Chapter Seventeen
The Veteran at the gate was an Ulotar. He looked like nothing so much as a pale green willow tree made entirely of rubber. He (it could have been a she, Indrajit reminded himself) had a band of a hundred constantly blinking eyes at about the level of Indrajit’s face, encircling a six-cubit-tall trunk. Beneath the eyes was a crease that traveled all around the whole cylindrical body and appeared to be able to open as a mouth on any side, and even on more than one side at the same time. At the lower extremities, the trunk split into four legs. When the Ulotar stood still, the knees looked like warty protrusions on the trunk of a tree; when he moved, the knees all bent out, away from the trunk, so the Ulotar walked with a bobbing or skipping motion. Like the branches of a willow, limbs hung down on all sides from above the band of eyes. They looked like unruly hair, or an upside-down squid, were prehensile, and ended in sharp points like talons.
“Treelike Ulotar, leaping over fences,” Indrajit said. “Faster than a running man, swims like a stone.”
The Ulotar made an agitated sound at Indrajit and Philastes.
Philastes made a bellowing grunt in return. The Ulotar scuttled aside and tittered and Indrajit and Philastes passed.
“You speak Ulotar,” Indrajit said.
“Only a little,” Philastes said. “It’s an easy language, though. I could teach you.”
“Do you know Blaatshi at all?” Indrajit asked.
“No,” Philastes said. “Do you know a good textbook?”
Indrajit growled. “So, have you met Zac Betel? You bought the Girdle of Life from him, didn’t you?”
“Not that I realized,” Philastes said. “I thought I was buying it from an antiquities dealer and . . . ah, fence, named Hutch Squilo.”
“A fence for the Sootfaces, I suppose.”
As they passed from the gate into the Spill, Indrajit caught a flash of blue in his right eye. Lowering his voice almost to inaudibility among the whooping of early morning drovers and food hawkers, he murmured, “Look casually to your right. Do you see a man in a bright blue toga, with a bright blue hood?”
Indrajit stopped at the folding wooden table of a Zalapting selling gourds. He picked one up, rapped it with his knuckles, and weighed it in his hands to give Philastes a chance to look. Philastes hefted another such gourd and peeped past it.
“Yes,” Philastes said.
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s holding a cane. In front of him, as if it’s nectargrass and he’s going to drink from it. Who is that? Is he a follower of one of the Gray Lords?”
“We . . . don’t actually know,” Indrajit said. “The cane is a blowgun. If he raises it to his lips, he’s attacking. If he’s not raising it now, that confirms what we already thought . . . that his target is Fix, not me. For now, at least.”
“And not me.”
“That’s a good gourd,” the Zalapting said. “Very juicy, very sweet. The flesh makes a nice pie or stew. You can also dry it and it will keep for a long time.”
“So he’s probably wondering where Fix went.”
“So he’s not our problem,” Philastes said.
“Also,” the Zalapting added, “you can dry the empty shell, if you’re careful when you’re taking out the flesh, and it will hold water.”
Indrajit considered. “We could ignore him. Or, we could try to catch him.”
“Because he wants to kill our comrade in arms.”
“Yes. I like that. To defend our comrade in arms. And also,” Indrajit pointed out, “we need to delay, without looking like we’re delaying, to buy Fix time. Besides, if this assassin succeeds in killing Fix, who’s to say he won’t be sent after me next? Or after you?”
“Are you going to buy that gourd or make love to it?” the Zalapting asked.
Indrajit shuffled some coins out of his purse, sesterces and asimi and one Imperial bit. “How many gourds is that?”
“Three,” the Zalapting said.
Indrajit took a gourd and Philastes took two and they headed down the Crooked Mile. Indrajit casually turned his head, looking for any sign of Gray House footpads. He saw none. But surely, they had someone watching the Protagonists.
Unless they had all followed Fix instead.
“Why are assassins and thieves our enemies?” Philastes asked.
Indrajit took a deep breath and tried to explain. To his credit, Philastes took it all in stride.
“Why do the Gray Houses wear uniforms?” Philastes asked when it was all in the open.
“I don’t know,” Indrajit said. “This is my first real brush with them. I suppose for the same reason as jobbers: uniform helps morale. A uniform gives people something to be afraid of.”
“But they’re thieves,” Philastes said. “Won’t wearing a uniform get them hanged?”
Indrajit chuckled. “But all the uniforms are deniable. A cloak, a smudge of soot, a scarf. Recognizable, and totally deniable if they became a liability. And anyway, this is Kish.”
