In the Palace of Shadow and Joy

by D. J. Butler

  A fascicle.

  Another problem occurred to Indrajit, just as Mote Gannon looked up. The jobber captain must know his men should be on guard. No doubt, that was part of his security arrangement. And he would know in an instant that Indrajit and Fix were not his men.

  Gannon raised his eyes and frowned.

  Indrajit grabbed Mote Gannon, intending to throw him to the wall.

  The jobber captain, though, was faster than either of his men had been. He stepped in, turned his body to break Indrajit’s hold, and at the same time punched the Recital Thane across the jaw, knocking Indrajit spinning. Then he grabbed the hilts of his swords.

  Fix grabbed the hilts too, from behind, wrapping both fists around Gannon’s hands.

  Off balance, Indrajit seized a chair from the guardroom. The chair was heavy, made of metal-hard yetz-wood and pinned together, mortis and tenon style.

  “Fire!” Gannon roared. “Fire in the building!” Then he charged forward, dragging Fix with him. The stocky man barely kept his grip, and when Gannon reached the wall of the gateway, he lowered his head, twisting to throw Fix against the wall—

  Indrajit Twang hit him in the temple with the chair. Mote Gannon collapsed.

  Fix groaned, trying to stand. “Is he dead?”

  Indrajit checked. “He lives. And so do you. Now let’s all three of us get up into his apartment and have an intimate conversation.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Gannon had a key to his apartment in his pocket, so they let themselves in. Then Indrajit brought up the other two Handlers, one at a time, finally locking the door behind them and then further sealing it with the heavy iron bar hanging from a chain for the purpose.

  Then they climbed one more story, on a private staircase with steps made of pristine marble, and into the apartment proper.

  Mote Gannon did well for himself. Passing through an entry hall, past a kitchen and a dressing chamber, they found the large, square parlor. As Fix threw the jobber captain onto his back on a table as thick as his hand and stained the color of fresh blood, Indrajit looked about him and whistled. The apartment’s tall windows let in the sea breeze and the cry of the sea’s birds, but not the tidal stink that engulfed the lower precincts of Kish. Blue silk curtains waved gently in the windows, themselves reminiscent of the ocean below. The marble floor was a pale pink, and covered with thick plush carpet.

  Gannon’s apartment lacked the omnipresent murals of Orem Thrush’s palace and was much smaller, but it rivaled the Lord Chamberlain’s home for opulence. Rather than murals, a few sculpted busts in the corners suggested gods Indrajit didn’t know, or maybe military men whom the jobber captain admired—Gannon had fought in Ildarion, Indrajit seemed to remember, though the busts looked like Kishi. Tiny model sailing ships stood on waist-high pedestals in each room, complete with tiny model sailors and marines, meticulously painted. Wicker shelves in the corner of the parlor held perhaps fifty scrolls, along with several writing tablets.

  “Frozen hells,” Indrajit said. “Just when I was beginning to like the man, it turns out he’s a reader.”

  Quick glances into other rooms revealed two sleeping platforms—one adult-sized and one the right size for a small child—austerely covered with a single sheet each, and a bath. Some unseen pump mechanism must bring water up into the tower to fill the bath—tiny waves lapped at the tiled edge of the pool—unless Gannon simply had the money to pay someone to haul water up in buckets.

  How deep was the pool?

  Indrajit had no time to find out, but resolved that when he was a wealthy jobber captain himself, he’d live in the top of a tower and have a pool in his apartment.

  He dragged the two Handlers into the parlor one at a time, throwing each onto a thick-cushioned divan. As the unconscious men sank into the soft pillows, Indrajit fought against the urge to sit beside them and get a little rest.

  Maybe a few minutes of sleep.

  Gannon groaned, struggling to sit up. Fix pushed him back down onto the wood and pressed a long knife blade to his chest.

  Indrajit didn’t like threatening the man’s life, but he had tried to kill them first. And Indrajit and Fix were bluffing.

  At least, he thought they were.

  “Who are you?” The jobber captain asked.

  “Ah, see,” Indrajit said, “now that is a lie.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gannon lay his head back on the table. Slowly, he brought one hand up to rub his temple. “I just asked a question.”

