by D. J. Butler
“I guess I’m still skeptical,” Indrajit said. “Probably comes from having a bunch of jobbers attack me onstage at the opera.”
“Was any of those jobbers the Lord Chamberlain?” The Yifft secret agent spread his hands and smiled.
Indrajit turned to Fix, brow furrowed. “This guy has a mouth on him.”
“Does it make you want to punch him again?” Fix asked. “Or are you thinking of offering him a job?”
“Both.”
“I have a job,” Grit Wopal said.
“Come to think of it,” Indrajit said, scratching his chin, “I’m not sure I would recognize the Lord Chamberlain. I don’t suppose he actually looks like his device, does he, Wopal?” The rumors that the Lord Chamberlain was a shapechanger who could walk unseen in any crowd were surely nonsense.
“A horned skull?” Grit Wopal briefly covered one eye, the gesture of piety used by followers of the city’s god of seers. “In a life of travels, mercifully, I have never seen a race of man whose face resembled an actual horned skull.”
“I don’t know that it would be so bad,” Fix murmured.
“You’d be distinctive,” Indrajit added. “Anyway, I guess the point is that the Lord Chamberlain has never hurt me.”
“Correct.” The Yifft smiled.
“He did send you to follow me, though,” Indrajit said. “Why was that? And how did you get here ahead of us? I chose this place, and I didn’t tell the others until we were practically here. Wait—can you read my mind with that thing in your face?”
The Yifft looked overwhelmed.
“Okay,” Fix said. “Take the questions in reverse order. Can you read minds?”
“Not really,” the Yifft said.
“They are only men, after all,” Ilsa said.
“What?” Indrajit asked. “So…you can kind of read minds?”
“I can see emotional states. I can see certain other kinds of energies. I cannot see thoughts.”
“How did you get here ahead of us, then?” Fix asked.
“I didn’t. I got here after you, and listened to your conversation with the pander, and then ran around back, climbed the fence, and scaled the wall to get here just as you did.”
“How did you pick the right room?” Ilsa asked.
Wopal smiled. “It’s the balcony with Twin devices carved into it. It stood to reason it would be the Twins room.”
“Pretty good spy-work. I guess I’d hire you,” Indrajit conceded. “So, the energies you see…can you see invisible limbs?”
Wopal smiled. “Such as the Luzzazza possess?”
Ah-ha. “Did you read about that in your fascicle, Fix?”
“No. Many of the Luzzazza follow a mystical path that involves search for, then denial of, then complete annihilation of the self. I read that in my…papers.”
“That doesn’t really sound like invisible arms.”
“My point exactly.”
“Yes,” Wopal said. “With my inner eye open, I can see the additional limbs that the Luzzazza possess.”
“And Grokonk?” Indrajit pressed.
“Grokonk aren’t invisible,” Fix protested.
“But can you see the males?” Indrajit clarified. “Separately? All huddled there in the slime?”
“Yes.” Wopal nodded.
“And what do you see when you look at me?”
“He means, does he look like a fish?” Fix said.
“Really?” Wopal asked.
Indrajit chuckled. “Not do I look like a fish, but what do you see when you look at me with your third eye?”
The Yifft nodded and took a deep breath. As he exhaled, the lid of the eye in his forehead lifted, revealing an oversized pupil and iris, streaked red and gold. The Yifft blinked twice, gazing on Indrajit’s face.
“I see a man who has lost his way,” the spy said. “A man who has very nearly forgotten his quest, and who is in danger of forgetting his soul.”
Indrajit punched him in the eye again.
He had been attacked, the Lord Chamberlain might be behind the men trying to kill him, he was tired of being followed, and the Yifft had insulted him. Punching Grit Wopal might not have been a good decision, but in the moment, it felt right. The spy dropped to the floor with a high-pitched shriek, clapping both hands over his forehead.
“I warned you,” Indrajit said. “Kind of.”
“Wow,” Fix said. “That guy made you sound romantic. Like the hero in a cheap tale.”
“A cheap tale, such as might be written in a fascicle?”
“Or sung in an epic.”
