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Welcome to Kish

[ Part Three: The End of the Story ]


“As you have surmised, it is I who was purchasing information from the Lord Archer’s Fanchee administrators about the kelp farms they run.” Grit Wopal nodded as if in salute to his own cleverness, the dirty yellow turban bobbing neatly. “On behalf of the Lord Chamberlain, of course. As the head of the Lord Chamberlain’s Ears.”

Wopal stood in a sparely furnished room in the palace of the Lord Chamberlain, Orem Thrush. Indrajit Twang and Fix each sat on a low sofa; sitting, they were nearly as tall as the Yifft spymaster. The Yifft’s famous third eye was shut and invisible.

“We did surmise that,” Indrajit agreed. “But not until we almost got killed by a Yeziot, and a Chark, and an angry Fanchee.”

“I wouldn’t think a single Fanchee would be much of a threat to you two.” Wopal smiled. “They’re kelp farmers, not renowned for their martial prowess.”

“This one was really angry,” Indrajit said. “The point is that you could have told us more up front.”

“I could have.” Wopal smiled. “I didn’t want to.”

Indrajit ground his teeth. “Do you know what I’m remembering, and with pleasure?”

“Punching me in my third eye?” Wopal suggested. “Twice?”

Indrajit nodded.

“Savor the memory.” Wopal shrugged. “I know I think of it often.”

“You didn’t want to reveal to any unnecessary person anything about your information-gathering operation,” Fix said. “We understand. But now we’ve recovered the stolen information, so that’s it. That’s the end of the story.”

“The stolen information, please.” Wopal held out a hand, palm up.

Indrajit extracted four knotted leather straps from his kilt pocket. Apparently, they were written documents, containing information about the Lord Archer’s kelp farms. And Grit Wopal had bought that information from the Lord Archer’s Fanchee kelp farmers. It had been intercepted by the poetess Oritria and her accomplices, and the Protagonists—Indrajit and Fix—had recovered it. In the process, they had learned that the conspiracy of kelp-farm information sharers gave their strings to one of the Trivials of Salish-Bozar the White, a small man named Meroit. Meroit passed the information on to other agents of the Lord Chamberlain by painting it in symbolic form in pictures of buildings.

Indrajit handed over the documents.

“It’s not quite the end of the story,” Grit Wopal said.

“The girl,” Indrajit guessed. “The poetess Oritria.”

“She stole the information from her father, who was your spy,” Fix said. “You want to know who hired her.”

“Of course,” Wopal said. “The Lord Chamberlain trades on the stolen information. If there is some third party availing itself of the same data, he could get fleeces. And what if the poetess’s employer was a hostile foreign power?”

“Maybe it’s better if someone else handles this job,” Fix said.

“As you pointed out, I strongly prefer not to spread knowledge of these activities any farther than is absolutely necessary.” Wopal smiled.

“Then just send me,” Fix suggested. “Indrajit has feelings for Oritria.”

“I do not,” Indrajit said. “And besides, you have feelings for all written texts, and that didn’t stop you from going after the kelp strap writings with me.”

Fix sighed and shook his head.

“You two,” Wopal said. “Both of you. That’s who’s going to track Oritria and find out who has employed her.”

“Her and the Yeziot, Squite,” Fix said.

“And Chark,” Indrajit pointed out. “Big scaly guy, four arms, nasty claws? Remember him?”

“The Yeziot is dead,” Grit Wopal said.

“Are we certain Chark is in league with Oritria?” Fix asked. “Perhaps it was the confusion belowdecks on the Duke’s Mistress, but I thought maybe Chark and Squite were battling.”

“They were.” Indrajit shrugged. “But she knew his name, and they seemed to me to be disagreeing over tactics rather than fighting as enemies. And then Chark destroyed our chambers.”

“If Chark is not in league with Oritria,” Wopal said, “then I want to know who employs him, as well.”

“Who do you think employs them?” Fix asked. “Shouldn’t you be testing hypotheses?”

“Indeed, I will be testing hypotheses,” Wopal said. “But I don’t plan to share them with you.”

“You think you know,” Indrajit said, interpreting the conversation for himself, “but you’re not going to tell us. Even though knowing what you think you know might help us prove whether what you think you know is right or not.”

“Look at you, Recital Thane,” Fix said. “You’re fit for the Hall of Guesses now.”

Wopal nodded.

“Ah, good,” Indrajit said. “Blind and ignorant, that’s how I’m most comfortable. If someone actually told me what was going on for once, I’d feel downright out of sorts.”

“Like a fish out of water?” Fix suggested.

Indrajit ignored his partner. “How do you know the Yeziot is dead?”

Wopal nodded. “His body is on display at the Blind Surgeon.”

“Something about that bothers me,” Indrajit said.

“Perhaps that you owed the Blind Surgeon’s publican, Anaximander Skink, a prodigious debt before entering the Lord Chamberlain’s service?” Grit Wopal suggested.

“No.”

Wopal frowned. “Perhaps that you were humiliated in hand-to-hand combat at the Surgeon first by Skink’s bouncers and then by Yashta Hossarian, a jobber in the employ of Holy-Pot Diaphernes?”

Indrajit shuddered at the memory of the bird-legged man. “No, but I feel we’re getting closer.”

“The four-armed scaly fellow,” Fix said. “Chark. He mentioned the Blind Surgeon.”

