by D. J. Butler
Four Eyes the doorman, newly deferential in their presence, stepped aside into an alcove with a single cushioned chair. Close to the door as it was, it might have been his official station, a place to wait for knocking visitors.
“Zalaptings are weak,” Fix grumbled.
“Yeah, but they’re so plentiful,” Indrajit countered. “That’s why you say, of mosquitos, for instance, these things breed like Zalaptings. It means they spawn in huge numbers.”
“I know what it means.”
“And I’d love to have a wall of Zalaptings to take a few hits for me, you know?”
“No time!” Grit Wopal threw open the bar holding the door shut.
Yashta Hossarian crashed through the door, opening it with his body and knocking one of the hinges loose. Four Eyes immediately shrieked, not a mindless alarm but a string of high-pitched, compact syllables that Indrajit couldn’t decipher.
That ended abruptly as Yashta Hossarian flicked the sharp tip of an orange talon across Four Eyes’s throat. Bright red blood spouting from a severed artery and all four eyes opening into blind circles, the doorman sank straight down into a puddle of flesh on the floor.
Fix leaped past Indrajit, falchion in hand, but he didn’t attack. As the obsidian-colored birdman jobber recoiled into a defensive position, Fix grabbed the Yifft by the elbow and yanked him back. By the time he was shoulder to shoulder with Indrajit and the spymaster was behind them, Indrajit had out his own blade so that the two men formed a defensive wall protecting Grit Wopal.
“Fear the Voice of Lightning!” Indrajit cried.
Hossarian coiled, legs bent as if prepared to leap forward. “I’m here for Ilsa without Peer.” His voice rumbled like the bottom of a river.
“You want to kill her.” At the sight of the long, powerful muscles on the big jobber’s body, and the smell of blood rising from Four Eyes, Indrajit’s grip on his sword felt slippery and unsure. “I understand. You’re keeping faith with Diaphernes.”
“Faith has nothing to do with it.” Hossarian sniffed at the air. He shifted his weight from side to side, changing stances as if testing Indrajit’s and Fix’s reactions. Indrajit wished his heart weren’t beating so loud. “I am keeping my contract.”
“For honor’s sake?” Indrajit asked.
Hossarian blinked at him without expression.
“Someone out there is holding a final payment of money,” Fix said. “When he proves he killed Ilsa, he’ll get the cash.”
“Gentlemen,” Grit Wopal whispered. “There are other doors. Let’s back away calmly.”
Indrajit and Fix retreated, slowly and together. Hossarian advanced a step for each step back they took.
“But you know there’s a dead body,” Indrajit said. “Not Ilsa’s, but another of her kind. Why not present that one?”
“Maybe the other party knows about the dead body already,” Fix suggested.
“Stop trying to talk him out of leaving us alone!” Indrajit hissed.
Hossarian chuckled, a low rattle. “There is also honor.”
“She’s not here, anyway,” Indrajit said.
“No?” Hossarian sniffed the air again. “I smell her. But I think you’re right, it’s an old scent.”
“If you can smell her,” Fix muttered, “maybe you should try tracking her.” He and Indrajit retreated farther. The hall was barely narrow enough for the two of them to defend it, and they entered a stretch without side tables or statuary. From a mural, some former Lord Chamberlain frowned down at them with gaping eye sockets.
“But you’re here.” Yashta Hossarian smiled as he followed. “And you two fools are hells-bent on saving her life.”
“No,” Indrajit said quickly. “We were, but now we’re…” He thought for a moment, jaw working without words. What were they doing now? “Now we’re trying to save Orem Thrush.”
“Interesting,” Hossarian purred. “Why?”
“Because…” Indrajit said.
“Because…” Fix added.
“Because they’re the Lord Chamberlain’s servants,” Wopal said.
The floor just in front of Yashta Hossarian disappeared, falling away in the form of a trap door that opened beneath his feet. The gap that suddenly appeared was the width of the hall, and beneath it was a lightless shaft.
But the jobber was already moving.
“Stop him!” Wopal yelled.
