In the Palace of Shadow and Joy

by D. J. Butler

  “Very good.” Indrajit nodded. “We’ll give you boys your dolly back once we get somewhere safe.”

  “Like maybe Pelth,” Fix suggested.

  The Grokonk female snorted, a mucus-filled gurgle.

  “Herness suggests a grave,” the Third said.

  “Good to know where we stand.” Indrajit smiled. “You stay right here.”

  Fix picked up his spear, dropped when the Grokonk had thrown him across the room, and the two jobbers hurried down the tower steps.

  “The Dead Men is not a terrible name,” Fix said. “It’s a little mystical, and also suggests imperviousness. If we are already dead, who can harm us?”

  “We’ll think of a better one.”

  Fix ripped the iron bar from its brackets, letting it bounce against the wall on its chain. Indrajit looked once back up the steps to be certain the Handlers weren’t immediately on their trail, and then opened the door.

  The slate-blue Luzzazza in a Handler’s tunic stood in the doorway, a sword in one hand and a shield hanging on the other visible arm. A scab on his cheek reminded Indrajit that this was the same Luzzazza he had faced twice now in the Palace of Shadow and Joy. Behind him stood Green Skin—the Handler who had attacked Ilsa on stage—and to either side, along the walkway in both directions, stood a file of Zalaptings, three deep.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Catch!” Indrajit yelled.

  He threw Tiny Gannon.

  Indrajit did not have great aim.

  Indrajit’s people were fisherman, but they fished with bare hands, with nets, and with stabbing spears. He knew of peoples that hunted the great fish of the sea—whales, and porpoises, and sharks, and orcas—with thrown harpoon, and had seen spears thrown on land, by hunters and warriors, and launched from a Xiba’albi throwing stick. But hurling spears, and any other missile weapon, were not for the Blaatshi.

  The Blaatshi killed their food and their foes face to face, by hand, with melee weapons.

  So Indrajit’s aim was not especially good. In the tiny moment of time between when he opened the door and saw the Luzzazza on the other side, and when he threw Tiny Gannon, he worried that if he tried to throw the jobber company captain into the Luzzazza’s arms, he’d fall short, and fail to distract the blue-skinned man.

  Indrajit’s aim was not great, but his limbs were long and well-muscled. Worried he might fall short with his throw, he compensated by hurling Mote Gannon with all the force he could muster with his shoulders, chest, and legs, firing the tiny green man past the Luzzazza and out over the cobbled courtyard, four stories below.

  Tiny Gannon shrieked as he flew, a sound like a rat stepped on in the darkness.

  The Luzzazza had quick reflexes. A blur of blue, he spun sideways and lurched out over the void. He dropped his sword and grabbed for the flying green man with his long blue arms—

  And caught him.

  Fix also had quick reflexes. As Green Skin and the Zalaptings turned to watch their employer fly, gasping in surprise at the same moment, Fix lowered his shoulder and charged.

  He knocked Green Skin to the floor and kept running.

  Indrajit followed. To slow pursuit, he stomped on Green Skin’s ankle as he ran over the man.

  Pressing his hips against the iron railing, the Luzzazza leaned out over the courtyard, pinning Tiny Gannon with his empty hand into the space inside his shield.

  Fix ran one Zalapting through, dropped his spear, then knocked the other two lavender men up into the air as he plowed beneath them. Indrajit threw one against the wall and punched a second in his long, lavender snout.

  Fix crashed into the Luzzazza from behind.

  The railing snapped, and the Luzzazza fell.

  Notwithstanding his bluster minutes earlier, Indrajit didn’t want Tiny Mote Gannon to die. Especially right now, with Fix and Indrajit in their sight, Gannon’s jobbers might decide to take out their anger at unexpected unemployment by beating Indrajit and Fix to death. At the very least, a criminal prosecution and penalty for murder seemed likely.

  Also, he would feel bad.

  Fix seemed to care less, or at least, he kept running.

  Indrajit skidded to a stop, trying and failing to catch the Luzzazza’s long kilt.

