The Blacktongue Thief

22 A Blind Cat’s Luck

In the summer of 1224, while the crowned heads of Manreach were feeding kynd to goblins near Goltay at the Kingsdoom, the last wave of youngsters were mustered off for training. That training would take a whole, hard year of shield walls, spear drills, archery, and fast marching.

Manreach had learned during its second war with goblins—the Threshers’ War—that the Horde easily killed green peasants armed only with clubs and pitchforks, no matter how many they numbered. During the Threshers’ War, 1210 through 1217 Marked, we’d lost nine men in ten.

I was born in the first year of that calamity.

So I was fourteen when the muster came to Platha Glurris.

The war raging then was being called the Daughters’ War, for it was mostly daughters left to fight it. Lads my age were the oldest to be found in numbers, and eventually went with their sisters and mothers and aunts into huge armies allied against the goblin Horde. This newest group of Unthermen, Holtishmen, Braycish, Gallards, Spanths, Gunns, Middlers, Wostrans, and tributes from the Odd Cities in Istrea and Beltia called itself the Glorious League, and the gods hate that sort of thing. They like to decide whose the glory is, and so they did. The worms got the glory.

Even that last wave who, with the help of the corvids and the unburnable springwood ships, finally pushed the goblins back to their homelands in this Daughters’ War mostly didn’t come back. Goblins fought with poison, you see. They fought with great mole-blind, moon-white ghalls they’d bred up from manslaves underground and pain-mad boars the size of ponies, with spikes inside their armor as well as out. They fought with rolling palisades and a hail of bolts.

They fought with illness.

They fought with fear.

King Conmarr of Holt sent letters bearing his seal to all the towns in all his three lands; Holt proper (also called Westholt), Norholt, and Galtia. Platha Glurris got such a letter, and it empowered the duke to set mustermen—these had the responsibility of recruiting soldiers, and if a musterman named you, it was treason not to go. If you slipped town, the musterman paid a fine. He was never a noble. He would be one of the townsfolk, someone known and well liked, like a reeve. Someone wealthy enough to have something to lose, but not so wealthy the fine wouldn’t hurt him.

A month before the last muster, the Takers Guild had sent a musterman of its own to Platha Glurris. He said his name was Cavanmeer, and no one ever so ennobled greed, disloyalty, and desertion. Listen, here’s his solicitation, as near as I remember it:

After our talk, I walked the several miles to the Tattered Sea and borrowed a rowboat, which I took to the Isle of Ravens, called so for the colonies of huge, brave bastards that roost in the salt-sickened trees there. No land for farming, that, all rocks and marsh. A perfect place to take a girleen or hide out with a pack of mates. A perfect place to weigh a life-changing decision.

What did I think of thieves back then, anyway?

Well, to be very clear, the first thing I had wanted to be was a magicker. All the river towns, Platha Glurris, Brith Minnon, all the way out to the sea, had rung with tales of the time Fulvir Lightning-Binder and Knockburr the Galt had come to the Isle of Ravens to find the birds they’d later breed the corvids from. It was said they had enchanted fences to come to life and box the taxman’s ears; or turned the moon pale green to celebrate Summerdawn; or made two seagulls sing, one in Galtish, one in Molrovan, with a beautiful curly-haired woman to judge which bird sang better. These stories made the pair of warlocks out to be almost demigods, bending nature and matter to their wills, and with such panache and good humor I wanted to be as they were. But I knew magic came from books, and though I could read anything you set before me, I would never have the means for such luxuries.

And I never saw these wizards for myself.

Thieves I had seen.

My oldest brother, Pettrec—actually, only my stepbrother, for I was the eldest of my mum’s—was a thief of sorts but hadn’t a talent for it. He never went the Guild’s way. He’d been caught hooking a shirt off a drying-line one hamlet over, and he’d been drubbed soundly by the neighbors—people in little towns watch over each other.

That should have been the end of it, but it was a fine, plum-colored shirt belonging to the reeve. The reeve complained to the lord, and Pettrec got sentenced to work in the king’s mint. Sounds foolish, eh, putting a thief near all that silver? Well, the penalty for stealing from the mint was death, so no one much tried. The sentences were short, too. Three months was all he got, but he’d have been better off taking a year in gaol.

