Good Boy
“Good boy,” Fix said. He was the shorter of the two principals of the small jobber company known as the Protagonists. He was a muscular, bronze-skinned Kishi who carried an array of knives as well as a hatchet and a falchion hanging from his broad belt. He generally leaned on a spear, as he did now.
“Don’t say that to him, he’s not a dog.” The poet Indrajit Twang was taller than his partner. He was similarly dressed in a kilt and broad belt, but his belt carried only the leaf-bladed sword he was so fond of. Indrajit’s head was long and his face was divided in two by a bony nose ridge that pushed his eyes far out to the sides.
Fix shrugged. “He says it himself.”
“I’m a Kyone. I look like a dog.” Munahim wanted peace between his two bosses; his stomach curdled when they argued.
They argued a lot.
Fix shrugged. “And you look like a fish,” he said to Indrajit.
Indrajit growled. “You see? You’re just throwing fuel on the fire.”
Munahim hunched down to hide from the poet’s irritation. Since he was as tall as Indrajit, this didn’t make him any less visible.
“There’s no shame in your appearances,” Fix said. “I look like an ape.”
“Agh!” Indrajit clapped his hands to his ears. “Munahim, if you admit to looking like a dog again, I will let Fix here teach you how to read. I swear, by all your self-licking gods, that will ruin your life.”
“I don’t have self-licking gods,” Munahim said mildly. “I could come with you.”
“The only problem with that,” Indrajit said, “is that you’re terrible at lying.”
Munahim hung his head. “Is lying so important?”
“Today it is,” Indrajit told him. “We have to surprise this guy.”
“So follow us at a distance,” Fix said. “Bring your bow and that enormous sword and be prepared to intervene if something goes wrong.”
“This should be simple,” Indrajit added. “It’s just an arrest. You’re the backup, just in case.”
Munahim nodded and his two bosses set out, crossing the mercantile bustle of the Spill and heading toward the stink of the Dregs. Munahim let them get a stone’s throw ahead of him and then followed.
“I’m a Kyone,” he said, mumbling to himself. “We don’t have gods anymore. Not since we killed them.” His long sword slapped comfortingly across his back and his quiver pressed snug against his thigh. Pushing his way through the sweaty crowd of the Crooked Mile, the longest street in the Spill, was easy with his long, muscular arms. He was a head taller than most men—other than men of the enormous races, of course, like the Luzzazza and the Grokonks and the sexless Gunds—and so was Indrajit, so following his bosses was an easy exercise in watching Indrajit’s fishlike head bob along above the crowd.
Three camels burst from a courtyard into the street, bleating and kicking. The green-skinned, bug-eyed merchant who chased them cursed and struck at his beasts with a long-handled whisk. Munahim stopped while the animals were rounded up and then saw Indrajit’s head again, now as a mere brownish-greenish dot.
He lengthened his stride to catch up.
He much preferred Kish to Ildarion, where he had spent several years trying to make a living. Ildarians were a tallish, pale, and rather bland race of men, and Ildarion was full of them. In Ildarion, Munahim stood out like a freak and collected constant stares. In Kish—decadent, old, rotten Kish—all thousand races of men mixed in a frothy, constant foam, and Munahim was far from the most unusual-looking fellow in almost any crowd.
Also, among the Protagonists, he was valued for his skills. Indrajit wished he were a better liar, but Munahim’s bosses esteemed him as a tracker. Indrajit and Fix had hired him specifically for his sense of smell. The Ildarians had treated him as just a hired sword.
And as a Protagonist, he earned a share, not a wage. It made him feel much better about himself.
“Good boy,” he said.
An arrest was a simple job for the Protagonists. Usually, their tasks involved policing merchants or ferreting out spies. When they contracted privately, they might do anything from bodyguard work to rescuing kidnapped maidens, but the fact that they were marching to arrest someone meant that their employer was Orem Thrush, the Lord Chamberlain.
Who paid less than other clients, generally, but provided a lot of work, as well as a certain amount of protection. In a city of mercenaries, it was good to have a patron.
Munahim’s ancestors had killed their gods when the gods had become too demanding. They had given too little food and no shelter, and so Kyone heroes of the time had risen up. They had slain the gods, shattering the pack, and forming a new pack, of only Kyones. Naturally, out of gratitude and prudence, Munahim and his people reverenced their victorious ancestors, remembering them with short invocations and averting their wrath with simple charms.
“Much better than having gods.”
He could see Indrajit and Fix, and he could, just barely, smell them. Time and distance were not the complicating factors in smelling his bosses; the challenge was the roiling sea of mankind that bubbled around them, concealing the distinctive odor of each man beneath a mask of cinnamon, roasting fish, camel’s dung, perfume, and a hundred other smells.