“That seems to mean bad things. And does the House of Knives have a uniform, too?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Indrajit said. “It seems like it would be a handicap.”
“So that raises the question why the man with the blowgun dresses in this same persistent fashion . . . doesn’t it?”
Indrajit considered, but had no answer. “We need a way to turn the chase back on the blowgun man,” he said. “I suggest these steps to our left.”
They turned between a luthier’s shop and a leatherworker’s, where two Yuchaks were unloading a stack of hides from the back of a mule, and the Wixit shopkeeper was measuring each and making notations on a wax board. Three steps in, the alley dove steeply down stairs, turning left and then right again, and then splitting. Steps continued down and to the left, soon turning again and disappearing entirely. Another flight of stairs, difficult to see as it lay behind the corner of a brick tenement building, ascended sharply.
Indrajit pulled Philastes with him into the ascending slot. A heap of earth and moldering compost, barely retained by a net of twine, rose on one side of the chimney, while crumbling bricks walled off the other. Indrajit wished devoutly for a mirror, promised himself that someday he’d have a Protagonist carry around a mirror, along with lights, oil, fire starters, waterproof canvas, rope, and a hundred other things.
He didn’t want another Protagonist so much as a mule, really. An intelligent, creative, very loyal mule, that would carry its own gear, and always be prepared. Maybe an ylakka?
They pressed themselves against the brick wall and raised the gourds over their heads. Indrajit calmed his own breathing and counted his heartbeats, waiting. A hundred beats went by, and he began to think he’d made a mistake. Or rather, Philastes had been wrong. There had been no man in a blue toga, there had been some innocent person, wearing a blue cape and holding a walking stick, perhaps.
He was about to ask Philastes how good his eyesight was when the man in the blue false toga trotted down the stairs before him.
“Stop!” Indrajit roared. He wanted the man in the toga to stop and turn, so Indrajit could see his face, in case he got away, and also so Indrajit could see his blowgun, and be certain they had the right man.
Instead, the man in the blue toga burst into a run, down the stairs and past them.
Indrajit hurled his gourd. He struck the assassin squarely in the back of the head. The gourd cracked and then fell to the stairs, shattering on the steps. The man staggered, but kept running. Philastes threw his first gourd and missed, and then Indrajit raced after the man in blue.
He hadn’t thought about the steps as he’d descended them earlier, but now they seemed terribly narrow. His footing wobbled, his feet slid from one stair to the next, his ankles felt as if they might snap.
He thought he heard Philastes puffing along behind him, but he couldn’t wait. His stride was longer than that of the man in blue, and he threw his weight forward, racing down the steps at a pace that would break his neck, if he missed his footing.
The man in the toga turned left into an alley. He was running so fast that he couldn’t slow for the turn, and slammed into a wooden wall at the corner. A flowerpot hanging from the eaves above was dislodged by the impact and fell, shattering on the cobbles as Indrajit took the same turn. Dirt sprayed into his face and he scraped skin off his right shoulder, but he was nearly stepping on the assassin’s sandaled heels now.
They were turning into a tiny plaza, the cobblestones ceding to packed gravel. At the far end, a crack barely a cubit wide squeezed between two buildings onto a busier street beyond. Indrajit saw oxen and a drogger and the assassin was running toward the crack.
Indrajit hurled himself forward. He shoved the man in the blue toga sideways and crashed to the gravel himself. The assassin stumbled, slid, and then smacked into the brick wall, two paces to the side of the crack.
Indrajit sprang to his feet and drew Vacho. “Time to give us some answers.”
He grabbed the assassin by a shoulder and spun him about.
The assassin wasn’t a man. She was a woman. A youngish woman, he guessed. Hard to tell, because her skin was bright red and she had no hair, just short, knobby horns on her head. Her skin was unlined, though, and her eyes had the stubborn, apprehensive look of the young. She gripped a cane in her hands, but it was now snapped in two, and Indrajit could see that it hadn’t been hollowed out, and indeed was still green, oozing juice. An actual cane, not a blowgun. Maybe, in fact, nectargrass.
And she appeared to be armed only with a belt knife.
“You’re not the assassin,” Indrajit said. He’d been tricked. He leaped to the side, trying to throw himself into the crack of an alley that would take him to the street beyond.
He didn’t make it. Searing pain stabbed him in the calf and he fell to the gravel. He hit, hearing a ringing in his ears. He turned his head, his own breath suddenly very loud in his ears, and saw the silhouette of a man standing on a rooftop above the courtyard. He wore a blue false toga and he held a heavy crossbow in his hands.
