The Blacktongue Thief

38 The First Daughter

The third most important woman in the port city of Edth sat before us in a very large chair in a very large room on the third landing of a tower that leaned just a little over the harbor as if listening. A cool wind blew through the window she kept open to justify the fire that crackled in an open hearth in the room’s middle. We four sat on our cowhide stools and drank our good Middlesea lager, listening. She was the harbormistress of Edth, and she was telling us our options. All the while I had the feeling we weren’t the first to hear some version of what she said.

“I have heard some of the words you have spoken to the captain of the Fourth Woman, the ship that nearly roasted you. It is my suspicion you have spoken them in delirium.”

Middlesea Holtish wasn’t exactly the same as Holtish proper, but you could get it easy enough. She spoke to us in our version of the language, else it would have been more like, I haert somme fall of the werts thoost spook wards the capitan, you get it. Point is, she was a canny old cunny, and she knew what she was about.

She was a fat dam, too, dressed in good Gallardian velvet. Her golden chain of office featured dragons chasing stars, with diamonds for stars, real stars presumably being just beyond the reach of Middlesea’s deep coffers.

“We have before us a series of ifs, and you may think of those ifs as axles upon which great wheels may turn.” She said turn in a way that was both delicious and threatening, drawing it like a knife coming out of a roast.

“If goblins attacked you on the island, as you may have mistakenly said, it means they have violated the treaty. This would be a matter of the most grave import. It would be necessary for you to prove that the crew attacked you and imprisoned you and ate of kynd-flesh. You will be required to testify before at least three sovereigns of Manreach and convince them that your story is true. You shall need to convince them despite their great interest in keeping the peace, and you will need to stay alive on the roads between the kingdoms hoping no actors in Manreach, or beyond, find your story so inconvenient as to move them to hire blades in the night against you. It should be noted that two expeditions have set out this year hoping to prove goblin aggression on northern seas. One made it as far as Brayce, where a bridge collapsed into a river, drowning the lot. The other disappeared in Gallardia enough months ago that we despair of finding them.”

She stopped there to let that sink in and to give her underneck a moment to stop wobbling. She took a sip of mead. She was drinking mead. We got beer. I prefer beer, but bugger her, she didn’t know that.

“If you did manage to give testimony in three courts, the goblin ambassadors may manage to prove that the goblins were merely exploring the island and that you struck at them first.”

“They were—” Malk started to say, but the harbormistress spoke over him, using the muscles in her belly the way actors and town mouths do to get louder without shouting.

“Please do not say anything I do not wish to hear and which you would not wish me to hear. May I continue?”

Malk nodded.

“Some crowned heads of Manreach will be eager to maintain peaceful accommodation with our foe, however fragile, so the odds of them accepting the goblins’ version of events are not small. In that case, you will be denounced as traitors to the peace and publicly hanged right back here in Middlesea, under my hand. Or worse, since you count a Spanth among your number, turned over to the Ispanthian army that recently passed near who will torture you to death as bearers of false witness in matters touching war.”

She met our eyes, each of us in turn.

“If you did manage to survive the perils of the road and to convince reluctant monarchs of your story’s truth, the League would have no choice but to accuse the Horde of breaking the treaty. If the Horde kings denounced their lost crew as independent actors and traitors to the peace, the matter should be closed. Goblins do not admit fault, however, and their language contains even fewer expressions of apology than Ispanthian. The truth is that they know we destroy their northern ships as they destroy our southern ones. The goblin Horde would be insulted that we did not simply burn their ship and let it sink with no evidence of its existence, something they would consider just and fair, something the captain of the Fourth Woman was on the point of doing until you good citizens of Manreach were espied; something she perhaps should have done, anyway. The result of public accusation instead of discreet disposal may very well be a resumption of the wars which I think two of you may have been too young to enjoy, but about which the other two might be able to instruct you.”

At this, she crossed her hands on the table so we could plainly see the left one had two fingers gone. Heavy gold rings on the other one.

“There is also the matter of the ship itself,” she went on. Even if she used exactly our words, there was no hiding her accent. If you’ve met a Middler, you’ll be able to hear them stretching those words out, as if trying to load extra vowels into each sound. Maater of the shiyep itseyulf. “If you mean to claim the goblins attacked you and that you killed them in self-defense, the ship will be seized by the crown as evidence.”

“And if otherwise?” I said.

She smiled for the first time.

“If, for example, you rowed your little boat out to find the goblins already dead, their ship adrift, and you were apprehended while sailing it to Edth as a gift to the crowns of Middlesea, you would receive some small token of our gratitude. A few gold duchesses each, perhaps a whole quarter trounce. Unless, of course, one of you were nobility,” she said, laughing, “then you’d be entitled to 10 percent of the goblin ship’s value. But…” She trailed off, waving her maimy-hand dismissively while she sipped at her mead. “So which is it? Trials, death, and maybe a war? Or a week in feather beds?” She looked at the Spanth now. “With hot baths besides?”

Before Malk could start the fucking war, I said, “We rowed the boat out and found the poor darlings dead. We wept and wept for the loss of their sweet little lives, then determined to bring the ship into your fair harbor.”

“Excellent,” the harbormistress said, motioning a near steward to bring more beer for us and mead for her, as well as an ink pen and several papers. “There’ll be oath-writs to sign, assuming you’re literate; if not, make whatever mark you may. We’ll all have a cool beer and keep the peace. And you’ll each have—yes, I think His Majesty would approve my generosity here—you’ll each have a quarter trounce of Middlesea gold and our king’s thanks for being reasonable gents and dams.”

I signed.

Norrigal snorted and signed.

Malk shook his head and signed.

Galva did not sign, but looked at the harbormistress as if deciding something.

“No,” Galva said at last.

“No, what?” the harbormistress said wearily.

Galva pushed her cup away. “I will not have beer, I will have wine. Good wine.”

The harbormistress stared at her, then sighed and nodded at her steward, who brought the mead-bottle for her.

“And I will not have a quarter trounce for the goblin ship to pass to your hand.”

“I do not know where you think you are, my Ispanthian friend, but this is not an auction-house, and I have already told you how much the king offers.”

“Yes, you have. And you will keep your word.”

“Indeed,” she said, “a quarter trounce, and not a shave more.”

“No,” Galva said and stood up.

The halberd-bearers by the door stepped near now. They had already taken our weapons to hold, but Galva, though skinny, weary, and injured, was clearly a serious dam.

She reached slowly into her pouch, the one she carried on a strap beneath her arm, and pulled out a golden seal in a leather case. The seal of Ispanthia.

“I am the first daughter of the Duke of Braga,” Galva said in Holtish. “You may keep your feather bed, but I will have a bath, and I will have 10 percent of the value of the goblin ship to further my envoy to Oustrim.”

What little conversation remained was conducted in Ispanthian.