Chapter Twenty-Four
Ropes were tied about the prisoners’ waists and they were hauled away. Emerging from Boom’s lair into the plaza, they stumbled down a short alley and then were dragged down a stone-choked crevice into the underworld.
Budhrriao and Yammilku each held one of the maps and a lantern. They puzzled over the lines and glyphs, argued, and then came to joint conclusions by which they guided the party farther down. Gink kept his own counsel, humming irregular tunes of long drone notes and staring often at Indrajit.
One cat-man walked in front of Indrajit, holding the ropes. Beside him walked a second, carrying the sack that contained all the Protagonists’ weapons. Presumably, after Indrajit and his colleagues were murdered, their weapons would be placed beside their corpses to show that they were the assassins. The rest of the Huachao came behind the prisoners. Turning his head slightly, Indrajit could make out weapons in their hands.
But with the lamps in front of him, his own hands were in shadow. Indrajit worked to free himself, squeezing his fingers together to try to slip them from their bonds. It failed. He tried picking at the fibers of the ropes with his nails, to no effect. He tried tearing the ropes apart by main strength and got nowhere.
“Can I get more light?” Munahim grumbled. “I can’t see.”
By way of answer, one of the Huachao struck him with a club.
The sack. Indrajit needed to get his hands on the sack.
Vacho and Munahim’s sword were both sheathed, but not all the weapons were. Fix’s ax, in particular, only ever hung on a loop on his belt. It had no sheath, and its blade was sharp as a razor. If Indrajit could somehow get his hands on the sack, he could cut his bonds.
They marched across a wide brick chamber. Snuffling sounds echoing faintly in the darkness made Indrajit think of Ghouls.
A diversion might do the trick, but it would have to be something big, something that really distracted the thieves. Like a fire.
Munahim stumbled and fell against Indrajit. He knocked Indrajit forward, onto his face on the brick, and landed on top of him.
Briefly, Munahim’s face was in Indrajit’s back. Indrajit felt the Kyone’s hot, wet breath, and the scratch of his teeth on Indrajit’s hands.
“Ouch,” Indrajit grunted. He rolled, trying to get out from under his Kyone henchman.
“I can’t see,” Munahim complained again. Three Huachao dragged him to his feet and punched him in the belly.
Indrajit lurched to his knees, and with the movements of his body, he noticed that there was new give in the ropes on his wrists. Munahim had torn at them with his teeth.
He had also torn Indrajit’s skin; his wrists were bleeding. But he could feel that the fibers of two loops had been shredded, and suddenly the rope had slack in it.
He pulled in the slack with his fingers to conceal it and stood. “I’m cooperating, easy,” he said, as the Huachao grabbed him.
They pushed him forward and he walked with his head down.
“We need to emerge as close to the False Palace as we can,” Yammilku said, jabbing a finger at his map. “It’s one thing to walk a few paces in the Dregs with three men tied up, but dragging prisoners openly around in the Crown is another matter entirely.”
“Look at this line,” Budhrriao told him. “That must be an entrance into the False Palace, no?”
“It’s about the right place,” Yammilku conceded. “It doesn’t match up with the Sootfaces’ entrance, but it could be one of the others.”
“Each Gray Lord has his own entrance?” Gink asked.
“And there are further doors beyond those,” Yammilku said. “Many entrances mean many exits, so if something goes wrong, flight is easy.”
Indrajit slipped his hands from the loose bonds, holding the rope to approximate the look of the bonds still being in place.
“Could we go aboveground here?” Budhrriao pointed. “Then how far would the walk be to the Sootfaces’ entrance? I presume that’s where we want to encounter Zac Betel.”
“We just go through the center,” Yammilku said. “We don’t go aboveground at all.”
The large gallery ended in a span of brick that arched across a void. In the lamplight, Indrajit could make out a dirt wall opposite, with a ragged hole where the span connected with it. Below, he could hear the sound of flowing water.
How far down was the water, and how deep was it?
But he didn’t think he’d get another opportunity this good.
“Now!” he yelled.
