Page 2 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

I wasn’t in a boat at all but a room.

In an inn.

At the feet of the Thrall Mountains.

Right.

Not much of an improvement.

I heard the donkey I’d just bought breathing in the room, and that paired nicely with wind tossing fall leaves and such around outside the shuttered window.

Galva lay next to me on the far end of the room’s one bed, the end near the door. She was moaning in her sleep and grinding her teeth, having her own bad dreams, like many of those who went to the Daughters’ War did most nights.

Quite a pair we were, her trying to stab dream-goblins with a blunt sword, me getting spit on by a snaky cunt who had to clap with her feet.

The darkness in the room was thick but not absolute.

The yak oil lamp was low on oil, guttering but not out, its smoky wick filling the room with stink.

Something was wrong.

I heard a voice past Galva’s little grunts and moans, a voice that was speaking in half-whispered, what, Gunnish? Yes. But the voice didn’t sound entirely … human. Or if it did, it sounded like several voices—male, female, perhaps a child—blended and speaking exactly in unison.

The speaker or speakers seemed to be just outside the window.

I rolled off the bed quiet and quick, had my knife out, crouched. Barely noticed my arm was sore from the cat tattoo I’d given myself in the last town-like place we’d stayed two nights ago.

That’s when I saw that the Book of the Full Shadow had gotten out of its bag again.

Fuck fuck fuck.

It lay open on the floor, face up.

I spied movement on a mostly blank page.

Fresh writing inked itself on that page, in Gunnish, which, like most languages, I can read but don’t really speak. As I watched the words spread, I noticed they formed themselves a heartbeat before the voice speaking Gunnish said them. Like the book was dictating, not taking dictation.

“Ovenni gealdra ran y fess herberge…” and etcetera.

Enemies of the Guild are within this room. Kill them and return the book they have stolen, and you will be rewarded in ways that will please you.

I tore open the shutters and looked left, then right. Nobody around, thank the gods. I’m not much for killing people—I will if I must, but it’s not my favorite pastime. Just right of the door, I saw it, though. A kynd mouth in the wall. I had seen an illustration of a mouth in the book, and that must have been the page that was now blank. Had I not locked the shutters, the book itself might have fled—it wasn’t fast, but it could move. I nearly shoved my knife in the mouth, but I love my knife. So I grabbed an iron tent stake from the mule’s pack. Before I could harpoon the tattletale mouth with it, however, it gave me a proper scolding in Holtish.

“I am one of only twelve Books of the Full Shadow, no two alike, and dear to the Guild. You have no idea what went into making me, and you will regret stealing me, you straw-farm nothing, you shallow pisspuddle, how dare you raise iron to me in that sloppy skinmitten, put it down! Don’t you dare, you muttonfart, you squab, you—no, no, don’t, wait, wait!”

I jammed the tent stake into it, feeling its teeth crunch and its tongue give as if it were meat and bone.

It made the same sort of noise you or I might make if we got a sharp stake in the mouth, most unpleasant, squealy and spitty. It bit down on the stake and died around the magic-killing iron, bleeding ink. Then it turned back into ink-stained wall. I tried to pull the stake out but couldn’t—it was now as much a part of that wall as if it had been built there.

When I slipped back in the window, Galva was up and off the bed, crouched, her short sword tipped on the edge of her shield, her eyes blazing murder over its rim.

“Če fus, jilnaedu?”

What are you doing, vicious idiot?

Sometimes she spoke Ispanthian when she first woke.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a little reading.”