Tihi

• Build & height: 1.45 m, small and quick, all elbows and knees, always bouncing. About fourteen at debut (nine on the founding day).
• Face: round and freckled (a whole constellation across her nose and cheeks), with a gap where a side tooth was (a dock-warden's cudgel, at nine) and a grin that takes over her whole face. She is never at rest. When she's sad her face goes completely still, and the crew finds that more frightening than any enemy.
• Hair: thick, sandy copper, in two bunches tied with little brass bells, three to a bunch. She jingles everywhere: the thief nobody suspects, because who steals while jingling? (When she steals for real, she ties the bells silent with a ribbon. When she's sad, too.)
• Eyes: hazel-green, and they crinkle shut when she laughs.
• Skin & sin-mark: sun-browned and freckled. Envy, rose. Two rose marks sit on her cheeks exactly where dimples go, which is why the Examiner who ranked her wrote UNMARKED: he took them for dimples. They glow when she laughs, and turn a dull grey-pink when she's sad. Since the founding day the mark has quietly spread into the laugh-lines at the corners of her eyes as tiny rose script.
• Clothing, layer by layer: a striped sailor's undershirt · patched canvas breeches rolled to the knee · rope sandals, or bare feet in the rigging · a belt of little pockets · the navy sailor's jacket three sizes too big, sleeves rolled four times, brass buttons she polishes with spit ("I'll grow into it." She said that at nine.) · juggling balls in every pocket: leather, hand-painted with faces, one for each of the eight and one for Mingus.
• Signature item: the bells.
• Movement: never still. Cartwheels, hops onto rails, walks on her hands to win an argument. When she stops dead, the bells stop too, and the page goes quiet.
• Voice: high and fast; she interrupts herself and giggles mid-word. She talks more than Kali, which nobody believed was possible. Her balloons are bouncy, round and overfull, with little rose sparkle-ticks. Her giggle is lettered as rose bubbles (tihi) that drift out of her balloon and into other people's, turning their words into giggles: the contagion, drawn.

Her laugh is contagious, and anyone who is laughing is un-held.

• Range: earshot.
• Contagious, not compulsory: anyone who hears it can catch it, and most do. A heart that truly doesn't want to laugh doesn't. Deep grief is immune, and so is hate held very tight.
• Un-held: while someone is laughing, holds can't hold them. A collar slackens. A chain of light goes limp. Binding script on an Examiner's rod fizzles. A Fowler's net sags. A nightmare loses its grip and the sleeper wakes laughing. A thread re-tied by someone else slips. A Cleaner reading a writ giggles mid-name and the writ fails, because a writ must be read whole.
• When the laughing stops, a hold can close again: a writ must start over from the first word, and a collar can be re-locked. She buys moments, not freedom. The crew uses the moments.
• What counts as a hold: anything that keeps someone where they are, or what they are, against their will. Not walls, not wounds, not death.
• What it can't do:
  • Mingus. Nothing holds him, so there's nothing to un-hold. And he can't be made to laugh: he just does, the dog way (play-bow, tongue out, tail going like a flag). He is her favourite audience, and the only one who always laughs.
  • The Null. It takes sounds. Near the grey her giggle is cut off halfway: ti—. A laugh nobody can hear holds nothing open. Phase One holds.
  • Death, wounds, walls, distance; anyone deep in grief; anyone who can't hear (Lärka's HUSH, the Silence at Void-II's rim, a pair of cork earplugs).
  • Work when she's sad.
• And Isa: any movement ends Isa's Hold, laughter included. Tihi's giggle breaks the stillest friend she has, so they have to be friends very carefully.

• Tempo: 3. She counts them out loud: "One, two, THREE!"
• Heartbeat technique: THE HICCUP. Her giggle skips one beat in everyone who hears it: a beat that doesn't count, so any power timed on it misses. Isa's Hold (the top of a beat), a Timekeeper's baton, a Seer's beat-ahead step, a strike timed on the next beat, an Arena verdict landing on the beat: all miss. No one else takes a beat out of the count.
• Burn cost (and the HADOM OVERFLOW rule):
  • It hits everyone in earshot, allies too. Before she uses it she shouts "HICCUP!" and the crew jams in Jeppson's cork earplugs.
  • It can kill. A heart at full burn that loses a beat has nowhere to put that beat's actions. They crowd into the next beat, and the next beat can overflow. She learned that in ch. 251, when the net-captain Nine overflowed, and made herself one rule: never on a full burn. The only place she breaks it is inside Emma's circle, where the Keeping Beat means no heart can overflow.
  • Her own cost: her heart never skips (she's the one laughing). But after a big giggle she gets real, ordinary, unpowered hiccups for an hour, and her ribs ache for a day.

