The Path of the Hunter
“Fifty Imperials if you bring my partner’s killer to justice,” the caravan merchant Ripto Shabam said. “I trust you know the path of the hunter.”
The trader was a Thorg, squat, thick-skinned, and a dull orange color. His eyes were narrow slits that occasionally leaped open wide to emphasize a point, and he had no visible ears. The top of Shabam’s head was a thicket of tiny stalks that ignored the gusts bringing seaport smells in through the merchant’s open window, but trembled in response to sound.
Shabam sat at a wide table. On the table beside him rested a bronze cage a cubit in all dimensions, containing a black kitten. The little creature lay coiled up on its side, but it looked at the conversation with wide yellow eyes set in a flat face.
Indrajit Twang and his partner Fix—adventurers, thinking men, and sometimes agents in the employ of Kish’s Lord Chamberlain, Orem Thrush—stood in front of the table. Indrajit was taller than his partner; Fix looked Kishi, but for his large nose and his broad Xiba’albi-like shoulders. The shorter man was very muscular. Indrajit and Fix were both dressed in kilts and tunics of undyed gray-brown linen. Indrajit wore his leaf-bladed sword at his belt, and Fix carried two knives and a hatchet; he’d left his spear at the front door.
They didn’t have uniforms, despite the fact that they were a bonded jobber company, because they generally undertook tasks that required discretion.
“Justice is tricky.” Indrajit was wary of the phrase the path of the hunter. “Do you mean you want the killer to be tried before an Auction Court?”
Fix smiled blandly as he and Indrajit sat.
The Thorg snorted, the sound causing his head-stalks to part left and right for a moment. “Who has time for that bureaucracy, not to mention coin for the cost? No, I want you to find him and kill him.”
Indrajit exhaled thoughtfully. “That course of action brings a different set of complications. I mean, killing someone might get us dragged in front of an Auction Court ourselves.” He looked at Fix. “Not to mention the possibility of friends and relatives who might want revenge. Which they would call justice, in turn.”
“Bringing a murderer to heel does sound attractive, though.” Fix’s voice was high-pitched and faintly melodic. “It sounds like the sort of thing heroes would do.”
Indrajit nodded. “We do like the idea of being heroes. On the other hand, we definitely don’t have the resources to go up against the House of Knives.”
“It’s not the House of Knives!” Shabam sputtered.
“How do you know?” Fix asked. “The House of Knives employs a lot of assassins.”
“They don’t have a registry, like the Paper Sook?” Indrajit asked. He had no experience with Kish’s assassins’ guild.
Fix shrugged.
“Because the killer dogged our trail all the way here along the Endless Road.” The Thorg hesitated. “We acquired . . . something exotic . . . in the east, and the killer wants to take it from us.”
“Oh, I see. You want justice, and you want to protect yourself.” Indrajit scratched the bony ridge of his nose. The role of bodyguard was more familiar. “How much do you know about this assassin?”
Ripto Shabam shook his blocky head. “Nothing. But he must be very good, if he could sneak past my partner’s servants and kill him in his own office.”
“And what is it you bought in the east that’s so valuable an assassin would be dispatched to recover it?” Fix’s eyes narrowed. “Or did you buy it, in fact? What do you mean by ‘acquired’?”
The Thorg chuckled. “Now, now, you’re starting to ask questions that get awfully close to what we in merchantry call ‘trade secrets.’ What we brought back is not relevant, nor how we acquired it. Though I am pleased that you are quick enough to guess that it wasn’t a simple purchase. No, we acquired something we believe the Lord Marshal or the Lord Stargazer will pay a lot of money for.”
“And would the Lord Marshal or the Lord Stargazer be willing to send an assassin after you instead?” Fix asked. “It might be cheaper.”
Shabam snorted. “And risk getting that kind of reputation in the Caravanserai? No one would ever do business with such a man again.”
Indrajit nodded. “Well, we’re going to have to insist on the option not to kill the assassin, but just to bring him to you. And then you can do the killing, if you want, or file for a court.”
“Fine,” Shabam said.
“But you’ll admit there’s legal risk to us,” Fix added. “So our fee will be one hundred Imperials. Thirty up front.”
“And I think you’re going to want to give us a key to your house,” Indrajit said. “We’ll have to be able to come and go, so we can better protect you.”
The Thorg shook his head. “I could hire a whole jobber company for a hundred Imperials.”
“You are hiring a whole jobber company,” Indrajit said.
“You are hiring the jobber company that is famous among all the better classes of Kish.” Fix smiled. “We’re the ones who are so committed to client service that we went into battle on the stage of the Palace of Shadow and Joy, reckless of the danger to ourselves.”
“Really livened up the opera season, they say,” Indrajit added.
Shabam sucked at his teeth. “Seventy-five.”
