Welcome to Kish
[ Part Two: The Caveats of Salish-Bozar ]
The office door was closed, and no one answered when Indrajit knocked.
It was early morning, the sky a gray and sunless slate reflecting the shrill accusations of the wheeling gulls. The Duke’s Mistress smoldered still, alongside the wharf where it lay at anchor. Indrajit and Fix had set fire to the ship the day before; really, Fix had done it, throwing an oil lamp onto a hulking tentacled man named Squite. Indrajit and Fix had recovered four punched and knotted leather straps, each the length of a tall man’s height, from Squite and his companion, the poetess Oritria, at the behest of Oritria’s father, a merchant named Forfa in the Serpent Sea trade. Indrajit and Fix had gotten quite battered in the encounter, and Squite had lost a number of limbs and also eyestalks. They had last seen Oritria facing off with a four-armed, scaly man named Chark, and then Indrajit and Fix had returned to their inn-room headquarters to lick their wounds and lie low for the night. Now it was morning, and they’d come to Forfa’s office to return the straps.
Only no one answered, and the door was locked.
Indrajit scanned the docks, squinting at each jar-lugging stevedore and loitering seaman to make sure he didn’t see the face-tentacle beard that Oritria and Forfa both had.
“We’ve already been paid,” he said. “It’s hard to care too much.”
“There is the ethical question,” Fix said. “We need to return the texts to him.” Forfa had claimed that the punched and knotted straps were writing, of all things.
Indrajit grunted. “Remarkable. I’ve just discovered an actual use for writing. We could leave him a note saying we have the straps, and to come back to our place to get them.”
“Oritria’s still out there,” Fix pointed out. “And we know she can read.”
Oritria had written her poetry on a wax tablet. “She might read the note and come after us, you’re saying.” Indrajit rubbed his chin. She had intriguingly known a number of Blaatshi epic epithets. She had even chanted lines to Indrajit about his own death, like a warrior in the Blaatshi Epic. It had been both disconcerting and fascinating. “I’m not so frightened of her.”
“She might bring that pile of bladed rope with her,” Fix said. “Squite.”
Squite was a Yeziot, a race that turned out to resemble giant piles of living green rope, with blades on the end of each strand and eyestalks in the middle of the heap. Until Fix had lit the ship on fire, it had looked as if Squite might singlehandedly kill Fix and Indrajit both, putting an end to their young jobber company, the Protagonists.
“Good point.” Indrajit examined the office building. It was a single-story cube made of mud bricks plastered white, with a tarred roof. It had shuttered windows on all sides, and the shutters were closed. “Then we’ll just have to break in.”
“And leave the strands here for Forfa?” Fix asked. “Does that really absolve us of our duty?”
“In light of the possibility that the Yeziot might this very minute be crouched on that rooftop, ready to pounce on us?” Indrajit drew his leaf-bladed sword, Vacho, and examined the shutters. “It resolves the ethical question for me.”
He eased Vacho’s blade between the shutters. The steel was fine and thin; this wasn’t great for the blade, but it needed sharpening anyway. He slid the weapon up until he found the latch, and pushed it open.
He looked up and down the wharf; no one was watching them.
“Shall we just toss them in the window?” he asked his partner.
Fix sighed. “Let’s at least go inside. I’ll leave him a note.”
“Wait by the door,” Indrajit told him. “I’ll let you in.”
He hoisted himself up onto the windowsill and into Forfa’s office. He saw the same sagging shelves as the day before, the same ledgers, the same counter.
But today, Forfa himself lay dead on the floor. His head was almost entirely severed, the white bone of his spinal column showing through the wound. He lay in a dried puddle of his own blood, his face tentacles stained brown.
“Frozen hells.” Indrajit pulled the shutters nearly closed. “No more Serpent Sea trade for you.” He opened the door and pulled Fix inside, shutting and barring it again after.
“Well, no wonder he didn’t answer,” Fix murmured.
