Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Eight

icon


The Protagonists lay on their bellies on the flat clay rooftop of a building just inside the city wall, looking down on a basket weaver’s shop and a narrow alley. Indrajit held a hooded lantern. Once it was lit, he’d have the ability to darken the light or let it shine directionally, by opening or closing the shutters on any of its four sides. He also held a flask of spare oil, flint and steel, a thick cloth gag, and a black hood like the one that had been forced over his own head four times by the Sookwalkers. Fix carried two lengths of rope, one coiled over each shoulder.

“That beggar,” Munahim whispered. “He was there both times. And the Zalapting standing just inside the doorway. Those were the two guards.”

“To be fair, the beggar only has one leg,” Indrajit said. “Maybe he was there both times because he doesn’t move much.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Munahim said.

“Is the Zalapting alone now?” Fix asked.

The doorway was below them and several paces to one side, but Munahim raised his muzzle and sniffed. “I’m pretty sure he is.”

A troupe of bawdy actors marched up the center of the street. “Performing now, outside the gate!” their crier shouted. He was a pudgy Kishi with a shaven head and an elaborately brocaded vest, which made him look vaguely like a eunuch. Two bang-harp players struck up an aggressive rhythm and an acrobat did cartwheels. “See the seven daughters of the Mad Duke get their just comeuppance! Saucy girls get what they have coming!” the crier shouted. Actors in masks swarmed the stalls. The crier stepped forward and addressed the beggar. “You, sir! Admission is free to all, do not worry, we operate purely on the basis of voluntary gratuities! Join us!”

All eyes turned to the troupe.

Which was why Indrajit had hired the performers.

“Now,” he whispered.

The three men let themselves down the side of the wall, taking advantage of a broad windowsill and a rain barrel to get to the ground. Running on tiptoe, they charged through the beaded curtain into the exit from Underkish.

Fix went first, and knocked the Zalapting behind the beads to the ground. Indrajit leaped to avoid treading on his friend, and then dropped to all fours. Munahim skittered in crabwise behind them.

Fix held the Zalapting’s muzzle shut with both hands; the lavender-skinned man kicked and punched Fix, but was pinned and unable to draw his sword.

Indrajit gagged the Zalapting and then yanked a black hood over his head. Fix quickly tied the small man up with one of his lengths of rope and then dragged him up onto his shoulder. The Zalapting squirmed until Fix pricked his thigh with a dagger, and then held still.

They were in a dirty room containing nothing but a broken, greasy reclining couch and stairs down into darkness. Indrajit lit his lamp, unshuttering one side, and drew Vacho. “Lead the way,” he said to the Kyone.

Munahim sniffed several times and then went down the stairs. He descended at a fast trot, apparently confident that he was on the right trail and that no one lay in wait. Indrajit was hard pressed to stay at his shoulder, and Fix was soon huffing and puffing.

They were quickly in the maze of Underkish. Fix asked Munahim to identify a side passage that carried no traffic, and when Munahim did so, Fix disappeared down the passage alone for a minute. He returned without the Zalapting, and they continued.

Munahim ran bent over. He looked to Indrajit as if he were staring at the bricks, and Indrajit had to remind himself that he was smelling them. Indrajit learned to let Munahim get out in front, because he didn’t need the light—in the deepest shadow, he never ran into a wall or fell into any of the gaping holes that yawned beneath their feet—and also because, from time to time, he would run a few paces down one passage or into an open vault, and then come back and choose another way.

Suddenly, Munahim stopped. He gave Indrajit the agreed signal for dousing the light, and Indrajit closed the shutter. A minute passed, maybe two. Then Indrajit heard a scuffling sound and a growl, and finally the whispered call, “Light!”

Indrajit and Fix rushed forward to join Munahim, who had disabled another sentry. He was sitting on the man, a Karthing or Ukeling by his pale skin and shaggy appearance, and pressing his face to the floor.

Fix tied the thief up, gagged him with rope, and lowered him into a pit.

“We’re close,” Munahim whispered. “But I hear and smell more people up ahead.”

“Can you get us to the office?” Fix asked.

“Yes,” the Kyone said without hesitation. “But I worry the lantern will be seen.”

“We’ll hold hands,” Indrajit said. “I’ll come last, so I can hold the lantern in my off-hand, but I’ll shutter it. We’ll go in darkness.”

“You trust me?” Munahim asked.

