by D. J. Butler
“Only back in the day, the palace was so famous, when people would talk about the city, they would sometimes refer to it by the name of the palace. Where are you sailing, Captain? To the Palace of Shadow and Joy. Who will declare war first? The Palace of Shadow and Joy has already sent its heralds.”
“Hmm.” Indrajit was not convinced. He looked for the door Ilsa had described, and had to shove aside racks of clothing and carts piled with props.
“So you see, it makes a kind of neat cosmic statement. The lords are the servants are the actors on the stage, as the city and the palace and the opera are all the same.” Fix smiled, a menacing expression in the near-darkness.
“I feel like you have finally discovered the first of your ten thousand useless things.”
“I have another thought,” Fix said. “It occurred to me while I was climbing into the window a few minutes ago.”
Indrajit found a door, but it had no writing on it. “You remember some threat we need to worry about?”
“It occurred to me,” Fix said, “that Diaphernes’s first name might be Holibot.”
Indrajit laughed out loud. Fix joined him in the laughter, his voice gentle and high-pitched even while guffawing.
“And he just can’t say it,” Indrajit said.
Fix wiped a tear away from his eye. “So you and I—and maybe the whole world—think his name has something to do with pots.”
Indrajit got his laughter under control. “Now I really want to ask him.” He pointed at characters neatly painted onto a second door. “Does this say The Queen of What Is It?”
“The Queen of All Islands.” Fix nodded.
“This was not as difficult to find as Ilsa made it sound, when we were standing outside discussing plans.”
“She must not think we’re very bright,” Fix said.
The door was unlocked. As Indrajit stepped inside, he heard yelling, elsewhere in the theater. “Frozen hells, this place. Do they ever actually finish a production, or are all their shows just the backdrop for mayhem?”
Fix looked left and right. “In any case, we haven’t been discovered. Let’s hurry this up.”
The yelling was quickly stifled.
The only contents of the room behind the door was a large blue chest.
“I guess when you’re important enough,” Indrajit said, “you get two rooms of your very own.”
Fix nodded. “Just to hold a box.”
The chest was locked with a heavy iron clasp, and between the two of them, they could barely heft it.
They dragged in the largest prop cart they could find and scooped all the helmets, fake weapons, maps, astrolabes, and books from it. Grunting, they levered the chest into the cart and began to wheel it toward the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, they stopped. “I’ll push from below,” Fix offered, but Indrajit shushed him with a finger to his own lips. He heard voices above, and wanted to hear.
Fix held his peace.
“I don’t know whose body it is,” one of the voices whispered. “But it sure doesn’t belong here.”
“Keep it quiet,” whispered the other. “Lock the door. If anyone asks, tell them a patron fainted, and is resting in the dressing rooms.”
“He didn’t faint, he had his head nearly chopped off. And some of the crew saw it.”
“Tell them they didn’t see anything, or else they are fired. And let the jobbers know.”
Footsteps moved in two opposing directions as the owners of the voices went their separate ways. The sound of the Imperial harps grew louder and changed mode, sounding an angry arpeggio.
“Did you hear that?” Indrajit asked.
“Any chance it was dialogue from the play?”
Indrajit shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
Fix gestured at the trunk, reminding Indrajit that they had a job to do.
“Okay,” Indrajit said. “We use the cart to get the chest to the top of the stairs, but then we’ll have to carry it. The cart wheels aren’t going to slip by unnoticed behind the curtain.”
Fix nodded. Counting together “one, two, three” and hoisting on three, Fix pushed and Indrajit pulled, and they dragged the cart up one step, a second, then more, and Indrajit lost count. His arms were beginning to ache as the cart reached the top of the stairs…and his back foot stepped on something, unseen, that wasn’t the floor.
Indrajit lost his grip. The cart skewed sideways and then dumped the chest. The chest toppled forward, knocked Fix aside, struck the stairs, and sprang open.
