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I’ll never forget my own dying scream or the power of Galva’s silence.

And even as the sick roast-pork and burning-hair smell filled the temple, the thing said in three different but awful voices, “ONE IS DESTROYED.”

Now it came, as myself and the other Kinch stared in awe, and grabbed him up.

“NO!” he said, “Put me down, please, no!”

I wanted to agree with him and say, “Yes, put him down, please,” but then I was afraid they would grab me instead, so I pissed myself and kept quiet. I looked around for a place to run, but there wasn’t any, there wasn’t even a fucking door now. So I made a mousy sound like eeep while it plucked up the other Galva by one arm. She had drawn her sword, but she made no effort to fight them. I think she just wanted to die, or whatever she was about to be made to do, with a sword in her hand.

I had the impression that Galva caught eyes with me, but I don’t know if that memory was shaped by later events. Memory is an unsound vessel, and as much wrongly flows in as leaks away.

“ONE GOES BACK.”

The awful, giant stone ruin flung them both like dolls against the wall, only they went through the wall, all their goods gone with them. It was like they had never been. The only clue about their destination was that a wisp of snow blew in from the wall that had seemed to have swallowed them both.

It turned to us now.

Not knowing what else to do, I picked up that karking book and cowered behind it. It had a little magic, a little power to it, didn’t it?

The chains on the bear trap jingled as it struggled.

It occurred to me that I might show the goddie the Murder Alphabet.

But what if it killed the goddie?

Was that possible?

Of a sudden, the thought of it being dead and us just being stuck here was worse than anything else I could imagine, so I chucked the book away before this terrifying statue god could get curious and decide to have a look inside.

Only the book didn’t fall onto the floor.

It arced perfectly—like I had been born for tossing evil books, like my luck was running full again—and fell straight into that blazing unearthly fire. It flared there for a heartbeat or two, longer than it had taken other me or other Galva to be unmade entirely. It groaned once, whether in fact or just in my head, trying, I think, to resist this irresistible world-forging fire.

Galva screamed in rage and surprise.

The book, failing to keep itself alive, its last defenses collapsing, screamed in my mind.

Or, most of it did.

I thought I also perceived a small gasp, a sound of acceptance, and release perhaps. The closest thing to it I’d ever heard was the sound made by the thief I called Deerpants when I saw her hanged in Pigdenay.

The girl Filaine, trapped in the book, was free.

Or one of her was free. Were souls trebled as well? They’d have to be, or two of us would have none, or a third of one. Fuck’s sake, it was for madness, wasn’t it?

This had all happened fast, none of it seeming to be of any interest to the god, who stood just before us now.

Was this it for me?

If in fact I were about to die, I wanted to do something to please Fothannon, so I said, “I couldn’t help noticing this room is in the shape of a rectangle, not a triangle. Do you own this place, or are you just renting?”

Faith and the three horrid voices laughed now.

They plucked me up by the collar like a bitch takes a whelp, and each ruined, eyeless head and gaping stone mouth rotated in turn with a terrible grinding as each considered me,

“We like you,” it said, and then it grabbed up Galva, who, like her triplet, had taken her sword in hand with no apparent plan to use it on the impossibility before her.

As it was fond of us, it did us the favor of declaring our fate before executing it, unlike the other pairs.