He grabbed the sack of weapons. With a split second’s hesitation, he also tore a map from Yammilku’s hands and jumped off the span.
Indrajit leaped off to the right. The rope around his waist went suddenly taut as he plunged into shadow, and then yanked him back up and sideways, beneath the brick span. He banged into someone else, all flailing knees and elbows, and it took him a moment to register by the smell that he’d hit Munahim, bouncing against him from the other side.
A moment later, Philastes smacked into them as well.
They swung apart, spinning. Indrajit felt he might vomit, but he kept his grip on the sack of weapons.
“Tie them!” Gink shouted. His voice snapped against distant, unseen walls and echoed back beneath the bridge with a dark, muted timbre. “Hold the lines! Pull them up!”
“Jump down there!” Yammilku shouted, but the only response was a feline yowl.
Indrajit worked an arm into the sack and patted around until he got his hand on Vacho’s hilt. He could see the other two Protagonists now, swinging back toward him in the darkness. Was Philastes rising? He was the smallest, and would be the easiest to pull back up to the bridge.
Indrajit slashed the rope over Philastes’s head and the Pelthite fell into darkness.
The resulting splash seemed delayed and remote. How far had he fallen?
Munahim gripped Indrajit, wrapping his arms around his waist. Indrajit felt his own rope tugging upward and could see that Munahim’s had gone slightly slack. Gink’s yells rose to a high-pitched shriek.
Indrajit looped a fist into Munahim’s rope and pulled it tight. With a few seconds’ sawing, he cut through. He wanted to yell a warning to Philastes, but he didn’t want the thieves to know what he was doing, and fundamentally, if the Pelthite wasn’t smart enough to get out of the way after falling into the underground river, he was probably too stupid to be a Protagonist.
The thieves dragged him higher. The bridge loomed over their heads like a starless void. But it was a starless void that would snap his neck if he cracked into its underside.
“Are we going to fight them?” Munahim growled.
Indrajit hacked through the last rope and they fell.
He splashed into icy water, still in Munahim’s grip. The chill shocked the air from his lungs and the sack in his hands pulled him under. His cloak also became an anchor, dragging him down with its sodden weight. The current was swift, but the water wasn’t deep, so he rebounded off the stone bottom and then thrashed to the surface.
He was afraid he’d lose his grip on the sack, but arms quickly grabbed him and pulled him onto a brick shelf. The light was dim and remote, but he could make out the silhouettes of two men. One of them smelled like wet dog.
All three of them smelled like wet wool.
“Shhh,” Philastes said.
“Jump down there!” Yammilku shouted. “Go get them!”
“No!” Budhrriao roared.
There followed a brief silence, pierced only by the sound of water pouring from their bodies and their cloaks. Indrajit half expected to see men come falling down from the brick span, but it didn’t happen.
“The Huachao appear not to like the idea of getting wet,” Philastes murmured.
Indrajit chuckled softly. “I grabbed a map,” he whispered. “But I lost it in the jump.”
“It will be soaked,” Munahim said. “And maybe carried away by the river.”
“We could burn the sack,” Indrajit said, “once it dries. Does anyone have lamp oil? Or flammable liquor?”
They did not.
The shouting above had tapered into ill-tempered carping and debate.
“Can we follow the thieves out?” Indrajit asked. “By smell?”
“Only if we can get up to the bridge,” Munahim said.
“Which means we need to find our way up now, while there’s light.” Indrajit stood and scanned his surroundings. He hoped for a ladder, or stairs, and found none. But of course, if there were a ladder, the Huachao would simply have climbed down after them. He looked for vines, or other exits that clearly led upward, and found nothing encouraging. The river flowed from darkness into darkness, and above them, a rough, rocky wall ascended toward the dim light of the thieves’ lamps.
“We’re going to have to climb,” Munahim said.
“It’s not sheer,” Philastes pointed out. “It looks like easy climbing, really. But if we miss a handhold, we fall onto this brick.”
“The other choice is to throw ourselves into the river and hope for the best,” Indrajit said.