“That’s it.” Indrajit closed his eyes and could visualize the encounter, complete with Chark’s sibilant hiss and his disdain for the Blaatshi Epic. “He knew I had once been a regular there. And, ah, some unflattering financial details.”

“Welcome to Kish,” Fix said. “It’s a small town when you need a big one.”

“And a maze when you need a crossroads.” Indrajit sighed.

<scenebreak>

Indrajit inhaled damp sea air as he and Fix strolled down the ramp from the Spill onto the West Flats. The air reeked of the exhalations, bodily odors, and effluvia of all the thousand races of man, but the cool salt of the sea on the breeze gave it a bracing metallic edge. They passed two carts, creaking with the day’s pungent take from the sea, and pushed away a troop of men with shaven heads and yellow-green robes, chanting a song about how the wind heard all the words ever spoken.

“What are the odds,” he asked Fix, “that Grit Wopal is withholding information you and I would actually like to know?”

“One hundred percent,” Fix said. “Perhaps that is because you and I are unusually curious fellows.”

Indrajit bobbled his head from side to side. “In this profession . . . you make a good point.”

“But I doubt he would get nearly as much value out of men who were less curious.”

“Another good point,” Indrajit said. “When I compose epic epithets for you, one of them shall certainly reference your curiosity.”

“I am disappointed to hear that the epithets do not already exist,” Fix said. “But pleased that they will be plural.”

“Multiple,” Indrajit said. “Many. And mostly not overlapping with my own.”

Fix slowed his step as they neared the end of the ramp. “Anaximander Skink doesn’t know me,” he said. “We should go in separately. Would you feel safer if I went in first, so you’re not in there without backup?”

“Safer?” Indrajit snorted. “A hero is safe at all times. If you enter first and unnoticed, though, perhaps you’ll be able to identify possible sources of trouble before I even arrive. You can wait, armed and unnoticed, to leap like a bolt of lightning into the fray when needed.”

Fix nodded. At the foot of the ramp, Indrajit turned right and slowed his pace. He drifted down to the sea, where he stood, listening to the cries of the gulls, the slap of the waves, and the whistles of the fishermen plying the trade that sustained the East Flats, the West Flats, and the Shelf alike. From this angle, he saw that the northern rim of the Blind Surgeon squatted over a narrow canal that connected directly with the sea; a long wooden boat lay there, tied to a post. The tide was beginning to go out, and the boat bobbed steadily lower as he watched it.

He gave Fix five minutes, a time he could accurately estimate because it was the length of time it took him to recite a dry account, with no embellishments or physical articulation, of the Taking of the Bone Tower. When he reached the line in which clever Gondahar, long of thew, took the Mistress of the Keys astride his dolphin mount, he stopped.

Then he turned back, climbed up the pebbly beach, littered with refuse and scarred by the hulls of boats, and into the Blind Surgeon.

The corpse of the Yeziot Squite hung from ropes lashing it to the ceiling. Strictly speaking, Indrajit had no idea whether it was in fact Squite, as opposed to some other Yeziot; all he could really tell was that it looked like a heaped mass of mildewed rope, each strand joining in a central clump that was accented with eyestalks and split by a gaping mouth filled with multiple rows of teeth. But since Squite was the only Yeziot Indrajit had ever seen, it seemed likely that the living man and the corpse were the same. Customers of the public house yanked on the Yeziot’s tentacles and touched the sharp tips of its teeth with cautious fingers.

“Indrajit Twang!” Anaximander Skink howled. The barkeep and owner of the Blind Surgeon was a Wixit, a furry bipedal race of man with a muzzle like a little wild dog’s. On the ground, he would only have come to Indrajit’s knee, so he stood on a rough catwalk nailed to the backside of the bar.

“Don’t let him recite!” a customer bellowed. Indrajit glared back at the man, a fur-wrapped Yuchak with three axes hanging from a broad belt.

“Now, now.” Skink made a clicking noise with his tongue. “That’s no way to treat an old friend. Besides, Twang’s credit is restored. Old Bird Legs wiped it clean, didn’t he?”

“I don’t need credit.” Indrajit smiled. “I have cash now.”

“Ah good.” The Wixit pointed at the dead Yeziot. “Because that’s two bits already. Price of admission to see the dead monster.”

The crowd inside the Blind Surgeon jeered. A dozen of the races of man thrust their faces in Indrajit’s direction to hiss and boo. A Zalapting made obscene gestures in the direction of the Yeziot.

Indrajit didn’t see Fix. His partner would have his face down on a table somewhere, or would be lurking behind some burly patron of the bar to keep himself unseen until he was needed. Indrajit didn’t look too hard; no sense finding his partner, only to give him away.

Indrajit strode up to the bar. “Wine. And none of that Ylakka piss you like to pass off as beer, either. Give me the good stuff.”

The Wixit hauled on a short rope to pull a bottle from beneath the counter, sloshing dark red liquor into a stone cup.

And then Indrajit realized that Fix had the money. This was at Fix’s insistence; his partner swore that Indrajit had no sense of economy or fiscal prudence, and should only be allowed to touch coin as a last resort.

“Actually,” he murmured to Skink, “I seem to have left my purse at home.”

“Your credit’s good here now,” the Wixit growled. “Just don’t try to pay me back in poetry.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Indrajit took the stone cup and sipped; the wine was sour, but he liked the aftertaste, and he found himself thirsty. He drained the cup and beckoned for more, which the Wixit promptly poured. “Who sold you the Yeziot?”

