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“Don’t look!” I yelled at the Princess Renata, grabbing her chin.

“What? Why?”

“Just! DON’T,” I said, and though she tried to turn her chin toward the godwords, I held her big face with all my strength.

A gasp went through the stands.

I’ve never heard a sound like it, and I hope I never do again. It was a chorus of surprise and fear, loud and final.

Now the sound of falling.

Lots of heavy, soft weight falling, all at once and then staggered, so heavy it shook the stone arena.

Renata managed to get her face out of my hand, so I poked her in both eyes before she could look. She made a loud yip of pain and anger and slapped me so hard with the heel of her hand that I wondered if she broke my jaw. I caught sight of the king, his face full of awe and horror. As if he now understood the true nature of the world and the stars above it, and it was too much for his mostly benevolent old heart. Blood ran from his nose. He grasped at his chest and fell, his eyes fixed toward the lethal words. As if they were too loyal to bear life without their sovereign, the guards fell, too.

The girl who fanned flies saw him fall, eyes fixed forward. She looked to see what he was looking at, then she gasped and fell, too. Several screams rang out, then these, too, fell silent.

Above us, one cloud-ship had begun to bump against the other as the third drifted off over the city, there being no living hand to steer any of them.

I looked at the godwords now.

They said

CONSIDER YOUR MERCIES

WERE THEY GOOD FOR ERYDON, OR YOUR FAMILY?

OR WERE THEY SELFISH?

OURS IS A GOD OF STRENGTH

But that was only half of the morning lesson.

For in the spaces between these lines had been written, poorly and in Hillox shyte, and with the back of a shovel,

You’re all karks, fuckwits, and slavers.

I read it with no difficulty.

But then, I know how to read the Murder Alphabet.

And how to write it.

Now another sound rose up, as disturbing as the gasp of twenty thousand dying all at once, as awful as the sound of all those bodies collapsing as one; from the earth itself a sort of groan rose up, and became a roar, and then a rumble. Thumos himself, I believed, was awake and furious.

Furious that his mighty most-favored race had shamed him by being murdered by a wee, wretched, blacktongue, eye-thieving kark like me.

And great would be his wrath.

I killed a city.

I did.

Not all of them.

But most of them.

All of those in the Halfmoon who had letters enough to try to read those words died. Many, many thousands. And the dying wasn’t finished that day. It’s too big to think about. It’s in my dreams now, you know. I’ll be coming home to Platha Glurris, and I’ll be cold and wondering where I might nick a warm coat, but still glad to be home. But there will be my ma and the man I called my da, and my brothers and sisters, and Malk and his da; and just then my niece with the stutter, without stuttering, says, “Welcome home…” but before she can say Kinch, she gets that look of terrible knowledge on her dear face, and she collapses, and the whole village with her. Everyone I know, friend and foe alike, lying dead together in a heap. And it’s from the horrible silence afterward that I wake.