“I’ll take the climb,” Philastes said. “Look, I think it gets easier up and to the right. Isn’t that a ledge?”
“You sound cheerful,” Munahim said.
The Pelthite was studying the slope. “Even going blind down the underground river is better than being a living wasp womb.”
Munahim grunted.
The light changed. Indrajit looked up and saw most of the party of thieves move forward in the darkness. Two Huachao remained, standing at the far end of the bridge with a lamp. They were blocked from direct view by the bulk of the brick span, but Indrajit could see their shadows thrown up against the wall.
They stood guard at the far end of the bridge.
“They’re waiting to make sure we don’t reappear,” Philastes said.
“If we can get up this slope without being seen,” Indrajit said, “we can attack them.”
“They’ll sound the alarm,” Munahim said.
“Not if we shoot them instead,” Philastes pointed out.
Indrajit distributed the other men’s weapons back to them. Philastes tucked the sling into his belt. Munahim tested his bow string, pronounced it good, and then attached sword and quiver to his person again. Indrajit belted Vacho back into place and then tied the sack, now containing Fix’s weapons, to his belt.
Indrajit climbed first. He was a confident climber, having grown up surrounded by the cliffs and rocks of the seashore, and he picked a cautious path. He was careful to select handholds and footholds that were close enough together to work for the shorter Pelthite, and rugged enough to support the Kyone’s weight. The wet wool of his cloak weighed him down, but with the night just beginning, and him far underground and potentially lost, he decided to keep it.
Climbing into the greasy darkness, he worried about Fix. Would the thieves grab Fix and use him now as their scapegoat? But even if they didn’t, how much longer did Fix have to live, anyway? How long until he burst into Kattak nymphs, dying a horrible, painful death, out of reach of the Girdle of Life? And how long until he was too far gone to be saved by the Druvash craft of the Vin Dalu?
Suddenly, he found himself on a fin in the rock. It wasn’t quite the ledge Philastes had taken it for, but a spine between the steep slope behind him and an even steeper fall in front. But he turned left and crept along the spine, toward the bridge.
He could see the Huachao; could they see him? He was maybe eighty cubits distant, and separated by the chasm. The two cat-men leaned over the edge of the brick span, peering down into the water below and raising their lamp. They didn’t see him because they weren’t looking, so he was careful to move silently.
He noticed that the fin of rock he straddled was marked with loose pebbles here and there. He also noticed that ahead of him, the fin ended, not quite connecting with the base of the brick span. There was a leap of some six or seven cubits to get from one to the other.
Indrajit hunkered down behind a fist of stone and waited. Philastes climbed up onto the rock and then Munahim, and they joined him in the shadow.
“Are you close enough?” Indrajit whispered.
For answer, Philastes picked up a rock.
The Huachao turned and were looking over the other side of the bridge. They muttered to each other, shrugged, and set the lantern on a ledge in the rock behind them, resuming their sentinel positions.
The other two Protagonists conferred briefly about targets. Then Philastes spun a rock once over his head and released it and at the same moment Munahim launched an arrow. Water snapped from the string of the Kyone’s bow, which had been briefly submerged, but his arrows had stayed dry, tucked into his watertight quiver.
The slingstone struck one Huachao fighter in the back of his skull. The arrow pierced the other’s lung. Both fell silently onto the brick.
Indrajit jumped over the gap onto the bridge. Over his protests, Munahim then threw Philastes and Indrajit caught him. They picked up the lantern.
“We have to rescue Fix,” Munahim said. “I don’t care about Betel, he’s not my problem.”
“Agreed,” Philastes said. “Also, Fix is the one with Kattak memories in his head. If there’s something going on and we’re to have any chance of stopping it, we need access to his memories.”
“If we go back to Boom’s lair,” Indrajit said, “it’s us against all of Boom’s men. How many is that? Twenty?”
“Maybe we can negotiate with Boom,” Philastes suggested.
“I agree,” Indrajit said. “But we need something to trade.”
Munahim frowned. “His becoming a Gray Lord?”