“No one sold it to me.” Skink sniffed. “He was a customer with a large tab. He died before I could collect, so I claimed the body.”

“Died in the common room, did he?” Indrajit asked. “Or did you drag him here from the Shelf all on your own?”

“What do you think you know, Twang?”

Indrajit took another sip. “The Yeziot was named Squite.”

The Wixit sneered. “Next you’re going to tell me about his starving wife and pups.”

“I killed him.” Indrajit pointed at the visible scorch marks around Squite’s mouth and eyes. “Lit him on fire.”

“Smork droppings,” Skink said.

“Ah yes,” Indrajit said. “I remember this about you.”

“My tough-minded, skeptical approach to life?”

“Your obsession with Smork feces. Shall I recite to you the tale of my battle with the Yeziot?”

“Kill me first.”

“I’ll tell you how you got the Yeziot’s corpse,” Indrajit said. He finished the cup of wine again. Was this a Wixit-sized cup, that he was draining it so easily? “You just fill in the blanks, and I’ll pay you for it.”

“On credit?”

“Yes.”

Skink frowned. “Okay. Tell me how I got the Yeziot’s corpse.”

“A Fanchee woman,” Indrajit said. “Green, with face tentacles. Quite pretty. You might have noticed her carrying a wax writing tablet, and you might have heard her using the name Oritria.”

“Go on.” Anaximander Skink’s eyes narrowed.

“She ran up quite the bill here,” Indrajit suggested. “Maybe you rented a room to her or to her Yeziot pal, or both. Or you sold them a horse. Maybe a Yeziot drinks a lot of wine.”

“Raki,” Skink said. “A Yeziot puts away a lot of raki, it turns out.”

“Expensive,” Indrajit said.

“And a room,” Skink added. “They both slept in my supply room downstairs.”

Indrajit nodded.

“That much information was free,” Skink said. “The next thing I tell you costs you money.”

“She came to you last night,” Indrajit said. “She needed something, or she would have just run away. What did she need?”

“Two bits,” Skink said.

“What about two orichalks, or two terces?”

“I prefer Imperial coin. Even chopped up.”

“Agreed.”

“She needed a place to stay. Said her business in Kish wasn’t done yet.”

“And she offered you the Yeziot’s body to pay off her bill.”

“Two bits.”

“Agreed.”

“Yes, she offered me the body.”

Indrajit growled, leaning over the bar to look menacing.

“Okay, okay, yeah, she gave me the body. She needed a place to stay for a couple more nights, and I told her if the Yeziot brought in enough cash, she could stick around here.”

Indrajit frowned. “And enough of your patrons are willing to pay two bits for a glimpse of a dead Yeziot to pay off a big raki tab?”

Anaximander Skink shrugged. “For a full Imperial, I let people cut off one of the limbs and take it with them. No one’s paid the two Imperials for a tooth yet, but at this rate, I’ll be burning the thing’s head by morning, with a coin-fat purse to hide away.”

“That thing is a man,” Indrajit muttered.

“That you killed.” Skink shrugged. “Smork droppings, now. I might as well make a few coins.”

Indrajit swallowed a long diatribe studded with reproach and condemnation. “And where is she now? The Fanchee woman?”

“That’s a full Imperial,” Skink said.

“Making the total . . . ”

“Call it an even two Imperials.”

Indrajit wished he had started by simply asking where Oritria was. Maybe his indirect approach had helped open the Wixit up. “Two Imperials it is.”

“She’s in my supply room downstairs,” Skink said.

“I’m not going to ask you how to get there,” Indrajit said in his most commanding Recital Thane tones. “I’ve paid you enough, and now you’re just going to tell me.”

“Back around in the kitchen,” Skink said. “There’s a trapdoor and a ladder.”

“Lead me.”

Indrajit followed the Wixit behind the bar and under a rotting brick arch into the kitchen. A pot of something meaty bubbled over a fire in one corner of the room; tottering stacks of shelves held pots, kegs, bottles, barrels, and eating utensils over most of the floor.

Another Wixit crouched over a heap of dirty mugs and plates, wiping the food and drink from them with a greasy cloth.

“What possessed you to dig a hole under this place?” Indrajit asked.

“We didn’t dig anything. Neither did the fellow who sold me the Blind Surgeon; he built over a natural cave.”

“Just a cave?”

“Nothing strange down there. No walking dead or Druvash mutants or anything.” Skink held a finger in front of his muzzle to call for silence, and Indrajit held his tongue. With careful motions, the Wixit rolled a threadbare square of carpet away from the floor, revealing a rectangular trapdoor underneath.

“Give me a taper,” Skink whispered to the other Wixit. She set down a gravy-smeared bowl, tossing her wiping rag on top of it, and lit a short, fat taper.

“Is she alone down there?” Indrajit felt a little slow; perhaps he’d had a bit too much wine. But he didn’t worry about facing Oritria alone.

Skink took the taper and nodded. “I’m to awaken her at nightfall. Let me go first; if she sleeps still, I will signal you. And if she’s awake, I’ll maneuver her so that her back is to the ladder.”

“You are cunning, Skink. I shall have to be more careful of you in the future.” Indrajit drew his heroic sword, Vacho, and steeled himself. Should he call for Fix? But Fix hadn’t seen fit to make himself visible, so perhaps he was watching other dangers. Perhaps he had found the four-armed and red-scaled man Chark and was tailing him. All in all, he decided to leave Fix hidden.