  Indrajit rested his hand on the hilt of his leaf-bladed sword. “Yeah, but see, the question implies that you don’t know who we are. And we already know that’s not true. So you are attempting a subtle lie, lying to us by implication. Maybe you find it easier to lie indirectly—that could reflect well on you, I suppose. It might suggest you’re not a habitual liar. Or maybe it just suggests that you have an easier time meeting another person’s gaze if the lie you’re telling in the moment is an indirect one.”

  Gannon frowned.

  “Do you have anything to eat?” Indrajit added. “I could really go for some cured meat, but bread would do. Fish, if it’s all you’ve got.”

  “Or maybe he wants to convince us he’s been knocked on the head,” Fix said. “So he won’t be able to remember anything.”

  “That would present a problem for us,” Indrajit conceded. He abandoned any hope of eating, at least for the moment.

  Fix shrugged. “If he doesn’t know anything, we just chop him up and throw him down the latrine for the Druvash ghosts to eat.”

  Gannon struggled to sit up for a moment, but surrendered to Fix’s strength. “You broke into my home!”

  “Yes, and you might tell someone,” Fix agreed. “Some judge or some jobber on a law-enforcement contract. So we should probably kill you, in any case.”

  “Although,” Indrajit added, “if the good captain had something interesting to tell us, maybe we could let him live in exchange for the information.”

  Gannon said nothing.

  An uncomfortable thought began to take shape in Indrajit’s mind.

  “You were very quick,” he said. “With that question and its lie by implication, I mean. You had it ready.”

  Gannon glared at him.

  “And also, your own men were standing guard below. That seems odd, doesn’t it? Surely, a high-fee jobber company like the Handlers could make more money working some task for one of the great families, and then just pay a much more low-rent force to work as simple security.”

  “What are you saying?” Fix asked.

  “I’m saying that I bet, usually, the men standing watch down in that gateway aren’t wearing Gannon gray.”

  Fix frowned. “You’re saying, you think he knew we were coming.”

  “I think he thought it was a possibility. So he put his own men on watch at his apartment.”

  “Listen to me, you criminals—” Gannon started to speak.

  “Call me by my name,” Indrajit said.

  Gannon glowered.

  “Go on.” Fix tapped his knife on Gannon’s chest. “Call him by his name.”

  “Twang,” Gannon said. “Indrajit Twang.”

  “There it is,” Indrajit said.

  Gannon shifted his gaze. “And you are Fix.”

  “I think it must have been the Zalapting,” Indrajit said.

  “That Zalapting told no one anything at all,” Fix said.

  “Except that the fact that he never rejoined the company suggested we’d killed or captured him. That put Gannon on notice that we might be onto him. On the other hand, the fact that Gannon here only posted two guards, and that he walked into the apartment without bodyguards, suggested he thought it was only a remote possibility we’d come after him. If he’d thought it was a likely event, he’d have had more protection.”

  “Or he overestimates his personal skill at combat,” Fix suggested.

  “Or you two got lucky.” Gannon sneered.

  “Anyway,�
�� Indrajit said, waving a dismissive hand, “we’re here, and you’ve admitted that you know us. So I think it’s time you just go ahead and tell us everything.”

  “Hells take you,” Gannon said.

  “Ah.” Indrajit shook his head. “So you’re going to show us you’re tough, and we’re going to have to wound you until you tell us what we want to know. Doesn’t that seem tiresome to you?”

  Fix shrugged. “Maybe he thinks we’ll torture his boys in front of him, and he figures he can take that.”

  “Well, they would be sad to hear that.” Indrajit crossed his arms. “How about it? Should we kill your two employees right off, just to clear the way for you to be honest with us?”

  “I think it would focus his mind, too,” Fix suggested.

  “Let’s at least start by telling him what we want to know,” Indrajit said. “Maybe he’ll find it’s something he’s happy to tell us. Maybe then we can let him and his men free, and be friends again.”

  “Were we friends before?” Fix asked.

  “Well, we could become friends, then. Maybe we could become Handlers, ourselves. This little caper might turn out to be something like a job interview. You know, the old classic, Hey, if you can kidnap me and tie me up, I guess I’ll have to hire you before you join the competition move.”