“We always trusted you,” Fix said. “When we leave you as the backup, it’s because we trust you to shoot the running Fanchee in the buttock. When you lead us in darkness, it’s because we trust your sense of smell.”

“My hearing is sharp, too,” Munahim said.

“You told us that.” Indrajit nodded. “Let’s go.”

They held hands in darkness and Munahim led them. He kept them on sure footing. From time to time, breezes touched Indrajit’s skin. The changing echoes around him suggested yawning pits and looming walls he couldn’t see. In the distance, twice he thought he saw the glimmer of lamps, and once a dull green glow. He heard footsteps, and once a sustained metallic groan. And then Munahim was pulling them through a heavy curtain.

“We’re here,” the Kyone said.

Indrajit heard the curtain swish back into place and he unshuttered one side of the lantern. They stood in Arash Sehama’s office, with its two tables, four candelabras, and maps. Indrajit pointed at the map in question, marking the territories of the Gray Lords. “It’s that one, isn’t it?”

Fix leaned in to inspect the map. “Can you brighten the light a little?”

Indrajit cautiously opened a second shutter. Together they pored over the seven colors of the map. “What do the words say?” Indrajit asked.

“I can’t read most of them. I can see Sootfaces, Sookwalkers, Silksteppers, Sailmenders, Soulbinders, and so on. The rest might be in some kind of shorthand, a technical notation. Or it’s a language I don’t know.”

“I am disappointed at the limits of your literacy.”

Fix shook his head.

“Also, I find it peculiar that the thieves’ guilds of Kish are so attached to assonance. Are they all named beginning with a sssuh sound?”

“We call that the letter ess,” Fix said. “And yes, they appear to be. Perhaps they could use a lesson in creativity from you.”

“We should take a copy of this map,” Indrajit said.

“Do we need to know which Gray House rules where?” Munahim asked.

“Well, that is useful information,” Indrajit said. “But also, if we make a copy, then we can keep it and try to figure out what these notations mean. Maybe they record something useful.”

“Certainly, they record something useful,” Fix said, “if we can learn to read them.”

“We could also give the copy to Zac Betel,” Munahim said, “and put this one back.”

The two partners glared at him together. “Put it back?” Indrajit asked.

Munahim shrugged. “If we’re worried that we’re making too many enemies. We might be able to put this back with no one the wiser.”

“Maybe.” Fix removed the tacks that pinned the map to the wall and rolled the document up. “For now, we need to get out of here.”

They joined hands again and Indrajit shuttered the light. Fix held the map in the same hand that gripped Indrajit’s; the rustle of the paper was reassuring in the darkness. They retraced their steps down what Indrajit now identified as a hall, and then the echoes of their footsteps opened up in a wider space.

He heard running feet, and saw the glow of a lantern. Two glows, coming from opposite directions.

Munahim pulled the three of them unto a corner and they pressed against brick walls. The glows grew in brightness and distinctness until both lamps entered the space where the Protagonists were and Indrajit saw that it was the throne room. He and the other Protagonists were hunkered beneath one of the arches of the brick arcade, behind the throne room and near the corner of the hall. Two men with lanterns met, one coming from the opposite side of the hall, emerging beneath an arch, and the other coming from the far left.

The man coming from the left was Yuto Harlee. The other was a Zalapting in a brown tunic and kilt.

The Zalapting shouted something and Harlee shouted back, all in a language Indrajit didn’t recognize. Then Harlee ran beneath one of the arches, and Indrajit guessed he must be going into Sehama’s office. When he emerged, more shouting.

Then both men ran back the way the Zalapting had come, leaving the Protagonists in darkness again.

“I take it none of us speak that tongue,” Indrajit whispered.

“It’s a thieves’ cant,” Fix said. “Called Graykin. I recognize a few words.”

“Such as what?”

“An alarm has been sounded. Something about a gate or a door.”

“They realized that someone has broken in,” Indrajit whispered, “which is to say, us.”

“They probably realize that someone stole the map,” Fix said. “Will they guess it was us?”

“Maybe they’ll guess it was Betel,” Munahim said. “Maybe they know there’s something on that map that he wants.”

“They still might guess he’s sent us to get it.” Indrajit felt tired. A missed night of sleep was no big deal, but they’d been moving nonstop, and the strain of hiding from enemies and trying to outguess opponents at every turn wore him down, too.

“We’re going to have to fight our way out,” Fix said.

