In the Palace of Shadow and Joy

by D. J. Butler

  She nodded. “Thinkum Tosh came to him, but he didn’t have enough available reserves to underwrite the risk, so he brought it to me. I was on the fence myself, given how big the contract was, until he agreed to take on part of the risk as the repurchaser.”

  “How much are you on the hook for?” Fix asked.

  Choot hesitated, but only for a moment. “One hundred thousand Imperials.”

  Indrajit resisted the temptation to revisit their agreement and ask for more money. This sum, he reminded himself, was an amount she would have to pay, not the profit she was earning. At least, that’s what he thought he understood of these risk-merchantry contracts. “So, who is the beneficiary?” he asked. “Orem Thrush?”

  She shook her head.

  “If someone submitted affidavits in the name of Thinkum Tosh,” Fix said, “they’re fraudulent. He’s dead.”

  “Is he?” Indrajit asked. “We never actually saw the body.”

  “The notary submitted the affidavits and the request for payment,” Choot said. “On behalf of the estate of Thinkum Tosh, who is dead, and his heirs.”

  “If he’s dead, who do you give the money to?” Indrajit asked.

  “What do you think this is, the Caravanserai? Do you imagine that I go find a man in a white turban and give him the money in opals? I pay it into the bank account designated in the contract.”

  “You just instruct the bank to transfer the credits from your account to the one in the contract,” Fix said.

  “Of course,” Choot said.

  “Of course,” Indrajit said, pretending to understand.

  “Under the contract, I have until the open of business, day after tomorrow. If I don’t pay or provide evidence to demonstrate that I have no obligation to make payment by then, the notary will sue.”

  “We can ask the bank who has the right to access that account,” Fix suggested.

  “We can ask the notary who he’s talking to,” Indrajit added.

  “Neither one of them will tell you,” Choot said. “Obligations of confidentiality.”

  “I wasn’t really thinking of asking nicely,” Fix growled.

  “Can you get them to tell you?” Indrajit asked Choot.

  “No,” Choot said. “You might get a judge to order it, if you could prove an attempt at fraud. If one of the seven lords, if Orem Thrush, for instance, asked, they might do it.”

  “We also still need to ask the Handlers what they know,” Indrajit said.

  “They may not have obligations of confidentiality,” Fix said, “but they have weapons. Should we leave that one for last?”

  “I have Mote Gannon’s home address,” Choot said.

  Fix nodded. “If you can give us that information, we can find him. I’ll know him on sight.”

  “We can talk to him without his Handlers,” Indrajit said.

  “It’s an apartment in the Crown,” Choot said. “He might not be there during the day.”

  “Perfect,” Indrajit said. “We go rattle cages at the bank and at the notary. Then in the evening, we have a private conversation with Mote Gannon. Surely, we’ll have this cleaned up before tomorrow.”

  “Something else is happening tomorrow,” Fix said. “Remind me what it is.”

  Indrajit shook his head. “You’re thinking of the Auction. Nothing to do with us.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “This is what comes of reading,” Indrajit said. “Confusion.”

  Fix hesitated. “All of this amounts to an effort to figure out who wants Ilsa dead. Is that really the best thing we can do to try to locate her?”

  Indrajit shrugged. “Do you have a better idea?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Indrajit tried not to limp, walking out of Choot’s shop. He failed.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” he said. “Frodilo Choot has already agreed to be our risk-merchant. What was it you called it before?”

  “She will post our bond.” Fix marched toward the notary’s office; he had scratched the address down in his fascicle. “So if our jobber company does anything like, say, drop heavy scenery on top of a crowd of footlings at the opera, or, I don’t know, accidentally kill a Zalapting with lots of angry relatives, there’s money to pay for the damages.”

  “The bond, right. So we’re halfway there!” Indrajit declared. “And we’re on our way to visit a notary, so maybe he’ll help us draw up the…whatever the notary thing was that you said.”

  “Organization papers,” Fix said. “Our charter. Create our joint-stock company or our partnership. I don’t know how jobber companies are organized, actually.”

  “Right. So this guy can tell us, and then we’re in business.”

