I sang the hell out of it.
Rao rao Bully Boy rao.
* * *
During the hour or so she sat with me, I learned something about the woman behind the good shield, the quick sword, and the murder-bird.
“Who are you, anyway?” I asked. “Beyond your name, I mean. Galva, you said?”
“Galva.”
“Right.”
“You don’t need to know the rest of my name.”
“Very mysterious. Are you famous?”
“Everyone is famous to someone.”
“That’s a yes.”
I waited for her to say more, but she just looked at me over her wineglass like she was waiting for me to speak, so I spoke.
“What are you famous for, Galva the Spanth? Famous killer?”
“You have not seen me kill anyone.”
She was right, actually.
“There’s a good place to start. Why didn’t you kill them, the other waylayers, I mean? And me? Are you Galva the Merciful?”
“That day.”
“You maimed them to slow down the others. Caring for them.”
She raised her glass slightly as if to toast my great insight.
“You fight better than anyone I’ve seen. I can’t think of many people I’d rather have on my side in a pinch than you. And that big, mean, magnificent war corvid. Where is he, by the way?”
“She. Do not ask me about the bird.”
“I know they’re not strictly legal.” I pulled out a Towers deck and shuffled it just to give my hands something to do.
“Not strictly? There’s no kingdom in the north that won’t torture you for having one,” Galva said.
“I haven’t studied those statutes. Not my area of lawbreaking, really. What do they do to you in Ispanthia for having a war bird?”
She fixed my eyes and drank before she spoke. “They pull your guts out with a hook and feed them to carrion birds.”
“Fitting.”
“Our beloved King Kalith has a gift for punishment.”
“Here in Holt, they’re simple. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just hang you.”
“No. Here they flip you upside down and saw you through the middle longways.”
She demonstrated the sawing with her right hand holding some invisible felon’s invisible ankle. I wondered if she were holding the imaginary Holter facing her or facing away.
“I thought that was just for treason,” I said. “And incest. We frown on incest here since the reign of Thamrin the Neckless.”
“You know what was done with most of these corvids, do you not?”
“I don’t know. Big cages in Ispanthia and Gallardia, I guess?”
“That’s what they let people think. But the birds were killed. Seven thousand of them. Too dangerous to keep them around in such numbers, the Wise and Dread Kalith decreed. So as we who had learned to love and trust them in the field looked on, Kalith had them fed poisoned meat and burned. This is how he treated the corvids who helped us turn the goblins. Some few of us fought against it. Some more of us went missing long enough to hide our feathered kith somewhere safe and claim they died.”
“Where do you hide a beast like that? I mean, they sort of stand out.”
She said nothing.
I started dealing us two hands for a round of Towers, but she pushed the cards back at me, so I shuffled them into the deck as smoothly as I could and put them away.
“What’s her name?” I said. “Your corvid, I mean.”
“Dalgatha.”
“What’s it mean?”
“‘Skinny Woman.’”
“That’s your god of death, right? Sort of a skeleton with wings and pretty hair, yah?”
She looked at me again. She had a way of looking at you like she was painting the back of your skull with her eyes. “She’s your god, too.”
“I like them curvy.”
“Doesn’t matter what you like. That dance is ladies’ choice.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that, so we sat there until, at length, she spoke again.
“You said I was the best fighter you have seen, but you have not seen the fighters I have. And I had some small practice.”
“Goblin Wars?”
“Yes.”
“Orfay?”
“No, Goltay.”
I suppressed a shiver. Goltay was our last big defeat, fought nine years before, in 1224. Also called the Kingsdoom. Everyone knew that name. Everyone knew someone who went there. Very few people knew someone who had returned.
“Bad as they say?” I regretted it as soon as I said it. I wished I could reel it back into my mouth.
“No,” she said with disturbing calm. “It was like gathering flowers in the fields. It was so beautiful most of my friends and two of my brothers decided to stay.” I couldn’t tell if she was angry and being sarcastic or if this was Skinny Woman talk. They weren’t supposed to speak ill of death.
She looked away. I found myself scanning her scars to see if any of them looked like bites, but I stopped when her eyes flicked back to me.
“My turn,” she said. “This Guild of thieves.”
“The Takers.”
“Was it worth it? The training they gave you. That is how this works, right? They make you a thief or a killer—”
“Thief, in my case.”
“Don’t interrupt me.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t say sorry.”
I opened and closed my mouth.
“They make you a thief, and you owe them money for the rest of your life, and everybody slaps you for wine.”
“Beer, usually; it’s just you Spanths and Gallardi that dye your tongues purple. Not the rest of my life unless I die soon. And they only put the open hand on the ones that fall behind on their debt.”
“Good incentive.”
“It gets more persuasive every day.”
“And they make you do things,” she said.
“That’s one way to pay. The Deed Note.”
“Worse things than ambushing strangers?”
“No worse than ambushing you, I hope.”
“Why don’t you just do something for them, then? Pay your debt off?”
“Most amusing you should say that now. I just spoke to them. I took the deed. They’re sending me west.”
“To Oustrim.”
I nodded and said, “Hrava, specifically. Probably. But yes, Oustrim.”
“To do what?”
“I’m supposed to lie now rather than tell you. Can we just pretend I told you a lie?”
“No. Tell me the lie.”
“Fine. I’m going there to steal some magical things.”
“Good. I go to find a lost princess.”
“Perfect.”
“Good.”
“Maybe I’ll help you find her.”
“Maybe I will be grateful.”
“Fine.”
“Good.” She drank her wine.
“And to answer your question, it was worth it. The Takers. The Low School.”
“What can you do?”
“Extraordinary things.”
“This ‘talking to animals’ I have heard of. Can you do that?” she asked, her dark eyebrows raising just a bit.