The Blacktongue Thief

29 The Tooth of the Vine

Dawn wasn’t much to speak of, what with all the clouds. You couldn’t really pick a moment when you could say, there it is, the sun’s up now. Choosing to fight a man with my shirt off was an easy enough decision to make when my blood was up and my leather was on, but now I saw the cold in this godsforsaken place was like to make me shiver. If I had to die, and there seemed little remedy against it, I didn’t want to do it in such a way as to confirm the legend of my cowardice.

“Norrigal,” I said, and she turned her fair face to me, the face I’d spent the night kissing warmly, wetly in the dark since sleep was unlike to come. “You wouldn’t have something to make a man stop shivering.”

“I would, but it’ll make you slow.”

“Keep it, then.”

Malk with his shirt off was no more encouraging than Malk with a shirt full of muscles. I still believed the Spanth could have beaten him at weapons-play, but doubted she’d do any better than me against this bruiser at fists. Speed be with me. Luck be with me. Let me do that bastard mischief. I wrapped my fists in strips of hide to keep the bones together, though if the bones of my head held together, I’d count myself happy.

“What do you think, sprumlet?” Malk said, cheerful as any man about to get tested at his favorite sport. “Shall we say it’s dawn?”

“Since we’re as like to see the moon next as the sun, yeah. Dawn. Let’s get on with it.”

I’d said my goodbyes to the Spanth, who inclined her head to me and moved her lips, though whether she was speaking in this world or a dream, I had no way to know. Either way, I thought she was hours from standing, and things would surely be settled by then.

I winked at Norrigal, and she gave a sad little wave with her hand. The decks near the mainmast had been cleared, and the crew stood above us on fore-and-aft castle. Captain Boltch sat on a sort of throne with Korkala at his shoulder. He’d taken not the slightest interest in this matter as a question of discipline, but seemed very keen on it as entertainment. He was making bets like the rest of them. Some very few had bet on me, thanks to the tempting odds, which I believe stood at twelve to one. I wasn’t so like to lose at that, but I’d have scarcely called it even.

The captain took the little bronze fist from Korkala—I wrinkled my nose to think of what adventures that artifact had been on while I fiddled—and raised it up. When he dropped it, the beatings and chokings would commence. It was nice, that moment with the baton aloft. A man who can pitch a tent and live in a valley three heartbeats wide is a happy man. I heard a seagull call, I heard a gurgle and a churn in the water as some tide or other rushed against the hull. It wasn’t so bad, that instant.

The baton fell.

Half an hour later, I was still alive but in an exhausted, nauseous sort of hell. I had Malk from behind, my legs wrapped around his waist, and I’d been pressed against him like that for almost the whole long, weary struggle. This style of fighting was called li denchēct di lįan, the tooth of the vine, or just the vine, and it was Gallardian. They have some of the best open-hand arts in the world, and the tooth of the vine was the most useful. Oh, it wasn’t much to look at. No beautiful kicks, no breathtaking throws. Just a studied approach at finding what the body doesn’t do well, then trying to make your opponent’s body do that.

They teach the vine in the Low School, of course—it’s embraced by thieves as warmly as the army takes to boxing and the navy takes to buggery. It’s the best way for a small lad or lass not to be murdered by a larger one, and thieves run small. So there I was, alternately burning and freezing, coated in cold sweat, my left eye swollen shut, a tooth loose, a rib likely broken. But I was still alive, and my man was getting tired. Countless times had he kicked me glancing blows, punched me with poor leverage, headbutted me at bad angles, but he had only hurt me twice, and neither time with his fist. Twice he’d made it to his feet even with me tangling him and flung us deckward, me taking the worst of it. For my part, I had broken a small finger on his off hand, slapped the piss out of his ears, and thumbed his eyes a time or two. But here we still were, muscles on fire, lungs full of razors, the noble tree and its cowardly kark of a vine. Still any man’s fight. The crew didn’t like it.

“Are you going to fight him or breed him?”

“Fight like a man!”

“Stop it, Captain, pull them apart!”

“It’s witchcraft, you know he’s got arts!”

“Coward!”

“Coward!”

“Slipper!”

Those were the things I heard in Holtish. The Molrovan, Untheric, and Ispanthian were worse. Boos, however, have no country. The malcontented mob of salts booed, hooed, and grunted at me, though, to be honest, they’d been doing it worse toward the middle, and now they were used to my tactics. Just lately, they’d been throwing things, and that was a worry. So far just bottle corks and scraps of whalebone, somebody’s dirty stocking. But it was only a matter of time ’til something wood or metal clonked me hard enough to stun me and loosen my grip.

Malk was working his way to his feet again, drooling all over my arm and breathing like he needed a midwife. I was tangling my feet around his and digging at his kidneys with my knees when I could, because when he stood again, he would dive us back at the hard, hard deck and me on the bottom. He was up on one knee, wrestling my cross-arm with one hand, the other arm tangled up under mine to save his neck a goodnight-squeeze. Though his chin was tucked, I hope painfully, under my arm, he managed to talk. Where he got the wind for it I don’t know, but he started shaming me again.

“I … should have known … you’d fight like this … It’s fit for goblins … no honor … never had it.”

“Never claimed it,” I said.

“Coward.”

Guilty.

“Slipper.”

As in, slipped the muster. Guilty.

“Fucking biter.”

That meant goblin, I know that’s what he meant, but in my pain and exhaustion, it struck me angry, because I’d passed up more than one opportunity to bite him. I could have had his nose off or an ear or a chunk of his neck a dozen times. So, to hell with him, I bit him. I bit the shyte out of him. He yelled and drooled more, started biting my arm in return.

A belaying pin flew out of the gray and hit me right near the corner of my eye. I can’t say I blamed the thrower, it was a disgraceful display all around. I looked in that direction to see if more were coming, but that was my slit-shut eye. I looked the other way and saw Norrigal. The woozy, barely standing Spanth was leaning on her, holding the horse-headed staff the witch had given her. I should have known that Skinny Woman’s bride would heal fast—Death wasn’t done letting Galva’s sword feed her kingdom. But the Spanth wouldn’t interfere in my fight now, and I wouldn’t want her to. Her for honor’s sake, me to stop the crew cooking and eating us.

The third time I bit Malk, he should have thanked me, because apparently the pain gave him the strength to stand. He bulled up on that wobbly leg and pitched me off him so I hit the deck and rolled sideways like a lumpy branch. The next thing I knew, he hit the deck and rolled as well, and someone yelled and fell off the forecastle. Everyone was yelling. The sea seemed at the wrong angle to the ship. And then I saw it. The tentacle.

The kraken had returned.