She can't use it when she's sad. To keep it alive she has to laugh at things that aren't funny, sometimes at the worst possible moment (a burial, a friend's fall, bad news read aloud), and people who don't know her hate her for it. On the page, every time: her bells ringing at a funeral, the rose marks flickering as she forces the laugh out, and afterwards the hour of real hiccups. The deeper price: she has never let herself be sad in front of anyone, because sad means powerless and powerless means held. The bravest thing she ever does is be sad on purpose.

• Sadness. Cruel enemies make her sad on purpose: show her a grief, say a name. (Grip did it with her mother's gull, ch. 248: Tihi went still, the nets closed again, and the Lace took her.)
• Silence: Lärka's HUSH, the Silence at the rim of Void-II, the Null (which eats sound), earplugs, a gag.
• Listeners who won't catch it: the grieving and the hate-full.
• Räva (BORROWED FACE needs one laugh): the worst pairing in the Current. Tihi's giggle hands Räva every face in earshot. The crew keeps them apart.
• Isa: her laugh breaks the hold of the stillest friend she has.
• Envy XI · BORROWED YEARS: Netmaster Grip : the matriarch of the House of Grip and Tärna's younger sister. She takes an hour of youth for every hour she watches the young, and her book opens only for a child's laugh, copied exactly.
  • She hunted Tihi's laugh (ch. 245–250). She made Tihi sad on purpose to net her, by showing her the Skrattmåsen's brass laughing gull on the Gilded Cage's prow (ch. 248).
  • She caged her in the Hour-Room and tried for a whole day to make her laugh (ch. 249).
  • She never got it. Grip is ninety-seven now and asleep, eyes closed, on Flyttfågeln (ch. 254).
• The body: 1.45 m, fourteen, tempo 3. One grab and she's carried off, still giggling.
• The Hiccup's reach: it hits allies, and near a full-burning friend it's a weapon pointed the wrong way.
• The Arena can't Call her, so when her people are Called, she is left behind with the hanging plates.

• The brass bells: six of them, from her mother's show-harness on the Skrattmåsen. The ribbon that ties them silent lives round her wrist.
• The juggling balls: leather, painted with the crew's faces and Mingus's. They're props, distractions and, thrown hard, a very surprising weapon.
• The jacket: found in the hold of the drowned carrack the night they raised her. "It was waiting for me."
• Cork earplugs in a tin (Jeppson's, from Ferdinand cork-bark scrap), handed out with a wink before every Hiccup.
• Lockpicks hidden in her hair-bunches.
• Her lucky button, kept in Flexsnus's waistcoat pocket "for safekeeping, because otherwise I'd just steal it back."
• The UPP IGEN: the broad, battered three-masted carrack, sunk five times and raised five times, five bands of differently coloured planks along her sides, a bandaged fist for a figurehead and on her black flag, motto "UPP IGEN!". Tihi is cabin girl. Her hammock is slung in the rigging under the Perch. Her job since she was nine: whenever anyone aboard falls, she rings the ship's bell, so the whole crew knows to shout. While she was caged on the Gilded Cage, nobody rang it, until Mingus took the bell-rope in his teeth (ch. 249): "The dog rang it." (ch. 250)

She doesn't fight; she gets everybody loose. She opens with the Warm-Up (a cartwheel into the middle of the fight, because nobody shoots a child doing cartwheels, then juggling), then the Giggle, and slips through the laughing with Light Fingers: keys, pins, writs. She uses the Hiccup only when the crew is corked and nobody nearby is full-burning. She finishes by giving back what she stole, or not. Crew combos (the Up-Again crew):