Two Kishi men slapped a wooden crate into the middle of the road just a few paces in front of Munahim, and a bawdy show sprang into being around them. Actors in masks and togas swarmed the low stand, and two bang-harp players plopped themselves right into Munahim’s path.
This was a bit like the games his sire, Garuna, had played with him when he had been a boy on the King of Thunder Steppes, leaving young Munahim behind the pack and ordering him not to follow until the sun set. Garuna would then deliberately confuse the scent by provoking elk and deer into crossing the trail, or would march the pack in circles.
Munahim always found the pack.
Indrajit and Fix passed through the gate into the Dregs. The Dregs could not obviously be said to be the worst part of Kish, but only because it had serious competition. The Dregs’ claim was that it was the zone with the most street-robbery, purse-cutting, throat-slitting, streetwalking, and daylight assault. The Lee probably offered more burglary, and the Spill more usury, but those were less colorful crimes.
Munahim gripped his bow tight. He was tempted to put an arrow to the string just in case, but that would draw attention.
From gate to gate, the passage across the Dregs was a brief march, cutting the short corner, as it was sometimes named by locals. To cut the long corner was to march the direct route across the Dregs from the Spill to the Crown. The Dregs proper, sometimes called the Filth, was the half of the Dregs with no gate, and which no casual traveler had any reason to enter, ever. Only desperation ever brought anyone into the Flith.
Munahim avoided looking toward the Filth. He spat on the packed earth to flush the thought of the place from his heart, and then Indrajit and Fix finished cutting the short corner, moving down the filthy slope of the Dregs, and passed through the gate into the East Flats.
Munahim didn’t meet the gaze of the jobbers working the gate. He didn’t recognize them, but there were far too many jobbers in Kish for him to know them all. Half of this crew were Xiba’albi with their characteristic obsidian-edged swords, which was in itself curious; Xiba’albi were rarely jobbers, and though Xiba’alb was not distant, its people were an uncommon sight in Kish. Tensions with the Ildarians, or perhaps the blandishments of the Free Cities, kept most Xiba’albi from making it this far.
Or perhaps they simply didn’t like to travel.
There was a commotion on the other side of the gate. Munahim heard the clash of metal and thudding sounds. He edged forward, in case his bosses were falling afoul of violence, but two of the Xiba’albi stepped into his path before he could pass through, one raising a forbidding palm and the other hefting his stone-bladed club.
Munahim didn’t have to stand on tiptoes to look over the jobbers’ heads. He still couldn’t make out the source of the noise, but saw tall Rover wagons, one painted with some kind of winged Ylakka on its side and another featuring an intricate pattern of interlocking snails. The images were different for every wagon; Munahim thought they represented the Rovers’ ancestral totems, something closer to the spirits his own people reverenced than to the gods whose temples clung to the Spike at the top of Kish.
He tapped his booted foot impatiently on the packed earth, but less than a minute passed before a wordless whoop came from the other side of the gate. The Rover wagons continued onward, rolling south, and the Xiba’albi stepped aside.
Munahim jogged through, onto the East Flats.
This was one of Kish’s three coast-hugging slums. All three were plagued by the stink of fish, sweat, and cheap beer. The hard-packed earth of the Dregs gave way to churned mud, sometimes alleviated by layers of straw strewn on top, or, around the least repulsive taverns and warehouses, sagging boardwalks.
The ground beneath Munahim’s feet descended slightly, along roads running north, east, and south. The slope and his height gave him an excellent vantage point, but no matter how he strained, he could no longer see Indrajit’s bobbing head.
His heart sank.
But no matter; he sniffed.
He caught the faint scent of both men. The trail was slightly confusing and he stalked in a tight circle as he tried to follow it, enduring the hard jostling of a scab-eyed Gund and the jeers of a pack of gray-skinned Visps. The scent of his bosses was mixed with the thick smell of rotting fish and with the smoke-and-spices smell that clung to every Rover wagon, but he eventually found a trail that emerged from the noxious cloud and ran east.
He took a deep breath, and felt fear fall away like a discarded cloak.
None too soon. “Get moving,” one of the Xiba’albi growled.
Munahim growled back, without words, and loped down toward the water.
The smell of his bosses was faint. There was a light breeze, now that he was outside the city’s walls. Perhaps that was causing the dispersal of the scent. Or perhaps the waves of brine and fish smells were covering up the more subtle odors of musk and sweat. He quickened his pace; he’d be more comfortable once he had the other Protagonists in sight again.