Skink crouched beside the trapdoor as the other Wixit retreated across the room. “If you lift the door, I’ll descend.”

The trapdoor had an iron ring for a handle, sunk into a circular groove cut into wood polished smooth by years of hands. Indrajit spread his legs wide to lower his body. Holding his sword up and to one side and breathing in a calm, controlled fashion to avoid accidental grunting, he hoisted the trapdoor.

Below, darkness, and the soft lapping sound of water.

Two enormous hands seized Indrajit by the right wrist. He spun, twisting his arm and torso to try to claw his arm free, but in vain.

The hands that gripped him were at the end of two enormous, muscular right arms. They were covered with red scales, patched here and there with brown fur, and they corresponded to two left arms, all attached to the same huge torso.

Indrajit stumbled and lost his balance. Chark, the four-armed, scaly accomplice of the poetess Oritria, hurled Indrajit down into the darkness.

He wasn’t sure what part of his body hit the floor first, but he survived. Pain exploded across multiple points in his chest, back, and ribs. But the loud metallic clanging told him that Vacho had fallen down into the pit with him. Lying on stone, hearing the ring, he groped in darkness toward the sound and found his weapon’s hilt.

Lifting it was an effort that caused his breath to come short, but the sword felt the right weight; it hadn’t snapped in two, at least.

Was this, after all, a storeroom? Or did Anaximander Skink’s public house conceal some sort of dungeon, or murder hole?

“Fear to come at me, fell monsters,” he grunted. “I am armed.”

“I am not,” Fix said in the darkness. “On the other hand, I don’t think there are monsters down here.”

“Frozen hells. What happened?”

“I was grabbed from behind,” Fix said. “Outnumbered. They disarmed me and threw me down in this hole.”

“What’s down here?” Indrajit knew that Fix would have begun exploring the moment he was conscious.

“Boxes,” Fix said. “I haven’t finished poking around.”

“Did you find the canal?” Indrajit asked. “There should be a water channel. A sluice of water runs right up to the building.”

“I hear the water,” Fix said. “I haven’t found it yet.”

“You hear it slapping?” Indrajit said. “That’s the action of the tides. It means the water in this room connects to the sea.”

Fix cursed mildly.

Indrajit patted around on hands and knees and had just found the lip of the channel when the tide suddenly dropped enough to admit light through the groove. It was the pale northern light of an autumn afternoon, but after a couple of minutes of darkness, it nearly blinded Indrajit.

And then it was gone, as the water returned.

“We’ll get more of that,” Indrajit said. “Let me get down in the water and see if there’s a way out of here. You dig around in the boxes. Look for raki. It’s a very hard liquor, double-distilled grape.”

“I know what raki is. I assume you don’t just want to get drunk.”

“Wine won’t burn,” Indrajit said. “Raki will.”

He lowered himself into the cold water, feeling the push as a long wave came in and then the pull as it dragged out. The water dragged him forward with it, but then he abruptly stopped; the channel was blocked off by an iron grate beneath the wall of the Blind Surgeon.

He took a breath and dove.

The iron bars descended all the way to the stone floor of the channel, and from wall to wall, completely blocking off the passage. When the tide reached its ebb point, he got several seconds of light, and could see both the boat bobbing just on the other side, and the heavy iron lock on the bars.

“It’s locked,” he told Fix. “Can you pick locks?”

“No. You?”

Indrajit climbed out of the channel, sloshing water on the stone floor. In the few seconds of light, he could see that they were indeed in a natural cave, with rough walls and a floor of cold, hard-packed, pebbly dirt.

“Picking locks is one of the few skills not illuminated in the Blaatshi Epic,” Indrajit said.

“Seems like an oversight now,” Fix said. “Perhaps you should compose a few verses.”

“If we escape by picking the lock,” Indrajit said, “I will. But I intend to get out of here by lighting a fire.”

“Burning ourselves to death,” Fix guessed.

“We will crouch in the channel, while the water is still high.”

“If the Blind Surgeon collapses, we will still be killed.”

“I don’t think Anaximander Skink will allow the Surgeon to collapse. And also, I don’t think Oritria will allow me to be killed.”

“You romanticize a spy who probably murdered her father.”

“She told Chark she needed me,” Indrajit said. “Back on the Duke’s Mistress. And not to kill me. And indeed, today, when Chark could easily have murdered me today, he knocked me down into this hole instead.”

“It seems a thin reed,” Fix said, “but I see no other.”

Working in spurts as they had light, they broke down a crate of raki. The straw inside, and the board of the crate, they piled against a stack of other crates, containing various dried goods—beans and rice and tamarind. They shattered several bottles of raki, soaking all the crates and the tinder.

Then Indrajit struck the hilt of Vacho against a rock until he produced a spark.

Blue flame leaped up, engulfing the heap of crates.

“Truly, Vacho is the hidden lightning.” Fix lowered himself into the watery slot, arms at the lip so as to be able to quickly emerge.

“The Voice of Lightning,” Indrajit said. “Which is to say, thunder. And this is an abuse I have heaped upon Vacho. I shall have to make up for it by plying him with raki later.”

“You will drink it for him, of course.”

“I will do him this service.” Indrajit lowered himself into the channel with his partner. He laid Vacho on the cave floor, in easy reach so he could leap out of the canal, instantly armed for the fray. “For being the Voice of Lightning, he is surprisingly not possessed of a mouth.”

