In the Palace of Shadow and Joy

by D. J. Butler

  “Well, don’t look so gleeful about it,” Fix grumbled.

  “I’m just happy to finally find a decent use for writing,” Indrajit said. “Would you care to throw your fascicle onto the pile?”

  “No.” Fix’s voice was sour. “But I bet the weight of a Recital Thane and all fifty thousand lines of the Blaatshi Epic would really slow down an intruder.”

  “Thirty thousand,” Indrajit said. “Depending on how much you want to embellish particular scenes. Fifty thousand would be a lot of embellishment. It might feel repetitive.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “That way.” Indrajit pointed at a greasy yellow light coming from the back of the corridors.

  They ran.

  “What are these papers?” Indrajit huffed.

  “You want me to stop and look?”

  As if to punctuate Fix’s question, they heard a THUD at the door behind them.

  “I want you to guess!” Indrajit said.

  They turned left with the corridor they were in, and reached an abrupt end—except that the shelves covering the end of the hallway had swung away from the wall, revealing a hinged mechanism by which the shelves moved, and also a space behind the shelves. The yellow light came from that open space, which had crumbling red brick walls and reeked of the dank, close, musty smell of mold and rot, with a faint hint of not-too-distant sewage.

  “Contracts,” Fix said. “Purchase orders. Statements of work. Change orders. After-action reports. Census tallies. Tax rolls. Maybe even literature.”

  “Forget I asked.” Indrajit stepped through the opening, Fix following.

  Crash!

  “That’s the door,” Fix murmured.

  “Shh.” Indrajit pulled his friend into the tunnel with him and pulled the shelves shut. They swung into place with a soft click.

  “I think Hossarian can smell us,” Fix said.

  “Then try being less stinky,” Indrajit suggested. “Also, quieter.”

  They followed the tunnel toward the yellow light at its end. At irregular intervals, the floor was scored with iron grills covering descending shafts—air rose from the shafts in breezes that were alternately warm and cold, salty and musty, stiff and gentle.

  Indrajit stopped over one shaft and pointed down—faint green light was visible below, and the smell of oil oozed up through the grate. “What’s down there?”

  “If I say statements of work,” Fix muttered, “will you stop asking me stupid questions?”

  Passages opened to either side. The smells of mold and rot nearly overwhelmed Indrajit, but the light ahead led him on. He loped quickly, almost running. A short flight of brick steps leading up ended in a wooden door that was swinging shut.

  “No!” Indrajit sprang up the steps, Fix behind him, and the door shut, plunging them into darkness. Indrajit pressed his shoulder to the cold wood, pushing, and then hitting, and the door didn’t budge.

  “It’s locked,” Indrajit said.

  “I didn’t hear a lock.”

  “You’re right, it’s barred. Silly me.”

  “Get out of the way.”

  “Am I in your way? I can’t tell where you’re standing.”

  “It’s too bad your strange eyes don’t let you see in the dark.”

  “My eyes aren’t strange,” Indrajit snapped. “And besides, you’re the one who’s trying to get past me.”

  Fix groped his way, shoving Indrajit aside. Indrajit heard the whisper of steel emerging from a sheath in the darkness.

  “Don’t stab me,” he said, half joking.

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “You’re not going to be able to cut through the door. You’d need an ax. And fifteen minutes.”

  Another crash at the far end of the brick tunnel made Indrajit jump. Dim yellow light trickled into the passage from that end now.

  “I’ve got a thin blade.” Fix grunted. “I’m trying to lift the bar.”

  “And?”

  “It’s heavy. Can you help?”

  The loud scratching of talons on brick echoed down the passage, and the light flickered in and out of existence, blocked by something large that rushed down the hall toward them.

  Indrajit grabbed Fix by the wrists, turning his friend’s hands to angle them upward, to turn the blade of Fix’s long knife into a hook. Then he hoisted.

  Their joined hands rose, heavy with an unseen weight, and they let the point of the knife drop. The weight abruptly disappeared—

  CLANG!

  The sound of talons paused.