The thought made Indrajit more tired still, but then he realized that Fix was wrong. “No, we won’t. Munahim, can you lead us out through the Fighting Fowl? The way we came in, the first two times?”

“Yes,” the Kyone said.

They set out. Indrajit soon felt beneath his feet the graceful rise and fall of the arch he had crossed twice before this same day. He took a deep breath and exhaled, realizing that his chest felt like a single tensed muscle. He heard the sound of flowing water, and then Munahim stopped.

“Someone’s following us,” the Kyone whispered.

Indrajit, last in line, looked about behind him. He saw no hints of light, not reflected lantern glow nor the weird luminescence he had seen more than once in creatures that glowed in their own bodies.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“I can smell them,” Munahim whispered. “They smell like rotting flesh.”

“I smell nothing,” Fix admitted.

“Listen,” the Kyone urged them.

Indrajit cocked an ear and held his breath. He heard snuffling. Like the sound when Munahim sniffed at the air, but wetter, more phlegmy.

“Could it be Sookwalkers?” Fix asked.

“If so, it’s some kind of Sookwalker that can travel in the dark,” Indrajit said. “We can’t defend ourselves like this. Arm yourselves.”

He dropped Fix’s hand, drew Vacho, and opened all the shutters of the lantern.

Five men charged him, running on all fours. They were naked, their mouths gaped wide and bristling with needlelike teeth. Their nails were long and green and sharp, like mold-encrusted talons. Their skin was white as sea-foam and thin tails lashed out behind them. Indrajit had barely noticed that one of them had two heads when the attackers were upon them and he was slashing the foremost through the throat with Vacho.

“Ghouls!” Munahim whispered.

Three of the creatures rushed past Indrajit, charging his friends. The last, the one with two heads, leaped at him. He was extended too far from his slash and he saw a momentary vision of his own throat opened by the Ghoul’s ragged teeth, but he spun his shoulders back the other way and clobbered the Ghoul in one temple with the pommel of his sword.

He heard wet, meaty chopping sounds behind him. Hopefully, it meant that Munahim’s big sword and some combination of Fix’s weapons were at work, hacking up their attackers.

The two-headed Ghoul dropped, scrabbling at Indrajit’s thigh and stretching its jaws wide to bite. Indrajit smashed the lantern onto the back of the creature’s neck, right where it forked to bear the weight of two separate heads. The Ghoul screamed and lurched away, spinning in a circle. Flaming oil spilled around its neck and shoulders.

Indrajit moved to intercept the Ghoul. He got a glimpse, orange-cast and flickering, of Munahim running his hand and a half sword into the chest of a Ghoul up to the cross-guard. Fix had his back against a column of brick, one Ghoul still at his feet with an ax in its skull, the other shrieking and trying to get at Fix’s throat.

The two-headed Ghoul lurched forward one more time. Indrajit stepped aside and grabbed it by its thrashing tail. The monster howled, but Indrajit was half again its size, so he took two steps, swung the Ghoul like a throwing hammer, and slammed it heads-first into a brick wall.

Then he stepped on the small of its back and ran it through the chest for good measure.

“Fix!” He turned and saw that Munahim and Fix were striking down the last Ghoul with simultaneous attacks, Munahim chopping off an arm with a single mighty swing and Fix impaling the creature through the belly.

The Ghoul shrieked, wailed, and flopped its arms. “Hungry!” it hissed, black bile pouring over its thin lips. “Only hungry!”

Then it fell still.

The whole battle had played out with almost no talking on the Protagonists’ part, like a piece of shadow theater. Now Indrajit staggered in a short circle, stabbing each Ghoul one more time to be certain they were dead.

The fire on the two-headed Ghoul was dying. Indrajit quickly refilled his lantern and lit it, shutting off most of the light but leaving one panel open, mostly because he was nervous there might be other Ghouls approaching.

“Light-shunning corpse eaters, bane of brick and wall,” he said, reciting the shorter epic epithet for Ghouls. He’d never seen one before; the Blaatshi Epic taught him that they were to be found in cities, and here indeed they were.

Fix scooped up the map, which had fallen on the floor; it appeared undamaged.

“Let’s get out of here,” Indrajit said. “Someone has to have heard that.”

Munahim led them quickly through the darkness, hands linked. Indrajit listened intently, trying to notice snuffling or breathing sounds behind him. Despite the long nails on their feet and the tails dragging behind them, the Ghouls had padded in silence. He shuddered.

They walked, he thought, for five minutes.