A corpse flew out of the opening chest, along with clothing and shoes and makeup. The body hit the steps and tumbled with a horrendously loud noise, coming finally to a rest at the bottom of the stairs, face up, on its back, head pointing downward.
The corpse was Ilsa without Peer.
Chapter Fourteen
“Frozen hells!” Fix gasped.
“That’s my saying!” Indrajit snapped. “You don’t believe in hells!”
“It can’t be her.”
It certainly looked like her. Bulbous eyes with the same nictitating membranes, though the eyes were gray in death and the membranes looked dry and brittle. Skin white as white eggshells, with dark-blue veins showing through. Long finger bones and fingers with too many bones in them. Wide, lipless mouth, thin, wiry hair, and flat head.
“Touch her,” Indrajit suggested.
The heavy footfalls of several men running in his direction spurred Indrajit into action. He scurried down the steps again, and as his head dropped below the level of the stage, he saw three jobbers charging toward him. One was a slate-blue Luzzazza, the second a pale Ildarian or Ukeling, and the third a man with green skin; they all wore gray tunics with a circular glyph, marking them as Gannon’s Handlers.
Something about the three men nagged at his memory, but he wasn’t quite sure what.
Fix was trying to shift the box out of the way.
“Forget that!” Indrajit hissed. “We need to hide her!”
They each grabbed an elbow and hoisted the corpse up to hold it vertical, as if they were supporting a drunken companion. Rushing pell-mell across the dark space beneath the stage, they found a rack of costumes and stood behind it.
Just behind him, Indrajit realized, was another staircase leading up.
The clicking of heels on the wood in a circular pattern over their heads suggested that the actors were performing some sort of group dance.
“This isn’t Ilsa,” Fix whispered.
“Are you sure? It looks just like her.”
“The corpse is cold to the touch.”
Indrajit was about to retort that maybe Ilsa had been cold-blooded, but he had recently gripped her hand, in helping her climb into the opera house, and knew that her flesh was normally warm. “How do you know her race doesn’t go cold instantly?”
Fix said nothing.
“Okay,” Indrajit said. “It’s probably not her. If she sent us down to get the trunk, someone would have to work very hard to kill her, race down ahead of us, and stuff her in the box before we got there.”
“And cool her.”
“But that means a stranger question remains.”
“Why is she carrying around a body?”
“Maybe it’s a memento,” Indrajit suggested. “Maybe this was a sister or something.”
“I thought all her people died when she was very young.”
“Maybe this is her, but not in the way we’re thinking.”
Fix hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe she moves from body to body. Maybe this is a new body she has generated, and she needs it because her old body is wearing out.”
“You are completely making this up,” Fix said. “Or are you telling me this is in the Epic?”
“I’m hypothesizing. Or maybe this was her old body, and she needs it. Maybe it’s the source of her powers. Maybe she uses this to build a new body.”
“This is an awfully fantastical explanation.”
“But you have zero evidence. You’re just making wild guesses.”
“Not zero evidence, just not enough. Anyway, something has to explain why she was so insistent she needed this…body.”
“Shh,” Fix cautioned. “Here come the jobbers.”
In the dim light below the stage, they saw the large movements of the three jobbers as shadows, detaching from one pool of darkness, moving through half-light until they disappeared into darkness again. The three congregated first around the chest, prodding at it and digging inside.
“It didn’t get to the top of the stairs by itself,” the green-skinned man said. Indrajit knew the voice.
“Is this what we’re here for?” the Luzzazza asked. “To investigate props that are out of place?”
“These aren’t props,” the fair-skinned man said. This was the Sword Brother. “Look at the writing on the chest.”
Indrajit found himself unnerved by the cold weight of the body. With his free hand, he began draping scarves from the costume rack over the creature’s face and shoulders.
“Maybe Ilsa’s come back,” the Luzzazza said.
“Why would she be back and not onstage?” the green man asked.
The Handlers drifted across the room, looking into racks of costumes and poking behind pieces of scenery. The green man lit a lamp, and in the greasy yellow light, Indrajit saw that the Luzzazza was doing his poking with a long, bronze-headed spear, stabbing it behind piles of wood and into costume racks.