Indrajit stood. “We do work at discount rates,” he said, “for widows and orphans. Damsels in distress, that sort of thing. Call us when you’re ready for premium service.”
Fix stood, too. “Good luck with whatever cut-rate jobbers you choose to hire.”
“We hear Mote Gannon has capacity,” Indrajit said. “He recently lost some of his contracts with the Lord Chamberlain.”
“His poor Luzzazza lost his lower arms.” Fix tsked.
“Why do you say ‘lost’ when you know I enjoy getting credit for my deeds?” Indrajit said.
“Fine, you took his arms in single combat. I’ll make sure your successor Recital Thanes get the details right.”
“The details are less important than the spirit. The spirit should be heroic. High risk, last minute, personal danger, swooning maidens. And how do you plan to tell my successors what to recite? Your race is no longer-lived than mine is.”
“I plan to write the instructions down, Little Hort.”
Indrajit sucked in air past his teeth.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” The Thorg spread his arms in a gesture that disavowed his earlier offer. “You must forgive an old camel trader his habits. I meant no offense. Of course, I recognize the best when I see them, and I am willing to pay for quality. Ninety Imperials!”
“Goodbye,” Fix said.
“One hundred Imperials it is!” The trader opened a purse at his belt and counted out thirty of the silver coins.
“We’ll watch your house tonight,” Indrajit said. “In the meantime, give us all the information you have, and we’ll see what we can find out.”
Ripto Shabam produced two long keys, one to his own house and a second to his partner’s. He also summoned a violet-skinned, long-snouted, red-robed Zalapting servant named Shunt, introduced Indrajit and Fix, and told Shunt to take them to “Jak’s office.”
To Indrajit’s surprise, the Zalapting didn’t lead them down to the street. Instead, he took them along a short hallway to a small door. On a staircase as they passed, Indrajit saw a gray-skinned servant sweeping the floor with a long-strawed broom. Big as this house was, it was quiet. Unlocking it, he led them out onto a catwalk that crossed over the street two stories below to another building.
The sky overhead was clouded, the scowling dark blue underbellies of the cloud promising rain. From the street below drifted the smell of roasting nuts and the neighing of horses. The two buildings were built of matching yellow bricks, irregularly sized but in a pleasing way that made the houses look bespoke. Their rooftops were made of matching red-clay half-pipe, with lead gutters around the edges.
“These men are close partners,” Fix murmured, “if they literally joined their houses.”
“These men are rich,” Indrajit said, “but we already knew that.”
They shut the door behind them and crossed the catwalk. Shunt unlocked the door on the other side.
“You and I live in the same chambers,” Indrajit pointed out.
“Because we’re poor.” Fix grinned. “As soon as we’re rich, you’ll buy your own palace where you can have a stage to act out your Blaatshi Epic with a dozen apprentices.”
“And you’ll marry that widow you’re crazy about and move to a farm in Ildarion where you can have a dozen children and inflict literacy upon them all.”
“She’s not a widow yet.”
“In due time.”
In his excellent peripheral vision—Indrajit’s eyes were set far apart in his head, as were the eyes of all Blaatshi—Indrajit noticed a smudge of black in motion above the door from which they’d exited. Turning, he saw two black cats crouched on the rooftop. One was large, and the other small, perhaps a kitten.
Fix followed his gaze. “Don’t worry, that’s a city cat. It probably eats rats and street-fowl, snakes, maybe even big beetles in lean times, but you’re safe.”
“I do not look like a fish,” Indrajit said.
“I know how uncomfortable you must feel, resembling food as you do.”
The Zalapting Shunt snickered.
“That’s it,” Indrajit said. “Take us to the latrines, Shunt. I’m throwing you both down, and the Druvash can eat you.”
As they entered the adjoining building, the black cats disappeared. Indrajit had the uncomfortable sensation that the creatures hadn’t moved, but had in fact simply ceased to be visible, but as good as his peripheral vision was, the edge of his field of vision was still tricky.
And besides, this was Kish. A cat that could turn invisible would fit right in.
The building that had belonged, apparently, to the dead partner Jak was completely silent. Shunt led them down a short hall to an office, both hallway and office the mirror image of what they had seen in the Thorg’s house.
“Did Jak have no servants?” Fix asked.
“On Jak Furbit’s death, his belongings all became the property of my master,” the Zalapting said. “My master promptly fired all the staff.”
“For failure to defend Furbit?” Indrajit asked.
“To control costs,” Fix suggested.
The Zalapting nodded.
Like Shabam’s study, Furbit’s office had a broad table and large windows letting in the sea breeze. On the table stood an open inkpot, a ledger, and a bronze cage just like the one the Thorg had, except that several of the bars had been pried out.
