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Chapter Two

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“Wait!” Indrajit grabbed Fix by the wrist.

Fix pressed Osiah against the wall of his study with a hand on the red man’s throat. Osiah was choking for air and Indrajit struggled mightily to prevent his cracking the bean merchant’s head open with his ax.

“What for?” Fix grunted.

“Look to Alea!” Indrajit gasped.

Fix spun instantly, sliding out of Indrajit’s grasp. Osiah grabbed for the lock to let himself out, and Indrajit hurled him to the floor and sat on him. Alea lay in a pool of blood and she wasn’t breathing. Fix gathered her up in his arms and burst into tears.

Two floors down, stringed instruments joined the drums and flutes in a frenzied Xiba’albi dance.

“You invaded my home!” Osiah groaned.

“Shut up,” Indrajit said, “or I will kill you.”

“Don’t leave me here,” Sanara Chee pleaded.

“We won’t,” Indrajit assured her.

Fix stood. “He dies. He’s a kidnapper and a rapist and a murderer.”

“All true,” Indrajit said. “But we need him to unlock the dancer.”

Fix dropped to one knee over the bean merchant and raised his ax again. “Where’s the key?”

“I don’t have it.”

“It’s inside his belt,” Chee said. “It’s just one key for all three locks.”

Fix ripped Osiah’s toga away, revealing short pants and a soft leather belt. He tore the belt roughly from Osiah’s body, nearly knocking Indrajit over. Inside the belt, he found several keys on a thin ring. With a moment’s trial and error, he unlocked the shackles at the dancer’s ankle and wrists.

She promptly kicked Eion Osiah in the head and then spat on him.

“We can’t leave him.” Fix trembled. Was it with rage? He still held his ax.

“Of course we can.” Indrajit stood and dragged Osiah up with him. The red man squirmed, but Indrajit was much stronger, and held his prisoner off the floor, feet dangling. He carried Osiah through the painting-door, knocked him once against the wall to stun him, and then shackled him into place. Osiah resisted, but Indrajit tied the gag into place in his mouth, as well.

Chee spat on Osiah again.

“They’ll find him,” Fix said.

“Maybe.” Indrajit shrugged. “But it won’t be until after we’re gone. And if they don’t find him . . . well, justice is done.”

Fix took a deep breath, then nodded.

“We need to take Alea with us,” Indrajit said.

“We’ll wrap her in our togas.”

The blood, fortunately, was all on the carpet. The two men wrapped Alea’s body in the toga sheets, knotting them together, and then tossed the bloody carpet into the secret room. The brick floor of the office was unmarked.

Fix set the manacle keys on the floor in the secret room, out of Osiah’s reach. He shut the painting-door and Indrajit slung the sheet-wrapped corpse over his shoulder.

“Can you climb?” he asked Chee.

“Show me an open window,” she said. “I’ll jump.”

“I admire your sense of the dramatic,” he said. “But we’ll help you climb.”

They took both lights with them, replacing the one they had taken from the mirrored niche and leaving the other on the balcony by which they exited. The music continued below and the red-headed children all slept soundly.

Indrajit tied the rope around Sanara Chee and called softly. From the rooftop, Munahim hauled on the line and helped the dancer up the wall.

Indrajit nodded through the bead curtain toward the sleeping children. “Who are their mothers, do you think?”

Fix stared into space, his eyes narrow.

“Fix? I said, who do you think are their mothers?”

“We have to help her,” Fix said.

“Sanara Chee? We’ll take her to Bolo Bit Sodani, she can’t get much more help than that, being under the wing of one of the Lords of Kish. And then we get paid, too.”

“Alea.”

Indrajit took a deep breath. “I don’t know quite how to say this, but . . . you aren’t her husband, my friend. She chose another man over you, and tonight we caught her cheating on that poor bastard. You owe this woman nothing.”

Fix was silent.

“She’s dead, in any case. We’ll take her to her husband,” Indrajit said. “I’m sorry.”

Fix said nothing.

What was he thinking?

“Or, if you prefer,” Indrajit continued, “we’ll bury her ourselves. Buy a nice place in the Necropolis, bury her at sea, funeral pyre, whatever you like.”

Fix still said nothing. Munahim tossed the rope back down to them.

“Say something,” Indrajit pleaded. “What do you want, a postmortem wedding to her? A shrine? Whatever you want, we’ll do it.”