  “Keep that in mind as a negotiating ask, then.”

  “Now all we need is a name.”

  “And more jobbers. And customers. And marketing.”

  “Yeah, yeah. In time. I was thinking, what about the Deep Thinkers?”

  “Sounds like a jobber company that does archival research.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Or maybe a street bawdy company that only performs parodies of street bawdy, for the benefit of the overeducated elite who pretend to be sneering at street bawdy, when in fact they secretly enjoy it, especially for the naughty parts.”

  “You hate the name.”

  Fix shrugged. “Keep thinking of other names.”

  “But in principle, you’re willing to be my partner.”

  “In principle, I am your partner right now. In fact, I am no expert in charter law, but I believe that since we are no longer employed by Holy-Pot Diaphernes—”

  “He being dead,” Indrajit interjected.

  “—but are jointly undertaking an enterprise with a view to making a profit—”

  “Getting four hundred Imperials from Frodilo Choot,” Indrajit elaborated.

  “—we are partners as of right now.”

  “Doesn’t it feel good?” Indrajit asked.

  “Mind you, I could be mistaken,” Fix said. “Charter law is definitely regarded as useful knowledge by the Selfless, and therefore disdained.”

  “We should celebrate!”

  “Agreed. Once we have the four hundred Imperials in our pockets, we’ll get a drink.”

  “Another steam bath. With the spiced oils and the massage, this time.”

  “If we’re going to be partners, you’re going to have to learn to stick to a budget.” Fix stopped. “Here’s the notary.”

  The notary’s building was four stories tall, squeezed shoulder to shoulder between two shorter, wider buildings. The flanking buildings were of brick, with canvas awnings extending their premises over the packed earth, but the notary’s building stopped sharply at the street and was made of plaster and wood, the plaster painted bright yellow.

  “This is without a doubt the ugliest building in the Paper Sook,” Indrajit said. “It might be the ugliest building in the entire Spill.”

  “Banks and risk-merchants want to convince you that they are enduring, that they’ll be as long as the temples and then some,” Fix said. “Lawyers and accountants want to convince you that they’re frugal.”

  Indrajit opened the front door, noting that it was anything but cheap. The yetz-wood slab was six inches thick and hard as rock—a direct hit from a ballista bolt might not pierce it.

  Behind the door was a waiting room with three divans and a man with skin blue as the sky, standing in front of a steep staircase leading up. He wore gold pantaloons and his bare chest was covered with swirling tattoos reminiscent of waves, and within the waves swam porpoises and orcas. Indrajit wasn’t entirely sure, but he dimly thought the man might be of a race native to the Paper Sultanates.

  The blue man bowed at the waist. “Is the advocate expecting you?”

  “I thought he was a notary,” Indrajit said.

  “Our master is both,” the blue man said. “Advocate is the senior title.”

  “You mean the more expensive title,” Indrajit quipp
ed.

  The blue man smiled.

  “The advocate is not expecting us,” Fix said. “But he’ll see us. We come on behalf of the risk-merchant Frodilo Choot.”

  “We know the name. One moment.” The blue man turned and slipped upstairs.

  “Careful,” Indrajit whispered to his partner. “He said we. The other guy is probably invisible.”

  “You might not be wrong,” Fix whispered back.

  The blue man returned, his step brisk. “The advocate will see you.”

  They climbed the steps, leaving the blue man behind. “That was easy,” Indrajit murmured.

  “He has to see us,” Fix said. “We might be bringing money, or some kind of response relating to his request for payment. If he turns us away, he’s not zealously representing his client.”

  “What a strange view of the world you must have.”

  The stairs were narrow and steep. At the top of the flight they made a one hundred eighty degree turn and climbed back the other way. At the top of the steps stood another yetz-wood door, this one hanging open. Behind the door was an office. Inside, a Wixit stood behind a broad desk and manipulated papers, a clay pipe clamped in its teeth. Shelves climbing around the walls were heavy with scrolls and codices, and a table took up most of the free floorspace, groaning under stacks of paper and pots of ink.

  To one side, stairs climbed up again.