“We can’t promise that. And if we promise to help him get it, he won’t believe us, or care.” Indrajit shook his head. “The life of his doorman. Hastin Gink. The Doorman and the Wandering Eye and the Voice that Stinks.”
“Thinks,” Philastes said.
“We have to douse the light,” Munahim pointed out.
Indrajit looked at the bridge, lacking hand railing or curb. “Because otherwise Gink and Yammilku and the rest will see us coming.” He sighed. “Okay, Munahim. But no funny business. No leading us into pits.”
“I’ll follow exactly where the Huachao went,” Munahim said. “They stink and are easy to track. But I can’t promise they won’t go into any pits.”
They locked hands and Indrajit snuffed out the lamp.
“Remember that we want to stay downwind, too, if possible,” Indrajit said. “The Huachao are sniffers.”
Munahim in front and Indrajit at the back each had a free hand, so each carried a weapon; Munahim his bow and Indrajit the Voice of Lightning, Vacho. Munahim led them forward into darkness, a faint snuffling sound that Indrajit tried to tune out as he listened for the sounds of Ghouls.
The journey in the dark seemed infinitely long. Sometimes, light gleamed above, suggesting they were near the surface, and even after sunset, some lamp or bonfire cast its illuminating grace down into the bowels of the city. Sometimes, water fell, crashing on stone or hard earth, or slipping quietly past to fall to lower levels. Was it raining again, then? They walked through echoing galleries, up and down stairs, and through a long passage only a cubit wide.
Munahim led them clambering over rectangular stone objects, slightly longer than the height of a man. Scooting awkwardly on knees and knuckles, Indrajit found stone scrollwork and beveled edges. For the first time, he broke his silence.
“Is this . . . ?” he asked.
“Coffins,” Philastes whispered.
They emerged from the corridor choked with coffins into a trench. The dirt walls, four cubits apart, were visible in a shaft of orange light that sliced down from above. A damp breeze gusted into the trench obliquely, causing Indrajit to wonder what exactly was over his head. If the thieves had taken the path they intended, shouldn’t they all be beneath the Crown now? The floor of the trench was of earth as well, and was strewn with bits of broken pottery. Indrajit was careful where he placed his steps, envying Munahim his boots.
“There.” The Kyone pointed at a dim light at the end of the trench as he whispered. “They went through there.”
“Shouldn’t we follow them?” Indrajit asked.
“I smell other men,” Munahim explained. “I’m not certain what direction the scent comes from.”
Indrajit took a deep breath and sighed. He looked up at the orange light for guidance, but it told him nothing. “Okay. Surprise is still with us.” He strode ahead of Munahim toward the light.
The light settled through an open doorway. Indrajit pressed himself against the brick around the doorway and sneaked a glance through.
On the other side, he saw a vast rectangular chamber. Its walls were built of large, regular bricks, and it had no windows. It had no ceiling, either, and rain crashed down from above. For a floor, it had only a metal grate. Dim light rose through the grate, but Indrajit couldn’t make out the source or sources of light at all.
Peering across the grate, Indrajit could make out other gaps in the wall, all low, at the level of the iron floor. Squinting and counting, he found eight of them. Nine entrances in total.
“This is the False Palace,” he murmured.
“I can’t follow the scent across that rain,” Munahim said, leaning over his shoulder. “I can go stick my head into every opening and sniff, I suppose.”
“That sounds risky,” Indrajit said.
“What is this place?” Philastes asked. He pressed forward at Indrajit’s side, peering out into the rain.
“If this is the False Palace,” Indrajit said, “then it has a façade like a real palace, on all four sides. But internally, it’s just this. Hollow.” He looked down. “Although I had never heard that it lacked a floor and ceiling.”
“Gases.”
The voice came from behind them.
Indrajit turned and found himself looking at multiple drawn swords, all pointed at him. The men holding the blades were tall and fair, and one raised a shuttered lantern, cracked to emit a single weak ray of light. Indrajit recognized the man who had spoken.
“Tully Roberts,” he said. “Which means that this fellow next to you is your brother, Uthnar, the Gray Lord.”