“You’re a Guild thief. You have training and magic. If I drop you, it won’t hurt you, will it?”
“If I say no, will you think of a different way to hurt me?”
“Maybe.”
“Then yes, it will hurt me very much. Please, brave knight, do not drop me on my melon.”
She dropped me, but I don’t hold that against her.
We were only on the third floor.
Using the wall to brake myself, I landed on my feet and rolled. Then I climbed back up to the window, pretty fast. She had her sword ready, but not in my face or anything. She knew I could have killed her while she slept. Not that she was careless, she’d locked the window tight, I’m just hard to keep out. And even harder to kill. If you speak Galtish and know my name, you probably figured that out already.
In our blackish, brackish tongue, a kinch is a loop in a rope, or a noose. It can also mean a tangle or an unexpected problem, which I certainly was for my mother, being only three months younger than my parents’ wedding day. I suppose unexpected trouble describes Galts generally, at least as we’ve been found by our conquerors from Holt. It took the Holtish fifty years to subjugate our lands, and they’ve spent the three centuries since regretting it. No good at taking orders, blacktongues, we’ll never be invading anybody—but we’re hell on our own soil. Galts are natural archers and good at throwing anything from a stone to a spear to a rotten squash. Fine musicians and riders, too, back when horses ran on the plains.
That, of course, was before the goblins came.
They say Galts are what’s left of elves, with our gently pointy ears and small bones. My hair’s browny copper, more red in the light, and my beard comes in ginger, what little I can grow. Not that the question of elves had been decided—most university twats said no, some said mayhap, but every village near a peat bog had the legend of some old tuber-farmer hauling up a wee manlike thing with bog-blackened skin, sharp ears, and the finest jewelry you’ve ever seen. Not that anyone you knew personally had seen one, and the jewelry had always been stolen or sold. But what did I know?
Nothing but my name.
“My name is Kinch, or Kinch Na Shannack, or fucking Kinch if you prefer. It won’t be the first time I’ve heard it,” I said.
She grunted.
I sat cross-legged on the sill, looking at the Spanth with my big, lady-killing green eyes. Eyes light like western jade, I’d been told.
“Shall we journey west together?”
She considered me. “What will you do for me?”
“It’s what we’ll do for each other.”
“So tell me.”
“I’ll watch while you sleep. Sleep while you watch. I’ll lie to you when it doesn’t matter, but I’ll also lie for you when it does. If you let me do the talking, I’ll make sure you miss the pennycock with the pizzle-itch and get the best wine in the merchant’s barrel. You’ll never again meet a door you can’t get through nor a wall you can’t get eyes over. I need your arms, yes, but you need my nose. If you do the worst of the fighting, I’ll make sure you know where your foes are coming from and cull the weak ones. I won’t be your dog, but if you’re half the wolf I think you are, you’ve found a fox to run with.”
She said, “Ask me again tomorrow,” and went to sleep with her back to me.
6
The Wasted Plum
The next day, adolescent, yellow-shirted runners from the Runners Guild came to Cadoth, and after the baron broke the seals on the messages they carried, the baron’s town mouths stood atop step-boxes to read the hastily prepared bans. The mouth I heard first was a plumpish girl with deep lungs. Her inbreath reminded me of a dragon getting ready to breathe fire.
“Listen all! Listen all! Word has reached the fair and serene Baron Anselm of Cadoth and His Most August Majesty, King Conmarr of Holt, that the lands known as Oustrim! Have been most treacherously invaded! By armies from beyond the Thrall Mountains!”
This girl was loud, her voice ringing off glass panes and stone walls, her mouth opening so wide as she spoke, I could see her back teeth.
“The capital city, Hrava, has fallen! And the king is feared dead! A merchant from Molrova, a man well known to the person of the baron, has had a runner last night! And assures us that the walls of his kingdom, the Oxbone Walls, just east of Oustrim, have not been darkened! And that they cannot be breached!”
“Was it goblins?” a woman shouted. She had a thick Unthern accent and wore their traditional dress-like long-coat over her traditional Unthern gut. Her status as a foreigner didn’t excuse her from the baron’s justice, however, and the mouth pointed her baton at her so that two guards most folks hadn’t noticed before scurried over and shook her until she thumbed half a silver out of her pouch. You don’t interrupt the bans, not in Cadoth.
Everyone knew the lands of kynd stopped at the Thrall Mountains, so whatever came east wasn’t human. Goblins weren’t west, though, and not much north. Oustrim was cold, and those mountains were colder. Goblins don’t like snow, or so I had heard. Goblins came from the Hordelands in the south, the huge island also known as Old Kesh, beyond the Hot Sea.
Right where we kicked them back to.
For now.
These people had not seen the hard truths of the witness coin as I had. They did not yet know that giants had spilled east. But some were figuring it out, and the rest would know soon.
“The baron stands with King Conmarr and knows you stand with him, each man, woman, and child. None are so faithful as Cadothmen! Nor so brave! For the falcon of Cadoth! Harralah!”
The crowd harralahed. The mouth stepped down and hurried off to the next square, step-box in hand, the guards trotting behind her. The roughed-up Untherdam supported herself on the ring of a long-unused horse-head hitching stone while she tested a burp to see if it would turn more material.
And the crowd talked.
I caught bits of it.
“Far too much like the start of the other business for my tastes.”
“Rally? Y’think they’ll call a rally?”
“—been training at the bow since I was a pup. What’s it for if not for such?”
“Yer still a pup, girl, and wise tongues don’t wag so. Wouldn’t be training at the bow if they hadn’t spent all the lads on goblins in the Threshers’ War twenty years back. They went from the fields and shops in their hundreds of thousands and tried to smother the biters in numbers. And they fell in the corn and on the grass and in sand. They fell in mud and on stone, and sickened in their camps, and brought back whip-cough and worse.”
“But then they let the women fight in the Daughters’, and women are better.”
“No better nor worse. In the Daughters’, ye had the birds. And training. And men fought beside you, too.”
“I have training. I can put a bodkin through a thrown plum.”
“That just shows how soft y’are, ready to waste a plum.”
The oldster had the right of it. Not enough hands to bring the crops in during the Threshers’ War, and most of Manreach went hungry. We’d had it better in Galtia, with game in the woods and fish in the river.
“I’ll kill a goblin,” boasted the girleen.