The smell disappeared and he doubled back, walking in a small circle through a crowded intersection. Stooping to sniff at the ground didn’t make the scent any clearer, but after a few spins around the well through a grumbling crowd, he caught a whiff off to the north and he followed it.
He didn’t dare run. He was the backup force, the hidden reserve. It was a role he’d played before. His sense of smell let him stay out of sight so that forces watching for pursuit didn’t see him until too late.
Only now it seemed that he might become separated from Indrajit and Fix by the sea breeze, and arrive when it was too late for the Protagonists.
Except, of course, that he was just the backup. He might not even be needed. Indrajit and Fix were good fighters, competent and clever, so they would probably be all right even if Munahim got lost along the way.
“You’re not lost, though,” he mumbled. “You’re still on the trail. Good boy.”
And then the scent was gone.
Munahim shook his head. He hadn’t even passed an intersection. He stopped and looked at the buildings around him: a net weaver, a ropemaker, a seller of sailcloth, a shipwright, two leaning taverns, a leatherworker, three buildings that might be residences.
He traced his steps back until suddenly he smelled Indrajit and Fix again. He sniffed at the air and prowled up and down the straw-stamped street, examining the scents of the doorways.
No sign that his bosses had gone into any of the buildings.
Had he turned wrong back at the last intersection? Was he following a phantom scent? He snorted, clearing his nostrils.
The street was packed with foot traffic and a small number of beasts of burden. Munahim crept back the other direction again, sniffing each person and animal. A stray Grokonk Third honked at him and a four-legged Shamb hissed, its tongue slithering over sharp yellow teeth.
Then Munahim sniffed the heavy leather sacks strapped across the back of a two-humped Drogger, and smelled his bosses.
The Drogger plodded at the end of a lead string held by a thin-bearded Zalapting. Munahim stepped past the good-natured beast and hoisted the little Zalapting into the air with one hand.
The Zalapting squealed. “I’ll call the constables!”
“I’m on the job myself,” Munahim said. “What have you got in the bags?”
“I don’t have to show you!” The Zalapting’s feet scrabbled at the air and found no purchase. “You don’t have a warrant!”
“I can get one.” Munahim wasn’t actually sure how to go about that, but he thought Grit Wopal, the Lord Chamberlain’s chief spy, could probably arrange it. Maybe the arrest papers Indrajit and Fix carried even included a warrant. Kyones had very simple ideas about law, which did not include written court orders. Mostly, for any important issue, the pack considered, the pack debated, and the pack came to a decision. Once in a while, a fight was necessary. “Do you want to come with me up to the Crown to sort it out?”
“Beans!” the Zalapting cried. “You can look, it’s just beans!”
Munahim set the lavender-skinned man down and undid the clasps. Opening the sacks, he found that they were indeed full of dried beans.
Except that, in the top of one sack, atop white beans the size of his thumbnail, he found two kilts, a leaf-bladed broadsword, and a pile of other weapons: three knives, a hatchet, and a falchion.
He knew these weapons by sight as the ones Indrajit and Fix carried everywhere, except that Fix’s spear was missing. And by smell, he knew instantly that he was looking at his bosses’ kilts.
“Frozen hells,” he muttered. His people didn’t have any profanity, so he borrowed Indrajit’s favorite curse.
“See?” the Zalapting snapped. “All I have is beans!”
Munahim dragged out the kilts and weapons. “Then these must belong to someone else.”
The Zalapting paled to a pinkish shade. “Yes. Those aren’t mine. I don’t know where they came from.”
Munahim could smell fear, and he smelled it now on the Zalapting. He wished he could smell lying, but he was pretty certain the little man was telling the truth. Without another word, he took his bosses’ gear and marched back the way he’d come.
The pungent odor of the sweat-impregnated kilts, the tang of the metal, the thickness of the cured wood in the ax’s handle, and the oiled leathers of the various scabbards made a heady bouquet. Twice Munahim plunged his face into the mass. Didn’t he need to remind himself of what Indrajit and Fix smelled like?
But he was blocking other scents from reaching him. With an effort of will, he balled the fabric and weapons up and clenched the mass under his left arm, the right holding his bow.
He forced himself to think.
Indrajit and Fix might have been stripped of their gear and diverted at any point along the path he had walked. But he had last seen them at the gate connecting the Dregs to the East Flats, where he had been forced to stop and wait for the passage of Rover wagons. And there had been a commotion. And then, when Munahim had finally emerged from the gate, they had been gone.