He stood a little straighter at the thought of being run through. Fix also straightened his spine.
The Luzzazza was creeping closer to Indrajit and Fix, and Indrajit felt cold sweat trickle down the small of his back. In the new light, he saw that he stood beside a bookcase of game props: ten-pins, balls, hoops, darts. Indrajit reached with his spare hand and grabbed a ball.
When the Luzzazza’s head was turned to one side, Indrajit tossed the ball across the stage. It thudded into a stack of painted boards, and the Luzzazza froze.
“What was that?” the blue man asked.
“It came from the rack in front of you,” the Sword Brother said.
Frozen hells.
The Luzzazza stepped toward them.
“Now!” Fix hissed.
They threw the corpse. Shrouded in scarves, it hit the boards with its feet and then bounced forward, head-first. The Luzzazza raised his spear, but not fast enough, and the corpse barreled into his arms, knocking him back.
For a mad moment, the Luzzazza spun in the lamplight, the dead creature in his arms, trailing lengths of silk. Then they together struck a false stone arch, painted onto a large cheap board, and fell to the floor.
Indrajit scooped three large darts from the shelf. Stepping forward, he jabbed one into the Luzzazza’s face. He’d been hoping to get an eye, but the Luzzazza was in motion, and instead, he jammed the dart into the jobber’s cheek.
Then he and Fix ran.
Indrajit reached the staircase first. As Indrajit’s feet hit the bottom steps, the Imperial harps shifted into a manic sequence. As if they were playing for him, the harpists jumped back and forth across their instruments, high-low-high-low-high-low. The notes sounded like sprinting, and Indrajit ran.
At the top of the steps stood the Grokonk Third. The sexless frog-man waved his arms, signaling to someone—probably to his female. Slightly disoriented, Indrajit was aware enough of his surroundings to realize that he was in the wings of the stage nearer to Ilsa’s dressing room. They had taken the long way around to get the chest.
They had been sent the long way around.
The Third slapped a hand onto the hilt of a short sword hanging at his belt. Indrajit threw his second dart, hitting the Grokonk in the neck. The darts were props, so they weren’t very sharp, but apparently they were intended to be thrown, because the balance was right and they were heavy.
The Grokonk backed away, raising his hands to ward off possible additional projectiles. Indrajit bounded past him, stabbing him in the belly with his last dart. Fix, for good measure, rammed his shoulder into the Third’s sternum, sending the man reeling through the curtain and onto the stage.
Indrajit heard the angry squeal of theater people, and paid it no mind.
The harp playing ended in a sharp crash. The stage rattled with footfalls that might have belonged to an elephant.
Or to a female Grokonk in full sprint.
Indrajit didn’t look back. He didn’t want to lead the Grokonk to Ilsa—Ilsa might be manipulating Indrajit somehow, and she certainly wasn’t telling him the whole truth, but he was still getting paid to protect her—so he took a sharp left before the stage ended, plunging back behind red curtains.
Cursing, Fix made the same turn. They raced with the plastered wall on their right hand and curtains on their left. Beyond the curtains, confused singing and declamation suggested that some of the actors were still trying to perform the play.
“You and your…long legs…not fair!” the shorter man grunted. But Fix’s own legs were muscular, and he kept pace.
The Grokonk apparently missed the turn, because Indrajit heard another enormous crash behind them.
Ahead, in the corner of the stage and hidden from the audience, the Sword Brother stepped into view. He held two long, straight blades, one in each hand, and he assumed a combat stance with one weapon raised over his head and the other extended before him.
Indrajit stopped.
“Twang!” Fix shouted behind him.
The Sword Brother charged.
Indrajit turned and saw that Fix had pulled apart two curtains, creating a gap. He stepped back and then ducked left into the opening. Fix was sawing at a cable—
The Sword Brother lunged—
The last fibers of the cable gave way and, with a whoosh!, a bag of sand fell from above and struck the Sword Brother in the back of the head, knocking him to the floor.
