The Blacktongue Thief

Following the kraken attack, the depleted crew of the Suepka Būryey is reorganized. Captain Yevar Boltch assigns Norrigal to ship-related work and tasks Kinch with playing the fiddle as the captain and the first mate, Korkala, engage in sexual couplings. Kinch also harvests spermaceti from the whale’s head, and the crew later celebrates when other workers discover the much-coveted ambergris in the whale’s corpse. As the ship becomes slick with grease, Kinch considers trying to escape the Takers Guild.

Kinch and Norrigal grow closer romantically, and she recounts her experience of being forced to renounce her magic as a child. Elsewhere, Galva and Malk form a friendship over cards. One day, while scrubbing the deck with Norrigal, Kinch has a fantasy of them having a child together.

Days later, the ship is becalmed, and now that Kinch’s usefulness to the ship’s various tasks has come to an end, Malk confronts Kinch, insulting him for avoiding military service. Kinch endures the taunting, but when Malk insults his family, he is provoked into declaring that Malk will answer for his insult “with [his] blood” (181).

Malk demands to know whether Kinch has invoked a duel, but before Kinch can respond,