Indrajit surged forward, Vacho up to try to keep the orange talons from his throat. Fix did the same, but Hossarian wasn’t attacking; he was trying to get a grip on the stone at the lip of the pit, and he teetered, struggling to find purchase.
A brown object half the size of a fist sailed forward past Indrajit’s ear; but for his excellent peripheral vision, he probably wouldn’t have seen it at all. It struck Hossarian in his antennae-like tentacles and burst, unleashing a glittering black cloud that stung Indrajit’s nose.
Pepper.
Shrieking in rage, Yashta Hossarian waved at the cloud in front of his face and then fell into the shaft.
“This way!” Grit Wopal called. As the three men ran through the palace’s corridors, guided by the Yifft, Zalaptings with long spears and short swords swarmed past them in the other direction. “Hold him!” the Yifft barked to the Zalaptings.
After sprinting down a short hallway, they encountered two more Zalaptings. These men were unarmored and carried only short swords—they looked as if they were off-duty, or maybe they were house-servants rather than soldiers.
“Follow me!” Wopal barked, and the two Zalaptings obeyed.
Two more long corridors, and suddenly they were at the other door of the palace. Lizard-like men in Thrush’s livery bowed and opened the door, ushering them out.
The Auction House was only a few blocks away. They ran.
“Won’t the other lords…think there’s something strange…when the Lord Chamberlain…shows up…looking like Ilsa?” Indrajit asked, huffing.
“Why should they?” Wopal asked.
Fix laughed.
“Because he’ll…look like Ilsa?” Indrajit felt stupid. “But no…they don’t know what she looks like…she sings in a mask.”
“And if she always…goes to the Auction,” Fix panted, “maybe for years now…then maybe they’re used…to Orem Thrush looking…like her. Maybe they think…he naturally looks like that.”
“Or they think…she’s his favorite bodyguard…and he always looks…like her.”
Grit Wopal nodded to all their guesses. “They won’t see…his face at all…beneath his mask.”
Arriving at a small elbow of street corner just out of sight of the Palace of Shadow and Joy and the Auction House both, they stopped to catch their breath.
“How will she kill him?” Indrajit asked.
“She’s armed and he isn’t,” Wopal said.
The two Zalaptings stared. They looked too frightened to ask what was going on, and they tightened their grip on their swords.
“It’d be easy enough,” Indrajit admitted. “All she’d have to do is get the sprig of Courting Flower away from him, then knock him silly with her magic. He’d probably slit his own throat, if she asked nicely.”
“What a power to have,” Grit Wopal muttered. Straightening his clothes, the spymaster led them into the plaza in front of the Auction House. The low steps before the shut door were occupied, by men in two different sets of livery. Indrajit ignored them for the moment, focusing on his companions.
“You’d like to have that power, too,” he guessed.
“It would make my job very easy,” Wopal admitted.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Fix said. “I think Ilsa’s power has to be tied to reproduction.”
“Oh, wait,” Indrajit said. “I haven’t had a good chance to use the word fascicle for almost an entire day.”
“I didn’t read this in a fascicle, I’m just thinking about it.”
“Planning to read a paper at the Hall of Guesses?” Indrajit teased his partner. �
��Give anatomy lectures?”
“I wouldn’t mind dissecting Ilsa,” Fix admitted. “With some Vin Dalu help. I might be able to test my idea.”
“I also wouldn’t mind dissecting Ilsa,” Wopal muttered.
“I think if reproduction were really hard for your race,” Fix said, “and it had something to do with the female—for instance, maybe if the female were only fertile one day a year, or something—then it would be very helpful for the female to be able to order males to step up and…do their job, so to speak…at that precise time.”
“You say that as if the females choose to have that power,” Indrajit said.
“I don’t exactly mean it like that. But maybe when they were…created…it was chosen for them.”
“You mean, the gods gave them that power to overcome a limitation in their reproductive arrangements?” Indrajit resisted the urge to sneer.
“Fine,” Fix said. “Maybe it was the gods. Or whatever power or process made them. I’m just saying, the parts of any successful creature tend to fit together, and that’s how I imagine Ilsa’s people might need such a power.”
“Do you two ever shut up?” Grit Wopal asked.
