Chapter Seven
They passed under the sign of the Fighting Fowl. Yuto Harlee looked up from polishing the wooden countertop. “You’ve just missed the lunch rush. We do have fried tamarind and a little flatbread left, and I could dig up some berries.”
Indrajit leaned over the bar. “Is there some sort of password we’re supposed to say to let you know we want to be let into the Undersook Palace?”
“Yes,” Harlee said. “And you don’t know it because you’re not Sookwalkers.”
Fix rapped his knuckles on the wood. “You know what we want, Harlee.”
Harlee produced the hoods and the knotted rope, disarmed them, and again led them into darkness. Indrajit had the presence of mind to protect his face from the beginning this time. Munahim must have done the same, because he chuckled several times as they walked. Indrajit walked over the same arch clutching the same knotted rope, heard the same flowing water, and then had his hood removed.
They weren’t standing in the throne room, but in a much smaller chamber, furnished like an office. Two wide desks stood against two walls, perpendicular to each other and facing the center of the room, where the Protagonists stood. Arash Sehama sat at one desk, face still hidden in a hood, yellow tail flicking back and forth under his seat. Yuto Harlee, after plucking off the three cowls, sat at the other, setting a bag full of their weapons on the floor beside his feet. A candelabra stood in each corner of the room, and the single visible exit was a passage under a narrow arch, shut with a heavy curtain. Maps hung on all the walls—Indrajit recognized the city and its various quarters, but there were numerous lines and shapes inked over the top in various colors that meant nothing to him. The wide margins of all the maps were also full of written notations, which made him frown.
“You didn’t bring the body,” Sehama said.
“We’re not idiots,” Fix said. “Do you want that kind of attention?”
Harlee chuckled.
“No,” Sehama said, his voice a dry rasp. “But I would like evidence. We’re not idiots, after all.”
“You’ve already had it,” Indrajit guessed. “Either you followed us and your man saw us shoot Zing, or Kotzin came rushing right down here to tell you what we did, and demand to know what you were doing to protect him.”
“Both, in fact,” Sehama admitted.
“We got into the bank by announcing that we were on the Lord Chamberlain’s business,” Fix said. “When Kotzin came out, we couldn’t very well reassure him that we were there as Sookwalkers.”
“You’re not Sookwalkers,” Sehama said.
“No,” Indrajit said. “If we were, we could have given him the secret handshake, and his mind would have been set at ease.”
“My man who followed you couldn’t see what you did with the body,” Sehama said.
“We work for Orem Thrush,” Indrajit said. “We have ways of disposing of corpses.”
“Fire,” Fix said. “Acid. Deep, deep wells.”
“The Necropolis,” Indrajit said. “The sea.”
“Eat the flesh,” Munahim said.
Everyone stared at him.
The Kyone shrugged. “It works.”
“I’d feel a little better if you’d brought me . . . I don’t know, fingers.” The Gray Lord leaned his elbows on his desktop and spread his own eight fingers flat on the wood, as if illustrating what he meant.
“There are ten thousand Fanchee fingers in Kish,” Fix said. “Do you want us to go collect some for you? It’s time to deal, Sehama.”
“You don’t want to be initiated?” Harlee asked. “Secret handshake, passwords to the Undersook Palace, and so on?”
“We do,” Indrajit said. “We think there are some interesting business possibilities.”
“But we want the Girdle of Life first,” Fix said. “We want it now.”
“Initiation later,” Indrajit said, to clarify.
Arash Sehama sighed. “Well, as prospective Sookwalkers, I can now let you in on a trade secret. I no longer have the Girdle of Life.”
Fix’s shoulders knotted instantly.
“You’re not dealing in good faith,” Indrajit said.
“You were outsiders before.” Sehama shrugged. “You know what they say.”
“They say, ‘Welcome to Kish,’” Munahim said.
“Welcome to Kish,” Sehama agreed.
“Where is the Girdle?” Fix’s voice cracked.
“Strictly speaking, I can’t tell you where the Girdle is,” Sehama said. “Because I don’t know. But I can tell you who I sold it to.”
“Someone outbid the Vin Dalu,” Fix said.
“The Vin Dalu offered us healing services.” Sehama shrugged. “Apparently, they don’t have a lot of cash. And, frankly, I’m usually just as happy to let my men die as to go to the expense of healing them.”
