Welcome to Kish
[ Part One:The Name of the Monster ]
“My daughter is a poet.” As the green-skinned shipowner spoke, the mass of thin tentacles hanging off the front of his face beneath his nose danced. The voice emerging from the worm-like strands was deep and monotone.
Indrajit cocked his head. “Poet?”
“Oh, now Indrajit is listening,” Fix said.
“I was listening before.” Indrajit snorted. “I am very concerned for Melitzanda’s safety.”
They stood in the shipowner’s office, a single wooden room whose walls were lined with shelves. The shelves sagged under the weight of ledgers, boxes, and stacks of paper. The office crouched at the head of a long wharf in the Shelf. Outside, Indrajit heard the crying of seagulls and a squeaking sound that he thought was made by the Sobelian Lamprey. That made sense; autumn was arriving, and the lamprey’s migration patterns meant it should now be starting to swim around the rocky beaches of Kish. Soon, it would swim south, toward the Free Cities.
“Oritria.” The face-tentacles circled slightly and flexed. The shipowner’s golden eyes flared wide open and his nose flattened into his face, leaving behind only two narrow slits. Indrajit didn’t know this race of man, and had no idea how to read the facial expression. Grit Wopal—the head of the Lord Chamberlain’s Ears, and sometimes Indrajit and Fix’s boss—would have known what the shipowner was thinking. He would have seen it, with the third eye set into his forehead.
But Indrajit and Fix were working for their own account, today, and Grit Wopal was nowhere in sight.
“Yes, Oritria.” Indrajit cleared his throat. “I said ‘Melitzanda’ because I was thinking of an important incident in the Blaatshi Epic, involving a kidnapped princess named Melitzanda. Who is also a great poet. Naturally, the similarities to your daughter’s situation brought that episode to mind.”
“My daughter is not a princess,” the shipowner said. “I am not a king. I sail in the Serpent Sea trade.”
“But princess-like.” Indrajit smiled.
“In what respect?” The tentacles quivered.
“In deserving to be rescued,” Indrajit suggested.
“I don’t want you to rescue her,” the shipowner said. “The little vixen ran away with her filthy Yeziot lover and, as far as I’m concerned, he can have her. But she took important documents with her, and I want you to get them back.”
“I don’t know the Yeziot.” Fix’s coppery-brown face brightened, his eyebrows lifting high enough almost to touch the straight hair spilling over his forehead. Fix loved nothing more than learning, unless possibly it was learning from a book, the pervert. “Tell me about them.”
“They’re ravenous maneaters,” the green man said. “They’re really excellent sailors, practically a one-man crew, huge capacity for work and they never get tired, but you have to keep feeding them man-flesh or they go berserk.”
Indrajit now worried he had forgotten the man’s name, and he checked his memory palace. There, standing on a tussock of grass beneath the steep gray cliff from which Indrajit had dived as a boy, were four frogs. Four frogs.
“Forfa,” he said, “we’ll get your daughter back.”
“I’m vexed.” Forfa’s voice continued to be flat. The tentacles were curling more tightly, so apparently the curl reflected negative emotion. Or tension. “You don’t appear to be listening to me.”
“You don’t want your daughter back,” Fix said. “You want the documents.”
“Yes,” Indrajit agreed. “I meant we’d bring her back, with the documents. What are the documents, by the way?” He hoped they contained merely pictures, with no words. Fix got entirely too much approbation for his literacy as it was.
“First, demand the return of the documents,” Forfa said. “Wopal said you’d be the right jobbers for the task. He said you work complex and sensitive jobs in the Paper Sook. Jobs involving contracts and so on.”
Indrajit harrumphed.
“I presume she took them because they have value.” Fix’s voice was melodic, high-pitched, almost feminine in tone, though it emerged from the barrel chest of a muscle-bound jobber.
“Of course.”
“So we’ll demand them back,” Fix said. “And what if she offers to sell them to us, instead?”
“I’ll reimburse you,” the shipowner said. “Up to fifty Imperials.”
“Which happens to be our fee, conveniently,” Fix said. “If you pay us in advance, we’ll have the cash to negotiate.”
A sound like wordless mumbling bubbled from behind the tentacles, but Forfa retrieved a brass-bound casket from a shelf behind him, unlocked it, and counted out fifty gold coins.
“What kind of poetry?” Indrajit asked.
“Eh?” The merchant grunted.
“What kind of poetry does your daughter compose?” Indrajit clarified. “Or write?” He hoped she didn’t write it, but that was probably a vain wish.
“The foolish stuff,” Forfa grumbled. “You know, swords and heroes and love.”
“That’s the best stuff,” Indrajit said.
Forfa glared at him.
“We’ll demand the documents back,” Fix said, “then offer to pay for them if she says no, then steal them, if we have to.”
Forfa nodded curtly. “As a last resort, bring back the girl.”