  “Hells take your mothers,” Gannon snarled.

  “No need to get personal, Mote.” Indrajit sighed. Something about capturing and tying up the famous jobber captain made him feel powerful, or at least capable. “So, here’s the question.”

  “You want to know why I know your names.”

  “I want to know who told them to you.” Indrajit paced back and forth. “Here’s how I see it. Someone gets old Thinkum Tosh to sell risk on the life of Ilsa without Peer. Frodilo Choot, down in the Paper Sook, buys that risk, and she hires you.”

  “Choot told me your names,” Gannon growled.

  “I don’t think so,” Indrajit said. “I think Holy-Pot Diaphernes brought the deal to Choot, and you were already part of the deal. Choot just had more money than Holy-Pot, that’s why she got involved. She was one of the victims, the one who was supposed to lose her money.”

  “Indrajit…” Fix said.

  “Only Choot wasn’t just someone with money, was she?” Indrajit probed. “You had personal reasons to want to hurt her.”

  Gannon shrugged. “I’ve worked with lovers who had jilted me before.”

  “I knew it!” Indrajit snapped.

  “But she didn’t give you our names,” Fix said.

  “It must have been Holy-Pot who told me your names, then.” Gannon’s eyes glinted. “I’m sure he can confirm that if you ask him.”

  “See, now you’re taunting us.” Indrajit shook his head. “You know he’s dead, and you know we know it.”

  “You know so much,” Gannon said, “I don’t think there’s anything I know that you haven’t already figured out.”

  “What I’m looking to find out,” Indrajit said, “is whose idea was it? Who was the first mover here? Orem Thrush?”

  Gannon started to laugh.

  “Was it the opera house?” Indrajit continued.

  “And why us?” Fix asked. “If someone had to go down for the murder, why not just grab a couple of beggars from the street and throw them into the mix? What would Orem Thrush or the opera house have against me?”

  Gannon’s laughing grew louder, and he attempted to speak through the guffaws. “Oh, fine…I will tell you.” Red in the face, he got his laughter under control, but tears of mirth marked his cheeks. Indrajit felt vaguely unsettled. “Killing you was Holy-Pot’s idea.”

  “What?” Indrajit felt a cold rock in the pit of his stomach.

  “Why?” Fix looked more curious than angry, as if he were solving a puzzle.

  “Why?” Gannon laughed again. “I swear, the stupidest people are smart. Because, you hatchet-swinging muttonhead, you were taking risk-contracts off the registry.”

  “So?” Fix’s face was intent. Indrajit eased a step closer, just in case his friend decided to stab Mote Gannon.

  “So, you were Holy-Pot’s boy. You write contracts off the registry, people assume it’s really Holy-Pot doing it. Holy-Pot worried you’d get him into trouble, or if you didn’t, you’d do something else to hurt his business or hurt the Paper Sook. So he decided to kill you.”

  Fix rocked back on his heels, a surprised and thoughtful look on his face.

  “I wasn’t writing risk-contracts off the registry,” Indrajit objected.

  “No,” Gannon agreed. “But you’re a screw-up. You owed Holy-Pot money. You spent Holy-Pot’s money. You stole from him.”

  “That’s not how I see it,” Indrajit murmured.

  “As long as you were walking around, you were an advertisement for the idea that ripping off Holy-Pot Diaphernes was no big deal, a deed without consequences. Holy-Pot wanted you dead too, Fish Eyes.”

  “I’m not a fish,” Indrajit said.

  Gannon’s laughter grew louder. He arched his back, as if the laughter might erupt from his belly button.

  “You’re very amused, for a guy lying on his dining room table at knifepoint,” Indrajit said. “What aren’t you telling us?”

  “Only one thing.” Gannon gasped, the laughter choking off in his throat as he sucked air into his lungs.

  “The person who wanted Ilsa dead,” Indrajit said.

  “Orem Thrush,” Fix suggested.

  “The Palace of Shadow and Joy,” Indrajit countered.

  Gannon shook his head. “The one thing I know, that I’m not telling you…”

  He broke into laughter again.