Sehama and Harlee laughed.
“Don’t say it,” Indrajit warned Munahim. The Kyone nodded.
“Especially when your best sources of revenue have been shrinking because of the interference of the Lord Chamberlain’s men,” Fix said.
Sehama stopped laughing.
“Who bought the Girdle?” Fix pressed.
“Zac Betel,” Harlee said.
Fix trembled.
“Okay,” Indrajit said. “We’ll go deal with Betel, and then we’ll come back and finish our initiation. We still want to do business with you. Where do we find him? Does one of these maps show?”
Harlee pointed. “That map there. You see how the Spill is divided into red and green sections?”
Indrajit looked. The division was not a simple half-and-half split, but had lines and islands of green penetrating into red territory, and vice versa. Similar lines and islands splotched the map elsewhere, but if each color corresponded to one of the Gray Lords, then, roughly speaking, there was one Gray Lord each for the Lee and the Caravanserai, while a single Gray Lord ruled the East and West Flats as well as the Shelf, two Gray Lords divided the Crown between them, and Sehama and Betel split the Spill.
No one owned the Dregs.
“Jaxter Boom isn’t one of your mob, I take it?” Indrajit asked.
Sehama snorted.
“Who’s Boom?” Munahim asked.
“A gangster in the Dregs,” Fix said. “No one to worry about.”
“A gangster who probably doesn’t remember us fondly,” Indrajit said.
“Only one of us stabbed him in the eye,” Fix pointed out.
“I’m not ashamed of that,” Indrajit said.
“The Sookwalkers’ territory is in green,” Fix said, returning to the map. “But where do I find Betel?”
“The Sootfaces are the territory adjacent to our own,” Harlee said. “And you can see the Silksteppers’ domain up in the Crown, and so on. Betel does business openly in his territory, under his own name, as a blacksmith. You’ll find his shop within a stone’s throw of the western gate. There’s a red blot on the spot where the building is.”
Indrajit found the blot. “Take us out, then. Unless you just want us to find our way on our own.”
“You don’t want to do that.” Sehama laughed. “There are much more dangerous things down here than Sookwalkers.”
“Yes,” Fix said. “I’m down here. Now let us out.”
“You’ll come back, though,” Sehama said.
Fix ground his teeth.
“We will,” Indrajit agreed. “We want to be allies.”
They were hooded and led again, and once more when the hoods came off, they stood among baskets and pots near the gate to the Shelf. Harlee handed them their weapons.
“Cruel trick,” Indrajit said to Harlee as he belted Vacho back on.
“You’re dealing with a guild of thieves,” Harlee said. “Are you really going to complain about tricks being played?”
“Increasingly,” Munahim said, “I expect this sort of treatment from everyone in Kish.” His gaze was distracted; he was looking at a one-legged beggar sitting in the mouth of a nearby alley on a ragged blanket.
Indrajit led the way, not waiting for Fix to finish buckling his falchion back into place.
“Don’t worry,” Munahim told him as they walked. “I have excellent hearing, and if a monster were to approach us in the Undersook, even if we were hooded at the time, I’d be able to hear it coming. And smell it, too.”
“Or a person,” Indrajit suggested.
“A monster or a person,” Munahim agreed. “But I assumed we’re more worried about Ghouls or a six-eyed Gund than an enthusiastic young man trying to make us read a book about colors and how we’re all gods already.”
“Sehama set us up,” Fix said. “Deliberately. He’s just using us to cause trouble for his rival.”
“There’s an obvious trade we can make here,” Indrajit suggested. “We give Betel his man Zing back, in exchange for the Girdle.”
“Except then we show Sehama that we didn’t kill Zing.”
“Which he suspects,” Indrajit said.
“He suspects, but he doesn’t know it.” Fix snarled. “And he may be playing another trick on us with Betel, so we may need to go back to the Sookwalkers again. So we can’t free Zing. And Betel might know that we’ve arrested his man.”
“He might think we’ve killed his man,” Indrajit said.
“Perhaps we should tell him we’ve done so up front,” Munahim suggested.
