In the Palace of Shadow and Joy

by D. J. Butler

  He was alone, and he was running. He charged the Auction House, heading not directly for the front door, but for a corner of the building.

  He was as fast as a horse, and he took the jobbers by surprise.

  “What’s he doing?” Indrajit asked.

  “Remember him jumping up to the rooftop?” Fix asked. “Let’s go, we won’t have much time.”

  They trotted down an alley and around a corner so that they came out onto the plaza from a different street. As they emerged, the jobbers had organized into something like a defensive wall. Arcing around ninety degrees of the building’s circumference, composed of both gray and orange tunics, the wall of men faced Yashta Hossarian with spears lowered and shields forward.

  Fix marched briskly toward the two Kishi Wopal had indicated. The Luzzazza had moved into the defensive wall, but two jobbers in orange tunics stood with the Kishi now. One had a fish’s head, and the other had skin the color of ebony, and pointed ears.

  Indrajit tried to look at his feet, feigning dejection. His wide vision served him well yet again, letting him observe keenly as Yashta Hossarian charged the wall of jobbers—

  And then leaped right over it.

  Those enormous legs, bent backward like a bird’s, sent him flying from the ground while he was still out of reach of the spears and hurled him up over the heads of the mercenaries. Several of them jabbed gamely with their weapons and came up far short. A few hurled spears and missed.

  Several shot bows, and two arrows struck Hossarian’s body.

  Hossarian didn’t have wings, but he seemed to fall slowly from his jump, drifting down toward the rooftop of the Auction House. As he fell, the wall of jobbers pivoted to follow him, ignoring Indrajit and his companions.

  “Hells take me,” one of the Kishi said as Hossarian flew.

  “Fire!” Mote Gannon yelled.

  Hossarian hit the rooftop. He landed with a staggering, off-balance movement that suggested that his wounds were serious. A third arrow immediately struck him, and then Indrajit was too close to the Auction House to see what was happening on its rooftop.

  Fix opened the door and they entered.

  Behind the door, a single hallway appeared to encircle the entire smallish building. Its outer edge was square, to match the exterior of the building, but its inner wall curved, suggesting a circular room occupying the building’s center. The hall was two stories tall and its walls were bare to the point of resembling a prison cell.

  A person standing alone, a quarter-turn away along the hall, suggested where the door could be found. Indrajit sized the person up as they approached: short and narrow, dark red, four teeth like tusks. He’d seen this race of men before—hadn’t there been one at the opera house?—but he didn’t remember their name. Walrus Tusk stood beside a pair of double doors of plain yetz-wood.

  “No one can enter,” Walrus Tusk said. “The Auction is in progress.”

  Indrajit listened, imagining he’d hear shouted bids, but there was silence. “Can you take a message in for us, then?”

  Walrus Tusk shook his head.

  Indrajit dug into his kilt pocket, looking for his purse.

  Fix punched Walrus Tusk in the face, felling him. “Too much talking,” he said to Indrajit, and then he opened the doors.

  Indrajit stepped over Walrus Tusk and into the Auction Chamber.

  He expected something like an amphitheater, with rows of seats cascading down into a well of furious action. In hindsight, given what Wopal had said about the Auction, that was a ludicrous image. Still, what he did see was surprising.

  “Spilkar’s thorny pants,” Grit Wopal murmured.

  The Auction Room was not two stories tall, but three. Its walls, like the walls of the encircling hallway, were stone, decorated only sparsely and strangely with the occasional plain gray blanket, and they rose in a cylindrical shape to a ceiling made of glass. Beyond the panes, Indrajit saw a blue, cloud-free sky.

  The room’s floor was fifteen feet below Indrajit’s sandals, reachable by a narrow staircase winding down around the inside of the cylinder. In the center of the floor rested a ring-shaped table, within which stood a podium. At the podium was a very ordinary-looking Kishi woman in a plain black tunic and breeks. She labored at a book that lay open on the podium, making annotations as she spoke to the men sitting at the table.

