The Blacktongue Thief

23 The God I’ll Take Today

The first few days weren’t so bad. Ashers burned to ashes. Lammas month came in, and with it autumn. The full moon rode high and bright over the sea, Norrigal singing to it over the rail.

The crew mostly left us be, except to offer us the pot-scrapings of the oats they ate and to sell us wodka. The Spanth drank from her barrel of wine and looked so murderously at any of the crew who watched her tapping it that the watcher went on and never peeked our way again. They swabbed around us and shouted and called above. On the second of Lammas, the Suepka hit a windy patch, and she pitched and rolled and even seemed to scoot sideways at times, and this made both Norrigal and me so sick it strained our guts. We moaned like the dying and hugged such vessels as we could find to receive our offerings. I only had a hat. After she’d near filled a pitcher with hour-old oats and wodka, she wristed vomit-tears out of her eyes and looked at me.

“Your seasick spell’s not working,” I said,

“Brilliant one, you are,” she said, spitting out some of her own damp hair. “I couldn’t find an ingredient.”

“Which?”

“Turmeric.”

“The fuck’s that?”

“Keshite spice,” she said. “It’s … it’s yellow.” I was glad I’d never had any, because I guess the thought of it’s what made her heave into her pitcher again. I considered the hat in my lap and wondered how long before it would soak through or if I could find the strength to stand up and empty it in the slop bucket.

I couldn’t.

“Fuck this shyte, karking knobhole of a trip,” I said and heaved dry, on the point of crying but didn’t, or won’t tell you if I did.

But that was the worst of the first four days.

The rest were tolerable.

Bully roamed the lower hold, but either the cat or what was inside the cat knew to keep him close to me most times. Also, and thankfully, he was good enough to piss and poo in the same place so I could find it and rag it up before anyone else complained about it.

Malk Na Brannyck came below to sleep in his hammock six hours a night, I know because I slept by day so I could pretend to sleep at night and watch him. He was like the rain in Pigdenay; he knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I thought about telling Galva about him, but that would mean telling her I had slipped the muster, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

I had some few talks with Norrigal, though, those first days.

“What gods do you worship?” I asked one afternoon when we were close enough to some island to draw gulls.

“All of them,” she said, looking at the sea a-twinkle and cleaning her teeth with a splinter from the Suepka’s rail.

“But which particularly?”

“Whichever suits the present spell…”

“Or keeps me out of any hell,” I continued, quoting Kellan Na Falth, a Galtish bard known for doggerel.

We finished together:

Funny part about that poem, “A Song for the Allgod,” is that it makes us blacktongues seem faithless. Rarely does any Holter stop to think it rhymes in Holtish; it’s no translation. The poem in Galtish, with much the same rhythm, praises each of the Galtish gods, but especially the fox. The Holtish version is such shyte as we answer Holters with when they come telling us to squint at the sun and call it our lord. The Galtish title isn’t “A Song for the Allgod” but “A Dirge for the Allgod.”

Kellan Na Falth was hanged in Lamnur during the Upstart Wars, his work forgotten outside Galtia. We’re overdue for another rebellion, but you won’t see one while we’ve all got the goblins to hate together.

“The Bright Moon,” she said in Galtish, her black tongue dancing behind her teeth. “She’s my mistress.”

Cael Ilenna.

“Fits a witch,” I said.

“As your fox fits you. Why do you expect things to be other than they seem, or hold them smaller when they are? Are the facts of the world laid out only for your amusement or contempt?”

“They are,” I said, turning to look at her and leaning back on my elbows, hoping I looked a proper rake.

“Then this should serve both,” she said and flicked her tooth-cleaning splinter at me and walked away.

A pity she didn’t see the result of her toss. Her toothpick should have missed or bounced off my shirt, but it hit me right in the forehead. And stuck there.

“Thanks for that,” I said, less to her than to Fothannon, but he had mischief enough yet in store.

It was on the fifth day out, the fourth of Lammas, that I heard the crew shout “Keleet, keleet!”

I’ll bet you know what that meant.

The whale was a small one, but a red. Red whales are related to squarehead cachalots and black-and-white orcas, just between the two in size but colored rusty orange and twice as mean as the squares. Their spermaceti isn’t as plentiful, but there’s enough to make them worth the fight, and they are twice as likely to have ambergris in their guts. You need more hands to take a red. And that’s how we became whale-hunters, Galva and I.

Korkala came to us in our stall and said, “Guest of Suepka Buryey. Now is time hunt in whale-chase. You stay here, you pay double fare. You hunt whale, you get some money, better food, we let cat live. Some of crew, those from Albyed steppes, want eating cat, I say no, is friend of guest, but Albyedoi love meat of cat, lya? But by ship rules, spear-mate have, how you say for small animal not good for nothing but feed and clean shit?”

“That’s a pet,” I said.

“Lya, pet. You hunt whale, not say no, you have by law of ship, pet. You say no…” Here she shrugged the shrug of a woman trying to be coy about cutting the throat of a cat hiding an assassin whose death would bring another assassin to kill me horribly and, as I’ve heard can happen, poison my family back in Platha Glurris. I cut my eyes to Bully and saw him sitting, staring at me. I’d never seen a cat grin before, but he was grinning, which I think was meant to be a snarl. It must be hard to make a cat’s face do things from inside him, but I hope never to find out about that.

“The captain said—” the Spanth started, but I spoke over her.

“Yes! I’ll go.”

“Is good,” the Molrovan harpy said.

Galva spoke up. “He can go if he cares so much about this chodadu cat, but I will not go.”

“Yes, she will,” I said.

Galva looked at me like a bull looks at you when you swing a leg over its fence.

“No,” she said. “We paid for the right to transport. We did not agree to help you hunt whales; in fact, your captain told us in specific it is not for us to do. We have important business in the west we cannot do if we drown chasing your chodadu whale.”

“Ah,” said Korkala. “Sorry, am not realizing we have aboard ship Ispanthnoi princess. Sorry, princess, not to have velvet for bedsheet and incense pot to cover smell of crew working.”

Galva grunted. As you no doubt remember, Spanths don’t care for sarcasm. Or lies. If Molrova and Ispanthia didn’t have seven nations between them, they would have fought to the death of one or the other centuries ago.

“But,” Korkala went on, “captain tell you about ship’s charter for wodka, wine, other liquor?”

Galva’s eyes got flintier still.

“Is charter rule captain control all liquor on ship. Is to prevent mutiny. Is unusual, but captain can say no hand have private good wine while others drink shit-water, keep all equal, friendly. Maybe if princess no help with whale, when brave whale crew come back, is for celebrate captain give them expensive wine of princess, lya?”

Galva’s hand moved slowly down to her belt. She didn’t touch her sword. But she put her hand so close to it the meaning was hard to miss. Korkala was unimpressed.

“If you defend wine, maybe ship’s poisoner put something in it to make you sick. Maybe worse. Princess look like fighter, maybe Calar Bajat fighter. Is good! Ispanthnoi sword make must-respect. But…,” she said, raising one finger almost too close to Galva’s nose, “even if princess kill whole crew, save wine for herself … who sail ship?”