Indrajit’s head for written maps was not great, and when he got to the gate, he found himself floundering, trying to figure out which building corresponded to the tiny black square with the red blot he had seen. A line of beggars yelled taunts at him, and a pack of gray-skinned Visps circled, trilling eerily, shaking the feathers at their knees and their elbows.
“There.” Munahim pointed down an alleyway. “I hear the hiss of water.”
As they walked in the direction he indicated, Indrajit began to hear the clang of metal on metal. They marched down the alley to find a three-story-tall building of sturdy timbers. Two walls on the ground floor consisted of panels of folding shutters that were all open, leaving the work of the blacksmith within open to view. The smith was a Luzzazza, tall and muscular. With his two visible arms, he gripped a glowing iron bar against an anvil the size of a pony. Two hammers seemed to levitate in the air before him, dancing up and down and tapping on the red iron.
Like Arash Sehama, he wore an unmarked iron disk on a chain around his neck.
“Zac Betel,” Fix said.
The smith plunged his iron into a tub of water, releasing a cloud of steam into the cool air. He turned to face the Protagonists, down-turned ears flopping as he moved. “I’ve seen you before,” he said.
“My name is Fix,” Fix said.
“No.” The smith pointed at Indrajit. “You.”
“My name is Indrajit Twang.”
“You’re a dancer or something. An actor, am I right?”
“A poet. The four hundred twenty-seventh Recital Thane of my people, as it happens. Here . . . well, my art is not much in demand.”
“The Blaatshi. I thought your people were extinct. Finally swept up in the fishing nets of Ildarion.”
“The Ildarians don’t fish for us,” Indrajit said.
“No, but they take the fish you want to eat, am I right?” Betel grinned, showing broad white teeth. “Leaving you less food. And there are so many of them, and they’re fierce fighters, that it’s hard to defend your territory. So you’re driven back, year after year. You have fewer babies. You forget your old pride.”
Indrajit snorted. “We remember all our pride. And we are as fierce in war as any Ildarian baron’s men.”
“Ah, good.” The Luzzazza rubbed his knuckles. “I like to see some fire.”
“We came to buy something from you,” Fix said.
Zac Betel squinted at them. Did he know about Toru Zing? And how much did he value the blackmailer, if he did know?
“Horseshoes?” the smith asked. “A doorframe? A lamp? Pots and pans? Rims for a wagon wheel?” He lowered his voice. “Or did you want a building burned down?”
“None of those things,” Fix said. “You’ve taken ownership of a Druvash artifact we want. It may have been identified to you as the Girdle of Life, but it’s a chest harness. It attaches to a larger device, so you may have seen free-hanging straps.”
“Ah.” Betel pulled the iron from the barrel and examined it. “Well, I’m no collector. I’m a practical man. If I acquired such an item as you describe, I would have done so for a client. That client might already be in possession of the said item. And I couldn’t betray a client by telling you his identity.” He thrust the iron into a bed of hot coals. “For free.”
Indrajit felt ill.
“We don’t have time,” Fix said. “What do you want?”
“You’re Sookwalkers,” Betel said.
“No,” Indrajit said.
“Arash Sehama took you into his confidence, true or false.” The Luzzazza frowned. “How else would you know I had the Girdle of Life from him?”
“He did tell us,” Fix admitted. “We’re not Sookwalkers, but we’re dealing with him.”
“Sehama has a map,” Betel said. “It marks boundaries between the territories of the Gray Lords.”
“We’ve seen such a chart,” Indrajit admitted.
“If you were to get me that map,” Betel said, “I would tell you who has the Girdle of Life.”
Indrajit and Fix looked at each other. Betel couldn’t possibly be ignorant of the territory of his own operations, so that meant that the map contained some other valuable information. But the map was in Arash Sehama’s office, and Indrajit, at least, couldn’t think of a way to break back into the Undersook Palace, find the office, and steal the map, without getting seen.
“Twenty Imperials,” Fix said. “We’ll just pay you.”
“Twenty Imperials probably seems like a lot of money to you guys,” Betel said. “For me, it’s not very much.”
“For a little information?” Fix pressed. “For a name? Twenty Imperials is a lot of money for anyone, just to say a name.”
“A client’s name.” Betel shook his head. “A rich client, an important client.”
“One of the Lords of Kish?” Indrajit suggested.
Betel laughed.
“Thirty,” Fix offered.