  There were seven men sitting, and behind each stood an armored warrior. Indrajit only recognized Orem Thrush, who wore a red toga and a mask that looked like his livery, a horned skull; armored and helmeted, and wearing a heavier version of the same headgear, Ilsa stood behind him. But the other six seated men must be the other six lords of Kish: the Lord Farrier, the Lord Usher, the Lord Gardener, the Lord Archer, the Lord Stargazer, and the Lord Marshal.

  “Frozen hells,” he murmured, “it’s the seven most powerful people in Kish.”

  “And Orem Thrush is still alive,” Wopal noted.

  “Eight,” Fix said.

  “Eight what?” Indrajit asked.

  “The eight most powerful people in Kish,” Fix explained. “The woman in black is the Auctioneer. She has the only permanent government post in the city.”

  Everything else the city did was auctioned off to one of the seven lords.

  “I should have brought a bow,” Grit Wopal said. “I’d just shoot Ilsa from here.” He started padding down the steps.

  “This is the quietest auction I ever heard,” Indrajit whispered, and followed.

  “And most important,” Fix said, bringing up the rear.

  As Indrajit descended, he saw more detail of the room. Multiple doors were set into the walls—unless they opened to very small closets, that suggested that the Auction House expanded horizontally underground, beneath the streets. Did it go farther down? What was in such rooms? Living quarters for the Auctioneer? Storage? Food and water? Written documents? The Auctioneer was writing in a book. Could there be rooms of such books stored down here? Written copies of contracts?

  He snorted. If a man wasn’t going to keep his word, Indrajit didn’t see how showing him a written version of the promise would have any effect.

  The stretches of wall between each pair of doors was thickened with another undecorated gray blanket. Were the blankets above and below trapping the sound? The men sitting at the table were indeed talking, though in ordinary tones and ordinary volume, but the sound didn’t seem to rise or echo, as Indrajit expected it might.

  A device to prevent eavesdropping, or to make conversations comprehensible and echo-free? Or both?

  As he reached the floor, immediately on the heels of Grit Wopal, he finally heard some of the conversation. Orem Thrush was speaking. “I realize this is a modest amount to bid on the Paper Sook Regulation Contract, but you know I’ve had difficulty with enforcement in recent years, and I can’t really afford to bid any more. I hope you will indulge me with this smallish payment, in this one case.”

  “Please,” Ilsa without Peer sang, with a beautiful melismatic flourish. Indrajit was grateful for the sprig of Courting Flower at his neck. He had enough in his pocket for the other six lords, he thought, but maybe not for their bodyguards as well.

  Ilsa’s brief song must surely be a breach of the Auction House’s rules, but no one objected.

  “Contract for the Regulation of the Paper Sook,” the Auctioneer intoned. Her voice had the listless, drugged quality of a person under Ilsa’s influence. “The Lord Chamberlain has bid one hundred Imperials. Are there any other bids?”

  The other six lords sat, silent.

  Indrajit’s head spun. Didn’t having the Contract for the Regulation of the Paper Sook mean that the Lord Chamberlain would impose taxes on the risk-merchants and bankers and lawyers of the sook, to recoup what the contract cost him?

  Frodilo Choot was on the hook to pay one hundred thousand Imperials. The Paper Sook was vast. Surely, the right to tax it would bring in thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Imperials into the coffers of Orem Thrush. That
one contract would bring the Lord Chamberlain fabulous wealth…and he was buying it for one hundred Imperials?

  But the other lords sat in silence, and made no counterbid.

  Ilsa. This was her doing. This was her value to the Lord Chamberlain. He wouldn’t have to win all the contracts, just a few big ones at steep discounts, and it would keep him fantastically rich.

  This was why he couldn’t allow her to escape. Not only could she not quit, but Orem Thrush would never take the chance that she might reveal to the heads of the other families that he had been defrauding them.

  Of huge amounts of money.

  Perhaps for years.

  It struck Indrajit as incongruous and maybe even hilarious that Thrush would bid one hundred Imperials. Why not bid one Imperial, if he thought he was guaranteed to win, regardless? Maybe some vestige of a conscience, or a belief in propriety, caused the Lord Chamberlain to pay an amount that was slightly less offensively low.

  Fix’s footfall on the floor behind him brought Indrajit from his meditation.

  “Contract assigned.” The Auctioneer made some notation in her ledger.

