"You laid on like no piper, good Drgon. Yet have you much to learn in the matter of endurance."
—And he was at me again. I spent the afternoon back-pedaling and making wild two-handed swings and finally fell down—pooped. I couldn't have moved if Gope had had at me with a hot poker.
Gope and the others laughed til they cried, then hauled me away to my room and let me sleep. They rolled me out the next morning to go at it again.
As Gope said, there was no time to waste ... and after two months of it I felt ready for anything. Gope had warned me that Owner Qohey was a big fellow, but that didn't bother me. The bigger they came, the bigger the target....
There was a murmur in a different key in the Audience Hall and tall gilt doors opened at the far side of the room. A couple of liveried flunkies scampered into view, then a seven-foot man-eater stalked into the hall, made his way to the dias, turned to face the crowd....
He was enormous: his neck was as thick as my thigh, his features chipped out of granite, the grey variety. He threw back his brilliant purple cloak from his shoulders and reached out an arm like an oak root for the ceremonial sword one of the flunkies was struggling with. He took the sword with its sheath, sat down, and stood it between his feet, his arms folded on top.
"Who has a grievance?" he spoke. The voice reverberated like the old Wurlitzer at the Rialto back home.
This was my cue. There he was, just asking for it. All I had to do was speak up. Owner Qohey would gladly oblige me. The fact that next to him Primo Carnera would look dainty shouldn't slow me down.
I cleared my throat with a thin squeak, and edged forward, not very far.
"I have one little item—" I started.