The real punishment isn’t the time—it’s the work. Mint-vassals hold the blank steady while the striker works the hammer. If you get a good striker, you’ll just go deaf. Takes about a week. Unless you plug your ears with wax, but you’re not allowed to bring your own plugs—they check your ears. You have to buy them, and they cost three shaves each; they should be fine candles for so much. You have to buy new ones each day. You see how this goes. The dishonest poor go deaf.

Also, you have to pay to choose your striker. The older, sure ones cost two shaves a day to work under. The new ones are free, until they crush you a finger because they miss, and then they cost a finger. Too bad, right? Shouldn’t be a thief, right? That’s not how I took it. The ones in charge are thieves, that’s what I gleaned from Pettrec’s crippled fingers and loud conversation. “Don’t get caught” is what I learned. Get in with the Guild.

Pettrec went with the muster that should have taken me as well, and he fought goblins. They killed him in some Gallardian mudflat, and him probably shouting “What!” the whole time.

The island was pretty that afternoon, the air cool, the trees full of the hoarse shouts of ravens. I found one proud, night-black bastard on a branch, throwing blue highlights off his feathers, and asked him should I slip the muster, but he had no opinion beyond craaark, which I knew I might interpret as I pleased. So I sat on the cold, rocky strand, and I watched the waves roll in like they’d done before thieves or soldiers, thinking, What’s any of it matter? and then, A boy does as he’s told, a man does as he pleases, and then, Soldiers get beers bought for them, then, Dead soldiers get none.

I tried a prayer to Fothannon for the first time, told him to show me if he wanted me for one of his own or should I take up a spear.

When I got back to the mainland, the fisherman whose boat I’d borrowed cuffed me about and named me a thief. I saw one hand on him was nothing but thumb and one finger, and he had an ear off him, too. Bit of the king’s ribbon on his straw hat to show him a soldier. And here he was wrestling cold cod out of the water with a boat needing paint and a pincer for a hand.

I made a little fox out of river-clay that night and declared myself his servant.

I left town with Cavanmeer two nights later, off to Pigdenay, leaving the musterman who named me to pay a fine. That man was Coel Na Brannyck, father to Malk Na Brannyck, both of them Coldfoot Spears, both of them blessings to their friends and devils to their foes. The father died in Orfay, in Gallardia, hacked and bitten down by goblins, the son saw it happen.

And here he stood before me on the ship I was to call home.

Malk Na Brannyck.

Older, goblin-bitten, sun-leathered, and, it seems, one of the toughest hands on the Suepka Buryey’s deck.

“Welcome, fucking Kinch. Welcome to my fucking ship.”

“Thank you, fucking Malk. I’ll try to make the fucking best of it,” is what I should have said, but what came out of my mouth was some weak little grunt. You see, while Malk was a man to reckon with, fear wasn’t what muzzled me. It was shame. No one can still your tongue like somebody who knew you at your worst. Of course, I’m not confident I was worse when I was younger. I may be the worst I ever was now, ethically speaking, but I know now how not to look so bad. We don’t usually know that when we’re young, so our worst traits are on full display. One of many reasons not to trust a traveler is that he may not be wanted by those who know him best.

“Aye,” he said, “best not let’s say too much now. We’ll have time to talk later. I just can’t believe my good luck seeing you here.” Once again, you’d have to be paying attention to see how hateful that was, how what looked like warmth in his eyes was actually a frost so cold it burned. Then, in Galtish, he said, “Ec sa imfalth margas beidh.”

It is smart to have a dog.

That’s a Galtish way of saying, “Watch yourself.” One response to that was, “Me saf math margas fleyn.” I am my own dog. Meaning, “I won’t be caught sleeping, and I know how to bite.” Of course, what I actually said was, “Me edgh bein i catet tull.”

I have a blind cat’s luck.

When it croaked out of my mouth, I meant it as statement of fact, but looking back, it sounded perfectly weird, ambiguous, and off-putting, so it was just the right thing. Or as right as anything else. What I said wasn’t going to matter to Malk. My chances of dying on this voyage had just gone from decent to excellent.