The Blacktongue Thief

32 Spiders Out of String

Not seashells, but eggshells.

Some creature or other was moving about in the pile of eggshells near our camp, and I hadn’t an idea what it might be. My first thought was a dog, but I had seen not so much as a rat here, birds and crabs being the largest things to walk the beach besides us, though when it was birds and crabs at the same time, the crabs were usually in a bit of a hurry. I sat up, seeing a small, dark shape in the shell-heap. It bobbed its head as if to sniff the air and then mewed a tiny mew at me. I had no more thought the words, It’s a cat, and then, Is it Bully Boy? when the latter was confirmed by the arrival of Bully’s deadly passenger, announced with hard fingers at my trachea.

I knew better than to speak. I looked around and saw a dark silhouette, as if a feminine and muscly shape had been cut out of the stars to show the black behind them. As my eyes adjusted, I saw pale skin like mapped streets around the strange black architecture of her tattoos, her glyphs and wards.

Sesta.

My Assassin-Adept.

She motioned for me to follow and also for me to bring the cat, so I hung the little bastard around the back of my neck like a stole and followed the shadow-woman up the rocky hillock into a congregation of stars like far candles the wind couldn’t snuff.

“Are you going to kill me?” I said.

We sat in the cave made by the rock-cleft next to my Gunnish friend, who looked much frailer without his helmet and breastplate.

“The cat getting tossed wasn’t your fault,” she said, “so you live. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Would you like my blanket, from the beach?” I said. She was naked as a bride, and I was shivering in my leathers and hemp. She barely shook her head, then raised an arm, pointing at a faintly glowing rune tattooed near her ribs. It said Hearth in some language I didn’t recognize. I now noticed that what little warmth there was in our little grotto was coming off her. She was making about the same amount of heat as the coals of the nearly dead fire had been.

“That’s how you stayed alive in the water. Kept the cat alive with it, too.”

She just looked at me.

“So you shake your head for no, but contemptful silence, that’s a yes. Yes?” She just looked at me. “Right, got it.”

“Tell me everything you did and saw after they pitched me off,” she said, and I told her the shortest version I thought I could get away with. She watched impassively through most of it, but her eyes lit up when I told her about stabbing the Ispanthian poisoner. When I finished, she just kept looking at me, sitting nearly as still as the armored old duffer next to her.

“So what’s the plan?” I said.

“That depends on how you get off the island, but it’s more or less the same. If you’re picked up, you take the cat. If no one comes in the next few days, row for it. If you row for it, you take the cat. I’ll improvise from there. Most importantly, don’t you dare delay getting us to Oustrim.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

“Also, make up whatever story you like to explain the cat’s reappearance, but anyone you tell about me I might have to kill.”

“No need to tell a thing. I’ll quietly continue in my fondness for feline companionship.”

“Good.”

Bully raoed.

We sat there awkwardly for a moment.

Then the killer cocked her head like a listening dog.

I thought, What is it? but didn’t have time to whisper it before Sesta was crawling backward and flattening herself against the rocks. I won’t say she disappeared, but I will say it got difficult to see her—I couldn’t tell which of her many magical sigils allowed that particular feat, but it was impressive. I barely had time to think, Someone’s coming, I hope it isn’t Norrigal, before Norrigal’s head appeared in front of the stars, looking down at me.

“Did you forget me?” she said. “I thought we had a date.”

I could feel the invisible eyes of the assassin drilling me.

“No!” I said.

“No?”

“I mean, you fell asleep, and me, too. We slept.”

“Have you never shaken a girl awake before?”

“Not without consequences.”

Fothannon had a bit of mischief with me as the thought of shaking Norrigal awake to snog her produced a state of excitement. I saw her notice it.

“Perhaps you prefer to be by yourself.”

“No, nothing like that.”

“You needn’t fib, I understand, I had brothers.”

I supposed wanking was as good an excuse for my departure as any.

“I didn’t want to trouble you.”

Her eyes darted left, and I followed them to the cat, who was looking nowhere in particular as blind cats will, but here it made him look like a guilty party feigning innocence.

Her eyebrow raised.

“At least three questions occur to me, but I’m afraid to ask any of them.”

“The cat didn’t drown, because he’s magicked.”

“Two to go.”

“I’m the one magicked him, with a protection spell.”

“Now the weird one.”

“I came here to be alone, and he followed me. I only just noticed him. It’s got nothing to do with him.”

“That’s a relief.”

I nodded at the skeleton now. “Or him.”

