by D. J. Butler
Yuchak and Zalapting jobbers tried to dash around the Sword Brother in the narrow alley to join the fight, and each time, Fix rendered the extra combatant harmless in a quick, efficient manner. A deceptively gentle poke with the ax handle to this one’s head, a falchion slash across that one’s belly, and always the fight whirled around the two men.
Indrajit tightened his grip on Vacho and prepared to charge into the fray. “Protagonists!” he yelled. It wasn’t a proper battle cry, but for the moment it would do.
As he yelled, yellow light erupted from behind him. The Sword Brother hunkered and stepped back, shielding his eyes. Fix pressed his advantage for a moment, and then Zalaptings swarmed past him from Orem Thrush’s palace, sweeping the Sword Brother and the rest of Gannon’s Handlers away.
Indrajit took a deep breath, feeling safe at last, and sheathed his sword. Fix put away his own weapons, and when they turned, they found they were facing Four Eyes again, the Lord Chamberlain’s doorkeeper.
“Indrajit,” Four Eyes said. “Fix.”
Zalaptings returned from chasing the Handlers and surrounded the three men.
“We want to talk to the Lord Chamberlain,” Indrajit said.
“Good.” Four Eyes smiled. “The Lord Chamberlain wants to talk to you.”
The Zalaptings raised their spears.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Frozen hells. I just want people to stop pointing weapons at me.”
Four Eyes made an expression that wasn’t quite a smile, but the spears weren’t lowered.
“Fine,” Indrajit said. “We want the same thing as the Lord Chamberlain. We want to talk.”
“We want to rescue Ilsa,” Fix added.
“By tomorrow morning,” Indrajit said. “So let’s get a move on.”
Four Eyes and his Zalaptings prodded and led the two jobbers into the Lord Chamberlain’s palace, down two hallways and up a flight of steps, into a room without windows. There was no light in the chamber, but Four Eyes took an oil lamp from a niche in the hallway and raised it over the cell, illuminating bare stone floor.
“The night is warm,” Four Eyes said. “You’ll be fine waiting here for a little while.”
“This is not quite what I had in mind,” Indrajit said.
Thrush’s men disarmed Indrajit and Fix. Four Eyes and the lavender warriors retreated, spears last and pointing at the two jobbers, and then the door shut, leaving Indrajit and Fix in total darkness.
Indrajit heard the heavy thud of a bar being slotted into place, holding the door shut.
“We’ll just wait here, then!” Indrajit called.
No answer.
“Tell the Lord Chamberlain I haven’t punched any of his people since we spoke!”
“That you know of,” Fix said.
“What?”
“Well, you did punch that Zalapting Handler in the face. What if he’s one of Thrush’s people?”
“Well, if Gannon’s Handlers somehow work for Orem Thrush, rather than for Frodilo Choot…or rather, Holy-Pot Diaphernes…then we did worse than punch that guy in the face.”
“You ripped off the blue guy’s arm.”
“And stabbed him in the face. And threw Mote Gannon over a cliff. You ran a Zalapting right through with your spear.”
“We killed the two Grokonk.”
“No. We killed the big female. She killed her little neuter buddy. And he…or it…killed the little male. Bit him right in half.” Indrajit shuddered.
They were silent for a bit. Indrajit eased himself into a sitting position on the cool stone. He heard Fix situating himself similarly.
“Do you hurt as much as I do?” Fix asked.
“I was keeping track for a while,” Indrajit said. “Which muscles ached, where I was wounded. Now it’s all just melted into a single ball of pain. Including my stomach.”
“Me too. Maybe this whole jobber captain thing isn’t worth it.”
“If we can rescue Ilsa by tomorrow morning, we might come out of these three days of pain with a thousand Imperials. No, fourteen hundred. I can’t read, but I’m pretty sure I’m getting that math right.”
“Okay,” Fix agreed, “that would be worth it.”
“Besides,” Indrajit said, “it turns out that the reason Holy-Pot tried to have you killed is that you were taking off-registry risk-contracts. So I’m not sure that business is better. Be a jobber captain, we’ll work for a year, and then you’ll have enough cash to impress your lady love. Buy an island up the coast, settle down, raise a little brood of children. Spoil their minds by teaching them to read.”