With the stack of crates in flames, Indrajit now saw a pile of lumber behind it, and a rolled bundle of cloth—an unused curtain, or blankets?—on wooden shelves. He considered climbing out again, to push other flammable material into the fire, but the flames leaped well enough on their own that, in moments, the cave was a burning hell.

“My head might bake,” Fix complained.

“Keep dunking yourself,” Indrajit suggested.

“I also might suffocate.”

“We knew there were risks.”

Indrajit heard stampeding feet overhead. The ladder leading out of the cave, visible now in the firelight, was a series of iron rungs bolted into stone, leading up to the underside of the trapdoor. The trapdoor opened to the sound of several voices yelling. Anaximander Skink lowered a foot to climb down the ladder, and then immediately pulled it back with a pained shriek.

“The ladder is hot!”

“I didn’t think about that one,” Indrajit said.

“You morons!” Anaximander Skink squealed.

“Come on,” Fix suggested, “let’s grab that curtain.”

They snaked between two burning columns of wood to seize the rolled-up cloth. It smoldered, so they tossed it into the channel and jumped down in with it. The water was now only waist-high and dropping at the height of the tide, but they trampled the fabric deep into the water to thoroughly soak and chill it.

Then they threw the wet curtain over the iron rungs of the ladder and climbed.

Indrajit went first, climbing with one hand and pushing ahead of him with Vacho to clear the path. He dragged himself through the trapdoor into a kitchen filled with smoke. Chark lunged for him with his falchion, but it was a half-hearted attack, and Indrajit drove him away with the sharp tip of the leaf-bladed sword, and then gave Fix a hand.

Oritria stood in the door, a short, thin blade in her hand.

Skink was yelling something so shrill and wild that Indrajit couldn’t make out the words. “Listen, you should go around,” he told the Wixit. “Unlock the canal gate, and then slosh water onto the flames.”

“I’ve already lost a fortune in wine and raki!” the Wixit wailed.

“You’re losing more fortune by the minute,” Fix pointed out.

The Wixit skittered away, leaving the Protagonists standing with Oritria and Chark. Without any spoken agreement to hold off hostilities, they all stumbled out onto the street. Fire raced up several walls. The Yeziot had been stripped of limbs and sagged like a bushel of teeth from the ceiling of the Blind Surgeon, which was aflame.

The tavern’s customers had evaporated, other than the handful who were trying to help fishermen sling water onto the burning building.

Indrajit kept a tight grip on his sword. Chark had a leather bag slung over his shoulder and stood crouched, as if prepared to spring into battle.

“If you want the leather straps,” Indrajit said, “they’re gone.”

“Our patron will be displeased,” Chark growled.

“I don’t know whether I should care about that or not,” Indrajit said. “Here’s what I’m prepared to offer. You tell us who your patron is, and in exchange, I will listen to you explain what it is you need from me.”

“I need nothing from you,” Chark said.

“Her.” Indrajit pointed at Oritria with his sword. “What she needs from me.”

Chark snarled.

Oritria turned to Fix. “I will offer you a trade. Give us the Blaatshi, and we will tell you the identity of our employer and give you your weapons back.”

Fix addressed Chark. “Give us the girl, and we’ll let you go.”

Chark laughed, a sound like metal being folded. “I have all your weapons, you impudent sack of meat.”

“I see we are at an impasse,” Indrajit said.

“I want to be your apprentice,” Oritria said.

Indrajit stared.

“Nonsense,” Chark rumbled.

“Terrible idea,” Fix said.

Indrajit raised a hand. “Wait a minute.”

“You can’t be serious,” Fix said.

“You want to learn the Epic,” Indrajit said to the poetess. She already composed like a Recital Thane. She had sung to him perfectly composed lines about his own death, as she had attacked him.

“I want to finish learning it,” she said. “My grandmother sang many songs to me from the Epic. I would learn the rest.”

Indrajit’s head swam. “Why?”

“Because it is beautiful,” she said. “Because it is the truest thing known to all the races of man.”

“Oh no,” Fix muttered.

“Was your grandmother Blaatshi?” Indrajit stumbled at the idea. “I don’t understand.”

“She loved a wandering Blaatshi singer,” Oritria said. “He had been apprenticed to become Recital Thane, but had fled the responsibility. But he carried the Epic with him. He could not escape it, and neither could she. And neither can I.”

“And neither can I,” Indrajit murmured.

“When you say loved,” Fix said. “Do you mean . . . loved?”

“I am full-blooded Fanchee,” Oritria said. “My grandmother wed my grandfather, but she cherished the secret of her youthful love, and passed it on to me.”

Indrajit heard his own heart pounding in his ears. He felt as if he were living an episode of the Epic.

“Are you aware of this runaway apprentice Recital Thane character?” Fix asked.

“No,” Indrajit said. “This is a tale of the generation it will be my privilege to add to the Epic. The goddess has brought this girl to me.”

“She tried to choke you,” Fix said. “And stab you. She imprisoned you in a basement.”

“What was the apprentice Recital Thane’s name?” Indrajit asked.

“Rupavar,” she said.

“I do not care to be gutted by the Lord Archer for this nonsense!” Chark roared.

The Lord Archer.

Indrajit shook his head. “Arda Ne’eku? That’s your employer?”

“It seems reasonable,” Fix murmured. “Plugging the leak in his own organization. I wonder if that’s one of Wopal’s hypotheses.”