“That seems clear enough,” Fix said.
“You have to tell us what the documents are,” Indrajit reminded their client. “So we can identify them.”
“They’re not documents such as you would recognize,” Forfa droned. “They aren’t written on parchment or carved into clay.”
“Good.” Indrajit smiled.
Fix shook his head.
“They’re four long strips of leather, as wide as your thumb. Each is punched with a series of holes and has knots tied along its length.”
“So . . . not documents at all,” Fix said.
“If you prefer.” Forfa’s face-worms bounced.
“How long are they?” Indrajit asked.
“Each is about as long as a man is tall.” Forfa looked from Indrajit to Fix and back. “About as tall as you, with the long face-bone. Not your short friend.”
“Short is a matter of context.” Fix frowned.
“I usually call it my ‘nose,’” Indrajit said, “rather than my ‘face-bone.’”
Forfa shrugged. “You’ll admit that it’s long and prominent, and goes somewhat farther up your face than most noses do. Also, your eyes are rather far apart.”
“And you have a plate of noodles glued to your cheeks,” Indrajit said.
“Noodles?”
Fix stepped forward, putting himself between the other two men. “What can you tell us about where your daughter might have gone?”
“I’ll have you know,” Forfa said, “that my grandmother chose my grandfather from the Mating Run precisely because of his thick, luxurious beard.”
“A beard is made of hair,” Indrajit said.
“Not all beards!”
“It’s true, I have seen face-tentacles before,” Indrajit admitted. “But I recall them being on men who were very short, and gray, with triangular faces. Sort of like a cross between you and a Visp. Do you know the race of man I’m talking about? Are they kin of yours?”
Forfa’s eyes bulged.
“Your daughter,” Fix said. “Oritria. And the secret messages. How do we find them?”
“I never said the strip-writing contained secret messages.” Forfa snorted.
“Fine.” Fix nodded amiably. “The cryptic dots and knots embedded in four leather strips the length of an itinerant Blaatshi bard.”
“I’m not itinerant.” Indrajit sniffed. “You’ll be calling me ‘shiftless’ next.”
“The nature of the documents should not concern you,” Forfa said.
“Fix is just jealous of any book he can’t actually read,” Indrajit said.
“I’m not concerned with the nature of the documents,” Fix replied mildly, “or their contents. My question was, how do we find them? How do we find your daughter and the Yeziot?”
“You don’t have to find them.” Forfa shook his head as if he were sluicing away water. “They’re aboard a ship called the Duke’s Mistress.” He stepped to the door, opened it, and pointed at a two-masted, lateen-rigged ship within bowshot. “The brazen thieves. Oritria and the monster she’s making off with. They sail tomorrow with the morning tide.”
“Why not go take your documents back?” Indrajit asked. “You have sailors.”
“I can’t lose any of my sailors,” Forfa said. “And my sailors might not be as cautious as I’d like around the documents. And worse, if the harbormaster were to hear I had started a fight in port, it would get back to the Lord Chamberlain—”
“I’m pretty sure the Lord Stargazer has the contract for the ports,” Fix said.
“Fine, the Lord Stargazer.” Forfa nodded. “But whichever of the great families is administering the port these days, if I get banned from docking here, the trade is useless to me.”
“Not useless, surely,” Indrajit objected. “The Serpent Sea trade has four legs, doesn’t it? You could still trade in the other three—Pelth, Boné, and Xiba’alb.” He grinned at Fix.
“Except,” Fix said immediately, “the spices you buy in Xiba’alb you sell in Kish, to be resold to buyers from Ukel and Karth and Ildarion. Ildarion won’t buy directly from Xiba’alb because of the political tensions, and the others are too far.”
“And the Pelthites don’t care about spice!” Forfa sputtered. “Or they use all the wrong ones. They put rosemary on lamb!”
Indrajit nodded. “Of course. So if you can’t sell here, you’d have to sail farther or lose the entire trade.”
“Farther, and across rougher seas!” Forfa snapped. “My costs would go up for the time alone, and then there’s the cost of selling the risk!”
At the mention of risk-merchantry, Indrajit closed his eyes and willed the conversation to go elsewhere.
“Grit Wopal said you were discreet.” The shipowner’s eyes sagged with fatigue.
“How do we recognize the Yeziot?” Indrajit asked.
“He’ll be the biggest man on the ship,” Forfa grunted. “You won’t be able to miss him.”
“What’s the name of the monster?” Fix pressed. “And what do we do if he tries to stop us?”
“Squite.” Forfa nodded, his tentacles wiggling excitedly. “Feel free to kill him. Indeed, I want him dead. Bring back his corpse, and I’ll pay you an additional ten Imperials. I could sell tickets to passersby to see it.”
“Do you feel like we never get quite all the information we’d like to have up front?” Indrajit asked.
