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“What’s that?” she said.

“A sort of honey-cake you make for someone you love very much,” I said.

“So, you might give your sweetheart a kark?”

I thought about it and said, “You might,” then shouted at the bird, “Kark? Kark?”

The parrot, seeing that it was being engaged in conversation, offered a word of its own.

“Amilt!” it said with some enthusiasm.

“What does that mean, Princess?” I said.

“Almond!” she said, then looked at the birdseller, saying a sentence to him that included some form of amilt. He produced a small cloth bag the parrot watched keenly. The princess took it and pulled a shelled almond from it.

“Amilt!” the bird said and bobbed its head. She offered it the almond and the bird took it. I silently prayed it would be gentle, though I don’t know what god I was asking favors of—certainly not mine, for Fothannon Foxfoot would have made the beastie nip her finger’s end off for mischief’s sake and gotten the poor thing murdered. But the bird was skillful at taking almonds from soft fingers and offered Renata no hurt. So, this time, she offered it none back. The birdseller asked her something, and I was glad to see she shook her head. She wouldn’t be telling Drab to pay the birdseller from the moneypurse he carried, nor would she be handing the heavy birdcage to me or to one of the six huge guards who followed along with us in blackglass armor and sashes of orange to bear it home. Master Berrytop would be spared a place in the royal menagerie, and I was glad for him, or her, or whatever it was. I was becoming a favored pet of Princess Renata, but I had no illusions about how long that might last, or how she treated those she grew bored or cross with.

“What’s the worst you’ve seen her do?” I asked old Hasp one night as he ailed, sipping at a potion of whiskey, ginger, and lemon to ease his troubled digestion. I asked him in Holtish rather than Galtish, in case we were listened to.

“Aw, you’ll not want to know, sprumlet,” he said and raised a warning eyebrow at me. But I kept looking at him, so he said, “She pushed a slave into a vat of caustics they use to blanch pulp for paper. She loves the printery and the paper-plant where they cut huck-palms.”

“And why’d she do a thing like that?” I said.

“There’s your first mistake, asking the whys of it. There’s no why to her. Whatever comes to her mind, she speaks or acts on. She’s supposed to be empress one day, and unless Agraias starts beating some of the evil out of her, and soon, it’s a short and nasty reign she’ll have. She’ll give the Praxeter the excuse he’s looking for to assume power. It’s happened before. Most of the people, including the soldiers, would rather a kind, fat emperor than a mad, skinny priest. But a mad empress with no sense in her head? The city would take the priest over that. For a while, and then some royal cousin in the army would take the crown again. It’s a bloody cycle they’ve got here, between the power of the crown and that of the mountain and its angry goddie.”

“How does this goddie use his power? Does the priest have holy dreams or the like?”

“You’ll find out tomorrow. It’s Apocalypse Day.”

“Apocalypse?”

“Yah. It means revealing. Everyone has to go. Except me. I’ll be here dying slow.”

“Stop it, you whiny old mare.”

“You’ll see, sprumlet. I’ll die on you proper. But first, we have to work on your juggling.”

26Apocalypse the First

My first Apocalypse came on the morning of the full moon, as they always do. Back home, it would be the first of the month, possibly Hunters, maybe Himmer, I confess I lost count, and it was strange to think of the world just going on as it had been without me or Galva in it. Winter or late gloaming in Galtia and Holt and in Ispanthia, and here it was warm and springish every day, flowers mad in pots and birds of all hues flitting about the royal gardens. Had we died, and gone to some strange afterlife? It seemed so to me at times.

The princess was up early, and so Drab fetched me out of the quarters I shared with Hasp. I dressed quickly, holding my bells so not to wake the old fool where he snored gently on his sickbed, and followed Drab through the halls of the palace and out to the litter.

“About time, sleepybones,” the princess said to me from the cracked litter door as I tumbled across the stones and rose into a leap. A dozen or so royal guards watched me in silence, standing at their ease, but ready with their black-tipped spears and swords, their shadows long in the early sun.

“You will ride with us today,” the princess said to me through a yawn, then looked at Drab and said, “But you will walk, for you are not merry.” Drab bowed solemnly, then opened her door all the way so I could get in with her. I sat across and found I had to share my seat; a dog panted on one side of the cushion, a fat little thing with long ears and a tongue too big for its mouth. Not a young dog either, to judge by its breath. No sooner had I thought how silly it looked than it sneezed wetly all over me, so I suppose the feeling was mutual.

I made a great show of wiping my face and mugging, which made Renata chuckle.

“Merkin, this is Kitch. Kitch, this is Merkin. We’re all going to watch the Apocalypse and games together.”

The dog clambered into my lap and proceeded to drool on me. He looked up at me with big bug-eyes.

“He wants you to pet him.”

And so I did, and the beastie closed his eyes and panted with joy. Great shadows moved outside the curtains of the pillowed box we sat in, then the box lifted. True giants, one on each side, now walked with great strides and bore us swaying through the streets of Erydon toward I knew not what. After a moment, Renata opened a little paper sack of some soft, rank cheese and took a bite.

Merkin watched her intently.