Furbit himself lay dead on the floor. He looked Ildarian, fair-skinned and with light brown hair that was almost blond. His throat was ripped open savagely and he lay centered in a circle of dried brown blood. He clutched a book to his chest, spine cracked open so that the book’s plain black cover was visible.
“Oh, look,” Indrajit said. “Another victim of reading.”
Fix stooped to pick up the book. “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m pretty sure he was writing.” He pointed at a quill pen lying on the floor halfway across the room. “And look, ink on his fingers.”
“Another iniquitous practice.” Indrajit waited. “Well, go on, tell me what he was writing. Was it by chance his killer’s identity?”
“Don’t you want to take this opportunity to admit how important it is to be able to read?”
Indrajit smiled. “No.”
“Leave the keys,” Fix said to the Zalapting. “And you can go.”
Shunt gave both keys to Indrajit and left the way they’d come.
“What is this on the floor?” Indrajit picked his feet up, looking at white dust that now coated the sole of his sandals.
“Powdered sugar, I think,” Fix said. “Don’t suggest that I taste it.”
“I wasn’t about to.” Indrajit pointed to a crossbow that lay on the floor, and then at the feathers of a crossbow bolt embedded into a wall timber on the other side of the room. “Just like I wasn’t about to suggest you taste Furbit’s weapon.”
Fix pointed to a confectioner’s bag sitting on the corner of Furbit’s table.
“Touché,” Indrajit said.
“Hmm.” Fix looked into the book. “This is a narrative.”
“You mean a story?”
“There’s a heading. It says ‘dictated’ and then has today’s date.”
“And does the narrative come to a satisfactory conclusion?”
Fix looked. “It ends mid-sentence.”
“So he was taking dictation from the killer.”
“Or if not, then the person telling the narrative might have been a witness.”
Indrajit stepped to the window and peered out, assessing the difficulty of climbing up from the street. The walls were sheer, without handhold. “Clearly, you should read this narrative and see what it says.”
Fix’s eyes scanned the page.
“Out loud,” Indrajit said. “And try performing it. Maybe do a voice or two, make some theatrical gestures, as appropriate.”
Fix read. “‘Once, there was a dama who gave birth to a litter of six kitas. This birth was exceedingly rare, even miraculous.’”
“What is a ‘dama’?” Indrajit asked. “And a ‘kita,’ what’s that?”
“The text doesn’t say. Shall I keep reading?”
“Please.”
“‘Wise men and wealthy men and rulers came from all the . . . ’ Here now, what’s this?”
Indrajit frowned. “Is that what the dictation says? Men came from all the ‘here now, what’s this’?”
Fix squinted at the page. “No, he originally wrote ‘planets of that system and all the nearby systems.’”
“Gibberish. Or some kind of incantation.”
“Maybe Shabam should have hired the Collegium Arcanum rather than the Protagonists.”
“I think wizards charge a premium. Maybe Jak just made a mistake.”
Fix nodded. “I guess that’s why he scratched out that phrase and wrote ‘lands near and far’ instead.”
“Translation problems. Go on.”
“ . . . ‘came from all the lands near and far to honor her. The gifts rendered to the dama made her and her clan wealthy, and the offers of alliance that she received made her clan powerful, as well. Her many well-wishers feasted her and her litter for seven cycles of the earth around the sun.’”
“Clearly a fairy tale,” Indrajit said. “Or another mistake. In what kind of world would the earth move around the sun? But a seven-day feast sounds delightful.”
“One of the Selfless of Salish-Bozar in the temple where I was a foundling had mastered a series of obscure astronomical texts. Apparently, they accounted for nearly half of the useless facts he had to master to become a Selfless.”
Indrajit snorted. “Someone made a mistake in signing off on his ordination. Astronomy is supremely useful. You can navigate with it, and tell the seasons. It also makes an excellent theater of the mind for memorizing large amounts of information.”
“If you can’t be bothered to write it down.”
“Or you don’t want to weaken your mental faculties.”
“But these astronomical texts,” Fix continued, “argued that the earth moves around the sun.”
“So your Selfless had memorized not ten thousand useless facts, but ten thousand useless theoretical conjectures?”
“There is nothing so useless as a hypothesis that has been disproved.” Fix looked at the page again. “But what I’m saying is, maybe the feast didn’t last seven days, but seven years.”
“Ah, so we are firmly in the realm of fairy tales. Go on.”
“‘At the end of the seventh cycle, when all the well-wishers departed, the dama discovered that one of her kitas was missing. Had she been of another race, the dama might have sworn grand oaths of vengeance or commitments to recover the kita. Instead, she simply noted the disappearance to one of her clan.’”
“Disappointing,” Indrajit said. “Rookie move. Grand oaths have lots of dramatic potential, your characters should always swear them.”
“Is this how your recitations go?” Fix asked.