  The Wixit sucked at its pipe, exhaled a blue cloud, and then smiled, showing all its teeth. “You’ve come from Choot. About our notice of a claim, et cetera?”

  Indrajit blinked. “Your servant referred to himself as we, too. Do you both mean you two together? Are you a team?”

  The Wixit barked, a sound close to laughter. “When I say we, I am referring to myself and my client. When little Dromit says we, he does so because his people believe they have a collective mind. In their own language, as a result, they can only refer to themselves as we.”

  Indrajit was amused to hear the Wixit, who was the size of a small dog, refer to the blue-skinned man as little Dromit, but he managed not to laugh.

  “You say they believe they have a collective mentality?” Fix pressed.

  The Wixit exhaled another cloud. “They believe it, but they’re mistaken. His people are idiots. Are you going to contest the claim? Or, for the avoidance of doubt, is Frodilo Choot, in her capacity as risk-purchaser, going to contest my client’s rightful claim for reimbursement, et cetera?”

  “We’re happy to pay,” Indrajit said. “We just need to understand who’s receiving the money.”

  “No, you don’t.” The advocate smiled toothily again.

  “The…beneficiary…was Thinkum Tosh, who is deceased.” Indrajit still struggled with the new vocabulary. “We would like to be certain that the correct person is being paid.”

  “Tosh’s legal heir,” Fix clarified.

  “Fortunately for you and for my friend Frodilo Choot, you need to know no such thing.” The Wixit sucked on its pipe and paced back and forth along its desk for a moment, as if collecting its thoughts. “Since you have not apparently read the notice, and are apparently not familiar with the terms of the contract, I will spell it out for you: under the contract, because Ilsa without Peer died—a fact attested by the contractually and legally sufficient number of three witnesses—Frodilo Choot is obligated to pay into the destination account. Ownership of that account is not a relevant term of the contract. Et cetera.”

  The slippery concepts tumbled about in Indrajit’s conception. “You’re saying she has to pay, no matter who gets the money.”

  The Wixit bowed. “Those are the terms of the contract.”

  “And whom do you represent?” Fix asked.

  “My client.” The Wixit smiled.

  Indrajit fumbled, and found he had nothing more to say. Could they seize the advocate and physically shake the information out of him?

  “I detect in this awkward message of yours,” the advocate said, “the preliminaries to an attempt by Frodilo Choot to avoid her obligations under the risk-purchasing contract by challenging my client’s standing. Please tell her that if she tries to resist us in court, I will not only have the amount of the claim, I will have damages for malfeasance, my client’s costs—my fees are steep, I assure you—and a censure from the Paper Sook. I’ll have her license to purchase, resell, and repurchase risk taken away. Et cetera.”

  Indrajit heard a footfall. Turning, he saw a muscled, bronze-skinned man standing on the bottom step of the flight of stairs leading up. He held a heavy crossbow in his hands, aimed at Indrajit. The weapon was cocked, the steel head of the bolt grinning evilly.

  If Indrajit were shot, Fix would certainly be able to defeat the crossbowman, and probably shake the information they wanted out of the Wixit advocate.

  But Indrajit would be dead.

  “Thank you very much.” Indrajit smiled politely. “We’ll show ourselves out.”

  They descended the stairs in silence. The man with sky-blue skin and tattoos like the ocean bowed as he ushered them out the front door.

  “That was less successful than I had hoped,” Indrajit commented, stretching his back and twisting his neck until he felt the bones pop.

  A black-and-orange hurricane crashed past him. The sudden apparition hurtled toward Fix, and if it had been aiming at Indrajit, it would have flattened him.

  Fix, though, had faster reflexes. Shifting his weight onto his back foot and pivoting on his forward heel, he brought his spear up in front of him. The orange and obsidian meteorite altered its course at the last second, avoiding being impaled and slamming instead into the advocate-notary’s door.

  Yashta Hossarian. And behind him came a ring of Zalaptings.

  “Run!” Fix yelled. He hurled himself at the wall of lavender and broke through. Indrajit followed; the wounds in his legs screamed, and he ignored them. With his longer legs, he was quickly at his partner’s shoulder.