He had followed their scent, but it seemed likely that he had followed the scent of their kilts, stuffed after the hubbub into the sack on the Drogger’s back. Probably without the bean-merchant even knowing.
The commotion he had heard at the gate. Wasn’t it likely that that had been the sound of the two senior Protagonists being beaten and spirited away?
He broke into a determined trot, all his accouterments clanking and swishing as he ran. Whom had Indrajit and Fix set out to arrest? If he knew that, Munahim could go to that person and seize him. Maybe make a trade.
Except that Indrajit and Fix had many enemies. Not to mention professional rivals. Gannon’s Handlers might have seized them, or the secret agents of one of Orem Thrush’s rivals, or the heirs of some merchant criminal they had previously arrested or overthrown.
And in any case, Munahim didn’t know whom they sought to capture.
He stopped just below the gate. The jobbers had changed.
He now wished he had noticed the uniforms on the other jobbers; he closed his eyes and tried to remember, but he was much better at noticing and remembering smells than visual images. His memory conjured up the raw-meat smell of Xiba’albi, and even the specific odors of the man with the raised palm and his companion hefting his club, but not the color of what they had been wearing.
But these men were not Xiba’albi. Ukelings, Karthing, and Yuchaks, with a single scaly, four-legged Shamb. Munahim made himself look and notice the black tunics they wore. They were a jobber company, and not in the permanent employ of one of the great families.
He approached a mailed Karthing with two long swords strapped to his back. The man stood slightly apart from the rest of the company, leaning against the wall and chewing dip weed as he watched the crowd.
“Excuse me.” Munahim tried his most polite words. “Could you please tell me who were the jobbers here earlier today?”
The Karthing shook his blond, shaggy head. “No other jobbers here today. Just us.”
“There were Xiba’albi,” Munahim said mildly.
The Karthing bellied forward, pushing into Munahim with his torso like a bull and knocking him back. “Wrong. We were here all day. Bjurn’s Bruisers, under contract with the Lord Archer.”
“There’s been a mistake,” Munahim said.
“Yes.” The Karthing nodded. “And you made it. And if you keep insisting, that will be your second mistake. I’m Bjurn, and I don’t let people make three mistakes.”
Munahim hesitated. Bjurn was lying, and they both knew it. Did that mean that he had conspired with whoever had seized Indrajit and Fix?
But he didn’t have to have conspired very much. Maybe all he did was order his men to stand aside for a short time while the Xiba’albi watched the gate. That was a very ordinary sort of corruption in Kish, looking the other way.
But however much the Bruisers had conspired, that definitely meant that the Xiba’albi had been where they hadn’t belonged.
Munahim scratched his nose to hide the fact that he was sniffing. The trail he wanted wasn’t here.
“My mistake,” he said. “You’re right. I was thinking of a different gate.”
Bjurn grunted. Munahim drooped his shoulders, trying to look unthreatening, and walked through the gate. The Ukelings and Karthings jeered at him, but the Yuchaks stared warily; like the Ildarians, their lands bordered on the King of Thunder Steppes, and they may have had dealings with Kyones before.
Munahim slouched and dropped his chin.
On the far side of the gate, he smelled the trail he was seeking: Xiba’albi, half a dozen of them, crossing the Dregs and marching up into the Crown. This was the third leg of the main thoroughfares traversing the Dregs, and was sometimes referred to as walking it straight. Munahim walked it straight now, climbing steeply from the lowest, most rotting section of Kish through its most heavily defended gate (by a wall of blue Luzzazza holding spears and glaring), and into the part of the city where all the most wealthy and noble citizens lived.
The Crown. He smelled fruit and blossoms and delicate perfumes, and no sign of Indrajit and Fix. He felt a hard, cold knot in the pit of his stomach, but at least he could still smell the Xiba’albi.
He followed the trail.
They marched due west to the edge of the Spike. There, under the looming knuckled rock and the lurching temples of the city’s five gods, they turned left. They stuck strictly to the boulevards, the widest streets where the traffic flow was heavy but the channel of traffic was unimpeded. Munahim had moved fast and was moving fast still, and yet he didn’t see them. Had they let him move through the gate and then immediately turned and raced this direction? They must have, to have gained such a head start.
And then, suddenly, the smell of them grew stronger.
Munahim stopped and sniffed. He stood near the mouth of an alley, a narrow, cobbled lane that separated two large brick palaces from each other. Beyond the alley, a flower vendor shouted names and prices beside his green-varnished wooden cart. Across the street, another cart-merchant hawked tea. Two ladies in togas carrying parasols stood and sipped wooden cups of the steaming beverage.
