The Blacktongue Thief

The party arrives at the Oxbone Walls, the border of Molrova. They bribe the guards so that they may enter the war-torn country of Oustrim, where they encounter refugees fleeing the giant invasion. A refugee woman informs them that the capital, Hrava, has fallen. She reports that King Hagli is dead but his wife, Queen Mireya, may have survived.

At their campsite, Yorbez catches Bizh stealing bread from her open pack. As punishment, she cuts off the tip of his nose. The party debates over whether to abandon the musicians, but Norrigal senses that they possess a hidden magical significance and insists that they remain.

While the rest of the group waits for word, Kinch is tasked with scouting the ruins of Hrava alone in search of any sign of the thief-contact, Ürmehen, or of Miraya herself. In a deserted square, he is menaced by starving dogs and escapes by climbing a massive, toppled statue of a supposed giant-slaying deity, Tuur.

A gang of street children led by a boy named Janliff drives the dogs away. Kinch asks to be led to Ürmehen, and Janliff demands payment for this service. Kinch pays him with a valuable coin just before a giant’s horn sounds, forcing the children to flee. Several giants enter the square with collared and enslaved humans that they use as “hounds.” Kinch is spotted and flees, killing two pursuing “hounds” before escaping into a sewer.

Kinch navigates the sewers beneath Hrava, which now host a makeshift refugee society. Janliff leads him to Ürmehen, a thief-king who controls this subterranean world. Ürmehen reveals that the Takers Guild orchestrated the giant invasion as revenge on Queen Miraya for being exiled from Oustrim. He also explains that Queen Mireya’s magic had previously protected the king from Guild assassins.

In exchange for the queen’s location, Ürmehen demands a sexual favor. Kinch refuses and challenges the thief-king to a high-stakes card game of Towers, with the information as the wager. Ürmehen agrees.

In his sewer lair, Kinch plays Towers against Ürmehen. Kinch wins the first game through a well-timed bluff, but he is forced into a rematch and honors the wager by intentionally losing the second hand so that he can secure the information he needs.

In his private chamber, Ürmehen neglects to exact a sexual favor from Kinch and reveals that his gang kidnapped Queen Mireya and sold her to the Guild’s Full Shadow (a high-ranking overlord), receiving money and a magical Ring of Catfall as payment. (The ring allows its wearer to easily survive a three-story fall.) As Kinch leaves, he surreptitiously steals the ring from Ürmehen.

In an aside to the reader, Kinch also reveals that his previous description was incorrect, and that Ürmehen really did force him to engage in a sexual act in payment for this information. He scolds the reader for being naïve enough to believe otherwise.

That night, Kinch follows Ürmehen’s directions to a ruined house where Queen Mireya was previously held. In the basement, he finds a false wall concealing a hidden dungeon. Then, in the hearth, he finds the entrance to a long escape tunnel typical of the Takers Guild.

Navigating the passage, Kinch finds a boy’s body impaled on a poison needle trap. He avoids the remaining traps and emerges into the Starehard Hills. After finding the Guild party’s trail, Kinch uses the clovenstone to magically summon Norrigal and his other companions.

Hours later, the party reunites and follows the Guild’s trail. They find the scene of a recent battle with a dead donkey, two dead giants, and a dead Guild assassin disguised as a leper. Suddenly, a distant giant hurls a log that strikes Norrigal, breaking both her legs. Three giants charge.

The musicians arrive and play, their music magically slowing the giants. The party kills two giants, but the remaining female giant uproots a tree and crushes the musicians, killing them and breaking the spell. As the musicians die, their bodies transform into mice. The party kills the final giant and carries the injured Norrigal to a nearby cave.

Inside the cave, the party tends to Norrigal. A woman calls from a high shelf, identifying herself as Queen Mireya. On the floor, they find a gravely wounded female giant, Misfa, who clutches a book. Mireya explains that the Guild had transformed her into a bird to hide her. It is revealed that Galva and the queen were once lovers.

The dying Misfa, who is being poisoned by the contact poisons on the book, offers to tell her “death-song,” a giant ritual of truth-telling, to explain what happened. Kinch agrees to listen. The party also finds the bodies of several dead Guild members.

Misfa recounts her capture. She was kidnapped by a Guild magicker named Bavotte, who magically shrank her to human size and covered her in tattoos. She was held in a Hrava basement until Guild agents smuggled her out to this cave. During an ambush by a different giant clan, Bavotte died from magical exhaustion, causing the shrinking spell to break.

Misfa returned to her full size, killed her remaining captors, and caught a magical book that tried to fly away. During the chaos, a caged bird escaped and flew to the ledge, where it transformed back into Queen Mireya. Misfa explains the book has been slowly poisoning her. Kinch realizes that her tattoos are “sleeper” tattoos depicting horses.

After hearing Misfa’s death-song, Kinch climbs to Queen Mireya’s ledge with water and a cloak. The queen confirms that the Takers Guild provoked the giant war. She then enchants a waterskin to produce an endless supply of water and orders Kinch to give it to the dying Misfa.

Witnessing this, Kinch understands that Mireya is a formidable witch and a significant threat to the Takers Guild.

Kinch scavenges Bavotte’s possessions, finding gold and a magical torque. Misfa gives him the dangerous book, which Kinch identifies as The Book of the Full Shadow. It is written in the Murder Alphabet, a deadly magical script that only Guild initiates or Ciphers like Kinch can safely read.

Trusting his abilities, Kinch opens the poison-coated book and reads a passage suggesting that the Takers Guild created the plague that wiped out all horses. The sentient book becomes aware of him, and an illustration of a crab leaps from its pages, growing into a dog-sized creature that prepares to attack.

As the crab attacks, Norrigal destroys it with a lightning bolt from her ring, which dissolves. The backlash causes the tattoo on Kinch’s arm to vanish, freeing Sesta. The assassin appears and attacks with an “Arms of Iron” spell. She also spits poison to blind Galva and dodges Kinch’s arrow.

Yorbez stabs the wounded Sesta through the heart, but as Sesta falls, she mortally wounds Yorbez. As Sesta dies, she activates a clock-hand tattoo labeled “Go Back,” triggering a time-reversal spell.

Time rewinds. In this new timeline, Sesta attacks more effectively, killing Yorbez again, breaking Galva’s back, and fatally wounding Norrigal. As Norrigal lies dying, she signals for Kinch to cut her throat, completing a final magical ritual.

The spell triggers, and Norrigal’s body transforms into that of Deadlegs, the witch from Norholt. Deadlegs animates dead bodies and three stone-wights from the cave walls. The wights attack Sesta, and Kinch wounds her with his last arrow. Deadlegs then magically strips all of Sesta’s tattoos from her skin, rendering her powerless. Kinch spares the defeated assassin, but Queen Mireya ruthlessly decapitates her.

Deadlegs heals Galva’s back and restores her sight. She explains that she and Norrigal are the same person at different points in time; Norrigal has now returned to the Snowless Wood to heal. Hearing giants approach, Deadlegs devises an escape plan. She guides Kinch in a spell to release a living stallion from a sleeper tattoo on Misfa’s skin.

Kinch performs the ritual, and a horse named Esclaer appears—the first to be seen in decades. Deadlegs magically widens the cave mouth, allowing Misfa to leave. The party splits; Queen Mireya and a weakened Deadlegs ride Esclaer east to find the Ispanthian army, while Kinch and Galva flee west with The Book of the Full Shadow and Kinch’s blind cat, Bully Boy, who is now free of Sesta and wholly himself. Kinch resolves to find Norrigal again someday.