The two men pushed their way along the busy boardwalk. Indrajit gnawed at the fried leg of a Kishi fowl gripped in his left hand and kept his right hand near the hilt of his legendary sword, Vacho. Trying to appear nonchalant, he scanned the wharf where the Duke’s Mistress was moored. Sailors loaded merchandise, and a large, four-armed, scaly-looking man directed their movements.
Fix sauntered, his thumbs hooked into his wide leather belt, keeping his hands near his falchion and his ax. For real fighting jobs, he’d bring a spear, but if you carried a spear around in your hand, you announced you were ready for combat, and you attracted attention. Even in Kish.
“We’ll be able to identify the documents on sight,” Fix said, “and Oritria must look at least something like her father.”
“Not sure about that. Grokonk males and females look radically different, for instance.”
“Like tadpoles and frogs.” Fix nodded. “But most likely, we’ll spot Oritria easily.”
“She should at least be green.”
“So the thing we don’t really know is what a Yeziot is.”
“The thing you don’t really know.” Indrajit cast the bone, gnawed clean of flesh, into the water. A lavender-skinned Zalapting who had narrowly missed being struck glared at him. “Mmm, I would really like some fried tamarind right now. Maybe on a bed of kelp.”
“The Yeziot appear in the Blaatshi Epic?”
“How many times must I tell you,” Indrajit asked, “that the Epic contains all the best knowledge of the Blaatshi? Everything worth knowing is in the Epic. This is why knowledge of the Epic not only enlightens the mind, it necessarily edifies the soul. One becomes a better person merely by listening.”
“The Epic doesn’t tell you how to find a successor Recital Thane. Or you’d have done it by now.”
“Touché. This is also why, naturally, I’m interested in talking with Oritria, who is not a princess, but who is a poet. I wish to see what . . . edification . . . may be had from her poems.”
“What do you know about the Yeziot, then?”
“Shall I declaim?” Indrajit wiped grease from his mouth with the back of his forearm. He wore a sleeveless and baggy tunic and a kilt; Fix wore a kilt only. Both men had sandals on their feet. Even in winter, Kish would experience cold rain, but would not freeze.
“Just say the line.”
“Yes, I will declaim.” Indrajit looked around for a platform and saw a chunk of stone carved roughly with the features of a horned skull, lying beside a brick wall at the corner of an alley. Not roughly, he realized; the sculpture had once been very fine, its cuts deep and its lines subtly curved, but it had crumbled under the teeth of wind, rain, and time into its present state. He stepped up onto the skull and turned to face Fix and the street. “Auspicious that I should have for a stage the image of our patron.” The heraldic symbol of Orem Thrush, the Lord Chamberlain, was a horned skull.
“Or his great-great-great-grandfather.”
Indrajit raised his arms and struck the third combat pose; that was the one in which his left arm imitated a stabbing spear and his right pantomimed the motions it would make if bearing a shield. “Yeziot the growler, eater of the flesh of men,” he chanted, “swords in his mouth and spearheads for fingers.”
A passing sailor with rope sandals and canvas trousers threw a rock and hit Indrajit in the shoulder.
Fix stroked his beardless chin. “Those are picturesque details.”
“Picturesque? Perhaps you missed the part about ‘swords in his mouth.’”
“Yes, yes, and spearheads for fingers. But Forfa had already told us that the Yeziot were eaters of men, so you’d expect that sort of thing. And ‘growler’ tells us something, I suppose. But a man may growl, and so may a dog, and have little else in common. Is there another epithet for them, or anything else that would give us more . . . specific information? Such as . . . I don’t know, their color?”
Indrajit switched to the seventh combat post, a crouch with an imaginary spear braced to receive an attack. “Long-limbed Yeziot, drinking blood in darkness.”
A waddling merchant with a green turban wrapped around her head hissed. “Shut up and go away!”
“You see that the burden of poetry lies heavy upon me,” Indrajit said.
“‘Long-limbed,’” Fix mused. “That’s a little vague. I suppose it means tall.”
“Prominent limbs,” Indrajit suggested.
“Hmm.”
“If I were Squite and Oritria, I’d hide belowdecks,” Indrajit said. “At least until the ship left port.”
“We could pretend we want to buy passage. Bluff our way aboard.”
“Or pretend we want to ship cargo.”
“Or that we’re inspectors on behalf of the Lord Stargazer.”
“That one would come back and bite us,” Indrajit said. “We could tell the captain who we are and say we’re investigating for the Lord Chamberlain. Make out that some kind of Paper Sook misbehavior has taken place. Fraud or off-book risk-merchantry or trade indoors.”
“You mean insider trading. But we have no uniforms and there are only the two of us, so the captain could easily tell us to go away.”
“Right. Or we could disguise ourselves as sailors. Or leave our weapons and swim.”
“I don’t think leaving our weapons is a good idea. The Yeziot have prominent limbs, after all. Maybe the Epic’s epithets call attention to their limbs because they’re unusually strong.”
