Tabitha Glowdish
| Also known as | Tab |
|---|---|
| Species | Olphin |
| Affiliation | The Sarakyan |
| Home | Varaar |
| Weapons | Two daggers with purple hilts |
| Companions | Nupika |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | A Sacred Tale Collection |
Tabitha Glowdish, who goes by Tab, is an Olphin who grew up hidden in the streets of Varaar rather than be shipped to Morgaedion with the rest of her people.[1][2] She burned down The Hollowed Shadow to free the women held inside it, and she took it on herself after Elmryn's murder to return the Eyearke Stone to the Sacred Rulers and avenge him.[1][2]
Appearance
Tab has purple scales across her dark face and purple pectoral fins where her ears would be, and wears her black hair short and curled tightly on top of her head. She looked only a few years older than Reagan Hideaway when the two met.[3] She keeps her fins under a heavy hood everywhere outside the few rooms in Varaar that will have her: uncovered, they were a one-way ticket to Morgaedion.[1]
She walks with a noticeable limp that does nothing to slow her stride.[3] Drayzuzian raked the Nelazgian mark into her right wrist with a claw, peeling the skin away as he cut it.[2] Her forearm was burned to the bone holding Burkhan down in the fire at the Hollowed Shadow, and she bound it with a strip torn from her own cloak.[1]
Personality
Tab is blunt to the point of cruelty and loyal past the point of sense. She nicknamed Reagan Red on the day she took her captive and has never used anything else.[3] She hates her full name and bares her teeth when Aero Ellisvat uses it.[4]
She does not scream. When Drayzuzian clawed the Nelazgian mark into her wrist and told her to scream so that the god Nelazgus might hear it, she spat on the grass instead.[2] She has embraced vorath, the insult thrown at people who sleep in the streets and, since the war, at Olphins, and wears it as a badge.[1]
She keeps promises and says she does not give them out lightly.[5] What she is worst at is staying, and both her partner and the friends she left behind tell her so to her face.[6]
Background
Tab grew up in the streets of the canyon and learned early what the five gangs that govern Varaar were, and how to scale a building.[1] As an Olphin she was hated for something she had not done, hid in the darkest alleys of the city and let almost nobody know her.[2]
Two people did. Fawn, a dancer held at the Hollowed Shadow, became her partner, and Tab says that before Fawn she had never had a real companion.[1] The other was Elmryn, who took her under his roof, fed and clothed her, showed her what it meant to be loved and taught her everything he knew about the Eyearke Stone. Aero says that without him she would not have survived. She joined the Sarakyan and found a family in it, and it meant more to her than it did to any of the rest of them.[2]
Obellius killed Elmryn, the group fell apart, and Tab and Aero fell out with each other.[7][2] Tab also broke through Seely's door, pressed a blade to his throat and told him she would kill him if he did not hand over what she had come for. The Knower gave up the deterrent stone and still carries a faint scar on his neck.[8] Tab kept the stone in a large blue and gold painted box that she let nobody else touch.[9][10]
Story
The Way Shadows Live
Tab learned from a napkin Fawn pressed into her hand that Burkhan, the Damaziko gang leader who had stolen Fawn from her family, killed them and imprisoned her in his club, meant to marry her to strengthen his bloodline. She rode back to the Hollowed Shadow that night meaning to cut his throat and free the women.[1]
She got Fawn out to her camp in the desert and stitched a gash in her forehead with aloe and a heated needle, having never sewn anything but a shirt.[1] Fawn walked back to the city while Tab slept. Tab followed her footprints in, watched Burkhan tear an eyeball out of the doorman and send Fawn to be cleaned for the wedding, knocked the troll on the door unconscious and went down into an emptied club with a blade for Burkhan.[1]
She held the dagger under his chin and could not make herself use it, because part of her wanted him to admit what he had done. He knocked her flat, straddled her and began to strangle her. Tab pulled a table over, its oil lamp went into the carpet, and the room caught. She kicked free, pushed him into the flames and stood on his neck until he stopped moving, her own arm blistering and bursting in the fire, and did not let go.[1]
She dragged herself up the stairs, got Ayala to haul her through a window into the dancers' quarters, and found Fawn concussed on a bed. Kayloo, the Khaylant bear on the front door, moved the barrel off the hole in the wall the women used to come and go, and went out through it himself. Tab carried Fawn onto the roof of the neighbouring building and then handed her to Ayala, because the gangs would be hunting her and anyone near her.[1]