Indrajit turned and found he was now onstage. Fortunately, he could make out little of the audience, or their presence might have made him nervous. He looked left, and saw both Grokonk, spears in hand. He looked right, and saw the Luzzazza and the green-skinned man with their spears.
“Frozen hells.”
In the center of the stage rose a piece of scenery. From the audience’s side, it must have been painted to resemble a mountain or a pyramid or a temple, but from this side, it was a single staircase rising to a platform, all nailed to an enormous sheet of wood. At the top of the platform stood a woman in full costume, face concealed, singing. Judging by her costume, she was singing Ilsa’s part, but her voice didn’t have a tenth the power.
Indrajit hesitated.
Fix raced up the plank steps.
A gasp of titillated disapproval rose from the audience; they knew this was not supposed to happen. Perhaps they’d come expecting another on-stage debacle, having heard of Indrajit’s recent debut.
Indrajit followed. They reached the top together and the singer turned to face them. Through her opaque wood-and-silk mask, Indrajit imagined a woman glaring at them, but she continued to sing.
“What are you doing?” he asked Fix.
The Luzzazza and the green-skinned man reached the bottom of the steps. Fix pointed up, and Indrajit saw what the other man had noticed earlier—ropes dangled from the rigging above the stage, and hung within their reach.
The platform trembled as the first of the jobbers stepped onto the stairs. It also slid slightly—it must be wheeled. Someone in the wings was shouting, but Indrajit couldn’t focus on the words. Looking down the steps, he saw the green-skinned man.
“I know you,” Indrajit said. “You’re the assassin. You tried to kill Ilsa without Peer last night, only then you didn’t have your uniform on.”
The green man frowned and moved faster.
“So does Mote Gannon have the contract to protect Ilsa?” Indrajit probed. “Or to murder her? Or both?”
The green man charged.
“Sorry.” Indrajit threw one arm around the diminutive singer and tossed her down the stairs into the path of the charging jobber. They tumbled together back down to the floor, landing at the Luzzazza’s feet.
The Sword Brother staggered to join the other jobbers, along with a Yuchak encased in red leather, a Zalapting with a spear twice as long as himself, and a man wrapped in linen cloths, hiding even his face. Tucked into the swathed man’s waistband was something rare—a brace of pistols.
“Frozen hells,” he muttered. “Gannon’s got a Thûlian in his company.”
Fix jumped and grabbed a rope. When he jumped, the stairs slid to one side. As Fix climbed the rope, hand over hand, Indrajit found himself no longer directly beneath the ropes, but six feet away, and swaying to keep his balance.
The Zalapting and the Sword Brother took the stairs.
For the first time in his life, Indrajit felt the need of a battle cry, but he didn’t have one. Backing as far into the corner of the platform as he could, he took one step and then leaped.
The Zalapting stabbed, catching Indrajit on the outside of his thigh with the tip of his spear; the theatrical mountain lunged in the opposite direction from Indrajit, sliding rapidly across the stage, as if it had broken free from some unseen mooring.
A rope struck Indrajit in the face, bypassing his outstretched hands and burning his neck as it dragged across his flesh like a sawblade—
Indrajit flailed at the ropes with both hands—
And caught one.
Hand burning, he swung over the stage, trying not to feel dizzy and focus on the catwalk above him. He climbed, and behind him the prop mountain hit the edge of the stage and tumbled forward, crashing onto the footlings.
Screaming erupted. Indrajit blinked sweat out of his eyes, ignored the pain in his leg, and then took Fix’s offered hand. The smaller man hoisted him over a railing and onto the catwalk, and they looked down together.
Chaos reigned. The red-swathed guards employed by the theater itself had stepped in, and were struggling mightily against the more numerous Handlers. The singer, having survived her tumble, lurched away through the scattering clutch of harpists, and footlings threw punches at each other. A heavy man in a gold robe stood in the center, shouting directions at everyone as if he expected to be obeyed, his voice getting shriller with each moment he was ignored.