“Forfa said it’s like having a one-man crew, so the Yeziot are likely strong and very fast. I say we just walk on board,” Indrajit said. “And if anyone stops us, we tell them we’re looking for Melitzanda. Or Oritria, rather.”
“What, to collect a debt?”
Indrajit stepped down off the weathered skull. “No. We’ll say we want to hear her poetry. Which happens to be true.”
Fix nodded and they turned their steps toward the Duke’s Mistress.
The ship was moored at the far end of a long, sagging wharf. Sailors with undyed cloth wrapped around their legs to form something resembling baggy trousers marched along it with baskets and large clay jars on their shoulders to trudge up a splintered gangplank and deposit their burdens in various corners of the ship, mostly belowdecks. A big man, covered with a patchwork of scales and fur, directed their motion with movements of a long, coiled whip. Indrajit and Fix walked purposefully alongside the line of sailors and then, when a gap presented itself, slipped up the gangplank.
At the top, a cracking whip stopped them.
The big man loomed over them. His scales were red, orange, and yellow, in a repeating diamond-shaped pattern. His fur, which sprouted in irregular patches, was black and oily. His legs curved back and forward again, like an exaggerated caricature of the hind legs of a dog. Or like a frog’s legs, much more dramatic even than the legs of the Grokonk Indrajit had seen. He wore a harness of broad, thick leather straps. Of the man’s four arms, one held a long whip and the other a falchion, a curving, one-edged sword like Fix’s, only twice the size.
“Businessss?” the big scaly man asked.
“Pleasure,” Indrajit said. “We have come seeking a poet.”
“A poet?” The scaly man’s eyes narrowed and the nostrils at the end of his long snout flared. “Thiss is a merchant ship.”
“I’m Indrajit Twang,” Indrajit said. “I’m the four hundred twenty-seventh Recital Thane of the Blaatshi people, and keeper of their sacred epic. You may not have heard of me, but, as a man of culture, you’ve no doubt heard of the poem.”
“Anaxssimander Sskink mentioned you.” The big red man chuckled. “You were trying to pay your tab at the Blind Ssurgeon with poetry.”
“Yes.” Was this big fellow a Yeziot? Indrajit didn’t dare ask, nor did he dare meet the gaze of Fix, who must surely be asking himself the same question. The man’s nails were long and sharp, as were his teeth. He was large and strong; was he large and strong enough to crew a ship entirely by himself? Or had that been mere hyperbole? “I’m all paid up now, though. In fact, I have cash, and, look, I’ll pay you. I’ll give you a shiny gold Imperial if you let us go belowdecks to talk to Oritria.”
The scaly man’s eyes narrowed further. “You take me for a ssilly child.”
“We take you for a big man with a sword and a whip,” Fix said. “What race of man did you say you are?”
The scaly man growled.
Fix hesitated, then nodded. “Five Imperials. This is easy money. We’ll be gone before you know it, and we won’t cause trouble.”
The big man held out one of his hands. Fix, who always handled the money because he didn’t trust Indrajit to do so, dropped five yellow coins into the scaly red palm, and then the brute with the whip stepped aside.
Indrajit followed Fix toward an open hatch in the deck, near the front of the ship. He saw two more hatches, farther back. “That could be Squite.”
“He’ll watch us go belowdecks in any case, so don’t look back at him.”
Indrajit forced himself to keep his eyes on the plank ladder at his feet as he climbed down into the hold. “I don’t want to fight that guy. I’d rather jump into the water and swim, if it comes to it.”
“Fortunately, we’re looking for documents that aren’t water soluble.”
“Documents, I feel obligated to point out, that might be hidden under the leather straps wrapped around that fellow’s large, long-limbed body.”
Fix nodded. “Let’s find the girl before we tackle the monster.”
“I wish he’d told you his name.”
Light filtered down through a grate overhead, revealing a broad central open space, piled high with stacks of loose rope of a greenish fiber. The sailors carrying casks and jars descended to a second level below this one, from which arose an unpleasant order reminiscent of a latrine. Fore, hammocks hung close together lined the walls, and left and right—starboard and port, Indrajit reminded himself—were rows of doors, close together so as to imply tiny cabins. Aft, two doors farther apart might belong to the captain or his principal officers. Indrajit’s people were fishermen, but they rode the waves in small boats, and the details of a ship this large were a little beyond him.
“I guess we knock,” Indrajit said.
They started at one end and rapped on the door. When it didn’t open, Indrajit cracked the door and took a look inside, finding no one. Then the second door, and then the third.
“This reminds me a little bit of my youth in the ashrama,” Fix said. “We’d go door to door sometimes.”
“Salish-Bozar the White has a proselytizing operation?” Indrajit shook his head. “That surprises me. What did you say to people—‘Come join us for the glory of memorizing useless nonsense’?”