Fix handed Indrajit the rope.

Indrajit climbed up to the rooftop. Alea wasn’t much burden when he walked, but climbing with her was awkward. He shook his head the entire time, trying to think of things to say to placate Fix. Then he waited in the shadow of the chimney with Munahim and the dancer while Fix climbed up.

Munahim re-coiled the rope.

“Alea was a wonderful woman,” Indrajit said.

“We’ll take her to be healed.” Fix started marching across the rooftop toward their planned escape route, as if there was no more to discuss.

Indrajit followed. Fix didn’t go the way they’d come, which required jumping over two alleyways, but instead to where an adjacent palace was only two stories tall, so they could let themselves down by rope.

“Fix,” Indrajit said, as gently as he could. “She’s dead.”

Munahim and Sanara Chee caught up. Munahim tied the rope to a chimney and let down the end. Fix went down first, and then the dancer.

“He’s not listening to me,” Indrajit said to Munahim.

The Kyone shrugged. “Neither one of you listens to me.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“Not much of one.”

Indrajit slid down the rope and rushed across the lower rooftop to catch up to his partner. This roof was peaked, so he had to place his feet carefully on the stone ledge above the lead gutter at the edge. When he caught Fix, Fix was tying a second rope—which they’d climbed up and left the night before—around a gargoyle.

“Okay,” Indrajit said. “We’ll take her to be healed. Where do you suggest, the Hall of Guesses?”

“The Vin Dalu.”

“The Vin Dalu?” Indrajit’s voice squeaked, and he cleared his throat. “What makes you think the Vin Dalu can . . . heal her?”

“The Vin Dalu healed me when I was a boy,” Fix said. “My spine wasn’t straight. It was so crooked, I could barely walk. The Selfless of Salish-Bozar brought me to the Vin Dalu, because the Vin Dalu are known to be masters of Druvash technology.”

“The priests of the Dismembered One use Druvash sorcery to torture and maim,” Indrajit said. “I’m glad they were also able to heal you when you were a boy, well done, your back is nice and straight now and you walk like a champion, but—”

“You don’t have to come,” Fix said.

“—they have an orphanage of young boys they torture and maim for their entertainment,” Indrajit continued.

Fix took the rope in his hands and wrapped it around his hips. “Take the dancer to the Lord Stargazer. Then go back to the inn and sleep. I’ll take Alea to the priests.”

Fix went down the rope.

“Frozen hells!” Indrajit stamped his foot, nearly sending himself tumbling off the roof in his irritation. “What is he thinking?”

Munahim hesitated. “Shall I go next?”

Indrajit growled and slid down.

On the street below, two Rovers sat at a fire next to their wagon. A lavender-skinned Zalapting guard with a boiled leather helmet and breastplate leaned beside a door, dozing beneath a single torch. Fix paced back and forth.

“Fix,” Indrajit said. “Help me understand.”

Fix’s voice was strained. “In your precious Blaatshi Epic, is no one raised from the dead? Are there no miraculous healings?”

“Yes, of course,” Indrajit said. “Both things happen. But Alea is another—”

Fix pushed closer. “Miracles? Deeds of the gods?”

“Of course. Do you now believe—”

Closer. “And are there no extraordinary deeds for love?”

“The Epic abounds with extraordinary deeds undertaken for the sake of love. But—”

“But you would deny all these things to me?” Fix’s voice shook and so did his hands. “Then give me Alea, and I will go live my own epic.”

“But the Vin Dalu?” Indrajit asked weakly.

“You have been to the Hall of Guesses,” Fix said. “You have been entwined in the machinations of the Collegium Arcanum. Do you think the scholars of Kish can raise the dead? Do you believe that the wizards of the city have that power, or could be persuaded to exercise it if they did?”

Indrajit felt small. He was a head taller than his partner, but with Fix pushing into his chest and trembling with emotion, he felt he was looking up at Fix rather than the reverse.

“We’ll go to the Vin Dalu,” he agreed. “The Vin Dalu healed you as a boy. If anyone can heal Alea now, it’s the priests of the Dismembered One.”

“I want to carry her,” Fix said.

Indrajit handed over the body in its knotted sling. “We probably want to avoid getting stopped by the constables.”

Fix grunted. “Time may be of the essence. I’m going now.”

Sanara Chee alighted gracefully. Munahim was only a few moments behind. Across the street, the Rovers watched over their mugs of hot tea, so Indrajit kept his voice down.

