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“I fucking knew you weren’t going to let that rest.”

“Would you? A treasury of teasing like this?”

“Well. No.”

“I will remind you of this shame for the rest of your life.”

“That should only be about two days, so I guess I can bear it.”

That got a smile from her.

But now we stopped talking, because our mouths were just too dry.

I should say that if our bellies starved during these first strange days across the Thralls, our eyes feasted—the Giantlands were full of wonders. I saw a flock of birds so numerous they seemed for a good while to have neither beginning nor end and, though they were white, threw a great shadow on the land. I saw purple grasses and rocks like standing coffins that went a mile or more. I saw a dry riverbed that made my guts ache with longing for it to be wet; and on its nude bed a garden of fish-bones and the prints of strange beasts who walked there before its mud went stone.

And it was not far from this dead or sleeping river that we found a patch of bushes hung with berries of a bluish hue, but unfamiliar to either of us. We’d already had the last of her water—I throttled the skin for every drop.

We looked at the bushes, then at each other. We both knew that some berries would nourish, where some would sicken or kill. But they were plump, and moist, and I’d rarely been so tempted.

“Perhaps we should dig and see if there is water,” she said.

“Your shovel or mine?” I asked, for our shovel had gone over with the donkey.

We both drew knives and started in digging with their hilts, about two feet from the bushes. Those berries watched us. I could almost hear the tinkle of their laughter, for they knew as well as we how our labors would end. Not an hour past, dirty and mad with thirst, we backed off from the sad hole we’d made. We nodded at one another.

“I’ll go first,” I said. It made sense to me, at least, that tasks of stealth, cunning, and chance fell to a thief. She didn’t argue.

I plucked a berry and held it up.

A bit of its juice ran on my thumb, and I licked this.

The taste was tart, and a little sweet. Like an unripe sloe berry, but with something of a lemon.

Galva watched me.

I ate it then, wary of a stone, but it had none.

I bugged my eyes, then and grabbed my neck. Fell over on my side like a dead rat. Galva just shook her head at me, in that small way so you could barely see her move.

“What, was I not convincing?” I said, winking at her.

She punched me in the bladder, just at the outer limit of friendly, and I sat up and groaned.

We fell on the bushes, then. In for a shave, in for a shilling.

Gods help us both, we might die shitting ourselves skinny, but that awful thirst was slaked.

It was late now, and we were exhausted. The sun sank over the plains, and we camped in the dried riverbed, low and out of sight. We had no wood for a fire, but there was little chill. If this was winter, I’d hate to see summer here.

I made sure to settle on my side, as I’d been taught by the Guild where poisoning was possible, and had Galva do the same.

Good thing, too.

I woke with a gurgling urp, and soon I was hunched doglike and spattering the ground like the spout of a winepress. Galva moaned in her sleep, then got up and paced, holding her belly. It wasn’t long before she joined me in purpling the riverbed. I’d have given anything for a mouthful of the vilest water to rinse my burning mouth out with; water from a Pigdenay rainspout, rich with pigeon feathers and rat shit; water from a sailor’s salty boot. I’d have nudged in between a pair of rheumy-eyed sows and shared their trough with a grateful “thanks-miladies.”

I looked up at Galva now and was surprised to see she’d grown great pig-ears on her, and now said, “What are you looking at?” though her words came out as something between squealing and a song. The dry bed moved beneath me like a ship on gentle waters, and I moaned, “Oooooooooooh, you’re a pig now.”

“Pig, am I?” she squeal-sang. “Well, at least I am not making sparks against everything I touch, as you are. You will start a fire, jilnaedu.”