  The Luzzazza toppled forward, bending at the waist as if he were trying to cradle Tiny Gannon with his body. Maybe Gannon would survive the fall, bouncing off the wreck of the Luzzazza’s corpse. Then the Luzzazza somersaulted forward, nearly hitting the back of his head on the railing of the floor below. Death looked imminent, the Luzzazza hurtled on past the third story walkway—

  And then suddenly stopped falling.

  He screamed and rosettes of blood burst from his ribs on one side, but the Luzzazza hung in midair, as if he had been caught by an invisible net.

  Or as if he had arrested his own fall with invisible arms.

  Indrajit found himself laughing with relief.

  The Zalaptings, scooting around to face him and galloping in his direction, seemed considerably less amused.

  Indrajit ran.

  Ahead of him, Fix disappeared down the staircase. Indrajit lurched, his legs in agony, both the muscles from exertion and the two not-yet-healed wounds from being reopened again. Thinking he should have caught up with his friend by now, Indrajit flung himself down the stairs. As he plunged toward the railing, grabbing with both hands, he turned his head slightly, and was dismayed to see Zalaptings gaining on them.

  Passing the third floor, Indrajit saw a blue hand reaching up from below the level of the walkway and grabbing the rail. Tiny Mote Gannon climbed along that arm and squeezed between the iron bars of the railing.

  Their eyes met, briefly, and Gannon turned and ran.

  Passing the second, Indrajit saw the Luzzazza, still dangling by his grip on the railing above, and trying to get his sandaled feet onto the second-story railing. The blue man stared at Indrajit with hatred, and Indrajit stepped around the corner from the staircase, momentarily not following Fix down.

  “Stop!” the Luzzazza yelled at the following Zalaptings. “He’s hiding!”

  Indrajit shrieked and leaped from his hidden corner, scattering the small lavender men with sweeping blows of his sword. He knocked the helmet off one, disarmed a second, and slashed into the calf muscles of a third before they evaporated completely before him.

  Indrajit took one last look at the Luzzazza before he descended. The blood flowing from his sides clung oddly to something Indrajit couldn’t quite see, appearing therefore to outline in red an invisible set of shoulders.

  No, just one shoulder. From the other side, much more blood flowed, and there was no shoulder outline.

  Indrajit’s legs ached and his head hurt. He spat, and continued his descent.

  On the ground floor, he would have missed it if he hadn’t stepped on it—beneath the Luzzazza, alone and still, lay an invisible arm.

  Indrajit stooped to pick it up. As he looked more closely, he saw that the arm wasn’t invisible—it shifted color as it moved. Knowing where he was looking and what he was looking for, he could see the arm, but the arm took the color of whatever lay behind it: cobblestones, marble, or even Indrajit’s own mahogany skin, with hints of green.

  Indrajit squeezed the forearm, and the fingers and thumb of the hand clenched.

  “Strange,” he murmured.

  Shouting above and behind him reminded him that he was pursued. Skirting around the space below the Luzzazza, in case the blue-skinned man fell, he ran toward the gateway.

  Fix threw himself against two warriors there—the fair Sword Brother, who now held a long, straight blade with both hands on a long hilt, and a Yuchak woman in furs, who stabbed and swung with two short spears, one in either hand.

  The three danced, ebbing and flowing within the narrow space as Fix maneuvered to keep a wall behind him and tried to drive the other fighters away in turn, so that he never really faced more than one at any given moment. He fought with his falchion in one hand an
d his ax in the other and he was more or less succeeding, but the Sword Brother and the Yuchak were closing in.

  Beyond all three stood a Thûlian, face swathed and the match—the long, slow-burning cord that sprang from his headgear and hung in front of his face like a fiery esca—smoldering. The gunman poured Thûlian powder into the mechanism of his weapon. Such powder was of secret composition, known to very few, and said to be the object of numerous bounties offered by princes of the Serpent Sea. The person who obtained the formula of Thûlian powder would be able to retire from public life with great wealth.

  Sadly, a mere sample wouldn’t do.

  The Thûlian raised his long-barreled musket, pointing it toward Fix.

  Indrajit threw the arm.

  And fell short.

  He lost track of the severed limb in the shadow of the gateway, and charged, screaming.

  “Heroes!” he hollered.

  The Thûlian lowered his head, touching the match to his gun. Bang! A plume of smoke erupted from the musket, and Fix fell.