“The audiences are generally larger. When the news gets out that the Recital Thane is going to perform, people assemble in a hall to listen. Everyone brings food and drink, and each family competes with its neighbors to provide the best wine or beef or fish.”
“No, I mean, do you get interrupted this much when you perform?”
“No,” Indrajit said. “But the Blaatshi Epic is more exciting than this.”
Fix arched an eyebrow. “I’ve heard you recite for an hour straight once, and say nothing but genealogy. I lost count at three hundred instances of begetting.”
“Yes, and wasn’t it exciting?”
“Stop interrupting.”
Indrajit grunted.
“‘That very same night,’” Fix continued, “‘every hunter of the clan departed. Each left alone in his vessel, and they’—scratched-out words here—‘sailed the oceans around, tracking down every single guest at the feast. Those who gave aid were honored, and some even adopted into the dama’s clan. Those who refused aid, or lied, were dispatched, as surely and as easily as a corn-mouse.’”
“That is dramatic,” Indrajit conceded. “But one could hope for a little more detail in the description. Also, the hunters should suffer setbacks, so that we the listening audience are not totally convinced that in the end they will succeed. For instance, maybe have some hunters die, or get lost and wander for forty years. Also—”
“Shut up. ‘Finally, a lone hunter, a Depik named Mrowf with over one hundred kills to his credit, found the missing kita. The kita lay imprisoned in the—’ Oh, what is it now?”
“What’s a Depik?”
“Obviously, I have no idea. ‘The kita lay imprisoned in the dungeons of a prince who was also a mighty warrior, and who enjoyed pit-fighting. Every year, the prince held a grand tournament in which fighters from’—scratched out—‘many lands battled, always to the death, and the winner faced the prince himself.’”
“Heroism.” Indrajit nodded his approval.
“‘If the winner of the tournament could survive three minutes in the pit with the prince, then the winner received his freedom. The hunter strode boldly into the prince’s hall and demanded the kita’s freedom, but the prince rejected his plea. There were too many warriors around the prince to attack him directly, and the dungeons were too well guarded to sneak into, so the Depik made the prince an offer. He proposed that he would enter the arena in place of the kita.’”
“Of course he did.” Indrajit rubbed his hands. “See, Fix, this is the sort of thing I want my successor to write about me.”
“You’d better take up pit-fighting, then. ‘The prince agreed, but it was a trick, and he threw the hunter and the kita into separate cells, and forced them both to fight in the tournament, which began the next day. No one was surprised that the Depik was a skilled warrior, but the crowd cheered with delight when the tiny kita dispatched heavily armored warriors on her own. Both the hunter and the kita advanced, killing foe after foe, until the final round of the tournament, when they were forced to face each other.’”
Indrajit chortled. “Ah, now the story is reaching its climax. The tragic, impossible choice!”
“‘But Mrowf would not fight, and neither would the kita. They stood there, enduring the insults of the crowd, until the prince told them that they would starve to death together in the pit. Then Mrowf knelt, and begged the kita to take his life, and then avenge his death on the prince. With tears weighing down her whiskers, the kita bit the hunter’s throat, and he fell to the sand.’”
Indrajit unexpectedly felt tears in his own eyes.
“‘When Mrowf’s body had been carried out, the prince entered the arena. His armor was strong and his weapons devastating and he, too, had killed over a hundred men. Despite her agility and toughness, the kita found herself overmatched and backed into a corner. As the prince was about to deliver the killing blow, Mrowf appeared. His death had been feigned; he had vanished before the very eyes of those who had thought to bury him, and he now leaped down into the pit and . . . ’”
“And what?” Indrajit asked. “And what?”
“And that’s the end,” Fix said. “It stops in the middle of a sentence.”
“Well, clearly the end is that Mrowf kills the prince, takes his wealth, and sails with the kita back to the dama, to be honored for his heroism for the rest of his days.” Indrajit frowned. “Hey, wait a minute.”
“You’re considering an alternate ending?”
Indrajit pointed at the ruined cage on the table. “Who was Jak Furbit taking dictation from?”
Fix scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “You’re putting pieces together. Hold on. You think he was taking dictation from someone in the cage . . . ”
“Who was distracting him so that he wouldn’t notice the real killer,” Indrajit considered. “Or possibly someone was dictating to him to distract him from the fact that whatever he had caged was escaping.”
Fix picked up the bag of sugar and crouched to examine the floor. “There are tracks here. Wixit?”
Indrajit shuffled to the spot his partner was looking at. Small tracks crossed the floor, apparently at a run, since they were very far apart, given their tiny size. They didn’t look like Wixit tracks, though.
“Those look like handprints,” Indrajit said. “Or—what do you call them?—feet with thumbs. Like monkeys have, but Wixit don’t have feet like that.”
“Opposable thumbs,” Fix murmured.
“Lucky for us Furbit spilled sugar all over his floor.”