“What does the Lord Archer want?” Indrajit asked.

“The four texts you stole from us,” Chark roared.

“We can’t get them,” Indrajit said.

“Unless . . . ” Fix frowned.

Was Fix contemplating assaulting Orem Thrush’s palace to take the strings back? But why would he do that, when there were authentic knotted cord-messages to be had elsewhere? “Frozen hells,” Indrajit said. “I believe I’m going to do something impious.”

“Poor Meroit,” Fix said.

“He’s faking anyway,” Indrajit pointed out. “He knows the strings contain information. He reads them.”

“What are you talking about?” Oritria asked.

Indrajit sheathed his sword. “We’ll get you back the four strings. Then you’ll be in the good graces of the Lord Archer, right? And Chark, you can go on your way, eating babies, or whatever it is you do normally. And Oritria, you can get paid, and will be freed to study the Epic with me. Right?”

Fix grumbled without words. Chark nodded hesitantly and Oritria sprang to Indrajit, kissing him on the cheek.

“Where shall we bring you the strings?” Indrajit asked.

Oritria hesitated.

“Do you know Salt Alley?” Fix asked.

“In the Dregs?” Chark growled.

“There’s a well on Salt Alley,” Fix said. “Can you meet us there at moonrise?”

“That’s about six hours.” Indrajit nodded. “It should be enough time.”

“We’ll be there,” Oritria said. Chark pulled Fix’s weapons from his bag and handed them over, and then he and Oritria disappeared into the shacks of the West Flats.

The fire in the Blind Surgeon was nearly out. “I owe Anaximander Skink two Imperials,” Indrajit said.

“After what he attempted?” Fix snorted, and they headed back up toward the Spill.

“Why Salt Alley?” Indrajit asked.

“I don’t trust them.” Fix shrugged. “I don’t want them to choose the location, and Salt Alley is . . . well, it’s a place I know well. From my youth. We’ll get there early and we’ll watch.”

Indrajit had difficulty focusing on his steps. Was he, after all and in spite of his efforts, about to find the apprentice Recital Thane he had come to Kish seeking? But their relationship had had such an inauspicious beginning—she had stolen documents from her father, and Indrajit had been hired to recover them.

And she had attacked him, at one point.

They hiked up into the Spill and quickly to the ashrama of Salish-Bozar. A row of Trivials in white tunics filled the street in front of the rectangular building, stopping passersby to talk.

A woman with chalky white skin and four stubby horns on her forehead gripped Indrajit gently by the wrist. “Have you ever felt exploited?” she asked, her voice gravelly and seductive.

“Sometimes.” Indrajit shrugged. “Mostly, I feel ignored.”

The chalk-colored woman opened her mouth to say more, but Indrajit and Fix pushed on, into the ashrama. They found Meroit in his cell underground, sitting at a small easel and painting a large building. He swiveled his yellow, rootlike head to look at them as they approached.

“Look.” He pointed at the painting.

“The Palace of Shadow and Joy.” Indrajit shut the door behind himself.

“You know it?” the Trivial asked.

“The opera house,” Fix said. “We’ve been there.”

“Think of all the drama that happens inside.” Meroit sighed.

“Quite boring, really,” Fix said.

“Listen, Meroit,” Indrajit said. “We’re going to take four of your strings.”

“What?” Meroit’s skin was normally the color of a rotting potato, but it grew white. “No. No, you said you were going to give me four more. The four you had, you were going to give them to me.”

“We’re going to do this one way or the other,” Indrajit said. “Are you going to force me to brutally rip away your disguise?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Brutal it is,” Fix said.

Indrajit pointed at the painting. “This painting right here. You’re recording in it the data that you read on the string we brought in here, the one we let you touch. The one you read.”

Meroit’s mouth fell open.

“The information on the strings is not useless, and you know it. It contains data about the kelp farms of the Lord Archer, smuggled out by Fanchee double agents. And you know that, too.”

“You don’t have to tell anyone,” Meroit said.

“The god would know,” Fix said.

“But the Selfless wouldn’t! And it would be all the same, I could finally become one of the Selfless! You know what a worthy goal that is, Fix. Remember when you were one of us, a Trivial like me!”

“You would cheat the god.” Fix stared, as if by vision alone he could drill holes into Meroit’s forehead.

“I don’t know what the information is!” Meroit squeaked. “Yes, I know it comes from the kelp farms, but I don’t know what it says! Yield, plantings, territory covered, price, strains, pests, labor—I have no idea! The patterns are abstract to me, they might as well be useless information!” Sweat poured down the conical head of the little Trivial.

“How do you get paid, Meroit?” Indrajit asked.

Meroit shut up again.

“Is coin slipped to you by the Hierophant Selfless?” Fix’s voice was bitter. “Or are your paintings purchased for surprisingly large sums of money by strangers, who then transmit the information onward!”

“I sell the paintings!” Meroit squeaked. “And half of the proceeds go to the ashrama!”

“And the other half on wine, women, and song?” Indrajit guessed.

“Caveat number one.” Fix’s voice was flat and hard. “‘No information that can be sold for money is useless.’”

Indrajit drew his sword. Meroit scooted away from his easel, pressing his back against the far wall.

“You wouldn’t take the easy way,” Indrajit said. “The easy way would have been that you pretended to be innocent but let us take four of your strings. Now you have to choose between the hard way, and the really hard way. I’ve drawn my sword in case you choose the really hard way.”

