The Fork-Tongue Charmers (9 page)

“He's afraid of roaches,” Bramble explained with a shrug.

Newtie sprang to life. He cocked his head from side to side, puffing out his chest eagerly, on alert. A sail-like crest flared up from the ridge of his back and along his curled tail as he darted forward, snatching each roach with a long pink tongue until they were all gone. He crunched the bugs contentedly in his jaws.

“Lottie, where did you get those?” Abby asked in exasperation.

“The kitchen,” Lottie said, and seemed genuinely surprised by the fuss.

Quinn frowned. “I think I'll be heading home for supper now.”

Rye watched the lizard swallow its feast. “At least he'll never go hungry around here.”

That night the cook prepared calf's-head soup and Fletcher Flood grilled a boar on the spit over the fireplace. Rye ate with her family in the Mermaid's Nook. She fished through her soup with her spoon, making sure she didn't end up with an eye. Abby cut boar into bite-size chunks for Lottie while frowning at Shortstraw, who was sitting on the table and scratching his hindquarters.

“You'll have to excuse him,” Bramble said. “The fleas have made him ill-mannered.”

Bramble stabbed a slab of pork with the tip of a
sharp knife and ate it from the blade.

Lottie grabbed a cutting knife to do the same, banging it down with such force it nearly cracked the plate.

“Lottie,” Abby yelled, and snatched it from her hands before she put it in her mouth.

Rye sat back and stifled a giggle.

A louder sound caught all of their attention. The great iron doors of the inn creaked open. Fitz and Flint stepped from their post to block the way but eased aside as several broad-shouldered men in dark cloaks filed in.

Rye sat up in her chair and tried to make out their faces. A man followed briskly behind them and pulled his hood from his head. His keen eyes scanned the inn, and Rye saw the relief pass over his face once he'd spotted her. He headed for the Mermaid's Nook quickly. Rye watched to see whether the men he'd arrived with would follow, but in the time it took her to blink they had already disappeared. In that fleeting instant it was as if the shadows of the Dead Fish Inn had swallowed them whole.

“Harmless!” Lottie called.

“And so the High Chieftain has finally arrived,” Bramble muttered, and slumped back into his chair, a tankard in his hands.

Harmless smiled and placed a hand on Rye's shoulder, then stepped over and patted the crown of Lottie's
head with affection. His eyes fell on Abby, and Rye's parents looked at each other with a degree of fondness that she couldn't quite gauge. Even after all that had happened since his return to Drowning, they still hadn't dwelled under the same roof in more than ten years.

“It's a great relief to see you all,” he said. “Even you, Bramble.”

Bramble raised his drink in greeting and then pressed it back to his lips, withdrawing behind it like a mask.

Abby pushed aside the folds of Harmless's cloak where he had kept a hand pressed to his ribs.

“You're hurt,” she said, in the matter-of-fact manner she used when she didn't want to cause alarm.

He waved her off and flashed a grin for Rye and Lottie, although Rye noticed that he sat down gingerly. “Just a scratch,” he said, and lifted a spoon to dip into Abby's soup. It emerged with an eye. “My lucky day,” he said, and slurped it up.

“Riley told us about the attack this morning,” Abby said. “Who was it?”

“It was hardly an attack,” Harmless replied, dismissing the notion. “Codger was a lookout. He would have simply fled if I hadn't pressed the issue.”

“Codger?” Bramble asked, leaning forward.

Harmless nodded grimly. “I didn't recognize him
until it was almost too late.”

Bramble's pale blue eyes were grave. “Did you—”

“I spared him when I realized he was a brother, although he's in no condition to trouble anyone soon.”

“Codger's always been a follower,” Bramble grumbled. “An underling. He'd never raise a hand to you acting alone.”

“He refused to reveal who he answers to, but it is not difficult to guess. He and Slinister will have their time of reckoning in due course.”

Rye cringed at the mention of the Fork-Tongue Charmer.

“But Longchance comes first,” Harmless said. He glanced at Abby, Rye, and Lottie, then his eyes fell on Bramble and he spoke quietly. “Tomorrow we visit Longchance Keep.”