“Munahim,” he said. “You need to get Sanara food and water.”

“I’ve given her food and water already,” Munahim said. “I brought dried meat, biscuits, and a water bottle with me.”

“Oh. Good.” Indrajit cleared his throat. “Never mind. Let’s deliver Sanara Chee to the Lord Stargazer. It’s on the way.”

“On the way to where?” Munahim asked, but Fix was already stomping resolutely up toward the Crown.

Indrajit caught up to his partner. “Gannon’s Handlers have the gate contract into the Crown.”

“They won’t try to stop us. And they can make all the nasty faces they want, I don’t care.”

“I was going to suggest, let’s emphasize that we’re on the Lord Chamberlain’s business. They know we work for Thrush.”

“I’ll kill them if they try anything.”

This was not a side of his partner that Indrajit had ever seen. Fix was intense, but he was quietly intense.

“Noted. But let’s try the persuasion first.”

Indrajit struggled with clashing emotions as they walked. They had rescued the dancer, and he felt pride and delight in the accomplishment. On the other hand, he felt unbalanced and afraid at the urgency with which Fix now took every step and enunciated every word. And meeting Alea had been an unexpected and violent revelation. He and Fix had been partners for several months now. From the beginning, he had known that Fix was in love with a married woman, a woman who had turned him away from life as a Selfless, one of the scholar-priests of Salish-Bozar the White, and driven him to become a speculator, a businessman, and a rogue. In the space of a few heartbeats, Indrajit had met the woman, learned her name, and witnessed her violent death.

He felt uneasy, directionless, and nervous.

The half dozen Zalaptings and the powder priest of Thûl guarding the gate wore Mote Gannon’s livery. “What’s in the bloody sheets, Fix?” one of the Zalaptings asked. “Out of work, and reduced to eating offal again?”

“Kidnapping children is more like it!” A second Zalapting snickered.

“It’s a bloody corpse!” Indrajit snapped. “It belongs to the Lord Chamberlain’s Ears. Stand aside.”

The Handlers and the Protagonists had clashed in the past, which had resulted in Handler casualties and an enforced truce. The Handlers stood aside.

“I’m reporting this!” the Zalapting snapped.

“We need to develop some reliable ways around the walls,” Indrajit said. “Or through or under, I suppose.” They had been into Underkish more than once; it had never really been convenient, and had often been violent.

Fix kept marching.

They took Sanara Chee to the Lord Stargazer’s palace. It was an ordinary palace, not much bigger than the one belonging to Eion Osiah, but it fronted on two avenues in the Crown. These streets were lit with lamps, and were patrolled by armed men with torches—jobber companies that marched the lengths of the boulevards and wider streets under a constabulary contract, and fighters in the livery of the Lord Stargazer himself, who stood at the doors and the corners of the building.

“Ubandar Hakko,” Indrajit said to the two men wrapped in bands of steel standing to each side of the palace’s front door.

Fix growled, an impatient sound.

They knocked and whispered, and Hakko came forth.

Ubandar was the night steward of the Lord Stargazer’s palace, and he’d had dealings with the Protagonists before. He was a pudgy man, dark red in color, with four long tusks in his mouth, and he appeared already in the act of bowing.

He moved more slowly than Indrajit was used to seeing, though. His limbs were thin and fleshless and his belly sagged. Had the man taken ill?

“Sanara Chee,” he said, his voice a greasy smear on the air, “you don’t know me, but I’ve been expecting you. Come in, come in, the Lord Stargazer is anxious for your welfare. I have a room and a bath and clothing and food and spiced wine.”

Fix was already marching away. Indrajit accepted half a hug from the four-eyed, yellow-skinned dancer, and a purse from the lethargic night steward, and then he was racing to catch up, Munahim in his wake.

Was this a madman’s quest they were on? Could the Vin Dalu raise the dead?

Did it matter?

“Why did you stop me from killing Eion Osiah?” Fix growled when Indrajit caught up. They were headed to a gate on the east side of the Crown, which led down into the Dregs. “He deserved it.”

“He deserved it,” Indrajit said. “And maybe he’ll die in his secret little room, if they can’t find him. But you don’t deserve to have his blood on your hands.”

“I want his blood on my hands.”