The Xiba’albi were waiting in the alleyway. Munahim was certain of it. He could smell the wood of their clubs and hear their breathing.
Had they detected him yet, or were they waiting for him to pass in front of the alley?
He backed away, watching the alley’s mouth. A blue-uniformed doorman in front of the palace aimed a kick at him, but Munahim bit back a growl and kept moving until he had reached the edge of the building.
Then he slipped around behind. Crossing a fountained plaza at the back of the building, he crept up the far end of the alleyway, toward six Xiba’albi at the mouth. The Xiba’albi crouched together, staring out into the street. They were obscured from view on the boulevard by a pile of garbage timbers, and they held their stone-edged clubs in their hands, muttering to one another.
Munahim looked for a place to hide. There were balconies that would have afforded an excellent view of the alley and the plaza both, but they were on the second story or higher, and he was a very ordinary climber. But all along the base of a pink-brick-built palace clustered a thick hedge of bushes with broad, dark green leaves and white berries. He pushed himself into the hedge and waited.
Long minutes passed. Had he made the wrong choice? Was there a better scent he should be following, a scent that was now growing cold because he had wasted his time pursuing these Xiba’albi thugs?
But they did seem to be waiting for him.
His skin began to itch, where it was pressed against the leaves. He sniffed, but the smell of the bushes told him nothing.
And then he saw that the skin of his arms and shoulders, where the leaves pressed against it, was red and raw. Blistering, in fact.
Blister-berry bush.
“Frozen hells,” he muttered.
And then the Xiba’albi moved.
Munahim froze. The itch immediately seemed to swell ten times in effect. He felt as if his arms and shoulders were aflame. He wanted to burst from the hedge, rush forward, and hurl himself into the fountain, scratching his skin furiously.
He held still, and managed not to whimper.
Four of the Xiba’albi stood and walked in his direction. Munahim held his breath and prepared to draw an arrow, but they passed him, entering into the mouth of another alleyway and disappearing.
He took a deep breath. “Good boy.”
The other two settled back into their vigil. Munahim waited a few minutes and then crept from the bush. His skin was patched red and raw, and wept in several places from open, blistering sores. Resisting the urge to leap into the water, he peered after the four departed Xiba’albi; they had gone, disappeared around a bend in the little side street they had taken.
He laid down Indrajit’s and Fix’s gear and his own bow beside the fountain, drew his long sword, and crept toward the two men lying in wait.
The sword could be used with either one hand or two. Munahim was no sword brother, but years of fighting for Ildarian marcher barons against other Ildarians, Yuchak men’s societies, Karthing raiding parties, and the wagon nomads of the Steppes had made him a proficient swordsman, maybe even a good one.
He didn’t want to kill the men, though. He wanted them to lead him to Indrajit and Fix.
He crept up with silent steps. Both men faced away from him. The nearer squatted and leaned forward, poised almost on all fours to stay low and in the shadow. The farther stood, pressing himself against the pink-brick wall.
Munahim slammed a boot down on the back of the croucher’s neck, to pin him to the cobbles. The man squealed. At the same time, Munahim raised his long sword, gripped in both hands and prepared to slash downward. It was a pose he had found terrible and frightening when he had seen other warriors adopt it.
“Hold!” he snarled.
But the Xiba’albi did not hold.
The man beneath Munahim’s boot rolled sideways. He gasped for breath and choked, but his move was abrupt and swift. Munahim had put his weight on the Xiba’albi’s neck to pin him, and the sudden removal of his footing sent Munahim stumbling back.
Instead of gripping his sword heroically in two hands, preparing to slash, he now found himself juggling and trying to catch it.
The second Xiba’albi leaped forward, swinging his club.
Xiba’albi clubs were made of a heavy hard wood that didn’t grow in Kish itself, sometimes called ironwood. The wood alone made the clubs lethal, and this club was swung with all the force of a leaping Ylakka. Staggering backward, Munahim lurched out of the way of the first blow, and then the second.
And then he backed into a brick wall.
Beyond his attacker, he saw the other Xiba’albi rise to his feet, drawing stone knives. The warrior with the club bent his elbow, preparing to swing again.
But the wall gathered the force of Munahim’s motion and hurled him back the other way. He missed his catch, and winced at the loud rattle his sword made, clanging onto the cobblestones. But abruptly, he was within the Xiba’albi warrior’s guard and moving forward.
He seized the man by the wrist and spun him. He was taller and stronger, and he used his body as a lever, winging the short fighter and his club into a circle.
The Xiba’albi with two knives ran forward, and directly into the stone blades of his friend’s club.