Rye shifted in her chair. Harmless leaned in closer to her uncle. He flashed a narrow smile, and she barely heard the words slip through his clenched teeth.

“Tonight we find out who will join us.”

It was late in the evening when a motley band of musicians took up the pipes, fiddle, and tin whistle. High overhead, the sun-bleached skeleton of a long-extinct sea monster hung from the rafters by anchor chain, its bones now home to hundreds of candles that bathed the
inn in light. Some of the more daring village maidens had ventured out to the Shambles to dance, donning the colorful dresses they couldn't wear anywhere else in Drowning.

Abby had already carried Lottie up to bed, and Rye was losing the battle with her drooping eyelids despite trying to stay awake to hear more about Harmless's plans to ride on Longchance Keep. But Harmless and Bramble had parted ways after supper, and if there were other Luck Uglies at the inn they'd disappeared like spiders into the cracks of the walls.

Rye reluctantly dragged herself upstairs to Folly's room. She was so tired that she hardly noticed the steady stream of men headed in the other direction—disappearing down the steps to the wine cellar of the Dead Fish Inn.

R
ye dreamed of her mother's bumbleberry pie. She was just about to dig into its warm berries, a dollop of sweet cream piled on top, when a shuffling sound jarred her ears.

She awoke disoriented, uncertain of where she was. She hoped it might be her cozy bed on Mud Puddle Lane, then remembered the creaking floorboards of Grabstone's Bellwether. But instead she found herself huddled in blankets on the floor, staring at pickled insects, dried swamp blooms, and a wedge of ancient
cheese, all housed in multicolored bottles. It was Folly's shelf of makeshift potions. The hollow sockets of a tiny skull stared back at her from among the bottles—the Alchemist's Bone, a charm Harmless gave to Folly to help her with her experiments.

Rye sighed and rolled over. It was never easy to fall back to sleep with all of the inn's nocturnal noises.

Then she heard it again. Something moving in the room. She propped herself up on an elbow. Folly was sprawled in her bed, mouth agape, fast asleep after her long day of chores. The door to the room was cracked open and a sliver of hallway candlelight streamed across the floor. Rye sat up and blinked away the sleep.

A hooded figure stooped over Folly's dresser, rummaging through Rye's things.

“Hey!” Rye called. “Get out of there.”

At first she thought it might be Fallow, Folly's youngest brother, who always took great delight in snooping on them. But then the prowler glanced over his shoulder, hastily tucked something under his arm, and disappeared out the door. It was the coat Harmless had given her.

A thief!

Rye sprang from the blankets and leaped into her boots. Her spyglass, Fair Warning, and her other belongings remained on the dresser. She grabbed her
walking stick and sling—if it really was a cudgel, maybe she'd use it to teach the thief a lesson. She considered waking Folly, but after a second glance at her drooling, slumbering friend, didn't bother. She ran to the hall and saw the thief dart into a guest room at the end of the hallway, shutting the door behind him.

Rye didn't stop to call for help. She didn't think the entire inn would appreciate being woken over a stolen coat—surely it wasn't the worst offense commited inside these walls. Instead she rushed to the guest room and flung the door open, cudgel in hand, only to find it empty. A rope ladder, not unlike the one Rye and Folly used to sneak in and out of Folly's room, dangled out the open window. She hesitated but a moment, then slung the cudgel over her shoulder and started down the ladder.

Rye landed hard in the alleyway behind the inn. The cold night air hit her and, for a moment, shocked her back to her senses. The Shambles was no place for anyone to be caught alone after dark, and yet here she stood shivering in the shadows of its ramshackle flophouses. But then she spied the hem of the thief's cloak as he turned the corner at the end of the alleyway. Her ears reddened and she continued her pursuit.

The thief turned onto Little Water Street, and by the time Rye made it to the packed-dirt road, the night
air was eerily still. The lanterns and candles had been put out in most of the windows. The black river flowed silent. Rye heard a door close. There was a faint glow farther down the road. She recognized the shop but had never been inside.

