A Thief of Tongue looks like a hunched shadow with a long, pale, nimble hand. It has no visible name, as no Nameless does, and its face, when seen, has a mouth too wide, from which it is said to speak in borrowed voices. It carries its stock on it: strips of parchment, wax seals, and little glowing knots of script that are names, pinned into its shadow like burrs. It moves in quick, quiet darts and smells of ink.

They work the busier corridors and the doors sealed with names, wherever visitors gather or names are spoken. A Name Bound holds a few, and their market moves.

They are greedy, quick, and businesslike. They listen for a name spoken carelessly, read the glowing letters over a sleeper’s head, or steal a record from the Scribes, and then they sell. Their buyers are visitors who want power over someone, other Nameless, and anyone hoping to buy back a name of their own. They keep their bargains to the letter, because in the Name Bound every agreement binds.

They take a True Name from the air or the record and hold it, so that the name’s owner becomes one of the Bound until it is returned or its holder dies. They can carry names out of the zone; whether a name has any power outside it is argued.

To someone who has lost a name, a Thief of Tongue may be the only seller. To anyone else, it is the reason the zone’s travellers bring a false name and never speak their own.

Outside the zone, Thieves of Tongue have become figures of nursery warning: the thing that takes a child’s name if it is said too loud at night. Some believe a name bought from one can command its owner anywhere; the command holds within the zone.

Bounty-takers fear them more than any outlaw: a hunter whose name has been taken can be told to let his quarry go, and every bounty-takers' inn has heard of the one who was, and spent the rest of his life unable to pursue anyone.