In the Palace of Shadow and Joy

by D. J. Butler

  “Fix is down,” the Yifft said. Indrajit’s vision swam, and when he managed to focus, turning his head slightly so his unbruised eye could gaze on Wopal, he saw that the Yifft’s third eye was open. “Fix is down.”

  Indrajit struggled to sit up. “Dead?”

  Wopal shook his head.

  Indrajit looked and saw Fix lying in a pool of blood in the center of the floor. The Lord Chamberlain, who now looked like Fix but wearing a red toga, backed across the stage with Ilsa behind him, weaving a defensive curtain before himself with Fix’s sword. The Lord Chamberlain was a good swordsman, better than Indrajit and maybe better than Fix, but he was being forced back.

  Was he defending Ilsa out of gallantry? Out of a sense of his own guilt?

  Or was he trying to save her, so he could force her to continue to work for him?

  Where were the orange-tunicked jobbers, who had come flooding into the Auction House? Gannon’s Handlers? And the bodyguards? Had Hossarian killed them all?

  Or had he simply blocked the path behind him, more effectively than Indrajit and Fix had?

  “Get Fix out of the way.” Indrajit dragged himself to his feet and patted the wooden floor, finding his sword hilt again.

  The Yifft blinked once with all three eyes—not quite in sync—and skittered toward Fix. Indrajit looked for a ladder.

  He’d attacked from behind, to no effect. He couldn’t attack the man face-on and hope to survive.

  Maybe he could drop something on him.

  He couldn’t find a ladder, and didn’t know where to find stairs, but he found the pyramid. It was the same one he and Fix had knocked into the footlings; it appeared to be intact, and it stood in the wings, off stage.

  “Indrajit Twang!” Orem Thrush shouted.

  Indrajit ignored him and climbed the pyramid.

  The top of the pyramid wasn’t within reach of any dangling ropes, but it was adjacent to a curtain. Indrajit tugged on the thick velvety fabric, and was happy that it didn’t fall. He was even happier when he put his weight on it, swinging out over the stage floor, and the curtain held.

  Grit Wopal dragged Fix toward Indrajit and the pyramid. Fix was moving, though sluggishly.

  Indrajit hauled himself onto the catwalk. He trod quietly, trying not to catch Hossarian’s notice, as he positioned himself above the jobber and simultaneously looked for things to drop. A sandbag? A coil of rope? A backdrop?

  His sword?

  Indrajit leaned over the catwalk railing and looked down. If he dropped it just right, point-first, he might be able to stick his sword, like a dart, into the top of the jobber’s head.

  He shook himself, chasing out the insane thought.

  The catwalk trembled slightly. Indrajit spun to see what was approaching from behind him, and found Fix.

  Bleeding, grim-faced, and determined.

  “A curtain,” Fix growled. “We drop a curtain on the bastard. Then we jump down and attack him through it.”

  Orem Thrush was bleeding, too. He was fast, but Hossarian was faster, and the bird-legged jobber didn’t seem to mind any of the wounds he took, while the Lord Chamberlain looked more drained by the moment.

  “A curtain.” Indrajit nodded. “But I have a better idea than swords.”

  A feint by Yashta Hossarian caught the Lord Chamberlain out of place. As he knelt to unhook a curtain over the combatants, Indrajit expected to see Orem Thrush run through or decapitated.

  But the jobber leaped past the swordsman, and stabbed one long talon into the center of Ilsa’s chest. The claw sank through the lacquered red armor of her breastplate, the talon disappearing entirely into Ilsa’s body.

  In her moment of death, Ilsa looked magnificent. She rose to her full height, short though it was, and looked forward. She threw her shoulders back, as if daring an audience to love her. She opened her mouth, and a trickle of blood came out.

  Hossarian removed his talon.

  Ilsa without Peer sang a long, single, rock-solid, golden note. It bore no words, but the pure sound of it broke Indrajit’s heart.

  Then the note ended, and blood gushed from Ilsa’s mouth and from the wound in her chest.

  She fell forward slowly, and with her seemed to fall all Indrajit’s memories of childhood, his desire to recite the Epic, his love of home. All collapsed slowly forward into a pale, shapeless sack, which bounced once off the wooden stage floor and then lay still.