“Basically.”
“I’m shocked Salish-Bozar hasn’t converted everyone.”
Two irascible Zalaptings waved them away from one narrow cabin, and a sleepy Luzzazza grunted from his cot in another. A third cabin held something that looked like a sloth, gripped to a beam overhead and staring with eyes like bone-white saucers. Otherwise, the starboard cabins were empty.
“Passengers haven’t boarded yet,” Fix suggested.
“Or they won’t fill these cabins with passengers, and will stack cargo in them eventually,” Indrajit countered. “Or maybe the ship’s officers have cabins. Did something just move in the pile of ropes?”
“Most likely a rat,” Fix said. “Ships have rats.”
They crossed the central space, pausing to let sailors emerging from the hold below to pass them.
“The ropes are pretty disordered, aren’t they?” Indrajit asked. “Isn’t that a point of pride for sailors, to always make sure your ropes are tightly coiled and neatly stowed?”
“Did you learn that from the Epic?” Fix asked.
Indrajit nodded. “It’s an epithet of ships. All ropes tightly coiled, all sails furled tight.”
“Maybe this captain is just less epic than the Blaatshi captains were.”
They knocked at the first port cabin door, and there was no answer. Fix pushed the door open.
A woman sat on the cot inside, staring at them with golden eyes. She had green skin, and strands like tentacles hung off the front of her face. She was wrapped in a toga, and she held a wax writing tablet on her lap.
“Oritria,” Indrajit said. “You have a—” He caught himself. He had almost said “beard,” but he didn’t feel comfortable finishing the sentence that way. “Tablet. Writing tablet. You write your poems down, of course you do.”
He felt a little disappointed.
The green-skinned woman blinked. “Are you sailors?”
“Your father sent us.” Fix kept his hands away from his weapons, but both ax and falchion were clearly visible. “We’ve come for the documents you took.”
“What documents?” She held up her writing tablet. “This is for writing poems.”
Fix sighed.
“Maybe keep an eye out for Squite, coming down the ladder and surprising us,” Indrajit suggested. “Let me talk to Melitzanda, poet to poet.”
Fix stepped back into the larger chamber and turned to watch the stairs.
“Melitzanda is a princess of Blaatshi legend,” Oritria said. “My name is Oritria.”
Indrajit leaned against the wall. He felt light-headed. “What do you know about Blaatshi legend?”
“I’ve read summaries of stories. The Epic itself isn’t written down, of course, but in Zilander’s Ninety-Nine Riddles, he retells a dozen or so of the tales. Including the one about Melitzanda and the harp that knew how to tell time.”
“Wait, wait . . . what is ninety-nine riddles?”
“It’s a book.” The green woman’s brow furrowed. “Are you Blaatshi?”
A wave of nausea hit Indrajit. “The Epic is written down?”
“Only some stories,” Oritria said. “And in Kishi, not in the original Blaatshi. And, of course, the real experience of the Epic is engaging with a Recital Thane who performs it, composing it as he goes from his stock of epic epithets. So the true Blaatshi Epic is never exactly the same twice, as no two men live exactly the same life.”
“I . . . I’m sorry, may I sit down?”
Oritria scrambled to her feet and Indrajit fell heavily on her cot.
“Indrajit?” Fix called.
“I’m fine,” Indrajit said. “Just. Is the scaly red guy coming?”
“Not yet.”
Indrajit took deep breaths. “Okay, sorry, I’m a little overwhelmed. It’s just . . . I’ve been here . . . months, I’m not sure how many, I’ve lost track of the time, and no one has ever heard of my people, or wants to hear the Epic, or understand what it’s about, and here you are . . . practically teaching me!”
“I am a poet.”
“Yeah.” Indrajit exhaled slowly, trying to stop his head from spinning. “Listen, we’re here to get the documents you took from your father.”
“I didn’t take any documents.”
“They looked like four leather strips, with knots tied into them and holes punched through.”
“I’ve seen those.” Oritria nodded. “I didn’t take them. I’m just leaving Kish, and I have to sneak out so my father doesn’t stop me. He thinks the world is dangerous.”
“He’s right.”
“Yes, but I’ll never write my own epic if I don’t try to live an epic life first.”
Indrajit clapped his hands to his forehead. Thoughts raced through his mind faster than he could catch them. Had he finally stumbled, in the hold of this ship and trying to escape Kish, upon an appropriate apprentice to become his successor as Recital Thane? She wasn’t Blaatshi. On the other hand, her greenish skin and the generally . . . oceanic . . . appearance of her features suggested she might be some sort of distant cousin. Fix teased Indrajit that he looked like a fish; Oritria looked like an octopus. A little.
