we talked and sang, and I always bought some fish to cook later, always assuming that I’d see her again. And now I never will. Because of them.” Her head bobbed down at the Bone Giants. “Well, not them specifically but another army of them. They’re all stone killers.”
“They are,” I agreed.
“We have to be the same. We can’t leave them like this or they’ll dig themselves out. I can go down, speed up, and knife them in the kidney.”
“No, don’t do that.”
“We don’t have a choice. They’ll kill anyone they meet.”
“I meant, don’t do that specifically. I have a better idea. I’ll finish what I started.”
“How so?”
“Watch that one there,” I said, pointing to a Bone Giant gesticulating at me with what I assumed were rude gestures in his culture and bellowing what I guessed were promises of a gnarly death. Placing the soles of my feet against the side of the earthen tower, I commanded the earth to convulse underneath his feet, loosening and dropping, and then compact once more around his body. It worked so well that I repeated it. The effect was that he was being gulped down into the earth, a hand span or two at a time. His aggressive tone and demeanor changed the farther down he sank. He kept his arms up and held on to his sword, I noticed. When he was buried up to his belly, he fell silent and despair gripped him as he saw his end approach. But once he sank to his armpits, he raised that sword high above his head and shouted a phrase as inspiration to the others, for they raised theirs in answer and repeated the phrase back to him in unison. Two more gulps and his head disappeared from view. I let it go one more gulp after that, leaving only his forearm and hand above the ground, still clutching that sword in defiance. It quivered, spasmed, but held on to the handle tightly even when it grew still. The remaining Bone Giants watched that in silence once he went under, but as soon as they were sure their fellow soldier was dead, they all turned to face me and shouted that phrase again.
“What is that they’re saying?” Tuala wondered aloud. “It’s all kind of a garble at the beginning, but then they say ‘Zanata sedam.’ Maybe that’s the word for their king or queen or god. Or their country.”
“I don’t know. But the good news is that wasn’t too rough on me. I think I can do that forty more times or so.” I picked the invader nearest the tower to be next. He stubbornly died the same way as the first, sword in the air, and so did the next two. The fifth giant broke the pattern and appeared to beg me for mercy, but he was quickly shamed by the others into dying with what they considered to be dignity. He raised his sword like the others and died like the others. There were no more entreaties until I got to the very last one. Seeing forty-seven die ahead of him—forty-eight counting the one Tuala brained with her stave—had robbed him of his convictions. Or else he figured there was no one left to witness his plea for mercy and judge him.
I would show him the exact same mercy that his people showed Bennelin and all the Brynt cities, that is to say, none at all. And I would ignore the twinge of my conscience. “There is no such thing as moral high ground in war,” Temblor Kavich told me once. “There is only high ground, and as a Raelech stonecutter, you don’t take and hold it. You make and mold it.”
From my high ground I sank that Bone Giant into the rich farmland of Brynlön to join the others, leaving only their wrists and swords standing in the air. The worms would be at the rest of them soon enough.
—
Fintan returned to himself and said, “Let’s step backward in time that very same morning right here in Pelemyn, where the newly commissioned gerstad Culland du Raffert had an appointment with Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll.”
This time the importer was dressed in a very smart and overly stiff uniform.
Pressed pants with a crease that audibly crackles as I walk: I hate this uniform already. But I move it and all its stiff, scratchy, crunchy noises to report on time to the Second Könstad at the Wellspring, hoping that she will give