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“Whistle,” he said.

“What?” I said. I can be a bit thick when I’m in a state of pants-shitting terror.

“You whistle. I follow you. To kitchen.”

“Right!” I said as brightly as I could manage, and started to whistle no particular tune, but just a very breathy, not very loud, not very musical whistle. Ever try to whistle when there’s a geezer who could squash you on a whim just behind you and a disaster and uprising happening all around you? Yah, I thought not. As whistles go, this one was shyte, but Pulhu was at least satisfied enough not to reduce me to a smear on the palace floor.

Just as I went through the door and he squatted to follow after, we both heard it.

A faint jingling.

Followed by the small, terrified noise of a half-giant child who knows she just dropped the whole cake.

I couldn’t tell precisely where it was coming from in the room, but I’ve only got a blind cat’s luck, not a blind giant’s hearing. He crossed the room in three huge strides, stumbling on the fallen beam, and headed for a trunk just the right size to hold a well-folded princess. Or the half-dozen pillows scattered on the floor near it that she had pulled out to make room for herself.

He felt back behind himself until he found the beam he’d tripped on, then lifted it upright high over the trunk, or as high as he could until it hit what was left of the ceiling, pluming a bit of dust down on him. His massive body flexed as he started to drive the beam down.

Fuck if I was going to watch that. I turned and ran.

I heard the crunch and shriek behind me. The shrieking kept on through one more crunch, but stopped at the third. Poor spoiled karker. She was wretched, but how would she be otherwise growing up here?

I went back through the main room where the queen lay, and I ran with my face turned away, picturing her sitting up sharing wine and dealing cards to the slaves in revolt, her head absolutely not bleeding a puddle, her clothes tidy and on her, the noises I heard coming from a very grunty wrestling match somewhere nearby. I’m not ashamed to say that at that moment I hated my own race as much as the Erydoni, and didn’t give the wettest kark if anybody but myself and the Spanth made it out of this dying city.

Galva.

I had to get Galva out.

I ran toward the ludus.

40Glassfall

A quarter of an hour later, I was standing at the huge gate of the Ludus of the King’s Own Dead, struggling to pick its lock, which was too large and strange for the skeleton key I’d had made. Sweat rolled into my eyes as I manipulated the rasp and knife in the guts of the mechanism. To make matters worse, it was sized for nine-footers, so I had to look up and to work with my arms at head-level. That doesn’t sound so bad perhaps, but you try keeping your arms up for long while you do something so difficult.

Also, there was the small matter of the hot ash falling on my face.

“Hurry,” Galva said, her face pressed on the other side of the gate. Several of those who were pressing her said variations of the same.

“I am hurrying,” I said. “This lock is a cunt’s cunt.”

“Maybe you’re sticking the wrong thing in it, then,” said a not-as-clever-as-he-thought quarter-giant from even farther west than here, though you’d never tell him he wasn’t clever once you saw his gristly, battered little ears and his oft-broken meatplop of a nose.

Well, since he liked his humor simple and crass, I said, “If I stop to fuck it, we’re all fucked.”

He laughed a raspy ah-ah-ah laugh that made me wonder if he’d had his throat punched as robustly as his nose and ears.

When the gladiators all started shouting incoherently and pointing, I knew I had to look behind me and also that I wouldn’t like what I saw there. I stole a glance over my shoulder as quickly as a swimmer steals a gulp of air.

For fuck’s sake.

Erydoni soldiers were coming, probably from the wall garrison. Wherever they were from, they were dressed for the dance, what with their blackglass scale armor glinting in the sun and their wicked sharp spears ready to ruin my status as a watertight vessel. I sleeved sweat out of my eyes and pulled hard against what I hoped was the right lever inside this bitch-tangle of an alien lock that was about to get me killed.

I peeked over my shoulder again.

The soldiers were marching swiftly but in good order. Their commander was clearly a by-the-book karker—he wanted them in formation for whatever came next. Gods gathered, they were close.

Another great bang sounded from the mountain.

The leader of the karks behind me shouted, in Arvisk, for he knew he was addressing a slave, “You by the gate. Move away now or you will be killed.”