Chastened, Indrajit faced forward just in time to step up onto the lowest of the stairs in front of the Auction House, and realized that the two liveries worn by the men there were that of the jobbers in orange tunics, and the gray tunic and circular glyph that identified Mote Gannon’s Handlers.
“Ah, frozen hells.”
Tall Gannon rattled down the steps, drawing a long sword with each hand as he did so. Fix also drew his weapons, ax and falchion, but Indrajit raised his hands to try to avert a massacre.
“Hey, listen.” He looked around for indications of the presence of the little green Tiny Gannon, but didn’t see any. Did the minute fellow—apparently, the thinking or controlling part of the Gannon-entity—have to be close? Was he sitting in his swampy pool in his tower, half a mile away, seeing through Tall Gannon’s eyes? Was he hiding inside Tall Gannon’s body? “Listen, Gannon. We’ve had some disagreements this week, but I think it’s safe to say we can be on the same side now.”
At the last moment, as Fix was tensing his muscles to leap to the attack, Tall Gannon hesitated. “How do you figure that?”
Why did Indrajit think there could be peace? After all, Gannon’s Handlers had been in on the plan to kill Indrajit and Fix and make them the patsies for a murder.
“You were engaged by Holy-Pot Diaphernes, really,” Indrajit said hastily. “We were also engaged by Holy-Pot—”
Gannon took a swing.
Indrajit stepped back quickly, but Fix’s move was even quicker. The shorter man leaped in front of Indrajit, caught Gannon’s sword with the head of his ax, and shoved him away. The two Zalaptings fell in behind Fix, shaking.
“We are not the marks anymore!” Indrajit screamed. He wanted to yell, If Orem Thrush dies, I’ll make sure you get the blame!, but that didn’t seem wise. “Holy-Pot’s gone, and won’t pay you! If you kill us, Frodilo Choot won’t thank you!”
Gannon regained his balance with a thoughtful look on his face. “I can’t say I’m too afraid of the wrath of a single risk-merchant.” He raised his weapons into a defensive position. “Especially that one.”
Fix countered by dropping into an attack stance. “Why are you doing this?”
Tall Gannon smiled coldly. “It’s personal.”
A Kishi or a Zalapting or some other man with eyes set in the front of his face would have missed the attack. Indrajit, though, was Blaatshi, and as Tall Gannon said the word personal, he saw a flash of slate blue racing toward him at an oblique angle, from nearly directly behind.
He threw himself backward. Grit Wopal yelped, Tall Gannon attacked, Fix attacked back with two weapons, the Zalaptings dove in like lavender dogs, nipping at Gannon’s heels, and Indrajit slammed his chest into the attacking Luzzazza’s ankles. As they tumbled together, calculating that he had only moments of seized initiative left, Indrajit drew his leaf-bladed sword.
They rolled to their feet at the same moment, rage in the Luzzazza’s face and a long spear in both his hands. Indrajit was too close for the spear to hit him, so the Luzzazza stepped back, looking to put the right distance between them.
Indrajit stabbed him as hard as he could, in his remaining invisible arm.
He could tell which side of the body it was on, because the other side had a visible bandage where the Luzzazza had lost a limb. And he could tell that he’d scored a hit, because his blade sank deep into flesh, struck bone, and then showered very visible blood all over the cobblestones.
The Luzzazza roared. Twisting, he jerked leaf-bladed Vacho from Indrajit’s hand and then stabbed with the spear—
Indrajit stepped in again, and grabbed the spear with both hands.
The Luzzazza was bigger and stronger, and should have been able to seize control of the disputed weapon. But the Luzzazza was also freshly missing one arm and freshly wounded in another, and it was therefore in pain and distracted.
Indrajit yanked away the spear.
“This way!” Grit Wopal called.
Tall Gannon backed away from the battle. Indrajit picked his sword up from the cobblestones. Fix, in turn, grabbed Indrajit by the arm and dragged him out of sight after Grit Wopal and his Zalaptings. Turning down a side street, they stopped and looked back over a baker’s stall and three children playing a game with sheep’s knucklebones.