“Not luck,” Fix said. “Furbit did it on purpose. So he could see the killer coming.”
Now it was Indrajit’s turn to guess his partner’s mental leaps. “So you’re guessing that otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to see the assassin. So the assassin is . . . someone who is on the mystic path of the Luzzazza, but he’s so far along it, he can become entirely invisible, rather than just having invisible arms. And Furbit knew it.”
“Something like that.” Fix pointed. “I think this is the spot where the assassin jumped up on the table and ripped out Furbit’s throat.”
Indrajit tried to picture a Wixit—short, furry men who seemed generally to be business owners and merchants in Kish—leaping up to the table and biting Furbit’s throat. “I think Wixit eat carrion,” he said.
“It’s not a Wixit,” Fix told him. “Stop imagining a Wixit. It’s something the size of a Wixit, that can turn invisible, that’s a natural-born killer.”
“Frozen hells,” Indrajit said.
“The cats,” Fix answered.
Indrajit broke for the exit first, and he had longer legs, but Fix was muscular and a powerful sprinter. They charged down the hall and threw open the door, revealing the narrow bridge connecting the houses again. Rain had begun to fall.
The felines on the opposite rooftop were gone.
“They captured two,” Indrajit said. “They brought home two cats, and each of them kept one. And an adult cat has hunted them down to rescue the kittens.”
“Only they’re not cats,” Fix said, “since they have opposable thumbs.”
Indrajit’s thoughts spun. “The cat-killer sat there and narrated a story about cat-killers to distract Furbit while another cat-killer crept up to murder him.”
“Cold bastards,” Fix said.
“Hunters.”
They raced across the bridge, nearly slipping because the surface was now slick with rain. Indrajit fumbled the key into the lock and opened the door. “If they’re not cats,” he asked, “what are they?”
Fix had a knife in one hand. “According to the transcript, they’re Depik.”
“Welcome to Kish,” Indrajit said. “Nothing is what you expect.”
“Did these guys plan to sell the kittens to the heads of the families as pets?” Fix asked. “Worth so much because they’re rare, and come from the far end of the Endless Road?”
“Or worth so much because they’re lethal assassins?”
“This was a terrible miscalculation on their part.”
They entered the building at a run. The Zalapting Shunt lay dead on the hallway floor, his throat torn out, and there was no sign of any other servant. Indrajit and Fix burst into Ripto Shabam’s office—
And saw Shabam, staring transfixed at the kitten in the cage on his desk.
Only the kitten was standing, like a man, and gripped the bars of its cage with both hands. Tiny furred fingers were clearly visible, wrapped around the bronze. Shabam leaned over a ledger book and scratched out words as the kitten said them. On Indrajit’s entry, the kitten stopped talking and glared at him and Fix.
“Stop!” Fix cried at Indrajit’s shoulder.
“Mrowf!” Indrajit called. “Mrowf, come out! You don’t need to do this!”
Suddenly, Indrajit’s own actions struck him as ridiculous. The kitten had fingers, but did that mean that a tiny cat-man had murdered Jak Furbit and was preparing to murder Jak’s partner? A tiny cat-man who could turn invisible?
He felt vaguely embarrassed at the thought.
The pages of the ledger in Shabam’s hands ruffled, though there was no breeze.
“Mrowf!” Indrajit shouted.
Fix threw the sugar.
It was good that Fix had picked up the sugar, rather than Indrajit. Indrajit’s wide-set eyes gave him excellent vision to his sides and even somewhat behind his own back, but it also meant his aim with missile weapons and thrown objects was poor at best.
But the sugar bag, thrown by Fix, hit something unseen directly in front of the Thorg merchant and exploded. The invisible thing let out a sound that was half yowl and half curse, and then Indrajit heard the soft pattering sound of something landing in a far corner of the room, near the door.
Indrajit and Fix charged the table. Sugar coated Ripto Shabam and his open ledger, the surface of his table, and the floor all around. Fix dragged the merchant by the twitching fronds of his head into the corner of the room. Indrajit grabbed the bronze cage, holding it carefully by a ring at the top, so as not to put any of his fingers within biting range of the kitten.
The kitten glared at him, the white powder on its fur making it look like an aged cat, and uttered one word in perfectly intelligible Kishite: “Peasant.”
Then the kitten disappeared.
“I know you’re still in there,” Indrajit said to the kitten, and hurled himself into the corner of the room. He and Fix stood shoulder to shoulder, the merchant squeezed behind them into the corner of the room. Indrajit held the cage in his left hand and with his right drew his leaf-bladed sword, holding it out in front of him, while Fix held a knife in each hand.
Indrajit kept his eye on the sugarcoated floor.
“They’re not like Luzzazza,” Fix murmured.
“What?”
