The Blacktongue Thief

51 Father of Abominations

Curiosity devils me in the darkest part of the night. Was the mad old codger my da? I had turned the idea round in my head now and was leaning toward not. It felt too like a story your gran would tell when you were small, by the light of the hearth on a wintry night and all that. Not that my gran told stories. She lived alone in a leaning cottage, and toward the end of her life, she swore at mice and chased them naked with a shoe in her hand. But most grans, I guess. A magicker for a father, and a right mighty one at that? Not likely for Kinch Na Shannack from Platha Glurris, Prank of the Guild and debtor. I was at least a bit more like my poor, blacktongue da than this rich, pinktongue monkey. But enough not like dear ole da to leave no room for doubt. That’s the thing about babies, isn’t it? They all look enough like any man to reassure him, but not so much like the right one as to damn him—questions of skin or tongue pigment aside, that is.

And how’d he know my ma’s hair was curly?

After I’d lost half the night’s sleep tossing and turning over this business, I lit a candle and tried to read some of the magic tattoo book, but it made my cat tattoo itch and burn—I don’t think the assassin liked me reading it—and anyway, I was too restless for sleep or letters. Norrigal slept like the dead, so deeply entombed in her blankets I couldn’t see an inch of skin. I decided to have a look around this crafty old deceiver’s demesne.

I had already seen a fair part of the house, so I chose to trespass in the many outbuildings behind. These were the same buildings Fulvir had warned us not to poke around in, but in Molrova, it was easy to mistake a prohibition for an invitation—or at least to claim you did. I scaled down the wall of horse bones and mortar, and nearly fell when I had the impression the house was about to pull itself out of the ground and rear like a horse. It did no such thing, but it was letting me know it could if it wanted to, so I got off it fast. I now understood the house could move, just pick itself up and leave. I also understood the bones that bricked the house were mortared together with blood, and not just horse’s blood.

I crept past the first outbuilding, and keeping quiet, keeping to the moonshadows, for there was still half a moon in the sky, I peeked into the yard behind, where I saw what looked like a huge black hedge. It seemed to move just a bit in the breeze, then part of the hedge broke off and started coming toward me. It wasn’t a hedge at all, of course. It was a whole pack of war corvids, just like the one that slept in ink on Galva’s chest. The one killer bird who’d broken off from the rest came nearer and nearer. Did it see me? How? I grabbed myself around the legs and tucked my face so there’d be nothing to see. I made not a sound and hoped I made not too much of a scent.

I watched with just the squinted corner of my eye as the great, black murderous thing strutted by me on its taloned legs, shivering a wing as it passed either by chance or as if to say, “I know you’re there but you’ve got permission,” which I dearly hoped wasn’t the case. It’s no mischief at all sneaking around where you’re welcome. It went by me, then broke into a run as it plucked something up from the ground. A mouse? I think it was a mouse, but I’ll never know, for the corvid ate it down in one gulp, then croaked its pleasure.

Well, I thought, I’m either harder to spot or less delicious than whatever that was. The others croaked back at it, and it loped across the yard and rejoined them in their standing half sleep, the lot of them now turning slowly like a wheel in the wind.

I snuck around now to the front of the building I had been crouching behind and found its one door. The place had a roof of turtle shells, walls of ochre-colored brick and no windows to speak of. Over the door of fire-hardened oak I made out the word bollisi, which was the Molrovan word for “gods.” It was the same word hanging over the Allgod house in Grevitsa, may its name be cursed forever. So my Molrovan false-father had a church in his yard, did he? I tried the door, and of course it was locked. I tried a simple unlocking cantrip, and of course it didn’t work—magic was strong here.

I had one spell I’d been taught during my last month of study, and it was the strongest lock-magery I knew. I crouch-walked the ground slowly, so slowly the wheel of corvids wouldn’t be alerted, until I came near several trees and soon found a dried twig in the grass. I took this and returned, saying certain words over it. I stuck the twig near the lock, said more words over it, then felt it turn into a key in my hand. I slotted this key and turned it slowly, so slowly, feeling the tumblers give. The door crept open with a slow push, and I slipped into the darkness within, closing it behind me and relocking the door. I may die for my curiosity, but at least I’d die knowing what sort of church a man like Fulvir kept. Surely that would be mischief enough for Fothannon.

Well, why don’t you ask him? a voice in my own head seemed to say. Well, what does that mean? I thought back at the voice. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the full darkness, and as I did, I made out the sounds of breathing and sleep. I was in a gaol of sorts, where iron bars separated me from about a dozen close cells. Words hung over the cells. Malmrana. Sava’av. Bolr. These were the names of Molrovan gods, I was fairly sure, but I had little knowledge of them. Bolr was the Molrovan word for “bear,” and that was their god of courage. I peered in the cave and saw a dark form sleeping, I could hear its snore, but could make nothing out. Sava’av appeared to be some sort of large bird, not so large as a corvid but bigger than an eagle, and the feathers on the wing it wrapped itself in seemed blue but could have been gray or brown as well.