Indrajit turned to Ilsa. “I take it you don’t want to go with this guy.” For emphasis, he kicked the Yifft in his dirty yellow turban.
“Knock them down and kick them,” Fix said. “You’re learning.”
“I do not,” Ilsa said.
“Last chance,” the Yifft gasped from the floor. “This doesn’t have to get ugly.”
“Way too late for that, I’m afraid.” Indrajit unlocked the door. “You see, you made a rather simple mistake. This was a job for a strong jobber company. You never should have come alone.”
He opened the door, and found himself looking into the copper face of the bravo with puffed sleeves. The man had a curved saber in his left hand and a hooked dagger in his right. Behind him, crowding the hall, were the rest of his bravos dressed in blue.
Grit Wopal staggered to his feet.
“I never told you I came here alone,” he said.
Chapter Eight
Indrajit slammed the door shut.
Copper Face lurched into the gap and the door cracked him in the head.
The leader of the bravos staggered backward, but the door shivered in Indrajit’s hand and pushed him away. By the time he could catch his balance and hurl his shoulder into the wood, one of the bravos had shoved a shield against the door jamb. Indrajit grunted and pushed and swore, but couldn’t force the shield from the door.
The Yifft was on his feet, keeping an eye on Indrajit and Fix both. He picked up a wine bottle, holding it like a club. “You can still surrender.”
Fix stepped smartly to the side of the crack between the door and its jamb. Two sword blades poked awkwardly into the room, beneath the shield. Fix raised his spear over his head, angled the blade sharply down, and stabbed.
A sharp scream on the other side was followed immediately by the disappearance of the shield and the two sword blades, and then a loud clatter. Grimacing, Fix wrenched his weapon back.
The door fell shut and Indrajit slid to the floor. Reaching up, he turned the lock again.
“Thank the Stormrider that the patrons of the Fountain enjoy their privacy, and that the management protects that privacy with doors that actually lock.” Indrajit rolled to his feet and found his leaf-bladed sword. “If these were strings of beads, we’d be dead.”
Fix crossed the room to the balcony. “We already know the wall outside can be climbed.”
The door shuddered as men tried to break it down from the outside.
“That’s our exit,” Indrajit said. “Just give me a moment to kill this fellow.”
“No!” The Yifft shrank. His third eye was shut again, but Indrajit couldn’t tell whether that was on purpose, or the result of swelling.
“Drop the bottle and you live.” Indrajit was bluffing, but Grit Wopal dropped the bottle.
“Why let him live?” Ilsa asked. “He can hurt me! He’ll tell Orem Thrush where I am!”
“Mercy is scarce enough in this world,” Indrajit murmured, “and you may want it yourself someday.”
Ilsa’s eyes held a curious expression, but Indrajit couldn’t read it.
“I won’t let them in, I swear.”
“Correct,” Indrajit agreed. “Now crouch in the corner there.”
He was worried about more than just the Yifft letting the men in. He also didn’t want the Yifft to see and report the true direction of their exit.
Grit Wopal crouched in the corner.
“The garden below is clear,” Fix reported. “Other than of revelers, of course.”
Indrajit handed the sword to Ilsa. “If Wopal moves, stab him.”
The divans in the room were heavy, but Indrajit was tall and strong. He slid one across the room and penned the spy into the corner, then tossed a second on top, squashing the little man across his shoulders.
Wopal let out a soft groan.
“You can still breathe, right?” Indrajit called to him under the pile of furniture.
“Barely.”
“Barely breathing is breathing,” Indrajit told him. “Just be glad you’re not almost breathing.” For good measure, he tossed a silk coverlet over the top of the mound, blocking off the last of the Yifft’s vision.
“Down we go!” he called to the others.
The door thudded.
Indrajit stepped to the balcony. There, he put a finger over his lips to urge his companions to silence. Then he mimed the action of climbing with both hands, and pointed up.
Fix grinned.
Ilsa’s nictitating membranes fluttered rapidly. She nodded.
The climb turned out to be easy. The thighs of a winged and wanton maid on one side provided a good foothold, and an ithyphallic man with goat’s legs and a cob of maize for a head gave an excellent handhold on the other. From there, a stone vine bearing strings of sex organs as fruit was almost as good as a ladder, and led right to the rooftop.