“Luzzazza change color,” Fix said. “Or their second set of arms do. If you coated a Luzzazza’s lower arms with sugar, they would become visible, and appear white. But I hit that thing squarely, and it didn’t become visible, even for an instant.”
“So it’s not a Luzzazza,” Indrajit muttered. “The fact that it isn’t seven feet tall and blue might have been a giveaway.”
“I’m just saying that its mechanism for disappearing is different.”
“Save it for the Hall of Guesses,” Indrajit said. “Right now, we have a bigger problem.”
“Or a littler one,” Fix countered.
“Mrowf,” Indrajit said, addressing the apparently empty room. “Can I call you that?”
A soft, disembodied chuckle sounded somewhere in the room. “It’s not my name, but I rather like the conceit.” The voice was low and throaty, like a purring sound.
“Well, you are the hunter who has come all along the Endless Road to rescue two kittens from a litter,” Indrajit said. “That’s twice as big a rescue as Mrowf carried out, in the story I heard. I can appreciate the heroism.”
“Your appreciation might be a little misplaced,” Fix muttered.
“Kitas,” the voice said.
“Kitas,” Indrajit agreed. “Not kittens.”
“You are supposed to kill him,” the Thorg merchant growled from behind Indrajit and Fix. “Not make friends!”
“Kill him or bring him to you,” Indrajit said. “I suppose, technically, we’ve brought him to you.”
“Hmm,” Fix said. “Taking my payment now and walking away, contract fulfilled, sounds very attractive at this minute.”
Indrajit kept his eyes fixed on the sugar. Something bothered him at the back of his mind, something he’d forgotten, but he couldn’t quite figure out what.
“Hey!” Shabam squawked. “You can’t do that!”
“We can,” Fix said slowly.
“But you won’t!”
“We don’t want to,” Indrajit acknowledged, “but you’re making things a little awkward for us. Maybe you should stop trying to get us to kill the Depik, and focus us more on the saving-your-life part of the contract.”
“He knew what he was getting into,” the unseen hunter purred.
“I did not!” Shabam shrieked.
“You did,” Fix said. “You knew these were assassin cats. Cat . . . people. So did Furbit, judging by how excited he got when that kita started telling him a story. That’s why you thought they had value, especially to—who was it, you said? The Lord Marshal or the Lord Stargazer?”
“Did you not realize there were adults who would follow and try to recover the kitas?” Indrajit asked. “Did you . . . You didn’t kill the rest of the family, did you?”
“No!”
“That sounds genuine,” Indrajit said. “Mrowf, how about it?”
“He and his partner killed none of my people.” The hunter’s voice was cold.
“If you’re going to say something like, ‘but in kidnapping one of my people’s young, he has committed an unpardonable wrong, and now he must pay for it with his blood,’” Indrajit suggested, “I just can’t agree.”
“It is not yours to judge,” the hunter purred.
Was the voice coming from a new direction? Indrajit deliberately didn’t shift his grip on his weapon, so as not to give away that he’d noticed a change.
“Maybe not officially,” Indrajit admitted, “but since I’m the guy standing in your way with a naked sword in my hand, maybe we ought to come to a reasonable agreement.”
“You find that having weapons drawn increases reasonability?”
“I know my own mind,” Indrajit said, “and I feel more comfortable going about learning yours if I’m not defenseless. I saw what you did to Jak Furbit.”
“Hmm,” the hunter hummed. “And what is your mind, fish-man?”
“I’m not a fish,” Indrajit said. “Have you ever seen a fish this pleasing shade of mahogany?”
“Yes,” the hunter said.
“Well, I don’t know what’s at the far end of the Endless Road, maybe you have mahogany-colored fish, but around here, the fish are silver and green and blue.”
“I come from considerably farther away than the end of your Endless Road.” For a moment, the purring voice sounded tired. “In pursuit of these kitas, I have come from places you cannot possibly imagine. They had fallen into the hands of eunuch bureaucrats in one of your world’s temple-states, but by the time I caught up, this man and his partner had paid lesser temple servants to steal the kitas and sell them.”
“What temple-states are you talking about?” Indrajit asked.
“I think he means whatever is at the end of the Endless Road,” Fix said.
That seemed right. “Someday,” Indrajit said, “we need to go explore down there.”
“I grow weary of this,” the voice said.
“That’s not very catlike.” Fix shifted his stance slightly. Had he seen something? “Cats are patient.”
“I am not a cat.”
“Ah-ha! See how it feels?” Indrajit cleared his throat. “Okay, here’s my thinking: You become visible, and you and I walk down together to the street, and I give you the kita, and you leave. No harm done, no one else needs to die.”
“Harm has been done,” the Depik purred. “I killed the eunuchs because harm had been done. You have seen Jak Furbit’s end. Ripto Shabam must also die. We are a small species, and few in number, and it is only the complete and overwhelming obliteration of anyone who harms a Depik kita that keeps future kitas safe.”