“Shh,” Munahim warned. “Light and feet coming.”

The Kyone dragged them off their path. In the advancing glow of a lamp, Indrajit could see that they were hiding behind a crumbling brick wall. Slime trickled across the floor at their feet and a great patch of lichen engulfed and nearly entirely concealed a brick column.

Three men and two lanterns came toward them. They wore leather jerkins and skirts under gray capes; two were Zalaptings and the third a short, wiry Kishi. They wore short swords at their belts, and one Zalapting had a spear.

“I heard Ghouls,” one Zalapting said.

The others snickered.

“Maybe that’s the end of whoever broke in,” the Kishi said. “Let’s find the bones so I can get Harlee off my back.”

They continued on, moving the way they had come. Their light faded.

“They’ll find the dead Ghouls and know we’re still at large,” Fix said.

“And they’ll know we came this direction,” Munahim said. “They’ll be back.”

“Wait.” Indrajit thought he saw a faint glimmer of light in a different direction. Not the yellow, greasy light of a lamp, but the bluish light of a winter day. “Those guys came from the Fighting Fowl, we can’t go that way. What about over there . . . is that light?”

They joined hands again and Munahim led them. As they approached the light, the glimmer became a blur of white against gloomy red, and then a bright patch, and finally a shaft of light falling from the ceiling.

The floor was a foul trough whose contents oozed away across the brick in a trickle. A shaft twenty cubits high or more rose up to the unmistakable sign that this was a latrine: two circular, horizontal holes, through which light dropped in. If the shaft were a smooth chimney, built on purpose for the latrine, it would no doubt be slimy and unclimbable. Instead, it was a ragged, crumbling, rocky tunnel, whose sides leaned first one way and then the other as it rose. Indrajit saw shelves covered with green moss, and handholds that he thought looked dry.

“Can you carry the map in your kilt?” he asked Fix.

Fix answered by folding the map twice, tucking it into his pocket, and climbing. When he was halfway up and past the smoothest-looking parts of the ascent, Indrajit sent Munahim up next. “I’ll be the backup.”

As Fix pushed up the seat of the latrine and more light flooded in, Indrajit himself climbed. Chunks of dust and rock fell down, choking him; Fix had had to smash the latrine seat from the brick on which it sat. Then Fix was out, and he was helping Munahim exit.

Indrajit heard snuffling sounds below him.

His hands gripped holds at a ninety-degree angle from each other, and his sandals were wedged into cracks on opposite sides of the shaft. Looking down, he saw two Ghouls crouching, shielding their eyes from the light, and staring up.

One Ghoul had an extra arm on one side of its chest.

The Ghouls gripped themselves to the brick and began to climb.

Indrajit made himself move faster. “Any help you can give me would be appreciated,” he called up the shaft. He made himself take risks for speed, grabbing handholds that looked less secure but were easier, reaching farther distances and pulling himself up without testing the stability of his holds.

“You’re in the way!” Munahim called back.

Indrajit risked a look down and saw that the Ghouls were gaining. Their talons dug into the crumbling mortar or slimy dirt of the walls, affording them easy grips, and their tails seemed to help them balance. He pulled a rock from the wall and hurled it down. He struck a Ghoul in the shoulder but didn’t manage to dislodge it.

He kept climbing. A depression in the wall above him might afford him a place to draw his sword and defend himself, if he could make it. Not finding a grip within reach of his fingers, he leaped across the chimney, grabbing and getting his fingers hooked onto a narrow brick ledge.

The Ghouls shrieked. A hand gripped his ankle, and he kicked. He kicked a second time and a third, finally planting the heel of his sandal into the Ghoul’s face. It slid a cubit down the shaft but didn’t fall.

He could feel hot breath on his calves. He scrambled, pulling himself up into the depression. He pivoted on his back, trying to get his hand on Vacho’s hilt and discovering that he had pinned the scabbard beneath his own weight. He heard the scratching of the Ghouls’ talons and one of them shrieked again, an awful, delighted sound. A Ghoul levered itself up into the mouth of the depression.

Then he heard the loud snap of Munahim’s bow. The Ghoul howled and fell.

Another snap, instantly on the heels of the first, and then Indrajit heard two wet thuds as the Ghouls hit the floor below and lay still.

“Are you well?” Munahim called.

“Not a scratch,” Indrajit said. “Give me a minute to catch my breath and then I’ll be right up.”


Back | Next
Framed