to the featured bout. Our Galva, who’d enjoyed several victories on the blacksand but had not yet eclipsed other gladiators in the king’s kennel, had just killed an Erydoni despite his having a blackglass two-handed sword and the advantage of about an acre of reach. It had only taken her a few heartbeats to get inside his guard and the result looked less like a fight and more like a talented child dressing a large deer after a hunt. Gory enough for these mean karks, yes, but over so quickly the master of ceremonies must have felt the audience needed something more.

So out came a tiger.

I had never seen one in the flesh, as they mostly come from hot, jungly Urrimad, which is under Hordelaw now. The big cats are as rare as kings in Manreach, though I had seen one’s pelt at the Low School, all burnt orange and stripes, and the lesson was that those stripes made it hard to see it creeping through trees on the hunt. The other lesson of course was that the Guild was rich enough to have a tiger’s pelt all the way up in rainy Pigdenay just for showing off to pimple-faced future Pranks. It worked, too, the way they awed us. Anytime afterward that I heard the word tiger, I thought of the Assassin-at-Rope creeping through the lecture room with that skin on him, its stripes blending with the tree-shadows in the weak light coming through the green-glass windows. He never liked me, that dangler, but he could get right up behind you without you knowing. And he could move like any animal he cared to, and half convince you he wasn’t kynd at all. He made a good tiger; or at least, so I thought until I saw a real one.

It strode out of the menagerie gate with the bright western sun on it, looking like something you’d fear and fall in love with at the same time. They’d starved it and hurt it, and it was old besides, but it was still magnificent. I suppose they thought it was time to retire it in style. I won’t say it anymore, I’ll say her, because now the ringmaster told us her name was Jubel. Jubel the fucking tiger. She’d eaten about a hundred poor bastards in that ring; they never made it a fair fight until now, if fair it was. Galva had her shield and sword, but the Ispanthian spadín’s not got much length on it—not as much as you’d want with several hundred pounds of murderous catflesh prowling your way.

It showed her its teeth as it got closer, and I was all tensed up like I meant to rush down there and help her, which of course they’d have never let me do even if I had the stones to try, and I’m not sure I had. Maybe with a big, long spear I’d have taken a wee poke at it. But that’s immaterial, all I had was a bunch of bells on my hat, I was reduced to a toy. But you get used to helping someone and fighting next to them, it’s hard to watch them face it down alone, you know?

But here’s the thing; I was thinking it was about to jump on her, and I was squinting my eyes, because I didn’t want to see it. But Galva did something I never would have guessed.

First, it roared at her—“Not a sound for forgetting,” as she would say.

“I think it’s going to eat your friend, Kitch,” Renata said, and if I’d had a knife, I’d have stabbed her, but I just said, “Yah.”

It didn’t jump, though.

Not yet.