  “Frozen hells, Gannon,” Indrajit muttered. He prodded Gannon’s shoulder with the tip of his blade. “Tell us now.”

  “That’s the one thing.” Their prisoner smiled. “I am not Mote Gannon.”

  For a split second, Indrajit smelled water. Not the cool, blue, healing scent of rain in the spring, transforming cracked cakes of dirt back into comfortable mud, not the nourishing green aroma of a spring bubbling up within the secret heart of a thicket or a grove, but the purple reek of a stagnant pond.

  Then Fix somersaulted forward across the room.

  A flash of yellow at the left margin of his vision warned Indrajit that something—the same thing that had hurled Fix across the parlor?—was lunging for him.

  He dropped to the floor. A heavy spear thrust against the wood and bent, bronze head folding neatly with a swift metallic groan. Indrajit rolled beneath the table and under a sudden cloud of curses that exploded in his direction, toward Fix.

  The black-market risk-merchant was resilient. He was already shaking himself, trying to stand, leaning against the wall as if climbing a ladder. A knee-tall being with bright green skin and a gray tunic dropped suddenly into Indrajit’s view, holding a dagger in one hand that, at the wielder’s scale, looked like a sword.

  Had the small man been hiding among the scrolls?

  As he scrambled toward his friend, Indrajit saw who had attacked them from behind. It was the big yellow Grokonk, the female, and at her shoulder stood the Grokonk Third. The Third stabbed with a spear directly at the space where Indrajit had been standing, and would have run the Recital Thane through if he hadn’t just moved.

  The Grokonk female bellowed.

  The Third cursed, then dropped back and turned his attention to untying the two Handlers who had been at the guardroom. The two-to-one odds against Indrajit and Fix were about to become four-to-one.

  Indrajit grabbed the imp’s wrist. The tiny green man shouted something unintelligible and bit Indrajit’s hand. Indrajit ripped away the dagger and wrapped his fingers around the little man, preparing to throw him back at the other Handlers—

  But saw that the Handlers had frozen in place.

  For a moment, he wondered whether some sorcerer had cast a spell, but then he realized that the Handlers were all staring at the little person in his hand.

  Ind
rajit laughed. “Mote Gannon,” he said to the little green man. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Tiny Gannon spat and tried to bite him again. The doll-like man, Indrajit now saw, had the same features as the taller man they had taken to be Mote Gannon. They could have been twins, only one was a fifth the size of the other and the color of an avocado.

  What did that mean?

  “We could kill him,” Fix suggested.

  “We need him,” Indrajit said. “This was a trap. There were more guards all along.”

  The Grokonk female bellowed again.

  “They knew we’d come,” Indrajit continued. “They realized they’d said my name. They knew we’d come find what was going on, and they waited for us, to finish out their contract by killing us.”

  The Handlers’ expressions were all sour.

  Indrajit nodded to the fair-skinned man with spectacles. “Who are you, then?”

  The fair-skinned jobber stood and straightened his clothing. “I’m Mote Gannon, as far as Kish knows.”

  “You understand that you were bait. This little guy here was willing to sacrifice you.”

  Tall Gannon shrugged.

  Indrajit flicked the green imp hard in the forehead with one fingernail. It was meant to be just a threat, but the fair-skinned man fell down as if he’d been punched in the face.

  “You’re connected,” Indrajit said.

  “If you kill me,” the Ildarian said, “I can be replaced.”

  “And if I kill him instead?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “We don’t want to,” Fix said. “For one thing, that would leave a dozen or so angry and suddenly unemployed jobbers.”

  “Although,” Indrajit pointed out, “maybe then you could all join our company.”

  Tall Gannon frowned. “What company is that?”

  “We’re still working on a name.” Indrajit smiled and backed toward the hall, and then through the hall toward the exit.

  The Grokonk female roared.

  “Herness would suggest the Dead Men as a good name,” the Grokonk Third said. The wheedling, greasy look on his face might have been intended to be a sly grin. The Grokonk female bellowed another time. “Or the Cowards.”

  Tall Gannon raised his hands peaceably. “Let them go,” he said.