“She married someone else,” Fix said.
“Oh.” Indrajit thought about this. It was difficult to concentrate, his head hurt too much. “Then why are you stuck here again? I thought you were trying to make money to impress her.”
“I was. Then she married. Now maybe I’m trying to make enough money to impress myself. Prove that I’m the kind of man she might have married.”
“That’s a terrible way to try to keep score, Fix,” Indrajit said. “Maybe the worst.”
Fix said nothing.
“On the other hand, maybe she’ll find you dashing as a jobber captain, and run away with you. Her husband will challenge you to a duel, you can kill him with a clean conscience, and then you can go live on a private island.”
“If I run off with his wife, I don’t think I can kill him with a clean conscience.”
“Not even if you do it for love? I thought anything you did for love was pure,” Indrajit said.
“No, that’s nonsense,” Fix said.
“You’re right,” Indrajit agreed. “Pure street bawdy.”
“But I need to stay in Kish to keep an eye on her.”
“In case he dies?”
“Or in case she needs my help.”
“Ah, Fix.” Indrajit sighed. “Life is complicated.”
“Where do you think Ilsa is right now?”
“I hope she went to ground. Hid.”
“I was thinking that maybe Orem Thrush found her. And maybe that’s what he wants to tell us.”
“I hope not,” Indrajit said. “I don’t think he’ll pay us, if that’s the case.”
“Frodilo might, though,” Fix said. “And two hundred Imperials would be nothing to sneeze at, especially if I could take the money and sleep for a few days.”
“Two hundred Imperials would buy a house, so you’d have a place to sleep in.”
“Not in the Lee, it wouldn’t.”
“I was thinking about a house in the Dregs.”
“I want a house in the Lee. Or an apartment, at least. But that’s a couple thousand Imperials, I think.”
“Well, if you’re going to aspire to wealth,” Indrajit said, “why not aspire all the way? Why not get a house in the Crown?”
Fix was silent.
“Oh,” Indrajit said. “She lives in the Lee.”
“Yes.”
They were silent for some time.
“You know,” Indrajit said, “we’ve been in here awhile. For a guy who urgently needed Ilsa without Peer back by tomorrow morning, the Lord Chamberlain seems pretty content to let us stew.”
“I think he’s recovered her. Maybe she just came back. Maybe some other jobber found her.”
“Maybe Grit Wopal found her.”
“Then why would Thrush want to speak to us?”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” Indrajit said. “Maybe he just wants us killed. Maybe he wants to interrogate us first. Or maybe he’ll turn us over to the constables.”
“I feel like we keep chasing our tails around a track of endless possibilities.”
“Yeah, but in the end, one of these explanations is right.”
“Does it matter if we ever find out?” Fix asked. “And how will we know?”
“I want to know the truth,” Indrajit said. “But it’s not as important to me as, first, survival, and second, getting paid.” But was that really true? It was, at least in the sense th
at if Indrajit died, he’d never find a successor Recital Thane.
“And what about that deadline?” Fix asked. “Tomorrow morning. The opera’s performances are in the evening, so it’s not that he wanted to be sure she made the show.”
“If Thrush wants her dead, then he wants her dead by tomorrow morning.” Indrajit tried to focus. “So maybe he thinks he’s about to kill her, but he’s keeping us in reserve just in case he fails, to deploy us again?”
“I feel like there’s some central point we’re missing,” Fix said. “Some central idea that, once we see it, it will cause the events of the last two days to make complete sense.”
“I don’t think Thrush wants her dead,” Indrajit said. “So I think either he’s rescued her, and has just forgotten to come tell us about it, or he’s about to find out where she is, and then he’ll come up and send us after her.”
“And the deadline, tomorrow morning? What do you make of that?”
Something nagged at Indrajit, but he couldn’t remember what.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is it possible that he knew something bad was going to happen to Ilsa? With all these armed thugs running around, is it possible that Orem Thrush wants to protect Ilsa? That he knows someone will try to attack her tomorrow morning, and he wants to save her? That whoever attacked her before is going to try again tomorrow?”
