Page 10 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

We had fat cause to kill them and skinny reasons not to.

I had the impression Galva was all for doing it. Cheeky turned out to speak some Ispanthian, and though it clearly hurt her to talk, she told us she was from Oustrim. She had fought in Gallardia, next to a company of Ispanthian birders like Galva.

I picked up some of what they said, but Galva told me more later.

“What are you going to do with us?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Let us go.”

“To cut our throats later?”

“We won’t. I swear.”

“What oath could you make now that would be as binding as your death?”

“None.”

Galva grunted at that, satisfied with her honesty.

“As a point of curiosity,” I said to Galva in rapid, low Holtish, “why are you for killing this bunch? You spared my fellows and me when we tried to rob you in the summer. But you killed the wounded after we fought Hornhead. Seems random.”

“Your band attacked an armed traveler. This is legitimate. Hornhead murdered peaceful villagers.”

“We were armed when these attacked us.”

“Yes, but they have advantage over us if we spare them. I would kill them not to punish them but to protect us. They may have friends watching the cave, waiting for a chance to strike. If they do and these are living, we will have trouble. Dalgatha would be pleased to accept them for this reason.”

“I’d like to know why this one was for killing her own husband. And if that was her we saw back in the village.”

People who think you’re going to kill them are often quite eager to help you get to know them. They can be positively chatty. When Galva asked my questions, Cheeky told us Ylda, the leader, was not the woman in the village pillory—the othbleddr had been her sister, Nella. It was with Worrig that Nella had committed adultery.

“I would have killed him, too,” Galva said in Ispanthian. By the time it got translated around, everyone had nodded at it.

Ylda managed, in barely intelligible Holtish, “Shit on him red hat,” and we all laughed despite ourselves, even Galva.

They also said, and Fothannon knows if this was true, that Worrig was probably planning to do for us when he got us to one of his caches. Apparently, the mountains another day farther into the Thralls were littered with the bones of travelers who had trusted him.

“We should have picked the man who was unclean with goats,” Galva said in Holtish.

When the brigand lasses looked questioningly at her, she translated for Cheeky.

Cheeky laughed and translated for Ylda.

Ylda said, “Ach, Gredjyk,” then made such a convincing goat’s bleat that it would have pleased the Famine who taught me animal talking at the Low School. We laughed more, and Galva got out the last of her shytey wine. She gave it to them after drinking from it herself, and they were glad for the mouthful Galva poured into their belt-cups, and then, since their hands were bound, into their mouths. I knew she would kill them next, so I said, “Wait.”

“For what?”

“Ask Cheeky if they can read in Gunnish.”

She did.

Cheeky translated. Ylda nodded, Cheeky made a “so-so” gesture with her head. Galva, understanding what I was up to, pressed her lips tight, gave a nod no one else would have noticed.

I freed the Book of the Full Shadow from its bear trap, then opened to the first page, showing them both the spiky letters of the Murder Alphabet. Galva looked away. Unlike myself, she was not protected by the birth-gift of being a Cipher. I could read any language on sight, and the magic of the Murder Alphabet was such that a failure to understand its words was the mechanism that brought death.

Ylda peered at the strange script, started to shake her head, perhaps to protest that this wasn’t Gunnish.