“Get me the map,” Betel insisted.
“Fifty.”
“The map,” Betel said. “Or else I will take it personally that you killed one of my men and didn’t even apologize.”
“Welcome to Kish,” Munahim said.
There was a moment of silence.
Then Betel laughed again. “Welcome to Kish, indeed. Get me the map, and we have business to discuss. Otherwise, we’re done.”
“Okay,” Indrajit agreed. “We’ll get the map.”
Betel nodded. “Give my regards to Arash Sehama. And to Orem Thrush.”
The Protagonists returned to the western gate. Indrajit traded a few asimi for three flatbreads wrapped around roasted tamarind pods with a spiced yogurt sauce and handed one to each of the other men.
“We can go back and attack Betel,” Fix suggested. “Hold that face in the coals by his big floppy ears until he tells us what we want to know.”
“He’s public,” Indrajit said, “but I don’t think he’s alone. He has to have men watching him. A couple of goons in an upper window with a crossbow, and we’d regret it.”
“If I don’t save Alea, I’ll regret it.”
“We’re going to end up with enemies,” Munahim said, “no matter how this turns out.”
“Again,” Fix said, “not my biggest concern.”
“We could try capturing one of Betel’s men,” Indrajit said. “Maybe watch the smithy until we figure out who they are. And interrogate that guy.”
“Whoever we grab, he might not know anything about the Girdle of Life,” Fix pointed out.
“What if we work it from the other end?” Indrajit suggested. “Maybe trying to do favors for the various Gray Houses isn’t the right way to go about it at all. Let’s ask ourselves instead, who possibly would want to buy the Girdle of Life?”
“The Vin Dalu,” Fix said.
“The Hall of Guesses,” Indrajit said.
“Anyone who buys art,” Munahim said. “A rich merchant. One of the great houses. A temple.”
“He’s right,” Fix said. “The list is practically endless. An ambassador, a guild, the Hall of Charters, the Auction House, the Racetrack. For all we know, some muleskinner bought it and it’s already halfway down the Endless Road.”
“We could get Grit Wopal down here,” Indrajit suggested. “Read Betel’s mind.”
“Wopal doesn’t read minds.” Fix shook his head. “He’s a good interrogator, but I think that would be a lot more involved than just a quick look into Zac Betel’s brain. We’d ask a question like, ‘So, did you sell it to the Hall of Charters,’ and Wopal would tell us what Betel felt while he answered. It would take time and the right setting.”
“So we arrest Betel and throw him into one of the holding rooms,” Indrajit said. “And we really interrogate him, with Wopal’s help.”
“And the Lord Chamberlain has then declared open war on the Gray Lords. Not sure Orem Thrush is really ready for that.”
“There’s another option.” Munahim took a large bite of the tamarind in yogurt.
Indrajit and Fix looked at him, waiting while he chewed.
“Yes?” Indrajit prompted the Kyone, once he’d swallowed.
“We go in and get the map,” Munahim said.
“Sure,” Indrajit said. “We just find our way in the darkness of Underkish, randomly feeling about until we find the Undersook Palace. Because one thing we can say for certain about us is that we are astonishingly lucky.”
Fix chewed his lower lip. “Well, it’s true that we know a little bit about where to find the palace. We know approximately where two entrances are. And we know that from the Fighting Fowl, we descend three flights of steps, whereas from the northern gate, we descend two.”
“That knowledge is nothing,” Indrajit said. “You seem to have completely forgotten our prior journeys beneath this stinking city, so let me remind you. It is a maze. It is a huge, slimy, rotting maze on multiple levels. It’s a maze full of rapeworms and insane Gunds and pits and ghosts and Ghouls and rivers of sewage and worse, and we don’t know our way through it. That’s what you’re proposing.”
“There’s probably a guard at the door,” Munahim said. “We’d want to trick the guard out of position and then go in.”
“Harlee,” Fix said. “Excellent idea, Munahim! Good boy! We grab Harlee and he can show us the way.”
“That’s not my idea at all,” Munahim said. “I don’t like the idea of grabbing someone and forcing him. He might call for his friends, or lead us astray, or escape.”
Fix frowned. “Well, what’s your idea, then?”
“Easy.” Munahim grinned. “I’ll just smell our way back to the office.”