• Tihi + Daniel, "the Witness and the Objection": anyone trying to silence a witness laughs and loses their grip. She was his first witness, and still his favourite.
• Tihi + Emma, "the Safe Hiccup": inside the Keeping Beat nobody can overflow, so the Hiccup is safe there, even across a battlefield.
• Tihi + Krydog, "the Hiccup": she giggles, and the enemy's second blow, timed on the next beat, lands on a beat that doesn't count. Running gag, from ch. 250: she forced a laugh while he was held standing in Grip's Lace (his nightmare), the net sagged, and he dropped: "NOT WHILE I'M FALLING, TIHI." / "You were STANDING!"
• Tihi + Flexsnus, the trickster pair: he bends the lock one notch and she picks the rest. He taught her the first rule of the Reject Quay: never bet against the captain. He's never cheated her once.
• Tihi + Perne: Perne calls the pockets from the Perch; Tihi picks them.
• Tihi + Roffe: she's always hungry too, and he gives her half his portion (the half he never eats anyway).
• Tihi + Jeppson: he chalks her a stage, and she brings the house down (the crooked chalk stage of the Laughing Bird, ch. 251).

Marka combos:

• Tihi + Isa, "the Pickpocket's Hold": the one combo they're allowed. Isa holds; Tihi, with a hand on Isa's shoulder (so she moves in the hold), walks through the frozen enemy line picking every pocket, and must not laugh at a single frozen face. She has never once made it all the way through without biting her own hand.
• Tihi + Kali, "the Loudest Minute": Kali borrows the Giggle. Lent, not taken, so it's shared, and with the Borrowed Beat Kali gets Tihi's home tempo too: sixty seconds of two gigglers talking over each other while every chain in sight goes slack. On the page: ch. 251.
• Tihi + Rougeina: Rougeina Swaps her into the middle of a guard post, and the guard post laughs. Rougeina doesn't, and Tihi has made it her life's mission.
• Tihi + Vigolas: two people who laugh in the middle of a fight. Standing order: never Hiccup near his Minus One.
• Tihi + Kompis: Lilla Ulv likes her: a wolf cub and a kid. Ivar disapproves of her loudly.

• Wants: nobody held, ever. The crew laughing. And, secretly, permission to be sad just once without anybody getting caught because of it.
• Fears: being sad, because sad means powerless and powerless means held. And silence, of any kind.
• Contradiction: the funniest person on two ships is the one most afraid of sadness. She laughs at funerals and cries alone.
• Humour: everything. Slapstick, faces, pranks, her own Scalelist number ("Eight hundred and twelve thousand and FOUR! The four's the best bit!"), and Daniel's coat.
• Habits: juggles when she's nervous; steals small things and returns them with a bow; counts her heartbeats aloud; makes faces at Isa and then remembers, and stops; rings the bell whenever anyone falls; asks Mingus's opinion on everything.
• Alone: she ties her bells silent with the ribbon and cries, quietly, for exactly as long as the crew can spare her power. Then she unties them.