Fix lumbered up first. Then Indrajit hoisted Ilsa without Peer; once up to the vine, she climbed easily to Fix’s extended hand. Indrajit managed not to think too much about how nice the opera singer smelled.
He looked back quickly; the furniture pile was unmoved. The door’s hinges were straining, and close to a rupture.
He threw himself up the wall as quickly as he could, and onto the roof.
The roof was tiled with baked red clay, at a gentle slope. Indrajit spread himself on his belly with his face at the edge of the rooftop, looking down into the private garden. The garden’s walls were two stories tall, as tall as the buildings around it, and had several gates. Porters stood inside each gate; Grit Wopal must have bribed or bullied one of those men to let him in. The wall was wide enough that a person with good balance—which Indrajit was—could jog around it all at a quick pace.
The garden itself contained pools and fountains and ornate sculptures depicting mythological scenes. Clusters of winsome amalaki trees and sweet-smelling ketakas around the outside downplayed the presence of the wall, and gave the garden the feeling of being a forest. In a cleared space surrounded by statues, a play was being staged, in which all the actors were nude—it looked like the unholy offspring of high opera and low bawdy theater. The audience sat on other undressed people, crouched on hands and knees to make their bodies into seats. Yip smoke wafted up to Indrajit on the breeze, and Indrajit smelled the bitter, honeyed scent of soma.
He heard the splintering crack of the door below giving way, and within seconds two of the bravos stood on the balcony. Out of natural impulse or curiosity or because they had heard and believed Indrajit’s misdirection, they looked down into the garden.
“No, don’t stab!” He heard Grit Wopal’s voice, muffled. The words became clearer, presumably as the bravos pulled the furniture away. “Don’t stab, if you want to get paid! It’s me! Get these divans off me! They went down the wall—they’re probably already out one of the gates!”
Several bravos jumped over the edge of the balcony and rushed across the garden to the porters. They’d get no answer, or a confused answer. They would attribute that to the staff’s discretion, or to the drugs and the wine. And they’d scatter, to search the city.
Smiling in satisfaction, Indrajit eased himself back away from the edge of the rooftop.
Ilsa without Peer was smiling. Fix looked more thoughtful.
“We wait here,” Indrajit whispered. “Then we get the Fountain to arrange a closed sedan for us, and our own set of bravos.”
“They’ll do that?” Fix asked.
Indrajit shrugged. “Surely they must have some way to deal with the situation where, say, the young heir to one of the great families passes out drunk on their premises.”
“I’ll pay,” Ilsa said. “Where do we go? Back to the theater?”
“No,” Indrajit said. “We’d be seen there.”
“Maybe she’s right,” Fix said. “After all, there are now two different jobber companies searching the city for us. Maybe moving around just increases our chances of running into them. We could go to the theater—they won’t look for us there. Or maybe, we should just stay right here, for the same reason.”
“Right here is going to be pretty chilly by the time the night is up,” Indrajit pointed out.
Fix nodded. “Fish are cold-blooded.”
Indrajit sighed. “Besides, we need to find out who sold the risk on Ilsa. That means going to the Paper Sook and, unless you’ve got some other source of information, it probably means asking Holy-Pot Diaphernes to tell us about the contract.”
“Will he break a client confidence like that?” Ilsa asked.
“I doubt he sees it that way,” Indrajit said. “He’s not a priest or a notary. And besides, we’re trying to protect his interest, keeping you alive. He’ll tell us. Let’s give our friends a couple of hours to give up. Try to sleep a little, if you can.”
The night fires of Kish were low enough that Indrajit could see the stars. He marked the position of the Snake-Charmer behind the silhouette of one of the few nearby buildings that was taller than the Fountain, a jagged row of chimneys and a dome-topped tower to the southeast. Then he waited to watch the constellation move two handspans.
The rooftop air was cool, but he didn’t dare climb down into the Twins room for a coverlet. Ilsa without Peer, fortunately, wore her cloak. Her breathing soon dropped into deep rhythms, and while Indrajit was too chilly to sleep, he was able to stretch out flat, and thereby relax.