“I’m sympathetic to your plight,” Indrajit said. “I’m one of the last of my people—we’re down to three hundred or so, as far as I can tell. So I know how important it is to protect the young, and keep them on the right track. But I just can’t let you kill my client. Even if, maybe, he should have seen it coming.”
“Even if he might deserve it,” Fix added.
“Hey!” Shabam blurted out.
“You would die for pay?” the hunter asked.
“Well, there is that. It’s awkward, I don’t like it, but that is sort of the deal. I get paid, and I take certain risks. But there’s more than that. See, we’re not the guys who get paid money to kill people. We’re the guys who get paid to save people, and to stop killing.”
“We’re heroes,” Fix said.
“Like you,” Indrajit hastened to add. “Maybe with slightly different ethical codes.”
“You are right to say that I must show the young the correct path to walk,” the hunter purred.
“Yes,” Indrajit said. “In my case, I suppose I’m failing, since I haven’t convinced any of the young of my people to follow my example and become a Recital Thane.”
“I will not fail,” the voice said. “I will show the young of my people the path they must walk. That is the path of the hunter.”
“Uh . . . this doesn’t sound like an offer to compromise.”
“The path of the hunter tells me that Ripto Shabam must die.”
“Look—” Indrajit said.
A howl of pain, right in his ear, cut him off.
Turning with his shoulders, he saw blood spurting from Ripto Shabam’s neck. The merchant slapped at his own clavicle, trying to free himself of an unseen attacker. Fix plunged into the semi-visible fray, grabbing the invisible creature with his hands and yanking it free of its prey as his knives clattered to the floor.
The other kita, Indrajit realized, that’s what had escaped his mind. The other kita must have been standing in the corner with them all along.
Thinking of the second kita reminded Indrajit of the adult hunter. Turning back to face the room, he saw prints like tiny handprints appearing in quick succession in the sugar, racing toward him.
If he raised his sword, the Depik would likely scoot under it or leap over. Indrajit needed a bigger weapon.
He stepped forward and swung with the bronze cage.
Indrajit made contact with an unseen mass and knocked it across the room. He heard three voices yowl in complaint—one from Fix’s hands, one from the cage, and the third from the far corner, near the window. Indrajit saw an irregular whorl of sugar disturbed as the hunter landed, and he sprinted immediately for the exit.
“After me!” he shouted.
Fix followed, unseen Depik kita in one hand, still yowling and hissing, and his second hand wrapped around Ripto Shabam’s belt so he could drag the man.
“Where are we going?” Fix barked as they charged up the hall, toward the catwalk connecting the two houses.
“Away from here!” Indrajit held the door to the narrow bridge open as Fix and the trader stumbled through and into the rain, then stepped in after them and shut it. “If we can escape this hunter, maybe we can release the kittens and they’ll all calm down and just leave.”
Meaning to sheath his sword, Indrajit fumbled and lost his grip on it.
The weapon fell to the street below, making a clear ringing sound on the cobblestones.
“Frozen hells!” Indrajit locked the door and turned to his partner. “To the other house!”
Indrajit heard the faint whoosh of something moving rapidly through the air, and then the soft plop of it landing on the catwalk ahead of them. The hunter became abruptly visible, standing on the center of the bridge and blocking their path.
Standing, the hunter came to mid-thigh height. His fur was black and his tail long and curled upward like a jug handle. Hands and feet looked very similar, the same dark fur with opposable thumbs. Now Indrajit could see that the Depik wore a brown leather belt, carrying several pouches.
Fix stepped between the hunter and the merchant, holding the kita in his hands before him. “This might have been a tactical mistake.”
“You are brave men,” the hunter said. “I am willing to let you two go.”
Indrajit’s heart sank. “That’s not good branding. We can’t be the jobbers who let a client die.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Fix said. “Every jobber company fails at a contract now and then.”
“Hey.” Shabam’s protest was weak. He was losing blood.
Indrajit shoved the bronze cage against the door and stripped off his tunic, wrapping it around Shabam’s neck like a bandage. It didn’t seem very effective. The hunter might not have to kill its prey at all, it might merely have to stop Indrajit and Fix from summoning effective aid, and watch as Shabam bled to death.
Indrajit eased forward along the bridge until he stood directly behind Fix. “No one has to get hurt.” As he spoke, he despaired of the possibility of persuading the little cat-man assassin. He shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself. Cats were homicidal little predators that left trails of corpses in their wakes—why should cat-people be any different? “We let the . . . kitas . . . go, and you let us go. We all just walk away.”
The hunter stared past Indrajit at his client. “Your client is not worth your loyalty.”
“True.” Indrajit shrugged. “But, you know, I’m trying to be a hero.”