“I don’t think Orem Thrush wants to save Ilsa,” Fix said slowly. “Or at least, not for Ilsa’s sake. I think Orem wants to own her, like he owns so many other things and people.”
“Except us,” Indrajit said. “He doesn’t own us.” The bluster rang hollow.
“And in your scenario,” Fix said, “who tried to kill Ilsa the first time? It wouldn’t have been the Lord Chamberlain, if he’s trying to save her. So…are we back to the opera house? We never really investigated them.”
“Maybe Holy-Pot had something personal against her,” Indrajit said. “He tried to have us killed, after all. Maybe he wanted her dead, too.”
“So he entered into a risk-repurchasing agreement that would cause him to lose money if she died?”
“That loss would only make him look innocent, if anyone investigated. In the meantime, it let him set her up, along with us.”
“Interesting,” Fix said. “How can we find out if that’s true?”
“Well, we’re not going to find a note, in which Holy-Pot confesses that he tried to kill Ilsa without Peer. Maybe we will have to hire a necromancer.”
“Your idea might suggest who killed Holy-Pot, though.”
“What? Who?” Indrajit yawned. His aching muscles were knotting up, his wounds reaching that state of scabbing where they no longer felt they were about to tear, and instead began to itch, and he was exhausted. All told, he really wanted to sleep. Almost as much as he wanted fourteen hundred Imperials.
“Ilsa,” Fix said. “If we left them alone, maybe Holy-Pot saw his chance and tried to kill her. Only she defended herself.”
“Or maybe she knew what he was up to, and ambushed him.”
“We’ll have to talk to Ilsa to find out,” Fix said.
“Or a necromancer.”
“I don’t believe you can talk with the dead. Or rather, I don’t believe the dead can talk to you.”
“I don’t know,” Indrajit said. “I’ve seen odd things. Heard an old cunning woman once, who had a familiar spirit. The thing sounded like it spoke out of her belly, and it had this voice…it was like a tree saw was talking.”
“You sure it wasn’t some little man, hiding down there? Someone Mote Gannon’s size? Or someone else talking through a tube? Or maybe the old woman had a second face, like Holy-Pot, only her second face was set into her belly?”
“All possible,” Indrajit admitted. “Still, I tend to believe.”
An iron rasp at the door made Indrajit sit up straight. Moments later, the door opened and a light burned his eyes. After blinking away the initial pain, Indrajit saw that the light came from a single oil lamp—he’d simply become adjusted to the darkness.
Standing in the doorway and holding the lamp was Grit Wopal, the Lord Chamberlain’s Yifft spy.
“Good evening.” The Yifft stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. The immediately following thud suggested that the bar was being put back into place.
Indrajit stayed seated. “Fancy meeting you here.”
The Yifft chuckled. “I’m glad you have a sense of humor. It’s so much easier to work at hard jobs with people who are capable of laughing.”
“I’m glad you see us working together,” Fix said. “This sort of feels more like we’re prisoners.”
“Yes, sorry about that.” Wopal crouched to set the lamp in the center of the floor, then sat cross-legged against a wall. “There’s just a lot of activity out there right now. A lot of heat, as you jobbers would say.”
“What do spies call it?” Fix asked.
Wopal raised a hand. “And I’m not a spy.”
“No?” Indrajit asked.
“I’m a spymaster.”
“Does that make us spies?” Fix asked.
“I might use the word agents instead,” Wopal said. “Or assets, if I wanted to be more vague. The Lord Chamberlain usually refers to his servants.”
“I like spies,” Indrajit said. “Though agents is okay.”
“If jobbers say there’s heat out there,” Fix said, “what do agents say?”
Wopal chuckled. “Enough, really. The point is, there are people chasing Ilsa without Peer still. I have not yet determined who they all are or who they work for.”
“We’re still trying to figure that out ourselves,” Indrajit said. “The truth is, we hadn’t ruled out the Lord Chamberlain as the one trying to kill her.”