  The Sword Brother heard Indrajit’s cry and turned to look. Indrajit careened into the Yuchak, dropping a shoulder to throw it into her ribs and send her sprawling into the path of the Sword Brother.

  The Thûlian reached into his sash, grabbing the butts of two long pistols. Indrajit fell on the man before he could fire them, jerking the deadly weapons from his hands and knocking him to the ground.

  Although as he slammed into the Thûlian, the marksman felt strangely light to him, and soft. Was it possible the Thûlian was a woman? But she smelled as sweaty as any man.

  Fix staggered toward Indrajit, bleeding from a wound on the back of one calf. When he had covered half the distance, he slipped and fell.

  “Sorry!” Indrajit called. “That’s the arm!”

  Fix picked up the Luzzazza’s severed arm, climbed to his feet, and stared in surprise at the limb as he ran.

  The Sword Brother tossed the Yuchak to one side and advanced again. Indrajit pointed one of the pistols at the fair man. “Fire!” he shouted. “Shoot!”

  Nothing happened.

  The fair man raised his sword.

  Indrajit shook the weapon, and it did nothing.

  The Sword Brother swung his sword and Indrajit threw the pistol.

  Indrajit missed, but the Sword Brother skewed sideways, and Fix took advantage of his sudden loss of poise, kicking at the man’s feet. The Sword Brother crashed to the ground.

  Fix dropped to one knee on the man’s sternum and punched him repeatedly in the face until he dropped his sword and lay still.

  Fix grabbed his weapons and hooked them onto his belt again. Then Indrajit and Fix ran.

  “What is this?” Fix shook the color-shifting arm.

  “It’s not mine!”

  “Really? Something got in my way in a fight, and it has nothing to do with you?”

  “Okay, I threw it at the Thûlian. But it’s not my arm.”

  Fix grunted, but held on to the arm. “Where did it come from, then? Wait…did this come from the Luzzazza?”

  “Yeah. I tried to hit the powder priest, but I missed.”

  “You have terrible aim.”

  “I am a hand-to-hand fighter.”

  “It’s your fish eyes.”

  “Really, now is no time to be offensive.”

  Night was falling, deep twilight drifting down the avenues and boulevards of the Crown like autumn leaves in a thick forest.

  “It’s not offensive. You just have no depth perception. I guess your whole species has the same problem. No wonder your people have almost died out—your eyes are so far apart, you probably can’t hit anything more than ten feet away.”

  “You are not making this any less insulting,” Indrajit said.

  They chose smaller and smaller streets, heading, without discussion, for the gate into the Spill. As they turned each corner, they stopped to look behind them.

  “Are we going back to Frodilo Choot?” Indrajit felt tired.

  “Maybe she can help us get into the bank,” Fix said. “We only have until tomorrow. Or maybe she can find us a big jobber company’s worth of extra muscle, so we can go back and squeeze Mote Gannon for what he knows.”

  “They wanted us dead,” Indrajit said. “Specifically.”

  “Not they,” Fix said. “Holy-Pot wanted us dead.”

  “But there has to be something more to this, right? This is about the money, the risk-merchantry? I mean, there’s no way that Holy-Pot Diaphernes went to all this trouble just to set us up and kill us, right?”

  “No, this isn’t about us. Killing us was just going to be the gravy on Holy-Pot’s duck.” Fix stopped. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. The vision thing. Look, here’s the other effect of your eye placement. Do you see my finger?”

  “No, I don’t see the fingers on the Luzzazza’s hands. I don’t know what kind of magic that is, but it’s pretty odd. Why would they want to have one invisible pair of arms?”

  “I’m not sure about magic,” Fix said. “I’m also not sure it’s something they want. There are lizards that are hard to see, because their color changes to match whatever surface they’re standing on.”

  “You think the Luzzazza’s arms do the same thing? And not on purpose?”

  “Yes. Their second pair of arms, their lower set. And I don’t know if it’s magic, any more than what Ilsa does.”

  “Ilsa controls minds. That’s magical, if anything is.”

  “Is it? Or is it just a more powerful version of what lots of other women do, too?”

  “Lots of other women are attractive.” Indrajit sniffed.