  And then Indrajit realized that Ilsa’s helmeted head was turned in his direction. She was looking at him.

  She drew a sword.

  “Ilsa!” Indrajit called. “Don’t do it!”

  Orem Thrush sprang to his feet. He yanked off his mask, revealing a face contorted and screwed up into a ball—it looked as if someone had taken a statue of Ilsa and slapped Indrajit’s eyes on it. In jumping up, Thrush knocked his chair back, and Ilsa leaped out of the way.

  The other six lords climbed to their feet, each bodyguard drawing a sword or taking an ax or a spear in hand. “What is this?” a man in a green toga demanded woozily.

  “Kill Orem Thrush!” Ilsa sang.

  She turned and ran.

  Fix seized the spear of a bodyguard to his left and wrenched it from the man’s hands, sending him away with a kick to the thigh. Then Fix and Grit Wopal rushed two more bodyguards from behind, scattering them.

  The other three bodyguards, and their clients with them, charged Orem Thrush.

  Indrajit took a start of two running steps and leaped up onto the circular table. To his satisfaction, a sheaf of papers—maybe a whole fascicle’s worth—and note cards tumbled to the floor. He landed in motion, and yelled at the Auctioneer: “Move!”

  She ducked, cowering beside the podium.

  Indrajit raised both hands and leaped again, hurling himself toward the podium.

  He landed off-balance, with one foot at the corner of the podium’s surface. The lectern lurched sideways and Indrajit jumped again.

  A warrior in lacquered blue armor raised an ax over his head, aiming at Orem Thrush—

  Indrajit tackled the man, knocking him to the floor. They rolled together on the stone and the ax went flying.

  Fix jumped over Indrajit’s head to attack a fighter in purple armor, forcing him back from the Lord Chamberlain. Grit Wopal took Orem Thrush—looking like a deeply shocked Indrajit Twang—by the hand and dragged him back toward an open door.

  An open door. The same door by which Ilsa had left?

  “The flower!” Fix shouted.

  The Courting Flower! Indrajit managed to disentangle himself from the fighter in blue and step back three paces. A warrior in yellow charged toward the Lord Chamberlain swinging a long-handled mace, so as Indrajit grabbed the flower, he ducked and stepped under the yellow-armored man, throwing a shoulder up into his midriff and pinning him against the blanket hanging on the wall.

  The yellow warrior choked, then inhaled deeply, and his motions suddenly became hesitant.

  Seizing his opportunity, Indrajit leaped for the warrior in blue, who was climbing to his feet. Indrajit slapped a big handful of Courting Flower against the grill of the man’s helmet.

  The warrior in blue inhaled and then staggered back.

  Indrajit stepped back and found himself shoulder to shoulder with Fix. “You’re under a spell!” he called. “Smell this!” As men in purple and green and orange came forward, but more hesitantly, he threw each man a small bouquet of the countermagical flower. “This is the counterspell! Breathe through it! It will clear your head!”

  Maybe Ilsa’s spell was fading, and maybe the plant had its effect. As each warrior sniffed the sprig and then passed it his master, their facial expressions changed from lethal rage to confusion to calm curiosity.

  “Hey!” The shout came from above. Indrajit looked up, flinching involuntarily, and saw jobbers in orange spilling in through the door.

  The one in front was a heavy Xiba’albi with a topknot and an obsidian-spiked club. “Interlopers! Trespassers!” the Xiba’albi bellowed.

  For a moment, Indrajit grinned. Then he realized that the jobber was talking about him.

  “No, wait,” he said.

  Fix pulled him backward by the shoulder, and Indrajit drew the leaf-bladed Vacho.

  “Gentlemen,” Fix said, “we came here to stop a murder.”

  The warrior in yellow shook his head. “You’ve trespassed on the Auction. The penalty is death.”

  “Trespassed…what are you…it’s just an auction!” Indrajit protested.

  The yellow warrior raised his mace and advanced.

  The other warriors in lacquered armor picked up swords, spears, and axes, and ranged themselves in a semicircle around Indrajit and Fix.

  The jobbers in orange poured down the steps. Behind them came men in gray, with Mote Gannon’s glyph on their tunics.

  “The door,” Indrajit whispered to his partner. With the muffled walls sucking sound out of the chamber, he could barely hear his own words.