  “Go!” Fix pushed Indrajit toward the door. Suddenly unbarred, the door opened outward, and Indrajit stumbled from one dimly lit space into another. He nearly tripped on what he thought was a body, but then realized was a dummy, sprawled across the floor in a heap of scarves. Fix rushed afterward and they both fell into a rack of clothing. Fumbling on the floor, Indrajit found the iron bar they had dislodged and shoved it into the brackets that let it pin the door shut.

  THUD!

  Something heavy slammed into the door from the other side.

  “Where are we?” Indrajit whispered.

  Fix pointed. “Don’t you recognize that trunk? We’re beneath the stage, in the Palace of Shadow and Joy.”

  Not only beneath the stage, but in the tiny room that had been exclusively given over to Ilsa’s trunk, containing Lysta’s body. Light filtered in from an oil lamp that burned in the larger space directly beneath the stage. Confused memories flashed across Indrajit’s mind—on the night the Handlers had tried to kill her, Ilsa had wanted to flee under the stage. She had said there was a way out, hadn’t she?

  So this was her planned escape route: a secret passage that connected the Palace of Shadow and Joy and the Auction House. Surely, she hadn’t built it, but it was easy to imagine how she might have learned of its existence.

  “No!” A muffled shout came through the ceiling. It was Grit Wopal’s voice.

  “He’s alive, at least.” Fix turned and ran for the corner of the space. Indrajit followed, recognizing that Fix was heading for the stairs up. “Hopefully Thrush is, too.”

  “Is that our job now?” Indrajit asked. “Save Orem Thrush?”

  “Let’s save everyone,” Fix said. “Frodilo Choot can pay us for saving Ilsa, and in gratitude for saving his life, Orem Thrush can pay us as well.”

  “Frozen hells, Ilsa’s got cash, too. They can all pay us.”

  THUD!

  Indrajit and Fix emerged onto the stage of the Palace of Shadow and Joy. Light, bright enough to see by, poured down onto the stage from windows set into the walls and the ceiling high above the audience’s seating. Ilsa without Peer, helmet off but still wearing lacquered red armor, stood over Grit Wopal with a sword raised over her head. The Yifft sat at her feet, wearing a red toga and a stunned expression on his face.

  Only it wasn’t Wopal, it was Thrush, his face having metamorphosed into an imitation of his spymaster’s. The sprig of Courting Flower had disappeared from the Lord Chamberlain’s breast.

  The real Yifft lay crumpled at the edge of the stage.

  “I didn’t do it,” the Lord Chamberlain murmured.

  “Tell the truth now,” Ilsa sang.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “How are you resisting?” Ilsa growled. “Have you been immune all along?”

  Indrajit checked to be sure that his own sprig was in place, and then walked toward the singer. “Ilsa! Ilsa! Let’s stop this!”

  In his peripheral vision, he saw Fix kneeling over the fallen Yifft. Wopal’s yellow tunic was dark with blood.

  Ilsa without Peer turned to look at the Blaatshi, her nictitating membranes flickering briefly over her large eyes. “Don’t make me kill him,” she rumbled.

  Indrajit took a deep breath, then drew the Voice of Lightning from its sheath and laid it on the floor. “You don’t need to kill him. Or anything.”

  “I’ll spare him,” she rasped, “if he confesses.”

  Conf
esses to rigging the Auction? But no, there was nothing to confess. Ilsa had been Thrush’s conspirator, and they both knew good and well that they had gamed the Auction. “Confesses to what?”

  But in the instant he asked, he knew the answer.

  “Orem Thrush killed my family,” Ilsa said.

  “I didn’t.” Thrush’s voice was weak.

  “Liar.” Ilsa raised the sword as if to strike.

  Indrajit took two long steps forward, arms raised to get Ilsa’s attention.

  “Wopal’s alive,” Fix called. “But he needs help.”

  THUD!

  “Why?” Indrajit shouted.

  Ilsa looked at him and blinked.

  “Why do you think it was him?” Indrajit asked. He could guess motives—if the Lord Chamberlain had realized Ilsa’s powers, he might want to have exclusive control over them, and exclusive control would require ensuring that Ilsa was the only surviving member of her race. Or at least, the only surviving woman.

  “Lysta told me,” she groaned.

  Indrajit eased a few steps closer. He heard the sound of cloth being torn. “What happened to Lysta?”