She smiled. “You telling me that’s all for me, then?”

I smiled at her as if to say yes, but dared not say it. And then she started to climb down in the cleft with me.

“Wait!” I said.

“What for?”

I couldn’t think of a plausible reason why she should wait.

“What, you want to be alone with your cat and your corpse?”

“It’s dirty down here.”

“Perhaps you’ve noticed the whole island’s covered in shyte.” She kept climbing. “Besides, it’s cold up there, and you’ll not be hogging the only pocket out of the wind. It’s almost warm in here.”

She was down with me now, about to settle herself right where the adept had been.

“Stay still!” I said.

“What?” she said, exasperated.

The assassin had shifted so she was actually upside down over me, stuck buglike on the bottom of the rock.

“Thought I saw a spider, but it was just a shadow.”

“I don’t know what sort of girleens you’re used to, but witches aren’t scared of spiders. I can make them out of string.”

Now she sat, so close to the deadly shadow it could have reached down and flicked the bottom of her nose. So close to me I could feel the warmth of her leg on my leg. I could feel the adept hating the interruption, hating me for not putting a stop to it. I hated her right back for wrecking what could have been a night of real pleasure after months of drudgery and peril. Prudence should have made me send Norrigal off, but I don’t worship the god of prudence. The Galts don’t have a god of prudence. My god is as much fox as man and gives luck to the brave and clever. He doesn’t want to be praised so much as amused, and it’s said that if your death makes him laugh, he’ll let you into his sacred wood in the afterlife to run naked and rut and steal honey on the comb until you get tired of it. What happens then, I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s a good laugh—Fothannon is generous to all but the cautious.

“Spiders out of string, is it?” I said. “What more could a man want from a woman?” Now I don’t know a very great deal about women, but I know they don’t follow boys they don’t fancy into filthy caves at midnight and sit right up against them. Doesn’t mean they’ll sell the whole horse to you, but a whinny and a kiss is more likely than not. I bent to kiss her, and she leaned to me, but I just brushed her lips. Damned if I was putting on a show for the world’s most lethal hairball.

“Not here,” I said. “Let’s go to the far beach.”

“What, the cold one, away from the fire?”

“I’ll keep you warm.”

“And why not here?” she said.

I nodded at the Gunnish warrior.

“Oh, you’ll have a wank in front of him, but snogging a girl, that’s disrespectful?”

Fine logic, really.

“Nah, it’s more like I don’t want to share you. We’re going to kiss like lovers tonight. In no hurry. I’m going to remember it a long time, and I don’t want anything gruesome looking on.”

“I like that answer.” She got up.

“You run along, and I’ll be right behind you.”

“As you say,” she said, smiling at me in a way I’m sorry if you’ve never seen, and she left.

Bully followed her out.

When they were gone, I felt a stony hand tangle its fingers up in my hair and pull hard.

“Gruesome, is it? That was rude,” the upside-down assassin said.

“Yah, well. I thought it was important you know I’m my own man. I’ll do the Guild’s business and do it as well as I can. You can pull my hair if that’s thrilling for you, but if you mark me, the others’ll see, if you hurt me, the others’ll know, and whether or not you really need my help out west, the Guild wants me there, and you serve them as much as I do. So kill me if you like, but I doubt they’ll be happy if you hadn’t a good reason.”

The hand loosened in my hair and let go.

I didn’t even look at her.

“Another thing. If any harm comes to the witch I’m about to snog, please know that despite my affection for the wee cat, I’ll wring his neck with iron and throw him on the hottest fire I can find, and you with him.”

A low, gravelly chuckle came from the rocks above me.

“You know,” she said, “I’m actually starting to like you.”

“Maybe one day it’ll be mutual.”

“Well, you’ve earned yourself a treat. Go to the beach and fuck that girl.”

“Nah, not tonight,” I said, standing up. “Some things are worth waiting for.”

I’d like to say that was the end of it, but the killer got the last word. Yes, I had a joyous, teasing, tempting night shivering on a cold beach with Norrigal, kissing her full lips and tasting her black, black tongue with mine ’til light bled into the clouds and we walked hand in hand back, dropping hands just as we rounded the cliffside and came to camp. We were met with evil stares from all three of our fellow castaways—not because we’d been dallying together. It was because that tattooed bitch went and ate Malk and Gormalin’s fish. All of it. And left the bones where we’d been sleeping.

There was some arguing and grief about that, you can believe it. But it ended up not being so important in the long of it.

The goblins came two days later.