• Isa: friends very carefully. Tihi's laugh breaks Isa's holds, so near Isa she practises not laughing, the hardest thing she has ever done. Isa is the only person Tihi goes quiet for. Tihi teaches Isa to dance: Isa is terrible at it, and so is Tihi, and it's the one time Isa moves just for fun. On the page (ch. 263), Lumen's beach: "Dance with me." / "I don't dance. I'm terrible." / "So am I!" Isa stops dead every time Tihi laughs, and then, a beat late, laughs properly, the first real laugh of her life: "…Oh. That was a proper laugh." / "That was a terrible laugh! Do it again!" Vigolas, who'd been trying since Stilla, is betrayed; Krydog: "Tihi wins. Tihi always wins." Isa's deadpan jokes land a beat late, and Tihi laughs a beat after that, which is dangerous. "…Isa. I'm not laughing. Look. This is my not-laughing face." (ch. 254: "…It's not working.")
• Kali: Kali finally meets someone who talks more than she does. "I've met my match. I hate it. Keep going." (ch. 246). Kali borrows the Giggle, lent not taken ("I'm asking!"): two gigglers on one crooked stage, the Loudest Minute (ch. 251).
• Daniel: her first appellant; she was his first witness. She calls him "Objection", and he calls her "the witness", formally, every time. He's the one person she can't make laugh. (Until Saga VI.)
• Emma: the woman whose circle freed her voice. As near to a mother as anything since Lo, and the one adult who has never told her to stop laughing. When a Dimmer jar tried to drink her giggle, Tihi clapped both hands over her own mouth and refused to laugh, and Emma dragged her into a chalk circle: "Good girl." (ch. 255)
• Krydog: he'd die for her, and she knows it, and giggles at the worst moments anyway. When Skymning bottled his will and he stayed down, she didn't giggle at all: "Captain? Captain, get up. You always get up." (ch. 257) · curled against his side, hand over her mouth, "He always gets up. That's the whole thing. That's what the ship's called." (ch. 258). When it came back: "Now he wants to!" (ch. 261). Held standing in the Lace (his nightmare, ch. 250), he was freed by her laugh, forced up at his terror ("a big trussed-up goose"): "NOT WHILE I'M FALLING, TIHI." / "You were STANDING!" He took a net for her on the night raid (ch. 246).
• Flexsnus: her teacher in mischief, and keeper of her lucky button.
• Roffe: half his portion, every meal.
• Perne: the Perch.
• Jeppson: the earplugs, and a stage whenever she asks.
• Kompis + Mingus: Mingus is her best friend within five minutes of meeting. When Krydog gets flattened by eighty pounds of retriever on Fyren's rocks, it's Tihi who shouts "Steal him!". Mingus's beat is the one beat the Hiccup can't touch, and she loves him for it.
• Vigolas: he tries to make Isa laugh every day; Tihi tries to make Vigolas stop talking. Neither succeeds.
• Rougeina: her life's mission is one laugh. On the Bottling Barge, with Rougeina's resolve in a jar, Tihi popped up behind the Dimmer coming at her and tickled him: he laughed, he was un-held, and Rougeina, startled into it, just hit him. "…Thanks?" / "Anytime!" (ch. 260)
• Flisa: "A WOOD-GIRL!" (delighted, ch. 264). When Jeppson measured her at one metre exactly, Tihi's cheeks bulged with the effort of not saying anything (ch. 274), and held for a chapter, until the ships cleared the last arch: "SHE'S SO SMALL!" / from every plank on both ships: "I HEARD THAT." (ch. 275)
• Räva: the one person in the Current she must never meet laughing.
• Netmaster Grip : the woman who hunted her laugh all of Arc 2 and never got it.
  • She caged her with her mother's gull (ch. 248) and watched her for a day without blinking: "You don't blink." / "I blink. I just don't close them."
  • Tihi's answer: "You're doing it wrong, then. Laughing. You have to shut your eyes. Nobody laughs properly with their eyes open." and "Then I'll be old. And you still won't get it." (ch. 249)
  • Tihi's vow: "Nobody gets my mum's laugh. Not her." (ch. 246)
• Nine (the House of Grip's net-captain, Grip's great-grandson): "What's your name?" / … / "That's a number." (ch. 249). She saved his life by making herself sad on purpose when the Hiccup overflowed him (ch. 251). He turned the House around (ch. 254).
• Svala: the first person the Giggle freed on the page, laughing furious in the Lace (ch. 245). Tihi told her about Lo and the Skrattmåsen (ch. 246). By Tärna's body, Svala, grief-wild: "She's DEAD and you're LAUGHING?!" / "I KNOW—" (ch. 254: deep grief doesn't catch it).
• Bror (Kompis's gun): "I'm five." / "I'm fourteen!" / "…Old." (ch. 250)
• Bakasura: he laughed at the worst joke on her stage ("…heh. …house.", a callback to Saga II ch. 62), so she did (ch. 251).

• "Nobody can hold you if you're laughing! …Go on. Try."
• "I can't read. But I can count." (the founding day, age nine)
• "Eight hundred and twelve thousand and FOUR! The four's the best bit!"
• "Nobody gets my mum's laugh. Not her." (ch. 246)
• "Nobody laughs properly with their eyes open." (to Grip, ch. 249)
• "My laugh can kill people." … "Never on a full burn. Never again." (ch. 251)
• "…Isa. I'm not laughing. Look. This is my not-laughing face." (ch. 254)
• "That was a terrible laugh! Do it again!" (to Isa, ch. 263)
• "SHE'S SO SMALL!" (ch. 275)
• "AGAIN!" (Saga VI)