Munahim released his grip. The knife-wielder dropped to his knees, suddenly headless. The man with the club spun once more in a circle as he tried to catch his balance; Munahim used the spare moments to regain his own poise, scoop, and pick up his blade.
The dead man’s head thudded to the cobblestones behind him.
Beyond the Xiba’albi, on the boulevard, someone was screaming. Constables—which was to say, whichever jobbers currently had the contract for law and order in the Crown—would arrive shortly.
“Tell me where Indrajit and Fix are,” Munahim said. “Otherwise, I cannot let you live.”
It was a direct statement and without deceit, befitting a Kyone. The Xiba’albi roared and charged.
The Xiba’albi club was hard and sharp, but Munahim’s sword was longer, and so were his arms. He stabbed the Xiba’albi through his neck, then wiped the blood off his blade on the man’s kilt and ran.
He sheathed his sword, snatched up his bow and his bosses’ things from beside the fountain, and charged down the alleyway after the other four Xiba’albi jobbers.
Four men left a strong enough scent to follow at a dead run, but he didn’t want to run into an ambush, so Munahim sprinted only for a minute and then stopped to look around. He wasn’t being followed, that he could see, so he continued his pursuit.
He exited the Crown into the Lee. The Lee was home to racetracks and high-end brothels and wealthy merchants, and Munahim expected the tracks of the Xiba’albi to rush right through and out into the Caravanserai, the giant, permanent tent-city beyond Kish’s south wall.
Instead, the scent-trail of the men turned left, and then abruptly ended at the door of a brick rectangle. The rectangle sat at one corner of a rough triangle, smashed up against a two-story-tall inn that leaned outward in three directions, and a building split between a clothier and a cooper. The other two buildings had windows and balconies, but the rectangle was a solid mass like a single brick, the only distinguishing feature of which was a slightly recessed door.
In the street beside the rectangle waited three Rover wagons. Two Rover men stood between the first two wagons, slowly playing some card game on the foremost wagon’s tailboard. Each man had two pistols tucked into the sash at his waist. Munahim was unsure exactly how the pistols worked, except that there was part on top of them that had to be moved before firing, a part that made a loud click. Sometimes they required more preparation than that, but sometimes they didn’t, and it was safest to assume the latter.
Each wagon was pulled by a single horse. The images on the sides of two of the vehicles looked familiar; Munahim squinted and tried to think. Snails and a winged lizard. His memory was tied to smells more than images, and he couldn’t quite remember his connection with these vehicles.
But then the wind shifted and the scent of the wagons came to his nostrils. He had smelled this mixture of smoke, spice, sweat, and dung before, in the gate between the Dregs and the East Flats.
These wagons had blocked him off from following Indrajit and Fix.
He sniffed, concentrated, and found a faint odor of his two bosses on the wagons. They weren’t in the wagons now, but they had been.
He faded back around the corner, pressing himself against the wall behind a cart piled high with lychee fruit. He tried to think. Someone had seized Indrajit and Fix. Whoever it was had expected that Indrajit and Fix would have backup and had twice taken steps to stop that backup from coming to the rescue: with the blocked gate, and then with the Xiba’albi rear guard.
Did those enemies know that the backup consisted only of Munahim? They might, because they had marked out a false trail with his bosses’ kilts, as if they expected someone with a good sense of smell to be following. On the other hand, they might have been marking out that trail to mislead someone following with more magical powers, a witch or a scryer of some kind.
And if they had thought that Munahim alone was following, wouldn’t they have simply seized him at the gate, too?
On balance, it seemed likely that the kidnappers expected a rescue attempt, but didn’t know that Munahim was the whole reserve force.
Munahim considered plans, and found that he hated all of them.
He could climb onto the roof of the building, but there was no guarantee that there was an entrance into the building from above, and every likelihood of attracting attention in the climb.
He could find a privy or a basement nearby and try to let himself into the labyrinth that ran beneath the city, but it would take him time to find such an entrance, and there was no guarantee that the rectangular building could be accessed from below.
He entertained the idea of lighting the door on fire, but if there were an exit underground, the kidnappers would likely simply take it and flee. Also, the Rovers might simply put the fire out. Also, if the fire did burn the building down, it might kill Indrajit and Fix in the process.
He had no reinforcements to summon; he was the reinforcements.
Munahim dropped his bundle at the street corner and bought a lamp with a clipped quarter of an Imperial. The vendor, a portly Zalapting, ostentatiously filled the clay vessel with oil before handing it over. Munahim shifted his bow into his left hand to take the lamp in his right. “Will you light this?”
“Are you crazy?” The Zalapting gestured at the empty sky. “It’s broad daylight!”