Wopal nodded. “Because you’re not entirely sure you can trust me. I understand.”
“So you’re keeping us in here, because we contribute to the heat.” Indrajit nodded. “That’s not unfair.”
“On the other hand,” Fix said, “if the Lord Chamberlain really needs to find Ilsa by morning, he can’t have much time left. A couple of hours, maybe.”
“Oh, the time has run out.”
“There go the thousand Imperials.” Fix shook his head.
“Frozen hells. But there’s still Frodilo.”
“Also,” Wopal added, “Ilsa without Peer is dead.”
Indrajit took the news like a hammer to the chest. It snatched his breath away, and he was surprised to feel so much emotion. He tried to make a joke, and couldn’t.
Fix came to the rescue. “Looks like the Protagonists are going to start business thinly capitalized.”
Indrajit didn’t quite understand, but thinly capitalized sounded like poor, and that was certainly going to be true. He laughed, but it was a sharp bark that ended quickly.
“What happened?” Fix asked.
“She was killed at the Palace of Shadow and Joy,” Wopal said. “I don’t know who killed her.”
“So…we failed,” Indrajit said. “Whatever it was the Lord Chamberlain wanted her for, it’s over. He’s not going to pay us, but also…”
“Is he going to kill us?” Fix asked. “Break our legs?”
“No, no.” Wopal waved away the thought with a gesture. “Another…avenue…materialized for the Lord Chamberlain, so he’ll have what he wants, despite Ilsa’s death. And she was unhappy, poor thing, so maybe her passing is for the best. I don’t know if the Lord Chamberlain plans to pay you for your work. If he does, I think it’s likely that it won’t be a thousand Imperials.”
“He’ll just wait until the heat passes and then let us go?” Indrajit suggested hopefully.
“I’ve asked him to allow me to continue to engage you as assets,” Wopal said. “You’re enterprising, dogged, systematic, and clever enough. So even if he doesn’t recompense you, I’ll pay you something out of my funds, and then I’ll engage the…is it the Protagonists?”
“Could be worse,” Fix said.
&
nbsp; “Sure could be better, too.” Indrajit shook his head, and then he laughed. “Okay, Wopal. If you don’t mind working with a guy who once punched you in the face, I’m in.”
“Twice,” Wopal said. “Twice punched me in the face. I don’t mind. And the Lord Chamberlain will be here shortly, to make the details of his will known.”
“What avenue?” Indrajit asked.
“Excuse me?”
“What avenue materialized that let the Lord Chamberlain have his way, even with Ilsa dead?” Indrajit asked.
“I take it you know…what Ilsa was capable of?” Wopal asked. “I don’t mean her singing.”
“You mean how she made men fall in love with her. Made them sluggish and compliant.”
Wopal nodded. “The Lord Chamberlain found another of her kind.”
“A third?” Indrajit asked.
“Third?” Wopal looked surprised.
Indrajit heard footsteps in the hall, and the bar being drawn back again.
“Also,” he added, “the Protagonists is a great name. For jobbers or agents or whatever we end up calling ourselves.”
“Sure sounded good in a battle cry,” Fix said.
Grit Wopal frowned and blinked.
The door opened and light flooded in.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Ilsa!” Indrajit cried, once his vision had cleared. “Thanks be to every god in Kish!”
“Kish has some dark gods,” Fix muttered. “Maybe we don’t need to thank the cannibal cults and the kidnappers and the murderers.”
Indrajit ignored him.
Orem Thrush entered the room. He was resplendent in a toga dyed deep red, which he held in place with a closed fist over his sternum. He wore sandals of soft white leather, with thin soles. His hair was oiled and pulled back away from his forehead, and perfume wafted from him in waves. He carried no weapon, and something else about him seemed odd, but Indrajit couldn’t decide quite what. Altogether, Thrush’s costume spoke of wealth and luxury, and a man who had no need to fight or flee.
Orem Thrush must have been bound for the Auction, and meeting with the other six heads of the great families. Would such a costume intimidate the other lords? Would his lack of weapons reassure them? Would they all be dressed like this?