My eyes were keen in the darkness, I had trained and magicked them to be so, but this place was dark. I could tell nothing at all about Malmrana, save it was hidden behind a pile of rocks and sticks. Logs crossed its cell, and the bars were closer together than the others. The name above the next cell caught my eye.

Fothannon.

My own god, the god of mischief.

What did it say about me that the word sacrilege only now occurred to me, with my own chosen deity parodied in flesh? I thought perhaps I should leave without looking in that cell, and I dearly wish I had, but how could I? I’m a man who’ll always choose to know.

I crept over where I could get a better look. I saw what looked like a large fox sleeping, the way foxes do, all balled up like a fur hat with its pretty red tail over its nose. Every time I’d ever seen a fox came back to me at once, all their beauty and cleverness, how they play and bound over each other. I was always going to fall for Fothannon, even had he not been one of the deities sanctioned by the Takers Guild. I had loved him since I first met an old tinker who worshipped him and told me the story of the naughty fox, the sleepy drunk, and the lovestruck goat. I was reduced to a state of childlike awe and forgot I was a thief. For just that moment, I was a little boy again, and I was seeing the demigod I would devote my life to, and not in the tongue-in-cheek way Fothannon himself insists on. I was struck with wonder.

“Fothannon,” I said.

The fox’s head came up, and its nose twitched. It looked right at me. My heart skipped a beat. My godling stood up, and I was awed. The head of a fox sat squarely on the shoulders of a five or six-year-old boy. He had little leather pants with a hole cut in them so his bushy tail could peek out.

“Fothannon?” I said again, utterly bewildered.

I knew in my mind it was a mixling, but he was just as the legends described. He yipped like a fox now, then dropped to all fours and ran in a circle. The other gods were coming awake. I spared a look at Bolr and saw that the smallish bear or largish cub I had seen was peeking over its shoulder, but that it had a man’s face. An old man with caterpillarish eyebrows and a confused look. I heard movement at Malmrana’s cell and saw a serpent walk out on about a dozen pair of arms, flicking its tongue at me through the bars. Fothannon yipped. Sava’av stirred and began to beat its wings and I had no desire to see what they might hold aloft.

“Braathe! Braathe ne byar!” Bolr said.

“What?” I said to it.

It picked up a tin plate in its teeth and shambled toward its bars, dropping the plate near a slot in the ground, now pushing the plate with its nose.

“Braathe ne byar!” it shouted, its eyes mad, and wouldn’t you be mad if you were a small bear with a geezer’s face in a mad wizard’s menagerie?

All the noise had of course roused the corvids, and I heard them croaking loud, menacing croaks just out the door, which was the only way in or out of this karkery. I was well in the shyte, but one thing they teach you at the Guild is never give up. I was just crouching there in the loud darkness trying to figure out what not giving up might look like in this awful situation when I heard Norrigal say, “Yer a fucking idiot.”

Now she had me painfully by the hair at my temples and stood me up and shook me doglike, this from behind, where I couldn’t actually see her. The corvids stopped their squawking, and I heard the tumblers in the door turn. The clay man I’d fought on the way up the mountain pass walked in the doorway holding before him a lamp that looked for all the world like a burning frog in a jar.

He saw me and fast-walked over, the corvids behind him. He turned away from me and bent over, walking backward at me, and I saw Fulvir’s face on his arse. The face puckered its lips at me like it was going to whistle, then started blowing fire at me. I tried to run away but was caught fast by my hair. Now Norrigal’s fists, or whoever’s fists were wound into the hair at my temples, turned me around upside down as if in a dance so I could look behind me at her, but she wasn’t there. Invisible! That was a good trick! And I was on fire. Then quite suddenly, I was in bed and Norrigal actually was there, and she let go of my hair and started spanking my arse. She seemed angry.

“Oh, thank the gods, it was a dream,” I said.

“The devils it was,” she said, and I smelled smoke and realized she wasn’t just spanking my arse, she was putting it out. The wizard’s clay man really had blown fire out of its bunger all over me in a gaol full of mixlings made to blaspheme the gods.

“You made me use my last dream-walk, and that’s no cheap spell. I hope it was worth it.” The way she said I hope it was worth it made it perfectly clear that it wasn’t.

“You really do love me, don’t you?” I said.

“I think so, yah, but ask me when I’m not tempted to cut your throat.”

I saw out the window that first light was glowing in the sky.

Morning already? How long had I been wandering?

Norrigal slapped me in the face now, hard. I suppose because I wasn’t paying attention, after she’d left her body to fetch me back and then put my burning arse out with her bare hands. Fair play.

“Sorry,” I said.

She slapped me again, though less hard, to make sure I got the message.

Then she hugged me and held me to her.

“You confuse me dearly,” she said. Then we both nearly jumped out of our skins as a hard knock fell on the door.