  The lavender men pursued, but their short, bowlegged gait was no match for the long, loping stride of the Recital Thane or for Fix’s tremendous energy.

  It took Indrajit and Fix three turns to get into the main square of the Paper Sook, thick with the press of buying and selling. As Indrajit lowered his head to plunge into the crowd of merchants, he heard the scratching of talons on hard earth behind him, and, farther away, the shouting of Zalaptings.

  Yashta Hossarian had caught up.

  “This way!” Fix plucked at Indrajit’s tunic, pulling the poet to the right, under an awning. Tall shelving and stacks of scrolls flashed through Indrajit’s peripheral vision on both sides, and Fix kicked at the base of a wall of shelves, pulling it down behind them. Scrolls bounced off Indrajit’s shoulders and fell behind him into his wake.

  Offended merchants roared.

  At the back of the shop—whatever it was—Fix ducked into a split in the canvas. Indrajit followed, and found himself in an alley barely wider than his shoulders. Fix, shorter than Indrajit but also wider, ran with his shoulders twisted diagonally, one shoulder thrust forward as if he aimed to tackle someone.

  Indrajit smelled roasting fowl, and suddenly felt hungry.

  Fix dodged left, down a different alley, and scrambled up a stack of crates and barrels, piled neatly on the packed earth and roped together for stability. Indrajit followed, reaching a flat, orange-tiled rectangular rooftop. Fix threw himself onto his belly and slunk to the edge of the roof, peering down into one of the alleys below.

  Behind them, the shouts of outrage faded, and the dull rumble of buying and selling in the Paper Sook came to drown them out.

  “We may have lost them,” Fix whispered. “That was Yashta Hossarian and his company. What on earth would they want with us?”

  “I told you, they’re hired by Holy-Pot.”

  “Holy-Pot’s dead.”

  “But they don’t know that. Or if they do, maybe the fact that he’s dead has sent them coming after us.” Indrajit shrugged. “Maybe they think we killed him and ro
bbed him, and they want to beat their pay out of us.”

  Fix’s gaze jumped to a spot behind Indrajit, and he sprang to his feet, drawing his falchion.

  “Frozen hells.” Indrajit turned, arming himself with the leaf-bladed sword.

  Two Zalaptings stepped onto the rooftop from the crate- and barrel-made stairs. They held their spears low and glared.

  Fix freed the hatchet from his belt with his left hand.

  Then two more Zalaptings climbed up, and two more again.

  “Three to one,” Indrajit observed to his partner. “We have longer reach, but their spears cancel that out. We’re probably stronger.”

  “Still bad odds,” Fix murmured. “On the count of three, turn back and run. We’ll jump across the alley. They’ll never be able to follow.”

  “I’m not the best jumper,” Indrajit said.

  “One,” Fix said. “Two.”

  Indrajit heard the heavy whumph of something hitting the rooftop behind him, and then Yashta Hossarian’s voice. “If you try running again, I shall have to kill you.”

  Fix didn’t count three.

  Indrajit turned slowly. Hossarian prowled along the edge of the rooftop, anger flashing in his obsidian-colored face, antennae waving frenetically. Fix kept his back to the bird-legged jobber, facing the Zalaptings, and adjusted his grip on his weapons.

  “If you hadn’t attacked us,” Indrajit said, “we’d never have run. Aren’t we friends, Hossarian?”

  “Where is Ilsa without Peer?” Hossarian asked.

  What did Hossarian want?

  What did he know?

  “Dead,” Indrajit said. “Signed witness statements and all. And so is Holy-Pot. And if you’re looking to get paid, we can’t help you. Whoever killed that two-faced bastard robbed us of our own payday.”

  “She isn’t dead,” Hossarian rumbled, “and you know it.”

  Indrajit sighed. “I know surprisingly little. But I saw a corpse that looked like Ilsa’s. And I saw another that I’m pretty sure was Holy-Pot’s.”

  “Where are you hiding her?” Hossarian raised one birdlike leg, beckoning to Indrajit as if he could coax some answer from him.

  “I’m not hiding her. I’m looking for her, because she might be alive. What are you doing?”