What would he do if Orem Thrush, the Lord Chamberlain and one of the most powerful people in Kish, turned out to be behind the attempt on Ilsa’s life? And Indrajit had punched his spy in the face, twice.
Though he had spared the man.
But he had stayed true to his contract. He had watched Ilsa without Peer, and had in fact saved her life. Twice. His debt with Holy-Pot was squared, now.
Or would Holy-Pot see it that way? Maybe Holy-Pot would require him to keep protecting the singer until the contract period was up, which was a whole week. Or maybe the contract had an out clause of some kind, or maybe Holy-Pot would prefer a larger jobber company to take over now.
More good reasons to talk to Diaphernes.
The Snake-Charmer’s arrival above the silhouette of the adjacent roof told him an hour has passed.
“It’s been an eventful day,” he murmured.
“Hmm,” Fix said.
Ilsa breathed deeply.
If Orem Thrush decided he wanted Indrajit dead, there was nothing for it but to get out of Kish. The Lord Chamberlain was wealthy enough that he could send assassins anywhere on the Serpent Sea to kill the Blaatshi poet, so maybe Indrajit would have to take the Endless Road and find out for himself what, exactly, lay at its eastern end.
He certainly couldn’t go home.
And his quest—the reason he’d really come to Kish—would be effectively destroyed.
Maybe, as an alternative, he could seek patronage among the other great families. The Lord Usher or the Lord Gardener or the Lord Stargazer, or one of the other heirs to the seven servants of Kish’s last emperor who had picked up the reins of power when the emperor’s hands had fallen cold, hired jobbers for all manner of reasons. Maybe being the man who had thwarted Orem Thrush would be a good qualification for a job working for one of Thrush’s rivals.
As what, though? Bodyguard? Assassin? Thug?
Not as Recital Thane, that was for sure.
Indrajit sighed.
The second hour had passed. “C
ome on,” he said. “Let’s make our way back to the Spill.”
Dawn was still hours away, and the night had grown cold. Even here in the Lee, where the height of the hill on which the city stood sheltered the air from the worst of the sea’s excesses, the breeze was wet and salty. Indrajit’s bones ached as he rolled over.
Fix sat up.
Ilsa without Peer came instantly awake when Indrajit touched her shoulder.
“I’ll go first,” the former Trivial of Salish-Bozar the White offered.
Fix lowered himself to the balcony quietly, and Indrajit dropped him his spear. The garden party continued, at a slower, quieter pace. Fix signaled that the way was clear, and Indrajit and Ilsa followed.
Just in case, they dropped down into the garden and then Fix and Ilsa stood in a shadowed corner while Indrajit, Ilsa’s bag of coins in his hand, approached the pander.
The same woman occupied the station. She smiled at Indrajit. “Your friends came looking for you.”
Indrajit grinned back. “Not my friends.”
“Then it’s good they didn’t find you.”
Maybe he could get a job working at the Fountain. They’d already rejected him as a poet, but they might be willing to hire him as a bouncer. Would such a job protect Indrajit from the wrath of the Lord Chamberlain?
“I’m hoping to hire a sedan chair from you,” Indrajit said.
“For three?”
Indrajit considered. “Do your bearers and guards wear uniforms?”
* * *
Indrajit and Fix wore the Fountain’s livery and Ilsa without Peer reclined inside the sedan chair, curtains closed. In addition to the six bearers, four armed guards accompanied the sedan, two before and two behind.
The livery was a red tunic emblazoned with a blue fountain. Obvious, clear. If he were to organize a jobber company—if Orem Thrush didn’t kill him—Indrajit would want a similarly clear, memorable insignia for his company. Another strike against the Fixers—there was no obvious symbol that went with that name.
Maybe the Leafblades? With crossed leaf-bladed swords for the heraldry? But that only occurred to him because he had by chance acquired such a sword for himself today. But then, perhaps what he took to be chance was in fact fate, or a sign. The Epic was full of signs and omens, and the interventions of fate.