Rye carefully approached Thorn Quill's. Through the fogged glass window, she could see a roaring fire in the fireplace. The hand-scrawled sign hung in the window advised her to
Think Twice
. Rye did, then summoned her courage and pushed open the door.

The blast of heat inside the shop hit her so hard she had to take a step back. There was a sour smell to the place—familiar but unpleasant—a faint scent of the bogs. A man lay on his side atop a table with his back to her, the collar of his shirt loosened and one arm free from its sleeve. The shop was quiet except for the tap-tap-tapping of metal and wood instruments. The man held aside an elaborate braid in his fist so that he could be tattooed on the back of his neck—his shoulders already covered in green-black designs so realistic that his skin seemed to writhe like scales. Thorn Quill himself huddled over his subject, firmly striking what looked like a hairbrush over his subject's skin with a small wooden mallet. The process must have been extraordinarily painful, but the man on the table didn't flinch.

Thorn Quill turned on his stool, his bloodshot
eyes peering back at Rye from under his stringy gray hair. He continued to work bare-sleeved in the sweltering shop, his own skeletal arms so darkened with ink work that it looked as if he'd dipped them in tar.

“Come for a pinch, lass?” he asked, raising his wooden tool. What she thought was a hairbrush was more like a tiny rake spiked with rows of razor-sharp animal teeth. He checked over her shoulder. “All by your lonesome are ya? You're a bit on the young side, but we won't tell if you don't. Maybe a nice hummingbird, or a buttercup?”

He smiled a black-toothed grin. For a moment Rye felt very small standing there in her nightdress, the pink scars on her knees peeking out over the tops of her oversize boots. But she ignored his jab.

“Maybe I'll have one of those,” she said dryly, giving it right back to him. “What is it?”

She couldn't make out the design on the other man's inflamed skin. What looked like an upside-down tree trunk stretched down his neck and upper spine, forking into two thick, curved branches that curled back up to his shoulder blades.

“The marks are a secret between the artist and his canvas,” Thorn Quill said. “Let's just say you need to earn a patch like this. And when the color fades, you need to earn it once again.”

Rye looked around the small studio. Several cloaks
hung in a corner and tapestries draped from the low rafters depicted Thorn Quill's more impressive designs. Shelves lined the walls, overflowing with bottles, ink, and various plants needed to make the dyes. Several wharf rats chittered in a large cage in the corner. Rye hoped they were pets and not ingredients.

She glanced again to the cloaks hanging on their hooks. There was a coat there too. A familiar one.

“Did someone else come in here?” she asked hesitantly. “A few moments ago?”

“Look around. I assure you I'm not hiding anyone under the table.” Thorn Quill thrust a dirty thumb toward the crooked door at the rear of the shop. A darkened room lay behind it. “Check the storeroom if you'd like.”

There was no way Rye was about to head back into that room. Besides, she'd already found what she was looking for.

“My mistake,” she said.

If Rye had more time, she might have taken greater notice of the tattoo on the man's upper back. What could be mistaken for an upside down tree was in fact a serpent's tongue, its forked ends curling back like branches. At the tip of each end was a black four-leaf clover.

But the oppressive heat of the place and Thorn
Quill's words had made Rye uneasy, and she was now eager to leave.

“I'll be going now,” she said, and made sure Thorn Quill saw her start for the door.

“Come back any time,” Thorn Quill said without enthusiasm. He returned his eyes to his work and dabbed the man's fresh wounds with a scarlet-stained rag.

As soon as he looked down, Rye darted for the cloaks, quickly snatching her coat from its hook. She would have been outside before Thorn Quill could rise to his feet, but as she rushed to go she found her path blocked. A teenage boy of about sixteen stood in front of the door. Had he slipped silently from the back room? The boy flipped over the parchment sign in the window so that the words
Move Along
now faced the street. His narrow-set eyes regarded her curiously, but without kindness.

Rye glared back toward Thorn Quill to demand an explanation, and found the man with the tattooed neck pushing himself up from the table. When he turned and faced her, she almost fell backward into the fire.

Slinister's red-rimmed eyes bore down on her from behind his mask.