Meroit plucked four strings from his collection and handed them over. Fix took them and tucked them into his kilt pocket.

“Will you return them?” the Trivial asked.

“Probably not,” Indrajit said.

“Will you tell anyone?” Meroit pressed.

“As of now, I think it’s in all our interests that this whole episode stays quiet.” The hardness in Fix’s voice and stance had softened. “If you recorded the knot sequence, or can reconstruct it, you may be able to talk the Selfless Bonk into letting you include these in your ten thousand useless pieces of information.”

Meroit said nothing, and his lower lip trembled.

Indrajit and Fix left.

“I don’t feel very good about that,” Indrajit said. “If you’re wondering.”

“I don’t feel so bad,” Fix said. “If you’re going to go around professing a god, eating at that god’s table, sleeping in his ashrama, and seeking the company and praise of his devotees, you should live your life accordingly. You should at least try.”

“You’d have been a good priest, Fix. Ironically.” They emerged into a street full of cold rain, and Indrajit took a deep breath. “Well, I did try to do it the easy way.”

They crossed the Crooked Mile and took the street heading into the Dregs. Indrajit didn’t recognize the jobbers on guard at the gate, but he thought they nodded at him with deference.

The Dregs was smaller than the Spill by quite a bit, but it had far more alleys. Every block seemed to have a single stone or brick building at its heart, five hovels of wood or clay nailed to its sides, and seven alleyways cutting through and around it on all sides. Salt Alley turned out to be a winding path that ran along the wall of a large brothel, between a gambling den and an ironmonger, past a small square surrounded on three sides by cramped temples to foreign gods, and then into the courtyard of a hostler’s.

The well was in the plaza surrounded by temples.

“Who are these gods?” Indrajit asked.

“The one on the left is Aileric. Technically, he’s a saint, not a god, so that means he isn’t worshipped, he’s revered. Or maybe contemplated.”

“Karthing?”

“Ildarian. That’s him, distributing food to the poor in that painting. You can tell he’s a saint by the horns on his head.”

“Ah, I assumed that was one of the races of man I didn’t recognize. I know the Ildarians, they’re practically neighbors.”

“The one in the middle is Tlacepetl,” Fix said.

“Xiba’albi,” Indrajit said.

“Is he in the Epic?”

“He’s a sorcerer who sends dead men marching over the mountains against his enemies.”

“And, in fact, he is the Guide. Here in the Dregs, he leads the misfortunate through the mazes of their lives, but he also blazes the trail for the dead through the multiple underworlds. And sometimes, he brings them back.”

“The one on the right is gruesome. Her face is a skull and her hair is snakes.”

“Sharazat the Kind.”

“What does she do?”

“She kills you.”

“How is that kind?”

“She kills you when your life can never get better, at the moment from which your life takes a permanent turn for the worse. Her priestesses visit the sick to dispense the blessings of the goddess, but the goddess herself distributes death much more widely.”

“The gods of mankind are many and strange,” Indrajit said.

“Men are many and strange,” Fix answered. “Where shall we hide?”

“The hostler’s,” Indrajit said. “I don’t want to get in Aileric’s way, and the other two frighten me. Let’s see if we can get up on that wall.”

They passed through the hostler’s gate, and pulled up short at the sight of a powder priest of Thûl, pointing his musket at Indrajit’s face. Except that, looking at the way the lose robes and scarves hung over the priest’s frame, Indrajit was pretty certain she was a woman.

And she wore a tunic marking her as one of Gannon’s Handlers.

As did the three Yuchaks with scimitars and shields who crowded in on Indrajit’s and Fix’s sides.

“Don’t move,” the Thûlian said, “and I won’t shoot.”

“I thought we were friends,” Fix said. “Or basically even.”

“Or at least at peace,” Indrajit suggested.

One of the Yuchaks raised a horn and blew it; it was a wild sound, a noise that would have been at home on the steppes, but rang false and alien within the walls of the decadent old city.

Indrajit looked uneasily over his shoulder and saw the doors of all three temples open. Gannon’s Handlers slowly came out: the Zalaptings; the Luzzazza with only three arms; the Sword Brother; others he didn’t know.

Not the Grokonk, because Indrajit and Fix had killed them.

And there was Tall Gannon himself, the Ildarian-looking man who was the public face of the jobber company’s true leader, a one-cubit-tall green midget.

“We’re friends, Fix,” Gannon said. “You’re going to want to come into this stable now, and meet with some other friends.”

“Most of my friends don’t point muskets and swords at me,” Fix said.

“You’re right, it’s time to end the misunderstandings.” Gannon waved a hand and the powder priest lowered her weapon. The Handlers moving across the square blocked Indrajit and Fix from retreat, forcing them to follow Gannon into a stable to the right.

The stable had been emptied of horses and also mucked out, so that it stank considerably less than stables usually did. Oritria waited there, fists clenched and eyes narrowed. She stood beside Chark, who scratched at the earth floor of the stable with the talons of his feet and gnashed his teeth from time to time. There was a third person with them, too.

“My Lord Archer,” Indrajit said.

Arda Ne’eku did not look like an archer. He was imposing, a tall, broadly built, violet-skinned man with a heavy jaw and a stubby nose. A bit like some artist had tried to render a Zalapting and had gotten every descriptor other than the color backward. He wore a wooden breastplate and a kilt of studded leather, both stained yellow.

