The Blacktongue Thief

40 The Baths of Edth

Norrigal. Norrigal. Sweet-bitter Norrigal. Norrigal the frail and mighty, smelling of clove and beeswax, cider, and the quick, animal scent of a doe. I conjure you to appear for me again as you were in Edth, if only for this too-brief train of words.

I conjure the white, perfect spar of your arm, the one I saw from far below when you leaned from the witch’s tower and etched your name where I will never be smooth again. I call you and your dark-honey hair into the sunlight of memory to stand on your two good legs; I enjoin you to sing, and if you will not sing, only speak. Speak to me as you did in the baths of Edth, doubled in echo, with the drip-drap dropping of water to bejewel your voice; tell me in my ear which of your perishable wifely duties you mean to bestow, and demand what husband-gift of me you will, for in this moment, you are mine again as you were mine in Edth, your skin a coin that shone by moonlight and beneath candles, a coin mine to spend but never save.

What hunger I stoppered in you and what thirst I slaked, another might have done so well, but Haros tangled up our roads together in a braid, so your eyes and hands and laughter fell on me. I will remember until I grin in the soil how you crowned me, and how you beggared me, and I will call none your better.

The Stone Baths in Edth were a wonder of architecture and engineering, the destination of pilgrims from all of Manreach. Hot springs fed them, so they never needed stoking. The waters poured into huge stone pools carved with benches here and niches there, mosaics of trees and fish, and a hippogriff cleverly inlaid on the walls. On the roof, the most artfully wrought stained glass skylight outside Gallardia, and the size of a longship besides, showed Sath, the sun, in amber, with blue sky around him, and leaves and branches for a frame. The rock walls were alive with figures ten feet tall; lovers entwined, their backs and haunches, their pleasured and pleasing faces coming smooth out of the rough rock as if unfinished. On the pool’s floor, visible through the clean, greenish water, a mosaic of old Mithrenor himself, his twin fish tails bent beneath him, his right hand whipping a storm and the left one dandling a nymph. The pools were public, and man and woman young and old bathed there without shame, priestesses of Mithrenor keeping two hundred oil lamps lit, skylights letting shafts of sun spear down through steam. For those who wished less public discourse, a trough led the waters past horned and hermed caryatids of old Haros and into a honeycomb of private limestone cells they say half the bastards in Edth got their start in.

Bathers usually wore nothing but a pouch around the neck for coins. Lutists for hire wandered the baths, strumming slowly for lovers in nooks as readily as singing known ballads in the common pools. For a copper shave, handmaids would strew the waters with wildflowers. Vendors sold chilled mead or lammasgrape or cider, or hazelnuts or little bags of cooked snails. A knot of Sornian women, naked but for their torques, sat packed as close as grapes on the vine with no weapons near to hand. Bankers with the great houses of Hellernock, the financial capital of Manreach, sat nude next to oysterwives and goatherds; knights shared benches with cardsharps and chandlers. The waters were a leveler. The waters were safe.

Norrigal had just left me alone in the baths, this after our fourth bout of lovemaking under a small waterfall almost too hot to bear, when I let my feet hang in the warm deeps of the largest pool. My skin was covered in scratches and love-bites—Norrigal was expert in biting just when the pleasure was greatest so the pain only followed after. The hot water salved it all and pulled the ache out of the rarely used muscles I’d strained or tensed at love-play.

I thought nothing of the middle-aged man who frog-swam toward me, his froggy mouth opening and closing froggily as he made his way to me slowly, so slowly, his every double kick pushing his chin an inch or two closer and sending weak little waves before him. When at last he flopped from the deep water on to the tiled bench next to me, he said, “They keep it good and hot here, don’t they?”

Normally, I wouldn’t have minded such a platitude, but it was lethal to the afterglow, so I favored him with the sort of grunt that acknowledged having heard a comment but gave no encouragement to another.

And yet another came.

“I hear they had a murder here this year.”

Now I had to pay attention to him, damn him. Murder talk from strangers is best not ignored.

“What, in the baths?”

“Aye, in this pool.”

“Were you the killer, then?”

“No, not I,” he said.

“You’re quite sure?”

“I am.”

“So why are you telling me?” I said.

“Just by way of being friendly.”

“Telling me where they make the best fish stew, that’s friendly. Warning me off a tavern where they water down the wine, that’s friendly. Blurting out an anecdote about murder while I’m remembering a moment of earthly bliss, that’s not friendly at all. I’d call that macabre at best and threatening at worst.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know what you were thinking about?”