“You want justice,” Indrajit said. “You don’t want to have killed someone in anger, in the moment. That’s not the same thing at all. That would have been a justifiable reaction, but that’s not the same thing as justice.”

“This is a nuance I care very little about right now.”

“I understand that.” Indrajit shook his head. “But I think it’s a nuance you would come to care a lot about, in time.”

The gate into the Dregs was also guarded by Handlers—more Zalaptings, and a big blue Luzzazza with downturned ears. Indrajit looked closely, to try to determine whether this was the Luzzazza whose arm he had torn off, but he couldn’t tell; a Luzzazza’s lower pair of arms was invisible. That was their race’s great magical talent.

The Luzzazza noticed him looking. “I am no longer on the path,” he rumbled.

Had Indrajit knocked the man off his spiritual quest? “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Indrajit had more questions, but Fix was already charging down the ramp into the Dregs. Indrajit gripped Vacho by the hilt and jogged to catch up.

Several quarters of Kish claimed to be the worst, as a badge of pride; the Dregs was the quarter where you could most easily get your throat slit. At the foot of the ramp, alleys spun away in every direction, flanked and crowded by leaning, ramshackle buildings. The streets were of earth, packed hard by feet and cold, and a whine of beggars immediately swarmed the Protagonists. Even the beggars seemed to threaten, their claws slashing at the air.

“I have never been to the temple of the Dismembered One,” Munahim said. “Do we need to offer a sacrifice?”

“I don’t think the Vin Dalu offer sacrifices like that,” Indrajit said. “I think they torture certain classes of criminals for the city, and that’s a kind of sacrifice. And they use the same skills to dissect corpses for the Hall of Guesses, and maybe that’s a kind of sacrifice. Anyway, that’s what I’ve heard. I have no personal experience.”

“Maybe they can also heal, and that will be a kind of sacrifice,” Munahim suggested.

“That would be the best outcome.”

“What would be the second best?”

“That they don’t allow us in at all.”

Munahim considered. “And after that?”

“After that, my Kyone friend, all the possible outcomes are frightening.”

Fix led them down three alleys, each at a dramatically different angle from the preceding ones, so that they zigged and zagged through the Dregs. At every junction, men snarled and showed the hilts of rusted swords or gaps in sharpened teeth. A pack of stray cats followed them, hissing and yowling. The Dregs seemed bigger to Indrajit than he had thought possible, and then the last alley opened into a courtyard. On two sagging poles jammed into a corner dozed a row of Kishi fowl, thin, scarred, and mean, chuckling in their sleep. Overhead, Indrajit thought he saw narrow windows looking down on the yard.

Were those cats in the windows?

And ahead, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of a blank wall, was a figure in a black robe. The person leaned forward, so that its face was hidden within a deep cowl. Long hands emerged from the sleeves of its robe, and in the shadow, Indrajit thought perhaps he saw intertwining fingers. Two gnarled crutches leaned against the wall behind him.

Fix stood, swaying on his feet. Slung over his shoulder, the burden of Alea’s body was enormous. Indrajit and Munahim hung back a step.

“I’ve come to ask a boon,” Fix said. “A healing.”

“The Dismembered One does not give boons.” The voice coming from within the cowl was surprisingly youthful, and definitely male. Indrajit couldn’t place the accent, but it wasn’t Kishi. “Perhaps you intend to consult Saint Aileric. Or Sharazat the Kind, if death is the boon you seek.”

“The boon I seek is life.” Fix’s voice was almost a shriek.

“You are alive. Go forth and live more, as long as you may.”

“For her.” Fix knelt and laid his burden gently on the ground.

The robed figure was silent for a few moments. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “The Dismembered One does not give boons, O son of Kish. The Dismembered One gives, but also takes. All who have approached the Dismembered One come away dismembered themselves.”

“The Dismembered One healed me when I was a child,” Fix said. “By means of Druvash craft, I understood.”

“I believe it.”

“And yet I am not dismembered.”

“That you know,” the robed man said.

“You’re warning me, but you’re not refusing.”

“I am not refusing.”

“Then I would enter, guardian. And I would ask that the Dismembered One inflict upon me any cost he would impose.”

“You may ask.” The robed man stood. “And your friends?”

Fix turned. His hair was disheveled and blood stained his kilt. “You should stay here. I don’t know what waits for me inside.”

“I’m coming in,” Indrajit said.

“It might be more dangerous out here,” Munahim added.


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