“Not . . . worth . . . it!” Ripto Shabam bellowed.
“No!” the Depik hunter howled.
Indrajit spun about, just in time to see the Thorg merchant lift the bronze cage and throw it off the bridge. In his weakened state, he couldn’t throw it far, but the kita inside yelped piteously and winked in and out of sight as its cage spun sideways and fell toward the hard street, two stories below.
Indrajit knocked the Thorg aside and lunged. He dove toward the glittering cage as it dropped, and as he closed the fingers of his right hand around the ring atop the cage, he realized that he had completely surrendered his balance, and was falling himself.
He threw out his left hand, scrabbling against the side of the building for any purchase. His skin tore and he painted the yellow brick red with his blood. For a moment, his fingers caught at the edge of a large brick that protruded slightly. His heart beat once, twice.
“Drop it!” Shabam yelled. “Drop—!” A loud crunch shut him up.
Indrajit lost his grip and fell again.
He toppled slowly, head and cage pulling downward until he was pointed face-first at the cobbles, his toes still maintaining an ephemeral purchase on the catwalk, and then he lost all contact with the building—
But someone grabbed his legs.
Indrajit fell and bounced, supported by a strong grip around his ankles.
“Frozen hells,” he heard Fix grunt above him. “You are big.”
Indrajit looked up. Framed against storm clouds, he saw Fix. His partner lay on his belly across the catwalk, perpendicular to the span so that his legs poked out the other side. The Depik hunter stood at Fix’s side, holding a black-furred kita in his arms. The kita had blood on its muzzle. Ripto Shabam lay slumped against the doorway.
Indrajit tried to raise the cage and couldn’t. “It’s too heavy!” he called. Rain filled his mouth and nostrils. Below him, the rain had emptied the street and polished the cobbles to a gray shine.
“I can climb down!” the hunter yelled.
“No,” Fix grunted.
Indrajit looked down into the cage at the second black kita. It was wet and bedraggled, but it stood upright, looking at him with a fierce light in its eyes.
“How about it, little kita?” Indrajit asked. “If I open the cage, can you climb up?”
“Yes,” the kita said. “Peasant.”
Indrajit laughed.
“Stop shaking!” Fix urged him. “Your legs are slippery!”
Indrajit’s head was full of blood, making it tingle. He shifted the bronze ring to his left hand, and with his right he gripped the wire of the cage. He pulled with all the strength he had, and the wire snapped from its anchor, bending open.
“Two more,” the kita said.
“You could help,” Indrajit suggested, but he knew it wasn’t true. If the kita had been able to pry open the bars itself, it would have already escaped.
He ripped a second wire from its place.
“Hurry!” Fix roared.
Would the hunter kill them, once he had his kitas? Would he let Indrajit fall?
It didn’t matter. The kita was innocent.
Gritting his teeth with pain and exhaustion, Indrajit ripped out a third bar. He choked on the rain filling his windpipe.
The kita scampered out, quickly ascending Indrajit’s arm and back, and Indrajit released the cage. The bronze hit the cobblestones below and shattered into a thousand pieces, and then the weight of the kita was lifted as well, and then Fix heaved a sigh of relief.
Indrajit looked down at the hard street. “I don’t suppose you can pull me up?”
Even as he asked, Fix began to hoist him. The smaller man was heavily muscled, and as he worked, Indrajit felt other hands—tiny hands—grab his legs and help.
When he cleared the surface of the bridge, Indrajit managed to drag himself onto it and stretch out flat, heart beating fast and lungs gasping for air. Fix lay next to him, breathing hard, and the Depik stood over them. Indrajit wanted to say something, but he was all out of words. The eyes staring from the hunter’s flat, catlike face glittered with hard curiosity, and then with something else.
The hunter turned and knelt beside the fallen merchant. He produced several small objects from one of his belt pouches, all glittering, and applied them to Shabam. He pushed one object several times into the flesh where Shabam had been wounded, each time producing a neat snick sound. Then he ran a second thing over the wound, leaving an oily sheen behind, and finally he pressed a third object into Shabam’s upper arm. The thing hissed and Shabam groaned.
Indrajit groaned, too. “That doesn’t sound like you just killed him.”
The hunter stood over him again. One kita climbed up onto the hunter’s shoulders and the other clung to the side of his leg. “The path of the hunter is to kill his prey,” the Depik said. “But the hunter kills to feed his clan, and the hunter must always be able to recognize his friends.”
Indrajit found he could only nod.
“Get your client to a physician. The best he can afford. Make him drink lots of liquid.”
“Thanks, Mrowf.”
The Depik hunter disappeared from Indrajit’s field of vision. Had he turned invisible, with his mystical power? Had he simply walked through one of the doors and out of sight?
“I like that you call me that,” the hunter said.