  “There’s only one open,” Fix said. “All three of them went into it.”

  The bodyguards stepped closer, spreading themselves to have the optimal amount of space to create a lethal killing field.

  “Now Orem Thrush will try to murder Ilsa,” Indrajit predicted.

  “I’m kind of inclined to let him.”

  “I’m still running out that door. You ready? On three.”

  The lacquered warriors raised their weapons.

  CRASH!

  The window overhead shattered, and something huge and black and orange fell down into the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The bodyguard in yellow leaped forward, swinging his mace at Fix; the other fighters in lacquered armor fell back.

  For a split second, Indrajit felt offended that the yellow warrior was attacking Fix, rather than him. Did he not look as formidable as his partner? But his indignation ended quickly, as the yellow fighter snapped his arm in Indrajit’s direction and a gleaming blade affixed to the end of a long, fine chain hurtled toward the Recital Thane.

  He dropped backward to the floor. The chain and blade whizzed directly over his nose, missing his face by inches. At the same time, he saw Fix step in to his attacker, catch the handle of the mace with his ax, and stab with his falchion up into the man’s belly.

  Indrajit rolled to one side, lurching to his feet with his blade up in front of himself defensively. The black and orange object hit the ground, flexed, and bounced, and then Indrajit put enough pieces together to recognize what it was.

  Yashta Hossarian tore into the bodyguards of the great families like a pit lion tears into a pack of fighting dogs. They nipped at his sides, stabbing with spears and slashing with swords, and he seemed not to care as their blades nicked his jet-black flesh. The ichor that dripped from his flanks didn’t flow like blood, and Hossarian’s talons slashed the hamstrings of one man, dropping him to the floor, and then tore the head off a second.

  Indrajit stepped forward, thinking he might intervene in the battle, and then fell back again. The bodyguards shouted threats and curses, and called out directions to each other, trying to coordinate an encircling motion. Hossarian worked silently and efficiently, his face giving away no intentions and his talons as sharp and fast as they were long. The bodyguard in blu
e armor circled behind the armless jobber, and it looked for a moment as if he might have a clear aisle of attack into Hossarian’s back, but then Hossarian spun about, seizing the man’s head in one claw.

  The blue warrior screamed once, and then Hossarian squeezed. The fighter’s skull and helmet crumpled instantly.

  Indrajit had the sinking feeling that he was going to be held responsible.

  “Indrajit!” Fix hissed.

  Indrajit’s Kishi partner was grappled fist to fist and toe to toe with the warrior in yellow. The mace and ax had fallen to the floor and Fix’s blade was still impaled in the other man’s belly. The chain-blade lay snaked across the stone, still attached to the bodyguard’s wrist, but useless until the man in yellow could free himself from Fix’s grip.

  Indrajit grabbed the chain just below the blade. The bodyguard stared vitriol at him and tried to pivot, evading or possibly trying to throw Fix into his path, but the off-registry risk-merchant was too solid to throw so easily.

  Indrajit looped the chain around the yellow warrior’s neck and yanked it tight. When the bodyguard let Fix go, Fix yanked out his blade and kicked the yellow fighter into the path of Yashta Hossarian.

  Indrajit didn’t wait to see the result. “Go!” He scooped up Fix’s dropped ax and tossed it to him as he raced for the open door.

  Fix followed.

  They entered a hallway whose walls were lined with shelves. Other hallways intersected this one at right angles every few paces, and those intersecting halls were also lined with shelves. The shelves were stacked high with scrolls, codices, and baked clay tablets.

  Indrajit hesitated.

  “The door!” Fix threw his shoulder against the door, slamming it shut. “There’s no bar.”

  “Sure there is.” Indrajit jumped, grabbed a set of shelves as high up as he could reach them, and pulled them down in front of the door. Scrolls and wood planks collapsed in a tumble in front of the door, nearly raining down on Fix’s head, but the Kishi fighter managed to leap out of the way.

  From the chamber on the other side of the door, more screaming.

  Indrajit grabbed the shelves on the opposite side of the passage and pulled them down, too. The jumbled shelves and writing material amounted to a barrier nearly as high as Indrajit’s waist.