But she wanted to leave. Indrajit could leave with her, of course, and they could travel the world together as he passed on the Epic and its many arts. On the other hand, where would that leave Fix? But was that any of Indrajit’s concern? Fix would be fine, he would be no worse off than he had been before he and Indrajit had met and become partners. If Fix could reunite with his lost lady love by leaving Kish, wouldn’t he do so in a heartbeat?
But they were here for something else. What had they come for?
“Indrajit!” Fix snapped.
Indrajit took a deep breath and stood. “We need those two documents. Four documents. The leather strips. We don’t have any instruction to bring you back, so I guess your father thinks it’s okay for you to travel the world.”
“He does?” Oritria blinked.
Indrajit shrugged. “Anyway, listen, let us buy the documents from you. Fifty Imperials.”
Fix groaned and stepped in close to the door. “At least try to bargain.”
“It’s just money,” Indrajit said.
“Everything is just money!”
“Fifty Imperials,” Indrajit repeated. “You could use the cash if you’re really going to travel. And listen, maybe I could come with you.”
“That’s too much.” Oritria took a step backward, pressing herself against the wall. “Why would you want to come with me?”
He had come on too strong. “To be poets together, on the road. You could hear the Epic, maybe even learn Blaatshi.” Her eyes looked more skeptical by the second. “Also, I’m armed, so I could protect you against dangers on the road.”
“I have protection,” she said. “This is why I am traveling with Squite.”
Indrajit sighed. He wanted to run away with this girl and explore poetry. Instead, he was going to do his job. “My instructions are to ask for the documents, then offer to buy them, then take them from you.”
“I don’t have them,” she said again.
“Keep watching,” Indrajit reminded Fix. He searched the little cabin. It took all of a minute, and he found no leather straps. Standing, he faced Oritria again and put his hand on the hilt of Vacho to look menacing. “Take off your toga.” He hated himself, but it was what the job required.
“You can’t torture any information out of me because I don’t have the documents.”
“I’m not going to torture you. I have to make sure you’re not hiding them under your clothes.”
She stripped and Indrajit checked her toga. She didn’t have the documents.
“You can get dressed again.” He stepped back, standing in the doorway.
She left the toga on the floor where it lay.
“The captain could have them locked away,” Fix said.
“Or Squite has them.” Indrajit sighed. “I guess we have to go talk to the big guy.”
“Let’s search his room first,” Fix said. “Where is Squite sleeping?”
“Right where you first saw him,” she said. “It takes a lot of effort to move, and he can operate the ship from where he is right now, so he just plans to stay there until it’s time to disembark.”
Indrajit stared at Oritria and blinked. Something wasn’t adding up.
“What does Squite look like?” Fix asked.
Then greenish cords wrapped around Fix and whipped him sideways, out of Indrajit’s sight.
The thing in the center of the deck, the thing that Indrajit had taken for a pile of disordered ropes, now shuddered. It contracted, and a forest of eyestalks sprouted in its center. Indrajit drew his sword. He heard a crash and Fix cursing, somewhere off to his left and out of sight. Sailors dropped their crates and scampered back up the ladder.
Then a mass of the green ropes sprang toward Indrajit, like darts fired from crossbows.
He slammed the door shut. A hail of simultaneous thudding sounds erupted from the door as most of the ropes—they were really tentacles—struck the wood. Two of the tentacles slipped in through the door before it shut, and now squirmed, pinned between wood and wood.
The tips of the tentacles bore curved talons. Where they scratched the wood, they cut deep furrows, slicing easily through the planks.
Indrajit took a step deeper into the room to give himself space, and sliced the tips off the two tentacles. Thick green ichor sprayed in wedge-shaped spatters across the wall.
Outside, he heard a noise that was ear-piercing shriek and deafening bellow at the same time. Then a thud. Then he heard Fix shouting, “The Protagonists!” That was a battle cry of sorts, as it was the name of the jobber company of which Indrajit and Fix were both the owners and the sole employees.
Indrajit stepped forward to open the door and join the fray, and something seized him by the throat.
It felt like a single finger, and the sudden backward tug caused him to lose his grip on Vacho. The sword clattered to the floor and his flow of air disappeared. Indrajit staggered backward, slapping at the choking strand around his neck.
It was tightly twisted cloth.
A toga.
Of course it was. Was Oritria innocent? Or at least relatively innocent, a woman trying to escape her father and now trying to defend her friend?
Squite the Yeziot, who looked like a tangled pile of green ropes.
Was it possible she had some darker part in this affair? She was, after all, choking him.
But she was a poet.
He struggled, but couldn’t bring himself to smash the woman in the face with his elbow. His vision spun and was beginning to turn black, and then he heard words in his ear.
Blaatshi words.
“Softheaded Indrajit, eyes and heart blinded, he’ll die and let his friend die, before he will see clearly.”
The Blaatshi was grammatically perfect, perfectly intoned and accented. The lines rhymed and scanned and had impressive internal rhyme.
