The Blacktongue Thief

Kinch Na Shannack, a Galtish thief indebted to the Takers Guild, begins by joining Pagran’s gang in an ambush on the White Road. Their target, a lone Ispanthian warrior, proves far more dangerous than expected: she fights with extraordinary skill and unleashes a war corvid that mauls the bandits. Kinch’s accurate shot and surrender earn him mercy. In Cadoth, he gambles, steals a goblin-silver ring, fences it, and reports to the Guild, where a magicked agent shows him a witness-coin vision of giants destroying Hrava in Oustrim. Kinch is ordered to accompany or shadow the Ispanthian warrior west.

Kinch tracks the warrior, who names herself Galva, and proposes an alliance. Galva reveals she seeks a lost princess, while Kinch claims he is traveling to steal relics. After Kinch is jailed for rescuing a blind cat, Bully Boy, a Famine-priest helps him escape, revealing the gaol is Guild-run. Kinch rejoins Galva, and the two detour north to the witch Deadlegs. There they meet Norrigal, Deadlegs’s witchling great-niece, and Kinch learns that the Magickers Guild is compromised by the Takers. Deadlegs gives Galva a magical horse-staff, sends Norrigal with them, and warns Kinch that his Guild loyalties may soon be tested.

The three travelers pursue and defeat Hornhead, a magically warded bull-mixling outlaw, after Kinch deciphers his defensive tattoo and Galva releases her hidden corvid, Dalgatha. They reach Pigdenay and secure passage on the Molrovan whaler Suepka Buryey. Before sailing, a Guild Assassin-Adept named Sesta reveals she has been riding Bully Boy’s senses and orders Kinch to get her to Oustrim in Galva’s company. At sea, Kinch encounters Malk Na Brannyck, whose father suffered because Kinch dodged wartime conscription. Their hostility grows as the crew forces the passengers into a whale hunt. A red whale is killed, but a juvenile kraken attacks, causing heavy losses.

Shipboard tensions worsen. Malk publicly confronts Kinch, Galva challenges Malk to protect him, and Galva is poisoned before the duel. Malk then challenges Kinch and throws Bully overboard. Their brutal unarmed fight is interrupted when the kraken returns, capsizes the ship, and tears Captain Yevar Boltch apart after recognizing a juvenile kraken-beak trophy. Kinch, Galva, Norrigal, Malk, and the harpooner Gormalin escape to a small island. Sesta and Bully reappear secretly, and Kinch hides the assassin’s survival. Goblins arrive, capture the group after a battle in which Dalgatha is killed, and reveal the brutal consequences of goblin-Molrovan dealings. Norrigal explains that their true mission is to put Queen Mireya, the Ispanthian infanta and witch-queen, on a throne.

Aboard the goblin ship, Gormalin is butchered, but the goblin crew mysteriously dies from poison, likely through Bully and the salt grinder. Kinch kills the surviving goblin wizard, and the castaways are nearly burned by a Middlesea fireship before Kinch’s desperate leap convinces the crew they are allies. In Edth, a harbormistress urges them to present the captured goblin ship as found property rather than risk provoking war. Galva reveals she is the first daughter of the Duke of Braga and claims a noble share of the ship’s value. Kinch and Norrigal become moon-spouses, but Sesta returns in disguise to threaten Kinch’s family and insist he keep following Galva to find Mireya.

Kinch confesses Sesta’s presence to Norrigal. Together they drug Bully and bind the cat’s essence, along with Sesta’s sleeper presence, into a tattoo on Kinch’s arm, masking Sesta from the Guild. The party travels to the Ispanthian army, where Galva confers with Count Marevan and her swordmaster Yorbez. Their plan is to get a map from a former Taker in Grevitsa, then seek queen-loyal magickers. In Grevitsa, Chedadra sells them Hrava sewer maps and directs them to Ürmehen, the Upright Man. Norrigal buys a one-use lightning ring. Malk is then goaded into a goblin boundary ritual called a pull and is dragged to his death, leaving the group grief-stricken.

Kinch, Galva, Norrigal, and Yorbez continue into the Bittern Mountains to meet Fulvir, the maker of Galva’s tattooed battle-birds. Fulvir tests Kinch with illusions, shows him a vast library, and tells him he will never be a true wizard, though he gives him a book on magical tattoos. Kinch sneaks into Fulvir’s forbidden menagerie and sees imprisoned godlike mixlings, including a fox-boy echo of Fothannon, before Norrigal rescues him by dream-walking. Fulvir warns that giants are moving nearby and forces three strange musicians—Bizh, Nazh, and Gorbol—on the party. After crossing the Oxbone Walls into Oustrim, Norrigal senses hidden magic in the musicians and persuades the group not to abandon them.

Kinch scouts ruined Hrava through streets occupied by giants and collared human thralls, then descends into the sewers and finds Ürmehen. In a Towers game, Kinch wins information, then deliberately loses a rematch to preserve Ürmehen’s pride. Ürmehen reveals he once held a queen and sold her to the Guild’s Full Shadow; Kinch steals his Catfall ring. Kinch locates the Full Shadow’s trapped safehouse and follows signs into the hills, where the party finds dead giants and a dead Assassin-Adept. Giants attack, breaking Norrigal’s legs. The three musicians magically slow the giants long enough for Kinch, Galva, and Yorbez to kill them, though the musicians are crushed.

The survivors retreat into a cave and find Queen Mireya stranded on a ledge and a dying giantess named Misfa. Misfa tells her death-song: she was kidnapped, shrunk, and tattooed with sleeper horses by the Guild magicker Bavotte and his allies, who fled with Mireya transformed as a bird. When Bavotte died, Misfa grew, killed her captors, and trapped a deadly living book. Mireya enchants a waterskin to give Misfa endless water, confirming she is a powerful witch-queen. Kinch reads the Book of the Full Shadow and learns that the Takers helped engineer Oustrim’s disaster and may control other guilds and even the horse plague.

The book attacks as a crab, which Norrigal destroys with her lightning ring. Sesta then breaks free from Kinch’s tattoo, kills Yorbez, cripples Galva, and mortally wounds Norrigal. At Norrigal’s signal, Kinch cuts her throat, triggering a witch-swap that brings Deadlegs into the cave. Deadlegs summons stone-wights, strips Sesta’s tattoos, and Queen Mireya beheads the assassin. Deadlegs heals Galva and reveals that she and Norrigal are the same witch across time. With Kinch’s help, she frees a living stallion, Ēsclaer, from Misfa’s tattoo. Deadlegs and Mireya ride to rally the Ispanthian army against Kalith, while Kinch, Galva, Bully, and the dangerous book run west toward the giantlands, fugitives from the Guild and bearers of its secrets.