  Indrajit opened his mouth to scream, but Fix clapped a hand over his face, stifling the sound.

  Yashta Hossarian turned. He sniffed at the air, looking briefly puzzled, then turned to face Orem Thrush.

  “You just cost me a lot of money,” the Lord Chamberlain said quietly.

  “I don’t know anything about that.” Hossarian’s voice was terse and his posture a near-crouch, as if he still might spring into combat. Orem Thrush held his sword pointed upward and turned as the jobber walked around him, keeping the blade between them. “I know I fulfilled my contract.”

  “Murder is murder,” Thrush said. “Even if some client, even if one of my rivals, contracted you to kill someone, it’s murder.”

  “Unless the Auctioneer sold the contract,” the jobber said.

  “Don’t imagine that your knowledge of the system makes you my peer.” Orem Thrush’s voice was gravelly and severe. His face was shifting, darkening from the brown of imitating Grit Wopal to a dark black—he looked more and more like Yashta Hossarian himself, by the second. “That would make every jobber captain the head of a great family.”

  “Moments ago,” Hossarian said slowly, “you were offering to hire me.”

  Fix leaned in close to Indrajit’s ear and whispered. “Hossarian is out of position.”

  “We could jump on him,” Indrajit whispered back.

  “Suicide,” Fix said. “We get the curtain on him, and then what?”

  Indrajit explained his plan with two words and a gesture.

  Fix nodded. “So we just need him to get into position.”

  But Hossarian wasn’t in position. He wasn’t beneath any curtains at all.

  “Moments ago,” the Lord Chamberlain said, “it looked as if you might come around to my point of view.”

  “You don’t respect my integrity?” Hossarian continued to circle, and his eyes narrowed. “You don’t admire the way I keep my contract?”

  “I’m the richest, and can always be the highest bidder.” Orem Thrush’s voice was cold. “I have no use for a jobber who can’t be bought.”

  “Frozen hells,” Indrajit muttered, “he’s getting farther away.”

  Fix was staring at Thrush. “He’s going to get himself killed.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to help,” Indrajit suggested. “Maybe he thinks he’s distracting Hossarian, so we can ambush him.”

  “If we had, say, javelins, or crossbows, that would be a great idea. Since our plan is to drop a curtain and the target isn’t in position, the Lord Chamberlain is going to get himself killed.”

  “With Ilsa dead, that means no payment from anybody.” Indrajit’s heart sank.

  “Getting out of here alive might be our only victory,” Fix suggested. “All things considered, I think would be a pretty good one.”

  “I will see you tried before an Auction-appointed court.” The voice was Grit Wopal’s. The Yifft stood almost directly below Indrajit and Fix, feet planted apart, arms crossed over his chest.

  “They’re both going to die,” Fix murmured.

  “No.” Indrajit pointed. “Look. He knows.” He grabbed two hooks holding the heavy theater curtain and lifted them almost out of their brass eyes. “Are you ready?”

  Fix grabbed two more hooks and lifted. They were holding the curtain up by main strength, and it was heavy.

  Indrajit hoped he was right.

  “Will you?” Yashta Hossarian asked. Then he pounced.

  He slammed like a tiger into Grit Wopal, who didn’t flinch. The ball of orange smashed the intelligence agent to the floor a
nd then rose above him, orange talons flashing in the air and preparing for the kill.

  “Now,” Indrajit murmured.

  They threw the curtain.

  Wopal had positioned himself perfectly. The heavy curtain fell—interminably slowly, it seemed to Indrajit, but perfectly, billowing out, spreading—right on top of Yashta Hossarian, covering him entirely.

  As the curtain was still falling, Indrajit and Fix scrambled to their feet. Indrajit gripped the catwalk railing with one hand, raised his sword, and checked to see Fix’s progress; the shorter man was similarly positioned, ax held high.

  “Now,” Fix said.

  They cut the ropes holding up the catwalk.

  As he swung, Indrajit worried that one of them would cut through and the other wouldn’t, causing the catwalk to dump them, rather than fall, or that neither would cut through his rope, and they would have attracted Hossarian’s attention for nothing.

  But both ropes split and the catwalk fell.

