The Blacktongue Thief

20 A Knife in the Mouth

The whaler was called the Suepka Buryey, or “Pig-Lady of the Tempest” or just “Storm Sow.” Suepka was a versatile word, meaning “sow,” but also meaning “female bastard,” or basically anything you don’t like that has tits on it. But like many of the world’s best insults, it could be a grudging honorific. Like, that woman’s a real suepka with a knife. Not that I speak much Molrovan, but as you may have noticed, I collect vulgarisms.

We had taken a look at the ship, bobbing against the pull of her ropes, casting shadows on a smaller oar-ship beside her. No oars on the Suepka, she was too big for that, but had two huge mainmasts and a smaller lateen mizzenmast at the back, this sitting on the square, flat aft castle. Two oar-boats sat at her sides, ready to be lowered down for the whale-chase, and a trio of ballistas on her forecastle showed she thought herself ready to fend off or reel in whatever the foamy sea would throw at her. Her wood was so dark as to be almost black, and her shape was round and piglike. An exotic and diverse crust of barnacles peeped at me from below her waterline. The smell of old whale fat hung about the ship like perfume in a whore’s drapes.

Two members of the crew, greasy-looking women, surly to have been left aboard while others tried their land-legs, glared down at us, so I looked back down at the barnacles, but not before one of them, a barrel-shaped tan woman with sun-bleached hair slicked against her head, sucked her little finger at me. While I was puzzling out whether that was an insult, a proposition, or both, Galva said, “I think you’re going to find a bride on this boat.”

Norrigal snorted.

I looked away. It occurred to me that walking the several hundred miles to Molrova might be a better idea than climbing on that roll-bellied fatburner of a whale ship to be dandled by Lady Suck-Finger and coated in oil and filth, but if I didn’t get to Oustrim in a timely fashion, I’d have the Guild to answer to, and they were more frightening to me than the sea. Or so I thought.

I hadn’t put to sea yet.

I went back to the inn one final time to pack and ready for the voyage.

I had a goodbye to say.

The Spanth was off to market buying wine—too proud to let me haggle for her—and Norrigal had gone in search of peppercorn and other ingredients for some seasick-spell she had in mind to cast upon those of us who’d need it.

I watched Bully Boy paw his way to and fro in our room at the Heads-Up Penny, wondering how he’d get on in Pigdenay without me. Just as he’d gotten on in Cadoth, I imagined, until his luck failed him. Same as the rest of us.

“Come here, you little weed,” I said and scooped him up by the nape. He stuck his paws out in front of him like they do, and I spoke right into his face, looked him in his useless, pretty eyes.

“Bully Boy,” I said, “time has come to part ways. There’s no place for you on the ship.”

He raoed.

“I know. It’s sad, but the world’s made of sadness, if you hadn’t noticed, great gray bricks of it and mortared all together with pain and obligation. For kynd, at least. No obligations for you, my kith. Precious little power or choice, but nobody expects a damned thing of you, and there’s a worthy birthright. I wish you uncountable pans of milk, a bit of cheese and fish, and fewer kicks than you deserve, and I know you’d want the same for me. We’ll part as friends, then.”

I put him on the bed and petted the length of him so he pushed up with his back and curled his tail, but he wouldn’t purr as he normally did. I dug in my pack and went to feed him one last bony flake of salt herring, but he turned his nose up at it.

“What’s that, taking it hard? Eat the damn thing, you’re too skinny as it is,” I said, tickling his nose with it, but he wasn’t having any. “Fine,” I said.

I tossed the fish on the floor and swung my legs on the straw mat to lie down for a moment. It occurred to me that this was going to be the most comfortable bed at my disposal for untold months, so I might as well enjoy it. Bully went under the frame of the bed, ignoring the fish, and he proceeded to cough and hack as if to deliver one of his charming little hair-pellets onto the floor beneath me.

“You know, trying to make me feel bad won’t work. I said I’m going, and going I am, at first light tomorrow. Hack as you will, that’s an end to it.”

I felt my hairs stand up a bit on end.

I mistook that feeling for a pang of sadness to lose Bully Boy, who had a handsome little face on him and wasn’t bad as cats go, but by the time I realized it was magic, it was too late.

Bully ran out from under the cot and thumped his head properly against the wall and sat there panting, looking sightlessly back under the bed, where something much heavier and faster than a cat was moving.

I was reaching for my knife when a tattooed leg swung out from under the bed and a nude woman followed it. Just as Palthra cleared its sheath, she had me by the arm and vaulted toward the wall, kicking off it in such a way as to wrench me backward by the arm so I did a full turn and fell off the bed with her. If I weren’t a fast bastard myself, that particular move would have dislocated my shoulder, but I went with her to save the joint. Like she knew I would. When we hit the floorboards, she ended up on top of me, her legs spidered out so there was no leveraging her off and her pressing my knife arm against me with the weight of her so I couldn’t use it.

