Page 101 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

Negotiate it was.

I stopped and turned around, holding the eye of Thumos so enough light was on my face for it to see me. Did it need light? Anyway, I did, and I’d want to know if one of those sucker arms were stealing toward my throat.

“Quiggles Silversides,” I said, “I do not think that is your true name. Mine is Kinch, if that means anything to you. And I am a friend. Friend.” When I said it the second time, I put a hand to my chest for emphasis. That it could understand me at all was only a theory I had. It was smart, had a language of its own, and could hear, but did that mean it could understand Arvisk in a deep enough way for all that prattle?

I soon had my answer.

It turned its side-mounted, strange eye toward me in a suspicious way, dabbed iridescent ink from itself and wrote, on the wall, in figures I understood only because of my Cipher’s gift,

Why friend in giant-room hide?

All right, now we were talking. I wasn’t out of the cookpot, but neither was I yet cooked. How strange and beautiful those glowing lines were. Did these odd beasties write poems to each other on the rocks of the Sunless Sea?

“I wanted to know why there was water in the tunnel,” I said, gesturing at the floor of our shared shaft-way.

Why interest?

That was fair.

“I was curious.”

I don’t think it knew that word, so I tried another way.

“I like to learn things.”

It wiped its first sets of characters away and wrote,

I also

And just like that, I understood. This undersea thing, imprisoned as I was, stole from its watery cell at night just as I did, peeping through doors and hiding from half-giants and their slaves and servants. And just like myself, it wanted to know more about the world around it.

“You are curious, too,” I said, pointing at it. “Because you also like to learn things.”

It shivered, and I had the impression that meant it was pleased at learning a word. My mouth hung open in wonder at this talk we were having. It moved a tentacle up, and quickly but lightly brushed my tongue. My black tongue.

“Hasp,” I said.

It shivered again.

It wrote,

Friend

and again I understood things in a great rush. Hasp had spoken with this marvelous creature, much as I was speaking with it now, though I doubt he could read its language with my ease. Unless he had the Cipher-gift, too? It was a rare thing, but, since that was a good gift to keep quiet, who knew? He had befriended the cuttlefish, and it was entirely possible that I owed my life to the goodwill the old Galt juggler had earned. It was just as possible, perhaps even more so, that this tentacled fellow was simply blessed with a gentle nature. Would it have harmed me had I not started talking to it? Or did it pursue me because it wanted to know if I meant harm?

I would never know.

There were creatures under this roof that I meant harm to, however, and I was no closer to figuring out how to get to them. There was no question of trying to recruit this beastie to my cause. What did it care if faraway land creatures were preying on other faraway land creatures? Would I agree to help it kill a bunch of sharks on general principles, for instance? All right, I might do. Sharks and goblins were both fucking horrid.

This was all put to rest when it wrote,

I go giant then water

As I had thought, the time it could be out of water was measured.

“All right,” I said. “Goodbye.”

Goodbye friend