  Fix lost his grip as the platform swung down, and was cast aside. The curtain writhed and shrugged, and then Hossarian’s head and antennae emerged, enraged face glaring upward—

  Right into the oncoming catwalk.

  The iron of the catwalk smashed into Hossarian’s torso with a CRUNCH, and its weight drove it down through his body entirely, until it struck the wood. The two orange legs leaped sideways, took three steps as if they had a mind of their own, and then fell sideways off the stage. The jet-black mouth opened, and spewed out a thick stream of mucus that stank of bile and phlegm.

  Contact with the stage jarred Indrajit, tossing him sideways. He lost his sword in the tumble, and then found himself sitting dumbly, staring at the jobber.

  Hossarian’s mouth opened and shut wordlessly. His antennae scratched at the floor as if to pull him forward, but in vain, and then he collapsed.

  Indrajit hurt. He stood, and fell, bones and heart aching.

  “Wopal!” he called from the floor. “Grit Wopal!”

  A murmur and a wiggling of the curtain answered.

  Fix lurched across the stage. Indrajit could see now that his partner was spattered in blood from head to toe, his face shining with sweat. “Wopal!”

  Indrajit dragged himself across the floor and helped Fix pull away the curtain. Wopal lay still, most of his body trapped beneath the fallen catwalk and Yashta Hossarian’s torso.

  But he was breathing.

  Indrajit found he had tears on his cheeks. Relief that Grit Wopal wasn’t dead? Or that, finally, someone had survived? Tears for Ilsa without Peer?

  Orem Thrush offered him a hand and he took it, rising to stand unsteadily. Fix pushed against the catwalk with his shoulders, raising it a few inches so that Thrush and Indrajit could drag Wopal out. They pulled the Yifft to the far end of the stage, near where Ilsa lay, cold and still.

  Wopal began to come to, woozily.

  “I could use men like you in my service,” Orem Thrush said. Disconcertingly, he looked just like Yashta Hossarian from the neck up.

  “You could have had him.” Indrajit indicated Hossarian. “He was way better than us.”

  “He’s dead,” Thrush pointed out.

  “Dumb luck,” Fix said.

  “Hey,” Indrajit objected. “We had a plan. At the very least, it was smart luck.”

  Orem Thrush shrugged. “He’s dead, regardless. You killed him. I don’t care if you’re good because you’re lucky or you’re good because you’re smart or you’re good because you have eyes in the sides of your head.”

  “Hey,” Indrajit said again.

  “I need good people. And I think you need jobs.”

  “By good people,” Indrajit said, “do you mean men who are ruthless? I’m not sure we’re a good fit for you.”

  “Despite everything I have ever said to you,” Orem Thrush answered, “I do care about justice. And I care about this city.”

  Indrajit nodded. He thought maybe he should feel exultant, but all he felt was tired.

  Wopal sat up gingerly. “Remember that I sent a messenger to the bank.”

  Indrajit felt dull. “So?”

  “So we’ll see what happened,” Wopal said, “but if you saved Choot’s money, she might be persuaded to pay you something.”

  “She will be persuaded,” Thrush said.

  That thought lightened Indrajit’s heart somewhat. Money meant he could eat again, and live to continue searching for a successor Recital Thane.

  “What’s that?” Fix wobbled as he pointed across the stage.

  Worms crawled away from Yashta Hossarian’s body. Not worms, Indrajit realized, but the antennae that had sprouted like a hedge around his neck. They had detached themselves and now wriggled away.

  Even as he started across the stage, several of the worms had disappeared, squeezing into cracks between the floorboard, disappearing under curtains, or falling off the front of the stage. Indrajit and Fix smashed every worm they could find beneath their heels.

  Many got away.

  Indrajit looked at the mess on the stage. “Frozen hells.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Bolo Bit Sodani, the Lord Stargazer, was so thin, he looked as if a strong breeze might lift him entirely off the ground. He wore a toga of green silk, and his skin was transparent—Indrajit tried not to stare at the sight of muscle and sinew coiling and uncoiling as the Lord Stargazer moved his arms, and tried even harder not to imagine what it would be like to see the man’s torso.

  Or worse.

