Free Fool's Gold by Jon Hollins Page A

who was Lawl’s daughter and Toil’s sister-daughter. And then there was Barph, the absent god, who was Cois’s son, but also her lover, and who was Betra’s daughter too.
    Will really didn’t understand Cois at all.
    But in the end it all came to the same thing: No god had manifested in Kondorra in years. That was what everybody had said. In contrast, Mattrax was
real
.
    Which all added up to considerable confusion on his part when Firkin cuffed him on the back of the head. “Don’t you ever be saying that. You hear me, boy?”
    Firkin’s eyes were glittering hard, and there were no smiles in him as he glared at Will.
    Will felt his lip start to tremble, felt tears pushing up behind his eyes.
    â€œOh Cois’s cock,” Firkin said, rolling his eyes. “I didn’t mean…” He pulled Will to him in a rough hug. “And pretend I didn’t say that about Cois and her… his… pissing god. Oh and pretend I didn’t… You know what?” He held Will by the arms, and held him so he could look him in the eye. “The gods have abandoned this valley, so as long as you don’t tell your mother I said so, piss on the gods. Even though Cois would probably enjoy it.”
    Will didn’t know exactly what Firkin was talking about, but he knew his ma would do more than cluck her tongue at that. He giggled through his tears.
    â€œI’m sorry I had rough words for you,” said Firkin. “But you’ve got some things backwards there, and they rubbed me backwards, and some beasts don’t like that, if you follow me.”
    Will sniffed, and nodded. “I follow.” And that was mostly true.
    â€œYou weren’t here before the dragons,” Firkin said. “And sometimes I forget that.” He let Will go, and grabbed another apple off the ground. He took a bite. “Not that it were all that,” he said, still chewing and spraying chunks of white apple flesh across the orchard in a way that kept Will smiling. “Lords will always be lords, and taxes will always be taxes, and nobles will always be colossal bastards all the world over.” He leaned in and nodded sagely. “They say you’re a bastard if you don’t know who your pa was, but if a man can tell you who his pa was eight generations back… that’s when you know you’ve got a real bastard.”
    Will’s tears were long forgotten by now.
    â€œNo,” said Firkin. “It weren’t perfect, but it worked. People bitched and moaned. I bitched and moaned, for that matter. But we got by. Wasn’t no golden-age bullshit, like some will tell you—”
    Will giggled again.
    â€œâ€”but it were all right.”
    Another grimace. “Then Mattrax and the rest of those…” He hesitated. “Well,” he said with another knowing nod, “maybe you’re not quite old enough for me to use the word that really describes those dragons. But they came along. And there was a fight.”
    Will was old enough to know that there had been a war. He’d seen the grave markers around the temple in the village. He’d heard the scraps of stories his ma exchanged with those who came to buy eggs and milk each morning.
    â€œWhy’d folk fight, Firkin?” asked. He’d never quite understood that bit.
    â€œWell.” Firkin shrugged. “The nobles may be bastards, but they also know that if some great fire-breathing beast out of legend lands himself in the middle of a field that you should probably go stab him before he eats up too many of the farmers. That’s the idea about taxes, you see? The farmer pays them, and the noble uses them to pay the soldiers to stab stuff before it eats the farmer. We’ve lost that idea since Mattrax and his lot came along. Now the soldiers are more likely to stab the farmers. But that was the original idea.”
    â€œThe dragons ate farmers?” Will had