  “I had to do it.” The singer’s nictitating membranes flickered and a tear ran down each cheek.

  She had killed Lysta. “You were trying to escape.”

  “I had to.” She pointed at the Lord Chamberlain with her sword. “He had found another one. He was going to replace me.”

  “I had to.” Orem Thrush’s voice was remote. “You were going to leave.”

  “You were going to kill me,” she sang, “like you killed all my people.”

  “I didn’t,” he murmured. “I rescued you. I tried to rescue Lysta, too, but she was mad.”

  “You would have replaced me with a madwoman.”

  “Only if I had to.” The Lord Chamberlain seemed half-asleep. “Was it so bad, helping me win the Auction? I gave you every luxury. You had fame. You loved singing in the opera.”

  Tears trickled down Ilsa’s cheeks. “A bird in a cage is a slave.” Ilsa shifted her sword to the other hand, and then back again. “Even if her masters enjoy her song, and even if the cage is made of gold.”

  Indrajit took two steps closer.

  “I kept you too long,” Thrush said. “I should have set you free years ago.”

  “Before I killed Thinkum Tosh?” Ilsa asked. “And Lysta? And Holy-Pot Diaphernes?”

  “Stop,” the Lord Chamberlain murmured. “Stop confessing. Go now, I won’t follow. Go, and live your life in peace.”

  “You say that now,” Ilsa said. “But you would change your mind. You would be afraid that I would join one of the other lords, and you would have me hunted down.”

  No answer.

  “Tell the truth,” she sang.

  Orem Thrush seemed to struggle, but finally nodded. “I might. The stakes are very high, and the lord of a great house cannot always afford the scruples he would like.”

  “The stakes have always been high,” Ilsa sang, and then her voice fell back into its guttural rasp. “That’s why you killed my family!”

  She raised the sword over her head—

  Indrajit hurled himself forward, covering the Lord Chamberlain with his own body, and Ilsa’s sword bit into his shoulder.

  He collapsed onto Orem Thrush.

  Crash!

  “Indrajit!” Fix yelled.

  Lying on his back on the floor, Indrajit looked over his head. Upside down, he saw Fix setting the Yifft on the floor. Fix’s gray tunic had been torn into strips and wrapped around Grit Wopal’s wounds.

  Indrajit wished he hadn’t relinquished his weapon.

  “Ilsa,” he groaned. “Fix.”

  Ilsa raised her sword again.

  “Indrajit!” Fix yelled. “Hossarian’s coming!”

  Ilsa hesitated.

  “Ilsa,” Indrajit murmured. “My sword. Don’t kill Thrush.”

  Indrajit was losing blood.

  Ilsa stabbed Orem Thrush.

  The Lord Chamberlain bellowed in pain. Indrajit levered himself up onto his elbows and knees and dragged himself across the wooden stage. He slipped in blood—his? Wopal’s? Thrush’s?

  But then he wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his leaf-bladed broadsword. The act of holding the weapon poured strength into his limbs, and he forced himself to stand.

  Like a hero.

  He found himself facing Yashta Hossarian. Blood spattered the jobber’s talons nearly all the way up his legs and speckled the jet-black flesh of his chest. His antennae were extended straight out to the sides, making his head seem much larger than it really was.

  “Get out of the way,” Hossarian croaked. “You don’t have to die.”

  “No one has to die,” Indrajit answered. “We can all take a deep breath and walk away.”

  “The singer is a murderer,” Hossarian said.

  “She killed Holy-Pot.” Indrajit nodded. “And others. Holy-Pot at least deserved it. Her victims can’t walk away, but we still can. All of us.”

  “No,” Orem Thrush groaned. “Don’t let her.”

  Ilsa ignored him, backing slowly away toward the edge of the stage, bloody sword raised defensively.

  “You’d defend a murderer?” Hossarian took a step forward on his long, red-stained, birdlike legs.

  “There’s been too much killing,” Indrajit said. As he said it, he felt tired. Ilsa wasn’t the only killer on the stage—he and Fix had killed the two Grokonk—well, along with the tiny males, however many there had been of them—and the Zalapting in the latrine. The Grokonk had been attacking them, and the Zalapting’s death had been an accident, but they were all dead, nonetheless. “It’s not my job to bring her to justice.”