  “I don’t think you understand,” the Lord Stargazer said, and Indrajit yanked his thoughts back to the conversation at hand. “We are not requesting that you make peace. We are instructing you that you will be removed from the Auction House Registry if you attempt any sort of retaliation against these men.”

  Indrajit smiled, trying to look charming.

  The Lord Stargazer smiled too, and the effect was grotesque. His face was heavily made up, covered with powders and paints, and the smile shifted just enough of the concealing artifice to expose bare skin, which then looked as if his face had cracked open, revealing slices of yellow tooth, bright red gums and tongue, and white skull.

  Orem Thrush, the Lord Chamberlain, sat beside Bit Sodani in his red silk toga. He might have been smiling, but his expression was hidden by the horned skull mask. Through the eyeholes, Indrajit thought he saw a dark complexion around the Lord Chamberlain’s eyes. Mahogany, perhaps, with a hint of green? Did that mean that if he removed his mask, the Lord Chamberlain would look like Indrajit again?

  He thought he should probably find that flattering, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

  The Lords Chamberlain and Stargazer sat at a table with Indrajit, Fix, and Tall Gannon. Tall Gannon had a sour expression on his face, a bruised cheek and a bandage covering half his scalp. He was unarmed, as the summons had required, but he wore a leather jerkin with bronze rings stitched onto it. Outside the room, which had been rented for this conference, bodyguards waited. Grit Wopal had declined to participate at all—the fewer the people who knew his face, the better.

  The purpose of the meeting was to prevent further violence between Gannon’s Handlers and the newly bonded and registered jobber company, the Protagonists.

  “They broke into my home,” Gannon complained. “They killed a large number of my team.”

  “You can count the Grokonk as two,” Orem Thrush said. “Think through the math carefully. Did they kill a large number, or did they kill three?”

  “Three.” Gannon’s voice was sour. “Three is a lot of murders. And they maimed my Luzzazza. And sundry other injuries.”

  “Sundry—” Indrajit started to object, but Fix kicked him under the table.

  “Murders is a strong word,” the Lord Stargazer said. “The Protagonists were attempting to carry out their contract, and your men attacked them.”

  “I was carrying out my contract, too!” Gannon banged his fists on the table.

  “A contract in which, if I u
nderstand correctly, you may have been conspiring to commit murder.” Orem Thrush’s voice was grave. “Speaking of that strong word.”

  Gannon paled.

  “Indeed,” the Lord Stargazer said.

  “Or risk-contract fraud.” Orem Thrush shrugged. “Is this how you want this conversation to go, Gannon? We can request that an Auction Court be convened.”

  Tall Gannon ground his teeth.

  Where was little green Tiny Gannon, and was he grinding his teeth at the same moment?

  “You’re a good captain, Gannon,” the Lord Stargazer said. “We’d hate to see you come off the Registry.”

  “Or be exiled,” Thrush added. “Or executed.”

  Tall Gannon pounded the table again. “We entered the Auction Hall because we had to! We saw that…creature…”

  “Yashta Hossarian,” Indrajit said helpfully.

  Fix kicked him again.

  “Enough protest,” Orem Thrush said. “You can agree to peace with the Protagonists, or you can suffer the consequences.”

  Tall Gannon swallowed, then looked down at the table. He was quiet for long seconds, and Indrajit began to suspect the man had fallen asleep. Finally, he looked up. “I can’t stop my men from carrying out any private vendetta.”

  The Lord Stargazer nodded. “But we will hold you accountable if they do, regardless.”

  “Fine.” Gannon ground his teeth. “I accept.”

  Orem Thrush produced a rather large coin purse and threw it across the table in Gannon’s direction. The captain of the Handlers caught the money and secreted it within his jerkin.

  The Lord Stargazer turned to Indrajit and Fix. “And you.”

  “No vendettas, no grudges.” Indrajit spread his hands in friendly agreement. “We never wanted to hurt anyone in the first place. Happy to agree.”

  Fix nodded.

  “In that case,” the Lord Stargazer said, “your bond and your joint-stock certificate appear to be in order. You’ll be added to the Auction House Registry by next week.”

  “Thank you.” Indrajit wasn’t quite sure how he felt about the news. He looked across the table and met Fix’s gaze. Fix’s eyes looked puzzled for a moment, but then he grinned. Indrajit grinned back.