  “Anyway, I’m not talking about the Luzzazza arm. I mean the fingers of my left hand. Don’t you see them?”

  Indrajit frowned. “No. Because you’re holding them out of sight.”

  “Where?”

  “Down. Low.”

  “Wrong. They’re right in front of you, and almost touching your bony, fishlike nose.”

  “My nose is not like a fish.”

  “Turn your head and look.”

  Indrajit turned his head, and saw that Fix was right. Fix’s left hand came into view, fingers extended, fingertips nearly touching Indrajit’s nose, which didn’t resemble the nose of a fish at all.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “That you have no depth perception, and a blind spot right in front of your face. You probably don’t like kissing women, do you, because they disappear?”

  “Hey!”

  Fix shrugged. “You’re just fishes. Here, take this.”

  Indrajit took back the Luzzazza arm, sniffing. “We’re not fishes. We’re not descended from fishes. We didn’t used to be fishes. We eat fish. Except I don’t especially love it myself, which is another, very minor, reason for coming to Kish.”

  “Fish eat fish.” Fix shrugged. “It isn’t all that rare that men eat men.”

  “You are confusing external shape with spiritual reality.”

  “I don’t know,” Fix said. “I’m just trying to understand the world from the information it gives me.”

  “That’s a child’s way to understand the world.” Indrajit wanted to punch the other man, but instead he resumed walking toward the end of the alley. Beyond, he knew, lay the gate. “An adult learns from those who came before.”

  “You mean, by reading books?”

  “I mean, by listening to the Epic.”

  “Hort’s nubbin, you know the same answer to every question.”

  “Say rather that I have one powerful tool that sets me on the path to finding the right answer to every question.”

  “Your Epic doesn’t say anything about those who came before me,” Fix said. “I’m not Blaatshi.”

  “But you have a man’s soul. Anyone with a man’s soul, any member of any of the thousand races of man, can benefit from hearing and knowing the Epic.”

  “I’ll give you back that much credit, too, despite your fishy ways. You have a man�
��s soul, Indrajit Twang.”

  They turned the corner onto the crowded avenue, funneling into the gate-bound traffic. Palanquin bearers threw hard elbows trying to block their way, but Indrajit threw elbows back—his peripheral vision let him see pretty clearly who was responsible for each bump and scrape he received, and he tried not to think about the suddenly unnerving possibility that someone might attack, unseen, from directly before him.

  The gate was manned by Zalaptings, in armor but not in uniform. Each palanquin or party on foot or rider got a perfunctory examination, passing through. In more fraught moments—during a festival, or when the city was under attack—that scrutiny might be more detailed. Two parties ahead of Indrajit and Fix, a cord-thin Rover leading two mules dragged his feet, drifting into the gate. A Zalapting guard limped over to examine the animals’ packs, perhaps searching for contraband: yip, or unstamped metal or yetz-wood or luxury fabrics from Boné.

  Something bothered Indrajit, and he wasn’t entirely sure what it was.

  “I’m starting to not feel good about our chances,” Indrajit said.

  “Of…surviving?”

  Indrajit snorted. “No, what are Gannon’s goons going to do to us, really? There were a few nervous moments back there, but we’re in the city, now. Mother Kish, refuge of every scoundrel, haven of every fugitive. How’s he going to find us, if we don’t go to him?”

  “Yashta Hossarian found us.”

  “He’s unnatural. Got some kind of magic for finding people.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm, what?”

  “Hmm, I’m not sure I believe in magic. Or maybe, I’m not sure I know what it is.”

  “You’re the one who said he was healed by a Druvash artifact.”

  Fix shrugged. “Speaking of healing, what are you going to do with that arm?”

  “Tell them I found it. They can have it if they want it. Fine.” Indrajit chuckled. “Disbelieve everything, then, you godless clod. But no, I meant I’m starting to not feel good about our chances of getting paid. By Thrush or by Choot.”

  Fix rubbed his forehead. “Oh, that’s good. I, on the other hand, am beginning to worry we might not survive.”

  Indrajit snorted. “Nonsense. We’re immortals, you and I. Eternal beings. But we do need to get paid. Even the immortals eat.”