Indrajit swung his head back. With a crack, the back of his skull connected with something hard and heavy, and then he was lurching away forward, sucking in the humid, close air of the Duke’s Mistress’s lower decks.
He heard a heavy thud outside the little chamber and spun around to face Oritria. She stood, wrapping the fabric of the toga around her left arm; in her right hand, she held a long, thin dagger.
“Who taught you that line?” Indrajit demanded. The room swung left and right beneath his feet, as if the ship were cresting an enormous wave.
“I wrote it!” Oritria stabbed with the knife.
Indrajit’s senses returned to crisp clarity at the last possible moment. He slapped the blade aside and swooped forward, slamming Oritria in the face with his forehead. With his long face bone, in fact.
Blood spurted from her nose and poured into her tentacles. Perversely, disgustingly, the bright red blood over the waving face-appendages reminded Indrajit of a bowl of spicy noodles.
“Liar!” he shouted.
“Blind fool Recital Thane, death now comes calling!” she howled, again in Blaatshi.
She couldn’t have memorized lines, could she? Her accent was too perfect.
But what was the alternative? That a previous Recital Thane, someone of whom Indrajit was unaware, had come to Kish and taken an apprentice? And now the apprentice was attacking Indrajit?
Or could she have encountered a Blaatshi poet somewhere else, sailing with her father? Was there a Blaatshi village in Pelth, or in Xiba’alb?
But then why was she trying to kill him?
“Who taught you this?” he demanded.
She stabbed him in the side.
He pushed, knocking her to the floor. “Stop doing that!”
“Indrajit!” Fix yelled, outside the door.
Indrajit scooped up his sword and rushed out into the larger space belowdecks. Tentacles whipped and flailed in all directions. Some whipped themselves through portholes or around railings, bracing the Yeziot, while others snatched up weapons—a boathook, a metal rod, an ax—and fell in a mass toward Fix, crouched in a corner with his falchion in one hand and his ax in the other.
Indrajit rushed in, sword first. Oritria was right—he would only one day be worthy of his epic poetry if he had lived an epic life in the meantime. Vacho sliced through one tentacle and then another, dropping a cudgel to the floorboards and then a huge chunk of pumice and then an iron pot.
Pain lanced through his back.
He turned, his motion ripping the dagger from his flesh and sending it spinning along the floor. Oritria crouched like a wrestler, naked, face-tentacles writhing. “I’ll let you live, Blaatshi!” she shrieked. “But you will be mine!”
Only moments earlier she had seemed coy, retiring, put off by Indrajit’s forwardness. Had that all been an act?
Clearly, she wasn’t made of the right stuff to be an apprentice Recital Thane.
“The documents!” he bellowed, waving his sword.
“Squite!” she yelled.
The tentacles that rushed Indrajit didn’t seize him so much as push him, faster than a running pace, lifting him off his feet and hurling him against the wall. He managed to raise his arms at the last possible moment to protect his face and he bounced off the wood, falling to the floor.
Indrajit heard a thick growl that elevated instantly into a roar, and then he felt the heat of flame on his cheek. He raised his head, saw that a fire burned in the midst of the all the ropelike tentacles and eyestalks, and then Oritria kicked him in the face.
He rolled over onto his back, groaning.
“Squite!” Oritria shrieked. “Kill the other one!”
“I’m trying!” Squite’s voice sounded like the thick buzz of a saw cutting through hardwood, accented with a barrelful of rattling stones. Tentacles ripped open the doors of the ship’s small cabins and dragged blankets out, trying to dampen the flames.
Oritria was looking at the fire, and Indrajit took the opportunity to grab both her ankles. He rolled toward the flames, pulling her to the ground and sending her bouncing away across the wood. He managed to find Vacho and gripped it in his hand as he stood.
“Fire!” The alarm was bellowed by the large red scaly man—who was not, after all, Squite—who now stood at the bottom of the ladder, long, curved scimitar naked in his hand.
Squite launched four tentacles at the scaled man. They wrapped around his legs, one tentacle on each, and two further tentacles whipped themselves around his sword arm. How many tentacles did Squite have, anyway?
And how many did he have left?
Indrajit left Oritria on the floor. One thing he was fairly certain of was that she did not possess the documents he and Fix were looking for. As four more tentacles lashed at Fix, ripping the ax from his hand and dragging him to the floor, Indrajit took two long steps and leaped forward, diving into the center of the Yeziot’s body.
He felt the tentacles bunched up beneath him like corded rope. As he landed, the tentacles tensed, and stalk-mounted eyes swiveled to look Indrajit in the face.
“Drop my friend!” Indrajit howled, raising his blade.
Tentacles seized him from behind—
He swung the sword, chopping through the eyestalks entirely.