Munahim nodded. “Please.”
He brushed past a pair of Pelthites and a Kishi beggar rounding the corner again. The Rovers didn’t even look up until Munahim hurled his lamp against the side of the first wagon. The clay shattered, the oil splashed across the brightly painted wood, and the men cursed.
By the time they turned their attention to Munahim, he had an arrow to the string of his bow and was aiming at the larger of the two men.
“I hope you will get in your wagons and leave,” Munahim said. “Put the fire out, go away, mind your own business. I will only kill you if I have to.”
The big Rover snarled, his thick mustachios curling up in hatred, and tried to draw his pistols. Munahim shot him in the heart and he dropped.
The second Rover raised his hands. “There’s a bucket of sand inside the wagon,” he said. “Let me put the fire out, and then I’ll leave.”
“Pistols on the ground first,” Munahim said.
The Rover laid down his guns. He climbed onto the tailboard and disappeared into the back of the wagon.
Click.
Munahim loosed his second arrow, shooting through the wagon’s wall. He heard a cry, but he shot again and again, jogging to his right as he shot until he could see into the open back of the wagon. The Rover had three arrows in his chest, but was still trying feebly to raise a long musket to fire at Munahim.
Munahim pulled the Rover’s feet out from under him. He crashed to the boards, and Munahim tossed the musket across the street.
Startled passersby looked once, then averted their eyes and fled.
Welcome to Kish, Indrajit would say. Mind your own business.
“I told you to leave,” Munahim said.
Munahim gathered his bosses’ things and his own bow into a bundle and tucked it under his left arm, holding his sword in his right hand. The door into the building was heavy, and it didn’t budge when he tested it; barred. There was no peephole. He could apply fire, or hack away at the wood with Fix’s ax, but either method would take much more time than he felt he had.
He knocked politely.
The door opened. He was surprised that it did, but he was poised and prepared, so when the door pulled in a crack and a pale face appeared in the gap, he kicked the door in.
Alarmed shouts rose from behind the door. Munahim threw his bundle into the open doorway and charged in.
The pale man drew a dagger. Munahim slapped it out of his grip with an open hand and then bashed the man in his forehead, knocking him to the ground. The man tried once more to rise, and Munahim stomped on his chest.
That left him still and whimpering.
Munahim was in a small cloakroom. Boots stood in pairs on the floor, and heavy gloves lay in pairs on a shelf, and canvas smocks hung from pegs. The air was thick with motes and the floor was covered with grains that felt metallic under the soles of his boots and added crunch to every step.
Two steps brought him over the body of the pale man to the cloakroom exit. A Gund loomed up in the doorway. It was a civilized Gund, with four of its six eyes gouged out to prevent the madness that overcame the wild members of the tribe. It grabbed for Munahim’s throat with its two hands, while the thicket of insectoid limbs sprouting from its shoulders reached out and groped toward him, too.
Munahim lowered his shoulder and slammed it into the Gund’s sternum. The Gund stumbled backward, but its bug-legs snapped sideways and caught the doorframe, keeping it from falling. The Gund grabbed Munahim by the throat, cutting off all his air instantly. With its enormous muscles, it would crush Munahim’s larynx in seconds.
Munahim bit the Gund’s wrist, hard.
The Gund pulled his hand back, and Munahim bit harder. He felt his teeth rip through sinew and vein, plowing ragged furrows across the bone itself. The Gund tore itself free, shrieking. It grabbed its left wrist with its right hand.
Munahim still feared the bug-legs. He stepped in toward the Gund again, swinging his long sword in a two-handed sweep that sliced off all the legs on one side. Yellow pools of lamplight and deep brown shadows dappled the Gund as it staggered away, and Munahim threw back his head to howl.
It was an instinctive move, not a planned one. But in the boxy space he entered now, he heard his own war cry echo with great satisfaction.
The building was a single large room. Scaffolding created a mezzanine floor of thick timbers, and heavy tables lay in two parallel lines across the floor. The thick air made Munahim’s eyes water and his nose twitch, but he could still see Indrajit and Fix lying side by side on a table, perfectly still, naked, surrounded by a knot of men.
Two Xiba’albi warriors charged.
Munahim leaped left, putting himself out of reach of one of the warriors, and keeping both warriors between himself and the rest of the men. He slid his long sword neatly under the arm of the Xiba’albi, between two ribs. The man sank without launching a blow, bloody foam erupting from his lips. When the second Xiba’albi bent his path to try to return and attack Munahim, Munahim snarled at him; the Xiba’albi dropped his club and fled.