The crossbow string was perpendicular to the barrel of the weapon, and the man reached for a pouch of bolts strapped to his leg. The crossbow was large and had a crank, so it would take the attacker a little time to load and prepare his weapon.
Indrajit tried to stand and his calf wouldn’t support him. He collapsed again to the gravel and stared down at his uncooperating leg dumbly.
He had a bolt in his leg.
Of course. He focused on the bolt and the pain, tried to clear his mind. A fog seemed to have settled over him. He lurched upright on his one good leg, clinging to the wall. The woman in blue was running, but Philastes kicked her feet out from under her and she fell.
“Run!” Indrajit called to Philastes, but the Pelthite ignored him. He scooped and picked up a loose cobblestone from the ground and snapped it into the pouch of his sling. Just as the shooter on the rooftop gripped the crank of his weapon and began pulling back the string, Philastes hit him in the cheek.
The man in blue went down.
“Let’s go!” Indrajit croaked. He felt nauseated at the pain.
The woman in blue tried to get up again. Philastes grabbed the hood of her false toga and yanked it downward, blinding her and forcing her to her knees. Indrajit hopped to grab Philastes and pull him away.
The woman lurched forward, slashing at Indrajit’s other leg with her knife. Philastes was too quick for her; he kicked her hand, sending the knife flying.
“Leave her!” Indrajit gasped.
“She’s an accomplice!” Philastes snapped.
The Pelthite diplomat grabbed another stone and put it into his sling. Watching the roof, he gathered up additional rocks in his free hand.
Philastes was right. “Come on, then.” Indrajit grabbed the woman by the elbow and pulled her to her feet. “This way.”
As he lunged across the little plaza, the assassin on the rooftop raised his head again. Philastes cracked a stone into the man’s forehead, and he cursed loudly.
The woman tried to wrench her hand free. “Let me go!”
“Not yet.” Indrajit edged into the crack sword-first. The narrow alley, only ten paces long, suddenly seemed completely dark. “Larch!”
Philastes slung another stone at the rooftop and then retreated to Indrajit’s side. He stepped in front of the woman, blocking any avenue she had of escape, ignoring a savage string of curses she unleashed on them. He put another sling in his stone and held it.
The man on top of the roof suddenly stood and ran. Philastes slung a stone and hit him in the hip, knocking his pace askew, but he jumped across the alley, dropping a full story but landing on his feet. Indrajit feared for a moment that the assassin was circling around to get a better shot at Indrajit, perhaps shooting straight down at him while he was trapped in this crack, but then he saw the men pursuing the assassin.
Yammilku the Heru was in the lead, and five men ran with him, blades in their hands and yelling.
The Sootfaces. The rebel Sootfaces, he reminded himself. The ones who were trying to force him and Fix to commit a murder.
They had stepped in to protect their plot.
“Faster!” Philastes urged.
The Pelthite was right. Now was their chance to get free of the thieves, and maybe seize the initiative. Indrajit leaned into his step and dragged the woman through the alley as if it were by a single motion of falling to the ground. He emerged off-balance, dodged an ox dragging a cart, and leaned on her to avoid dropping.
Philastes, who was a much smaller man, made it through more easily. “I don’t know the Spill that well.”
“I do.” Indrajit staggered across the street, ducking under a drogger’s feed bag, and plunged into an alley on the other side. Mercifully, it was all downhill from here to Betel’s shop.
“You’re bleeding,” Philastes said as he caught up.
“Bleeding a ‘you’re going to die’ amount?” Indrajit asked. He was afraid to look for himself. “Or bleeding a ‘you’re going to need to rest and drink a lot of wine’ quantity?”
“The latter, I think,” Philastes said. “If we pull out the bolt and bandage it soon enough.”
“Good,” Indrajit said. “I like wine.”
He didn’t mention to Philastes that the blowgun the man had previously used had been poisoned. But Indrajit was deeply relieved that he was conscious and felt lucid, if distracted and sickened by the sheer pain.
“Tell us who you are,” he demanded of the young woman, trying to focus.
“I’m no one! Let me go!”
Indrajit cut between two rickshaws, then leaped over the tail of a blanket-covered ylakka. He meant to leap over it, anyway, but with his injured leg, he didn’t quite manage. When he stepped on the giant lizard’s tail, its head spun, jerked from its winter torpor. It hissed, showing a flickering tongue and bony yellow ridges in its mouth that were as sharp as teeth.