“The Protagonists,” the Lord Archer said. “Forgive me for forgetting your names.”

“I’m Indrajit,” Indrajit said, and Ne’eku raised a hand to stop him.

“I don’t care,” the Lord Archer said. “Listen, this whole thing has gone far enough, and I have called this meeting to put an end to it.”

“I thought we arranged this meeting,” Fix protested.

“I know you did.” Ne’eku grinned, all his teeth visible past thick, rubbery lips. “Let me tell you a story. I learned from a loyal Fanchee servant, who was willing to betray his own family, that information about my sea-farming enterprises was being recorded and transmitted to parties unknown. Certain purchases in the Paper Sook suggested to me that the buyer of the information might be the Lord Chamberlain, my colleague and rival. I decided to test the hypothesis.”

“This again,” Indrajit said.

“I was fortunate enough to know that among the Fanchee of my plantations was a lovelorn, idealistic, somewhat unhinged young poetess named Oritria, enamored of the idea of foreign travel, and song, and all the usual romantic nonsense. I knew of her infatuation with the Blaatshi Epic in particular. I also knew that Orem Thrush, the Lord Chamberlain, had a Blaatshi poet on his payroll, working in fact for his spymaster, head of the Lord Chamberlain’s Ears. From there it was all obvious and easy.”

“You told her to steal those strands,” Fix said, “and said it would bring the Recital Thane here running.”

“Which would prove my hypothesis that Orem Thrush was behind the espionage.” Arda Ne’eku smiled.

“Why use the girl?” Indrajit asked. “Why not use . . . I don’t know, Mote Gannon?”

“I didn’t want to disturb the Fanchee,” Ne’eku said. “I’d rather have them think there’s a mad poetess running around, causing havoc, than know the truth. Those who are spying should continue to spy. Those who are loyal should stay blissfully unaware that they are being spied on—unless I choose to inform them.”

“And if someone other than us showed up to investigate the issue?” Indrajit asked.

The Lord Archer sighed. “Well, you see, it was always going to end the same way for Oritria, no matter how right or wrong my hypothesis turned out to be.”

“Don’t kill her,” Indrajit said.

Oritria jerked, as if making a break toward the door, and Chark grabbed her with all four arms.

Ne’eku chuckled. “No, nothing like that. But she can’t go home. That would rather undermine the point. Fortunately, she doesn’t want to go back to the plantation.”

“I hate farming,” Oritria said. “I want the heroic life.”

“Farming’s not so bad,” Indrajit said. “It’s honest work.”

“I’ll send her to join the household of a Bonean noble family that is friendly to me,” Ne’eku said. “Chark will accompany her. She’ll study poetry, and be treated well. Like a curiosity and perhaps like a pet, but well.”

“But she won’t study the Blaatshi Epic,” Indrajit pointed out. “She was going to be my apprentice.”

“Ah, yes. Well, that was never going to work out, either.” Ne’eku smiled. “She’s a little mad, you see. Did you know that she seduced the Yeziot Squite? Squite was a plantation worker; I have quite a few Yeziot who work for me. Their ability to breathe underwater is a real boon, not to mention their strong resemblance to the kelp itself. Good for hiding, they make excellent guards on a kelp plantation. I asked her to work with Chark—he’s no jobber, he’s on my permanent staff. She didn’t quite trust him, so she seduced Squite.”

“She does seem . . . very intense,” Fix pointed out. “She tried to kill you. Her apprenticeship might have looked a lot like an imprisonment for you.”

Indrajit shook his head. “But then I’m back where I started.”

Ne’eku sighed. “Well, there was always only going to be one outcome for you, too.”

Indrajit grabbed Vacho’s hilt. “We’ve beaten the Handlers before.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Fix preparing to draw ax and falchion.

“We’ve never fought in a fair fight before,” Tall Gannon growled. “Are you ready to try your luck now, fish-head?”

“No, no, no,” the Lord Archer said. “Nothing like that. You Protagonists go home now.”

“But . . . we caught you,” Indrajit said.

“And I caught you,” Ne’eku pointed out. “So you will tell Grit Wopal what you learned, and we will continue as before. And now Orem knows that I know he’s spying, so maybe he’ll be a little more circumspect. And I’ll be a little more careful when I have truly sensitive information, so that Orem doesn’t get it. And I’ll be aware that he’s trading on knowledge about my farming. And maybe, at some point in the future, when Orem catches one of my agents with unauthorized fingers in one of the Lord Chamberlain’s pastries, he’ll remember this day, and the peace between us will continue.”

“Frozen hells,” Indrajit said. “The Yeziot died. He died so that you could confirm what you were pretty sure you already knew.”

“Don’t forget,” Fix threw in, “Grit Wopal also wanted to confirm what he thought he already knew.”

“We broke a . . . a religious votary,” Indrajit said. “He wasn’t a very good one, but he was trying, in his way. We took away all his dignity. Our chambers were turned upside down. A ship was burned to the waterline. A tavern . . . the Blind Surgeon mostly burned up, too, with a whole lot of raki and wine in its basement. Oritria’s getting exiled. All that for . . . what? Nothing? Just to keep the city’s great families comfortable in their usual corrupt competition? Just to maintain the status quo? The rich get richer, and the poor get crushed?”

Arda Ne’eku nodded as he strode toward the stable’s exit. “Welcome to Kish.”

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