The Blacktongue Thief

60 Her Death Song

My name is Misfa. I am a chief’s daughter, though he is not a great chief—a chief over three families only. I grew up in the vale on the other side of the Thrall Mountains, where my people live. I have no children, so a second husband was given to me, but I still have no children, so my womb was named hollow and I was sent to learn war and watch cattle. We all knew war with the small kingdoms was coming, though there had not been such a war for five spawnings. Now they were harming us. Two of my brothers had been killed by Oustri bearing the banners of Hrava—for a year or more, parties came over the mountains, killing giants or stealing them.

I was stolen. I saw a bright light flashing from a hill near the cattle I was minding, and I knew I shouldn’t go to see, but something in the light called me, and I couldn’t help it. I woke up in a dark stone room, chained down, my mouth gagged with iron bits. I was pricked with needles while voices spoke over me. Dead smallmen lay near me. I refused food, but water was wrung from cloths into my mouth through a bit that held it open. Still they pricked me, taking images from the dead men’s skin and putting them on me. They tattooed me for half a moon at least, and then the Fat Man, who you see dead in this cave, spoke words that made me small. It was not easy for him to do this—it made him sick.

I was taken into the city and hidden in a basement under the Rich Man’s house. I stayed under his house for many years. The Fat Man, who they called Bavotte, burned incense that made me want food, and so I ate. Bavotte played music for me from flutes that made me sleepy and tame. I came to want the sound of the flutes. I wanted the sound of the Fat Man’s voice, when he came to speak words over me, words I now know had been keeping me small.

One day, the ground shook, and dust from the stones over my head fell down on my face. I knew my people had risen against the smallmen of Oustrim, had called a Taking-Up-of-Stones. Other tribes from farther west will have come, among them the Wood-Binders who knew how to build machines for crushing walls, and the People of the Bright Cloud, who worked bronze and traded axes and armor with the rest. There was talk the city people, farther west yet, may join the war as well. But they are wicked, and their god is a god of fire.

I lay in the dark and listened to the new war, wishing I could fight, wondering if my father or brothers or husbands would know me in my tiny, crippled body covered in ink. If I could not fight, I wished the house would fall and crush me, and the earth would hug me in its arms of Warmth-Beneath-the-Ground. The house did not fall. Instead, I was brought up in chains, where three men in the yellow robes of the scab-men made ready in a house full of dead. They had killed the servants of the Rich Man, and the Rich Man was now wearing yellow robes, thinner than he had been. Bavotte, the fat smallman, was there and still fat, with a pretty white bird in a cage.

The four of them took me and the bird in its cage and all their goods down into tunnels that led out of the city and to these hills, where a donkey was tied and waiting for them. First, smallmen of the hills tried to rob them, but the yellow-robes showed them a book, which killed them when they looked in it. Just outside this cave, giantkind, five of them, from a neighboring clan to mine, saw them despite the magic of the Fat One, and came to kill them. They killed one of the yellow-robes, but the other smallmen used poison and magic and killed the giants, and ran with me into this cave.

The Fat One was using too much magic, magic to keep me small, magic to keep the bird a bird, magic to hide them, magic to fight. His heart died in his chest, and he fell. I felt the small-making magic die with him, and my limbs began to grow. I began to choke on my iron collar but my neck was stronger than the collar and broke it, as my wrists and ankles broke their bands. I was angry at the deaths of my neighbors and at all that had been done to me. Growing so fast hurt me, but I started fighting from the moment I was free.

I killed the Rich Man with my fist, and the last yellow-robe hurt me with a blade, but I pulled his arms and head off, and mashed him with a rock. The cage of the bird broke in the fight, and it flew up to the rock-shelf. Then it became a woman. I was not sure if I should kill her if she came down, but she has not come down. I was too big now to get out of this cave, and there is no water, so I knew I must die. I will go to the Father of Stars with my face blooded and because the deeds against us demanded blood, the blood on my face is righteous, and he will smile upon me and learn by my death song that I should have a golden tongue.

Before I could die, I saw something move out toward the cave-door. I thought it was an animal. I caught it in my hand and saw it was that book, the one that killed the smallmen with bad runes. It bit me. It wanted to leave. I knew that it was wicked and should not be able to do what it wanted so I stopped it and held it, and I hold it still. It poisons me, but I will not let it go, and I will fight you if you try to take it. Though I do not think I can win now. I am weak.

“Shyte,” Norrigal said, through a groan. She was the only other one that understood the giant’s story. Now it made sense. The Guild had been hiding in the merchant’s house, the one where’d I found a basement full of interrogation rooms, and on Bald Island, the leper colony. The Guild had sent those smallkind over the Thralls to attack the bigguns unwarranted, provoking the giants, hoping to cause Oustrim to be toppled. It had worked. The Full Shadow of Oustrim and the Shadows under him probably didn’t believe their own luck. There’s a Galtish expression, cnulth touidáh, which means, roughly, “fight luck,” or opportunity arising in a fight. When you’re wrestling a geezer on the street, all clenched up and desperate, and you notice your elbow will reach their head, you start throwing that elbow, knocking their dome on the cobbles. Pretty soon, they’re asleep, and you’re on your feet again. That’s cnulth touidáh—trying something out and having it work beyond your wildest hopes. No doubt that’s how this tickle-the-giants gambit had gone. The Guild got the whole karking kingdom overthrown. Then the Guild had managed to kidnap the queen that had exiled them and turned her into a bird to hide her.

What I didn’t yet understand was their interest in Misfa the giantess.

Why tattoo her?

Why shrink her at great cost in magic and try to smuggle her out?

I walked closer to her, ready to run if she made any threatening gesture. I didn’t think she would. I wanted to get a look at those tattoos on her. There were hundreds, it seemed, if the hidden parts of her were as closely tattooed as the parts I could see.

“Gods and their bastards,” I said, close enough now so I saw where witchmoss lit the giant’s skin.

“What is it?” Norrigal said, gritting her teeth. “What are the tattoos?”

“Sleepers,” I said, looking at the crudely drawn but somehow beautiful, somehow individual, beasts in her skin, with their manes, muzzles, and fetlocks, with their sweet, patient eyes. “Horses. This giant is a treasury of real fucking horses.”

“Good,” Norrigal said.

And slept.