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“Sorry, sir,” I yelled, “I’m under orders to fix this lock so these dangerous slaves don’t escape.”

“They’re not going to escape. They’re going to earn their freedom by helping us put down the uprising,” the soldier said, ever closer.

At half voice, I spoke to the brutal faces behind the bar, “What do you think, boys and girls, is that a lie or a fucking lie?”

“A fucking lie,” they growled, practically in unison, and I wanted to kiss all their badly shaven, oft-pummeled faces. They weren’t going to put down an uprising; they were going to be its sword.

Though my gaze was focused on the crabsnatch of a shyte-bothered lock, I was aware of Galva nodding in that slow way she does to acknowledge something she approves of—good wine, a fine sword, a woman of beauty. Or an act of valor. She was wordlessly telling me that whether I got the lock open or not, she saw me throwing the dice with my life by staying here rather than sprinting away like a rabbit. She knew how fast I was.

“Bolnu,” she said, her word for good.

It was at that moment that two very positive developments happened almost at once.

First, I got that lock. I got that fucker. It shuddered and sprang, and I felt every inch a Prank of the Guild, albeit a rebel against them now. Thing about rebellion; it feels grand. I recommend it. The blacksand fighters gave a deafening shout.

But luckily, before these killers could spring and engage the soldiers, the second development developed.

That bang from the god’s mountain had sent up an astonishing amount of debris. Worse for the city, this matter wasn’t just rock—a large part of it was blackglass, which breaks in splinters. While rock rained like hammers, blackglass fell like nails. Like spears. Like dark lightning frozen in sharp and lethal shafts. These struck through roofs, and stabbed deep into red paving-stones while falling rock toppled statues, collapsed walls, and roiled the water in private pools and baths.

For just an instant, I was back in the brigands’ cave with Galva, in the book-dream where nails and hammerheads rained on a festival day and stopped a crabby wrestler from tearing me to pieces. Had that moment been, I don’t know, a memory of the future? The thought came and went in an instant, for I had no time to woolgather.

On this street, at this moment, a murderous, blistering-hot volley of sharp blackglass fell on the soldiers. Most of them cowered as you or I would have done, but kark me if the commander and one of two others didn’t stand with their heads down and their arms out in the Posture of Receiving. Receive they did. Though, to their credit, they looked almost noble standing rather than stooping for their ration. The deadly, deafening rain didn’t stop all at once; we’d not be going out there just yet. I slipped inside the gate I’d just opened, and joined Galva and the others in backing away under shelter, barely able to breathe for the dust and ash.

She set her shield down and grabbed me up in a close hug, giving me two martial pats on the back, then set me down and slapped me fairly hard on the cheek. I knew that this was a poetic declaration of love and fellowship coming from a Spanth, so I swallowed the scream of pain my broken rib tried to toss out my mouth and returned her hug far more gently, my eyes tearing up now, though she might not have been able to tell given the sweat I was drowning myself with.

But of course this all happened fast.

Out on the street, the heaviest matter from the mountainside had gone up lowest and fallen first, so the pitch of the stone-rain went from lower to higher, and finally tapered off into a light patter, and then nothing.

The Erydoni who had not been impaled or shredded by the glassfall had sheltered up against the sides of buildings, and now the gladiators fell on them with the fury of wolves finally able to get at the farmer’s dog. Most of the gladiators were kynd and thus shorter than their foes, and also not so well-armed—but armed they were, with the weapons of the arena, and so the stunned and ash-whitened remnant of the wall garrison was overwhelmed and, not to water down the beer, butchered.

Galva killed one like a calf, but before she could engage another, I said, “Spanth! This is not our fight! We have to get home!”

“How?” she said.

I pointed behind me, toward the palace.

And then I pointed up.

She saw what I saw.

She nodded, and smiled, and slapped my cheek more gently.

We ran.

41Borne Away

On the run to the ludus, I had noticed a red shape in the sky, in the distance. I had heard that cloud-ships patrolled the aquifers, and I wondered if the one I saw was one of those, perhaps coming home to see what the huge fuck-off cloud over the mountain was about. And let me say, this cloud was like nothing I’d ever seen; it towered over the landscape in the shape of a hammer, with wee tentacles of smoke reaching down to trace where the mad goddie Thumos had pitched rocks and spears of blackglass like the ones that killed the soldiers outside the ludus.

It seemed to me that the cloud-ship’s most likely destination was the palace. Would they not want to report to the king and find out if he were alive and what his orders were? I suppose it was possible that a very devout captain of such a ship might secretly hold allegiance to the Praxeter, but you play the odds, don’t you?

If we could get on that ship, I thought maybe, just maybe we could figure out how to fly it. How far would it go? No idea. But any distance at all out of this shaking, falling, stone-battered, ash-smothered city would be better than none.

I’ll never forget the scenes I saw in the streets: individual soldiers unconcerned now with keeping order, running back to see if their families were alive, holding their shields over their heads to save them from the smaller stones; exotic animals I had seen in the market hall, which must have fallen—people wisely gave a wide berth to the brassworm, which slithered by, the weak light gleaming on its metallic scales. It spat its corrosives at anyone it thought it could reach, and many were the screams in its wake. Great gouts of steam rose up when the molten rock the mountain bled onto the city reached one of the vain pools of water in the wealthy quarters. But the worst, of course, was the slaughter of the Erydoni by their slaves.

True giants were out in the streets now, so blood-mad that we avoided them for fear they might not know armed kynd from Erydoni, or care to spare the former. It was the giants who caused the most harm, of course. They hated their half-giant masters as liars and slavers and makers of wicked machines. They went about picking up great stones that had cooled enough for them to handle and chucking these at half-fallen buildings to finish them off, or at soldiers, or just up in the sky to land where they might.

At one turn, we saw that the meltrock had just reached a street we needed to cross. Here was the god Thumos’s cruel hound, Magmas, released to savage the shamed city. I can best describe the meltrock as a smoking, slow-moving river of faintly glowing, overheated mud, with bits of fire leaping from it now and again. The heat from it felt as though it was scorching the fine hairs from your face and arms. Happily, we found another route. The cloud-ship, shaped like a great fish, was approaching quite near the palace now. It might have been that same one we saw months ago dropping thunderdust on the giants in the Dry.