“Not a good answer,” Indrajit said. They passed two braziers full of coals, a Rover wagon, and a Kishi selling cups of hot tea from a metal tank strapped to his back. The tank had candles on a small shelf beneath it to warm it, and several blankets insulated the vendor’s back from the tin of the tank. Indrajit was tempted to stop and taste the tea, but there was no time. “You just helped in an attempted murder. That’s probably a crime, but, as you can no doubt tell by now, I’m no notary.”
“If you were, you would know this is kidnapping!” She twisted to try to yank her arm free and failed.
“As I said, no expertise.” Indrajit shrugged. “I’m more of a man of action, and if you’re not going to answer my questions, I’m inclined to throw you down a well. There’s a nice deep one coming up in about fifty paces. It’s called the Spithole, do you know it? Water seeps from a rock, and then there’s a chasm.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“It’s pretty deep,” Indrajit said. “And there are Ghouls down there.”
“She’s just some prostitute,” Philastes said. “She’s too dumb to know anything.”
“I’m a student!” she snapped.
Oh, clever Philastes.
“A student?” Indrajit mused. “What does that mean? Are you a journeyman at some guild? Or you pay some artisan for training?”
“I study at the Hall of Guesses,” she said.
“What do you guess about?” Indrajit asked. “Poetry, by any chance?”
“Healing,” she said. “Herbs and compounds, anatomy.”
“Ah, good,” Indrajit said. They passed the Spithole, where a line of the quarter’s residents waited to draw water from the mossy seep. “How are you at carrying burdens? Say, a mirror and a rope?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Why did you put on the blue toga and hold the cane and follow us?”
They were nearing Betel’s smithy. Indrajit looked about for signs that they were followed, and saw none. This gave him little comfort, since he had seen none earlier, and then Yammilku and his men had burst onto the scene to attack the assassin. The Sootfaces, at least, seemed to be stealthier than Indrajit was perceptive. Still, he was moving as fast as he could, and in a straight line, and it was hard to imagine that they could have caught up yet.
Had they killed the assassin? Maybe they had captured him and could interrogate him?
Maybe, at the end of the day, if Indrajit were forced to murder Zac Betel, he could get Yammilku to tell him what he’d learned from the crossbowman.
Indrajit sighed.
“I was paid.” She sounded angry. “I needed the money. It’s so hard being a student. Everything is expensive and my family can’t pay the Hall of Guesses, so I have to pay. And . . . I didn’t want to make the money by working as a prostitute. I had no idea that that man would shoot at you.” She hesitated. “My name is Illiot.”
“I laud you for that decision,” Indrajit said. “I don’t know that murderer is a higher calling than whore, but I believe you that you didn’t know what you were doing.”
“I thought it was some sort of joke. He said he was playing a prank on an old comrade. I thought he was going to jump out and pull a bag over your head, or empty a chamber pot onto you from the second story.”
“Yes, ha-ha, that would have been hilarious.” They were only a hundred paces from the smithy, and Indrajit felt this well of information had turned out to be unfortunately shallow. “How did he hire you?”
“He stopped a group of us coming out of the Hall this morning,” Illiot said. “He wanted to hire one of the men, but I was the one who took the offer.” She shrugged. “I suppose I needed the money most.”
“And did he say his name?” Philastes asked.
“He called himself Chode. He paid in advance.”
“Okay,” Indrajit said. “I’m letting you go.” He hesitated a moment, then dug into his purse and produced five Imperials, handing her the coins. “Look, be more careful in the future.”
She looked astonished, but took the money and ran.
“How’s your leg?” Philastes asked.
“Hurts like ten devils.” Indrajit crossed the street, circulating around the crowd that stood watching a low bawdy performance and then diving into Betel’s alley. Ten devils didn’t really feel like an adequate number to produce the grinding, stabbing pain in his calf.
Zac Betel himself stood in the open air of his smithy. Three of his men, all armed with swords, stood casually around him, watching the alleys on three sides. Betel worked iron again, his visible arms holding the long, heated bar while his unseen arms swung hammers.
Could the men with Betel now be trusted?
Indrajit drew his sword as he limped closer. He felt blood squishing in his sandal. With his left hand, he drew out the copy of the map. He held it up and shook it open as he approached. The three men—a Pelthite, a Yuchak, and a fat Karthing, all clad in studded leather—drew their swords. The Karthing whistled a very nonmusical series of notes.
“This is for you,” Indrajit said. “As promised. And we want nothing for it.”
Betel hesitated. “Why do approach with a blade in your hand, Blaatshi?”
“Because Yammilku wants you dead,” Indrajit said. “And I don’t know which of your men are loyal to you, and which are loyal to him.”
The three thieves raised their swords and attacked Betel.