“You weren’t. I might have been sleeping for all you knew. But up you swam anyway to blarp at me with the trumpet of your mouth.”

“I just thought you’d like to know—”

“Well, I wouldn’t, and I didn’t, so whatever’s next, don’t.”

“I thought you’d like to know—”

“For fuck’s sake, man.” I closed my eyes, hoping he’d go away.

“That you’re going to keep following the Spanth.”

I opened my eyes again because the voice was different. It wasn’t the froggy-man’s voice anymore. It was the voice of the assassin in the cat.

Sesta.

I looked, and there she was, tattooed and lethal, her eyes flat and dead after Norrigal’s eyes so gay and full of pleasure. Her tattooed-black lower lip almost in a pout, her solid arms black as pig iron out before her as she clutched the stone edge of the pool.

“Well, why wouldn’t I follow her?”

“Because you’re a married fucking man now, aren’t you?”

“Just for a month.”

“A month too many.”

“What business is that of the Guild’s?” I asked, though I already knew. Emotional entanglements were greatly suspect. The Guild had been known to kill objects of too-great affection when said objects threatened to distract Guild assets or began to turn their loyalty. The Takers Guild was none too fond of the great independent magickers like Deadlegs and Knockburr, Fulvir, and the others who wouldn’t bend the knee to the Magickers Guild, which everyone knew was cousined to the Takers.

She let the silence do her work.

“Just make sure you don’t get any ideas about romantic flight. You go where the Spanth goes, full stop. And you stay sharp, little Kinch, and remember your place. We believe the Spanth is in search of the infanta Mireya, the niece of Ispanthia’s king. We had her in hand, but we’ve lost her, and we believe the Ispanthian birder may be able to find her. You are a tick on that Spanth’s arse, and the moment you fall off, you risk to get stepped on.”

“So the cat is a flea on the tick. And you a turd in the flea.”

She huffed a half laugh before she could stop herself.

“Clever. Before you get too clever, look at this.”

She pointed at a tattoo near her breast, just left of the clock; a tattoo of a heart with Keshite writing near it that said Heart, Drum, and a word that meant both “call” and “report.”

“Keep looking at it.”

After a moment, I could see that it was beating. And that it glowed, in a very subtle way, despite the blackness of the ink.

“What’s it do?” I asked.

“It keeps you alive. Because it means I’m alive. If I die and this winks out, a matching tattoo in Pigdenay winks out. When it does, they’ll send a spoilsport after you and yours. I know I’ve told you before, I just wanted to show this to you so you knew it was real. We need you to know you’re ours. Think on that before you go renewing your heathen Galtish moon-vow, should you both live the month out.”

I hated her then. I hated the Guild. I wished I’d gone to the Goblin Wars even if I’d died or lost my hands.

“You’re jealous,” I said.

“Of what?”

Out of nowhere, I said “Happiness,” and the word stopped her short. Though she recovered quickly enough, I’d hit the quick.

“What do you know about it, Prank? What you call happiness is just the breeze you feel falling off a cliff. I’m here to catch you. This is the Guild’s business now. You’ve endangered that girl with your love-oaths, and I’d hoped you’d know better.”

“I told you what I’d do if you threatened her.”

“Right. Kill the cat when I’m in him. Wring his neck with iron and so on.”

“Do you think I won’t?”

“I think you’ve stopped thinking. I think the ground has crumbled under your feet and you’ve been too distracted to notice.”

“If you harm her—”

“Plug your hole and listen, Kinch á Glurris Na Filleen.”

Saying my real name got me to shut up. Kinch from the River, line of Filleen.

She continued.

“Your family house in Platha Glurris sits at the bottom of a hill not far from the banks of the Shining River. When your mother works the butter-churn, she looks at the water and she sings. The song she sings most often is one about a girl who drowns and then comes back as a frog to sing under her lover’s window. Do you know the words?”

I tried to burn holes in her with my eyes, but it didn’t work.

“Yes, I thought you did. Anyway, every ninth day, she walks two hours to the next town over to visit your sister and their children. Your niece has developed a stutter. You wouldn’t know that, but I do. Think about that before you deceive yourself.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

“I know. You’re furious. But we shouldn’t quarrel, being two loyal servants of the Guild. Shall we kiss and make up?”

She pouted her tattooed lower lip at me, which I was sure was full of poison.

“I’d sooner fuck a badger,” I said.

“So noted. I know just where I can find you one,” she said and smiled. And her smile morphed as her flesh sagged, and her hair retreated from her head and turned grayish, and she turned back into the froggy man and frog-swam away, enjoying how powerless I was to do anything but watch her leave.