The gray-clad Handlers stared after them, or helped the Luzzazza. The jobbers in orange stood aside and watched, weapons ready.
“Aren’t those orange tunics on our side?” Indrajit asked.
“They’re hired by the Lord Chamberlain.” Wopal panted. “The Auction is always guarded by at least two jobber companies, engaged by two different lords. But they don’t know who I am and won’t take direction from me.”
“So, Gannon?” Indrajit asked.
“In the service of the Lord Stargazer at the moment.” Wopal shook his head. “Our bad luck that he appears to hate you.”
“What are we doing?” one of the Zalaptings asked.
Wopal fixed him with a firm eye. “Rescuing the Lord Chamberlain. I hope you’re both prepared to be heroes.”
The Zalaptings gulped.
“I do still have two orange tunics,” Indrajit pointed out. “And one gray one.”
“That’s not going to work.” Fix shook his head. “Not if they look at us directly.”
“Frontal assault is right out,” Indrajit added. “Sewers?”
“We’d need time to explore, and digging equipment.” Fix looked to the Yifft. “Unless you know a secret door in.”
Grit Wopal shook his head. “If there are secret doors, I don’t know them. I’ve never been inside the Auction House, much less the Auction Chamber. The heads of the great families go nearly alone, taking a single bodyguard each.”
“Some spymaster you are. How about secret powers?” Indrajit asked. “Maybe you can use your eye to put all the jobbers to sleep?”
Wopal didn’t even bother to chuckle.
“What we could really use is Ilsa’s power,” Indrajit reflected.
“Or the power of flight,” Fix added. “With time, we might be able to get down into the roof of the Auction House by rope from the top of the Palace of Shadow and Joy.”
“But we don’t have rope or time, any more than we have the power of flight, or Ilsa on our side,” Indrajit said. “Ilsa’s inside that Auction House, and she might already have killed Orem Thrush.”
“No,” Wopal said. “If someone had killed one of the lords, we’d know it by now.”
“Unless Ilsa has them all in a trance,” Fix pointed out.
Indrajit pulled the gray and orange tunics out of his pocket and looked at them. They might still have value, but only if they weren’t scrutinized too closely. “What we need,” he suggested, “is a distraction.”
“We could light a Zalapting on fire,” Fix said.
“What we need,” Indrajit continued, “is Yashta Hossarian.”
Wopal frowned. “Why would Yashta Hossarian help us?”
“He won’t,” Indrajit said. “So we’re going to have to help him.”
“You want me to free him,” Wopal said.
Indrajit nodded. “And tell him where to find Ilsa.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wopal sent the two Zalaptings. They ran off eagerly.
“Will Hossarian tear up the Lord Chamberlain’s palace?” Fix asked.
“I doubt it,” Wopal said. “He would have to fear a terrible retribution, and besides, we’re giving him what he wants.”
Indrajit and Fix nodded sagely.
“A more serious possibility is that he might decide to avenge himself by killing the three of us.” Wopal smiled. “Fix, I suggest you put on the gray tunic. It’s far too small for Indrajit.”
Indrajit handed over the tunic and Fix wormed his way into it. Indrajit and Wopal then donned the orange garb. “I guess we’re betting that Hossarian will show up and cause a scene, like he did at the Lord Chamberlain’s. And then we’ll run in.”
“Hold on.” Grit Wopal smiled at Indrajit and opened his third eye.
Indrajit again saw the yellow flesh, the thick mucus, and the horizontal slit of an iris. He felt relieved when the Yifft crouched at the mouth of the alley and turned that strange eye on the Auction House.
“Are you going to stun them with your eye, after all?” He grinned.
Wopal ignored him. “Fix, you see those two Kishi at the right end of the men in gray?”
Fix looked. “One has long, curly hair and the other has a shaved head.”
“When the noise starts, head directly for them.”
“Can you see weakness or something?” Fix asked.
“I see their uncertainty. They’re young, probably new.”
“The Luzzazza is near them,” Fix pointed out.
Wopal nodded. “But the Luzzazza is wounded.”
Moments later, Yashta Hossarian exploded onto the plaza.