Munahim surveyed the scene, his sword up in a two-handed guard position. The Gund lay weeping in the corner. The blood that flowed from its wounds was soaked up by the crystal grains on the floor, which swelled as they drank the liquid. Two Xiba’albi warriors remained, clubs trembling slightly in their grip, and behind them stood a dark-skinned man in a long silk tunic and silk pants. The toes of his shoes curled upward and back, and he wore a short cylindrical cap. He held an open vial in one hand.
The Xiba’albi and the man in silk all stood on the near side of the long tables.
“I am from Togu,” the man in silk said.
“Are you a sorcerer?” Munahim snarled.
“Yes.”
“Are you deadly and evil?” Munahim growled, snapping his teeth for emphasis.
“I am deadly. Evil is a matter of—”
“Are you prepared to die?” Munahim roared.
“Beware, dog-man,” the sorcerer murmured. He raised the vial over his head as if he might throw it.
“I am a Kyone,” Munahim said. “I do not lie and I do not fear.”
“You are not the first Kyone I have known.”
“Your Rovers are dead,” Munahim continued, “and their wagons burn. Your Xiba’albi are dead, or broken in spirit.”
“You do not frighten me,” the sorcerer insisted.
The two remaining Xiba’albi drifted slightly apart, creating an open avenue between Munahim and the sorcerer. Indrajit stirred, raising one arm slightly.
So Munahim’s bosses still lived.
“Your Gund is crippled,” he said. “Do you think your little glass bottle is going to stop me?”
“What do you want?” the sorcerer asked. “Money?”
“I am a Kyone,” Munahim said. “I do not negotiate.”
“So you want a lot of money, then.”
“I cannot be bought.”
“You have no sense of humor,” the sorcerer grumbled. “Don’t mistake that for heroism.”
Munahim roared and leaped at the nearest of the two remaining Xiba’albi. He didn’t raise his club fast enough and took a deep slashing wound across the forearm. He staggered away sideways, and he and the other Xiba’albi raced for the exit, nearly knocking one another over in the process.
Munahim raised his sword back into guard position. “Ha-ha.”
The sorcerer still held his bottle high. Did it contain an acid? A poison? Some sort of Druvash transformation magic? Munahim was loath to turn his back on the sorcerer, but Indrajit was just beginning to stir and Fix still lay catatonic.
“You’re not the hero,” the sorcerer said. “You are interfering with justice.”
“And you are interfering with my pack.”
“Leave now,” the sorcerer said, “or this potion will kill you all.”
Munahim threw his sword. It was not a throw that might impale the sorcerer; the weapon was far too big for that. But neither was it an awkward, spinning, throw. The weapon was balanced and Munahim was experienced and he hurled it with sudden force, sending the pommel straight at the sorcerer’s face.
The sorcerer ducked, and Munahim leaped forward.
The long sword flew across the room, over the tables, missing the sorcerer. The sorcerer dropped into a crouch, and Munahim grabbed his wrist with both hands, slamming his forearm against the table.
The sorcerer screamed, and Munahim grabbed the bottle. Thick smoke rose from the vial’s glass, which was hot to the touch. Munahim ripped the bottle free and threw it into the corner of the room.
BOOM!
Smoke and flame erupted from the vial. The Gund bellowed—had Munahim hit it with the sorcerer’s potion? Munahim felt all the air drawn from his lungs in one whoosh and he fell down, choking.
Blackness.
Munahim opened his eyes. His ears rang and his lungs hurt. He smelled smoke and heard coughing.
He stood and found himself still inside the rectangular building. Indrajit was lowering himself from the table to the floor, coughing fiercely. Fix was attempting to roll over, but having difficulty moving.
He could now see that both his bosses were bruised and bloodied.
And Munahim realized that he was coughing, too.
His eyes watered from the smoke. Scaffolding along two of the walls burned.
The Gund lay scorched and still. The sorcerer was gone.
“Munahim.” Indrajit retched, trying to talk. “Who was that?”
“I don’t know.” Munahim found and sheathed his sword and then grabbed Fix. Breathing was difficult, but he managed to sling the smallest Protagonist over his shoulder. “They said they wanted justice.”
“They meant revenge,” Indrajit said.
Munahim grunted.
“Believe it or not,” Indrajit said, “that dandy from Togu isn’t even the man we set out to arrest. We still have work to do.”
Munahim nodded. “I’m ready.”
“My sword?” Indrajit asked. “And, uh, kilt?”
“By the door.” Munahim pointed.
Indrajit nodded and limped toward the exit. “Good boy,” he said. “Good boy.”