Squite squealed. A thin, soupy, warm liquid that smelled of minerals and brine sprayed from the severed stalks and washed Indrajit’s face. The tentacles wrapped around him dragged him away, but they lacked coordination, and as one pulled in one direction and one pulled in another, Indrajit swung again. Like a farmer who hadn’t cut the grain close enough to the ground, like a woodsman who had left too tall a stump, he mowed through the stalks a second time, cutting right above the massed central bunch of tentacles.
Squite howled and threw him against the wall again.
“You!” The scaly red-skinned man stomped across the deck and stooped to grip Indrajit by his sword belt. He raised Indrajit into the air with one arm and shook him. “Causing trouble!”
“Me!” Indrajit’s vision swam in circles. He realized that he’d lost his sword, but he wasn’t exactly sure where. “I’m not here for trouble, I came for”—he felt faint—“the poet. And the rope-beast.”
“Attacking passengers?” The four-armed man punched Indrajit in the face simultaneously with two enormous fists. His head rocked back so hard he felt his neck nearly snap, and for a moment he lost consciousness.
“Don’t kill the Blaatshi!” he heard Oritria yelling, and her words woke him. “I need him!”
Needed him? For what?
Indrajit heard thumping behind him. Fix, fighting the enormous bundle of tentacles that was the Yeziot?
They were losing. They might be defeated already. Indrajit needed a way to take some of his enemies out of the fight, immediately.
“Need him?” The scaly man snarled, echoing Indrajit’s own thoughts. “For what?”
“That’s my affair, Chark!” Oritria snapped.
Chark. Was that the scaly man’s name? Or his race?
Indrajit kicked the scaly man. It wasn’t much of a kick, because Indrajit’s lungs were deflated and his limbs heavy, but he put all the force he could into the blow and struck Chark in the knee.
Chark hurled Indrajit to the floor and roared.
“Squite!” Oritria screamed.
Indrajit heard a louder thud and then tentacles surged over him. Oritria was screaming and Chark ripped tentacles apart with his bare hands and slashed with his huge saber. Indrajit dragged himself out of the middle of the storm of noise and movement. He patted the floor, looking for Vacho—
And found a knotted leather strip instead.
And then another.
He gathered them together and squinted. Fire had engulfed one wall of the chamber and it gave more than enough light for him to see that, as described, he held two lengths of leather, about his own height, holed and knotted irregularly.
And there were two more on the floor.
He was on his knees in the center of the space, where Squite had . . . lain? Been heaped up?
The Yeziot had been lying on the documents.
Indrajit gathered up the strips and looked behind him; Squite was massive and strong, but he fought blind and his tentacles crashed aimlessly against the ladder and wall behind Chark. Or the chark. Oritria was focused on the fight, screaming directions at Squite, and Chark waded into the sea of tentacles, slashing and cutting.
Indrajit spotted Vacho at the base of a wall and scooped it up with his free hand. Then he went looking for Fix in the shadowy depths of the room and found him, crumpled in a heap and bleeding from his nose. Indrajit prodded his friend.
“Can you hear me?”
“Mmmm . . . urggg . . . ”
“One of the more miraculous properties of the Epic is its restorative virtue,” Indrajit said. “The Recital Thane is obligated to sing over the sick and wounded, to accelerate their recovery.”
“By all your ugly gods, no.” Fix grunted and dragged himself onto all fours. “I’m fine. No singing.” Fix gathered up his ax and falchion from where they lay on the deck.
“You see that even the mention of the Epic has healing properties,” Indrajit said.
“It’s not the Epic, it’s the fire. I don’t want to burn to death on a ship in port.”
“You started the fire. What did you do, hit Squite with a torch?”
“I threw an oil lamp.” Fix shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Indrajit raised his friend with an arm under Fix’s shoulder and they limped toward the back of the ship, where he was reasonably confident they’d find another ladder and hatch. “Still, since I’m the one who will be composing the account of today’s events . . . it will be the Epic that caused you to revive.”
Fix growled.
“Be careful,” Indrajit said. “You are growling, and you have noteworthy limbs. I may mistake you for a Yeziot.”
“We didn’t find the documents,” Fix grunted.
“I have them,” Indrajit said. “Squite was sitting on them. But after I blinded him, he moved off them to try to kill Chark.”
“Who’s Chark?” Fix mumbled.
“Well,” Indrajit said, as the climbed the ladder toward a square of daylight, “I think it’s the name of the big four-armed fellow with red scales. Or possibly he is a chark.”
“I didn’t imagine today would be so educational.”
“So much to work into the Epic.” Indrajit nodded. They emerged onto the deck past sailors with leather buckets full of sand and water, rushing below. “Too bad for you the knowledge is all strictly useful and professional information. You’ll never qualify to be one of the Pointless by learning the names of monsters.”
They turned toward the gangplank and the wharf, moving slowly but steadily.
“Selfless,” Fix murmured. “The priests of Salish-Bozar are called the Selfless. And I gave that up long ago.”