She watched the pink of Fawn's hair fade into the darkness, promised herself she would find them again, and pulled up her hood.[1]
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Tab tracked the party through a dark forest from branch to branch, dropped in front of Galabear and scattered her, put a dagger to Alpin Loomin's chest and took Reagan away with a cloth over her mouth. She had recognised the Eyearke Stone on the girl's neck, and appointed herself its guard, meaning to hand it to the Council at the High Moon Festival and buy a pardon for her people with it.[3][6]
Fleeing a drovig across the Kella Desert, she cut her painted box loose to lighten a labouring pergonzia and watched the worm swallow it whole.[10] In Varaar she hired Aero Ellisvat, whom she had not seen in years, to get them to Galecrest.[4] At The Avonbourn she was hit with a rhinespire dart and vomited it back out of a broken window.[11] At Kantankerous Albertuous's circus she told Long Paws and Piercio outright that she wanted the Sarakyan back together, and left without them when Piercio refused.[12]
Outside Galecrest, Aero confessed that he had told the Nelazgians where Reagan and the stone would be. Tab put her blade under his chin and drew blood, and lowered it only because Reagan told her to hear him out. She then walked into the city posing as a Nelazgian recruit, and Drayzuzian had her held down and marked.[2]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Tab went back into the drovig tunnels with Reagan and Aero for the deterrent stone. They found the worm asleep in a cavern with at least a dozen babies nuzzled against her, and rode her out through the tunnels rather than kill her; on the surface Aero threw a handful of red stones from the Heart of the Kella into her open mouth and she brought up everything inside her. Tab waded through it for half an hour in borrowed gloves and came out steaming and stinking with the stone in her hand.[13]
In Varaar she went back to the Hollowed Shadow, which the gangs had left alone since the fire and which Ayala, Hybie and Fawn had moved back into and turned into a base for getting other women out of clubs like it. Fawn slapped her, then asked where Reagan and Aero were, then sent for her bow.[6] The two of them shot their way into the Varaar Colosseum and cleared the guards off the arena floor while Aloeissa carried Reagan and Aero out.[14]
Tab chose to stay in Varaar. She told Reagan she owed it to the women to make sure no gang ever got to them again, and that this was not the last Reagan would see of her. She handed over the deterrent stone with the instruction that Bea would need it if she ever hoped to hold off Obellius, gave Reagan two daggers and Aero a plain sword, and told him it would not replace his Viper. She wiped her eyes when Reagan hugged her.[5]
Relationships
Fawn is the partner Tab burned a club down for and then left for her own safety. Their reunion in Varaar begins with a slap and ends with Fawn arming herself to help.[1][6]
Elmryn was the closest thing Tab had to a father. Avenging him and returning his stone is the errand she set herself, and she has said she will die doing it if that is what it takes.[2]
Aero Ellisvat was in the Sarakyan with her and fell out with her when it collapsed. She hired him anyway, threatened to cut his throat when he confessed, and went on travelling at his side regardless.[7][2]
Reagan Hideaway began as her hostage. Tab tucked the stone back out of sight inside Reagan's collar and told her to keep it there, and cried when they parted in Varaar.[15][5]
Seely still carries a grudge, and a scar. Tab broke through his door, held a blade to his throat and took the deterrent stone, and he would not call their reunion at Galecrest pleasant.[8][16]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives the surname as Glow-dish.[16][17]
She is the point-of-view character of The Way Shadows Live, the second story in A Sacred Tale Collection, which is set before Sacred: Eslura's Calling.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 Collection, Ch. 2.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Book 1, Ch. 10.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Book 1, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Book 2, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Book 2, Ch. 10.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Book 1, Ch. 18.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Book 1, Ch. 17.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 11.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Book 1, Ch. 12.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 19.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 21.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 4.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 13.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 14.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 28.