Now, quick as you like, she did something where she wrenched my arm back and briefly almost straddled my face. I glimpsed her right in her lady parts, but to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t have been less interested in them. Or so I thought. But when her knee dug hard into my biceps, I did get less interested. I bucked up and tried to knee her off me, but I didn’t even manage to annoy her. Then she worked my wrist the wrong way just shy of breaking it and plucked my knife. I’m done for, I thought. This was an Assassin-Adept, one of the Guild’s best, and I had no more chance against her than a blind cat would have.

The knife appeared and settled under my nose like the world’s most unwelcome mustache. I regretted how sharp I kept it.

“Open your mouth,” she said at just above a whisper. When I hesitated, she pressed the keen edge of it up so that it was clear she could cut my nose right off me if she liked, and I mean shave my face as flat as a plate. So I opened my mouth, but just a little.

“Wider,” she said, applying just a bit more pressure, just so I felt the skin between my lip and nose starting to separate. I pulled my chin farther down. Now she put the knife in my mouth, depressed my tongue with the flat of it. “You’ll hold still now. I wanted to make sure you listen rather than talk. I come from the Guild with instructions for you. Don’t nod. Blink twice.”

I aborted the nod, a stupid gesture when you’ve got a knife in your mouth, and blinked twice. I recognized her now. I had seen her in Cadoth, the one who took my money away in a sack back at the Takers Guild Hall. All the tattoos on her. I grew less afraid, relaxed a bit, not because I was sure she wouldn’t kill me but because I was so very lamblike helpless there wasn’t much to do about it, and there’s a freedom there.

“Kinch Na Shannack, I am going to help you discharge your debt to the Guild. Your real mission is not to bring magic articles back with you; your actual task is to get me to Oustrim in the company of that humorless Spanth. Once there, I’ll tell you what’s next; you’re to help me do something, but what that is you don’t need to know yet. Just know that this comes from the Full Shadow of Holt and, by his command, your success or failure will bring you gratitude and wealth, or pain and death. Blink twice if you understand.”

There were only eleven Full Shadows in the Guild, who ruled their secret realms like upside-down monarchs; to say the Full Shadow of Holt was as if to say the hidden king of Holt.

I blinked twice.

“Good. I had to make myself known to you so you wouldn’t leave the cat behind. Leave the cat behind, you leave me behind. Let the cat drown, you let me drown. If I die, Kinch Na Shannack, the Guild will know immediately, and you’ll die in such a way as to envy me. I’m going to take the knife out. If you have any questions, ask them, but please know that I don’t like questions.”

“I have one,” I said, when the knife was clear, the taste of the metal thick on my tongue. She just looked at me. “Is the cat just a cat?”

“Yes, the cat is just a cat. But mind, I use his eyes and ears and steer him when I want to.”

“I thought he was blind.”

“He is. But I’m not.”

“So you’ve seen me at times I thought myself alone except for a blind cat.”

“I have.”

“I’ll try not to think about that too much.”

“Same here.”

She stood then, in all her runed and scripted glory, and flicked the knife up so it stuck in the ceiling.

“You’re a frightening woman,” I said.

“You haven’t the slightest idea.”

I studied the tattoos on her. As I’d first noticed at the Hanger’s House, her arms were solid black, from fingertips to shoulders, and I had no idea what magic that brought, nor knew I anything about the clockface tattooed on her sternum. I saw a few words in different languages, most I couldn’t identify even though I understood them all. Up. Horse’s Kick. Bottle-of-Breath. I caught those in glimpses, dared not read longer lest she divine I was a Cipher. No one could ever know that unless I wished to live out my years squinting and fat in a pillowed cell.

“Did you get an eyeful?” she asked, thinking I was intrigued with her nakedness. I let her think it.

“Yeah. S’not bad.”

“Not bad? Fitter than you’ll ever touch, Prank.”

“What’s your name?”

“I murdered it.”

“What will I call you?”

“Sesta.”

“Istrean for six?”

“Aren’t you proud of yourself. It’s how old I was when I first killed.”

“What, a bug?”

“My sister.”

“Must’ve been hard on your mum.”

“I’m revisiting the idea of shaving your nose off. Have you got anything else to say?”

I shook my head.

“Good.”

Now she stuck her finger down her throat and vomited up a leather pack. She got clothes out of this, dressed herself.

“Do you have any food?” she said. I showed her where it was, and she ate it all, looking at me the whole time. She even ate Galva’s and Norrigal’s food. Then she made me give her money for more food, and she went to the market. Apparently, being in a cat for a month makes you hungry.

When she had gone out, as quiet and fluid as the shadow of a cloud, I looked at Bully Boy. He yawned and rolled his tongue. Then he sauntered over and ate the dried bit of herring on the floor.

“Thank you very much for bringing that into my fucking life.”