  Hossarian smiled without humor. “But you see, it is my job. It is exactly my job.”

  Without warning, Hossarian launched one of his feet toward Indrajit. Indrajit flinched too late, eyes widening as he saw his jet-black doom hurtling toward his face.

  But the two-legged jobber snatched the Courting Flower from Indrajit’s tunic, hurling it into his own mouth.

  Then, with a single great bound, Yashta Hossarian leaped over Indrajit’s head, hurling himself at Ilsa without Peer.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Indrajit stabbed at Hossarian’s legs and missed.

  He lurched about just in time to see Fix throw his body against the singer, knocking her spinning across the stage. Hossarian crashed into Fix, flattening him to the floor and pinning him under his orange claws.

  Indrajit rushed toward Ilsa, to put himself between her and her attacker, as a shield.

  Ilsa raised her sword and pointed it at Hossarian. “Kill the monster!” she sang.

  Indrajit fell on Hossarian with energy, hacking at his back. This close, and attacking as he was, he could now see that the jobber’s muscles rippled beneath a scaly, callused hide that resembled the skin of a chicken’s feet. It was also resistant to the sword’s blade, though not impervious—swinging with all his strength, Indrajit nicked the jobber, drawing a thick trickle of black liquid to the surface.

  Hossarian turned, leaving Fix—was Indrajit’s partner still breathing?—and springing at Indrajit. Indrajit leaped sideways and found himself unexpectedly blinded, wrapped in a heavy red curtain and stumbling through with no view of his own feet. He heard Hossarian crash to the ground in some metallic stagecraft apparatus that rang like a whole forest of timbrels, and then he heard Fix’s voice.

  “Back off, Hossarian. We don’t want to kill you, but we will.”

  “Kill the monster,” Ilsa shouted.

  Indrajit heard clicks as Hossarian stalked sideways, extricating himself from the curtains and stepping out onto the stage. He managed to untangle himself and get a look at the stage. Grit Wopal struggled to sit up and Fix and Orem Thrush stood side by side. Thrush held Fix’s falchion, extended before him; Fix held a long knife and his ax.

  Ilsa stood behind the two men.

  Orem Thrush cleared his thr
oat. “Whatever you’re being paid right now, I can afford to double it.”

  Hossarian changed course abruptly, swiveling one hundred eighty degrees and clicking back the other direction with unnerving ease. “Of course, you can. But you can’t buy my honor. And you can’t buy the reputation I would earn as the jobber who stood up to Orem Thrush.”

  “You don’t need that reputation,” Thrush said. “You can work for me, full-time.”

  Indrajit saw that Fix had split his sprig with the Lord Chamberlain, so Thrush had a bit of green and yellow pinned to the top of his toga again.

  “Or the jobber,” Hossarian continued, “who killed Orem Thrush.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Thrush asked. “One of my rivals is angry at my outmaneuvering him at the Auction, and wants me killed as punishment?” He laughed. “Don’t you know that any one of the others would have done exactly the same thing in my place? Come, let’s be businessmen. At some price, you’ll switch sides.”

  “Stab him in the back!” Ilsa sang.

  Indrajit felt overwhelming need.

  He charged.

  Grit Wopal, at the same moment, lurched to his feet. The Yifft had a long, triangular knife in his hand, and he threw himself at one of Hossarian’s flanks while Indrajit attacked the other.

  Hossarian sprang sideways. With his bulk, he knocked Wopal to the floor again. Spinning, his face now pointing Indrajit’s direction, he opened his mouth wide and spat. Something large, white, and hard, too large to really be emerging from the gullet of a man, hurtled from the jobber’s open maw and struck Indrajit in the eye.

  Indrajit fell, in pain.

  The sense of desire leached from his flesh as he slammed hard to the wooden floor, banging his head and his heels simultaneously. He still felt well-being, associated with a vague memory of Ilsa without Peer, but she seemed far away.

  He was holding a small skull, for some reason.

  Hossarian scooped him up and threw him against the wall.

  If he’d hit differently—head first—the impact would have killed him. Instead, Indrajit saw a second’s view of the wall, approaching him quickly, and then the next thing he knew, he was lying on the floor and Grit Wopal was kneeling over him.