Indrajit sheathed his sword and pulled the knotted leather from the pocket of his kilt. “We were paid in advance. We can leave this and walk.”
“Who killed him?” Fix asked.
“Does it matter?” Indrajit tossed the straps onto the counter. “People get killed in Kish every day. Welcome to Kish, watch your back! Robbers killed him. Blackmailers. Muggers. A former business partner, an old lover, someone he cheated in a card game. It’s not entirely crazy to think that maybe his daughter killed him.”
“Or her tentacled lover.”
“We have no reason to think they were lovers.” Indrajit shuddered. “But yes, maybe the Yeziot did it.”
“Maybe he was killed for the texts.” Fix folded his arms across his chest and raised his eyebrows.
“That should warn us to stay away from the written word in the future,” Indrajit suggested. “Even when the writing in question is a knotted thong. And if someone is willing to kill for whatever is written on those straps, I say let them have them. I don’t think any written words are worth a man’s life. Not Forfa’s life, and certainly, to be clear, not mine.”
“You raise an interesting point,” Fix said.
“Yes,” Indrajit said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
“Whoever killed Forfa may be looking for the texts and he may think we have them.”
“We’ll leave the thongs here. The killer can have them.”
“The killer has already been here.” Fix tapped Forfa’s shoulder with the toe of his sandal. “He, or she, didn’t find the strings. He’s not coming back.”
“You’re saying we have to watch our backs.” Indrajit shrugged. “I knew that already. What do you think I am, new in town?”
“I’m saying that we should investigate the texts,” Fix said. “Knowing what they are will help us understand why someone would want them, who that person might be, and will help us defend ourselves.”
“Before I met you,” Indrajit said, “I never had to think about books. Do you know that? I didn’t read them, didn’t see them, wasn’t troubled at all.”
“Your life is so much richer now.”
“I miss the days of my poverty.”
“Besides,” Fix said. “A murder on the wharf? The Lord Stargazer has the contract to keep the peace down here. Even if you and I aren’t ethically obligated to investigate the murder, we can do Bolo Bit Sodani a favor, and I’d like him to owe us one for a change.”
“The translucent bastard.” Indrajit grunted, and then gathered the leather strands back into his kilt pocket. Also, it occurred to him, Forfa had said that Grit Wopal had recommended hiring them. That meant that Wopal was Forfa’s friend, and Wopal was head of the Lord Chamberlain’s Ears. In that capacity, he sometimes gave Indrajit and Fix sensitive work for the Lord Chamberlain. It couldn’t hurt to find out why Wopal’s friend had been killed. “Okay. But why do I have the feeling that I’m going to regret this?”
“Well,” Fix said slowly, “maybe it’s because we’re going to have to go do research.”
“The Hall of Guesses?” Indrajit sighed.
“I don’t think they’ll let us in,” Fix said. “But I have a hunch they wouldn’t be able to tell us anything, anyway, and there’s somewhere else I want to try first.”
<scenebreak>
“This is the ashrama of Salish-Bozar the White?” Indrajit gazed on the edifice in question. It was an unadorned, blocky building of gray stone with an extra-wide entrance. He might have taken it for a warehouse, if Fix had not identified it for him.
Also, it was located in the Spill. The city’s main temples were in the Crown, the district of palaces and government buildings and large institutions. The Spill was mostly occupied by merchants’ shops and the related buildings: inns, taverns, apartments, warehouses, stables, factories, and so on. And, apparently, the ashrama of Salish-Bozar the White.
The two Protagonists stood in a light drizzle across the street from the ashrama, in front of a pungent shop selling tea and spices.
“Why doesn’t your god have a proper temple?” Indrajit asked. “What’s an ashrama?”
“He’s not my god,” Fix said. “The Selfless of the ashrama raised me.”
“Very selfless of them.” Indrajit nodded.
“And Salish-Bozar is worshipped in the dedication of the thoughts of his acolytes. The ashrama is where the worshippers live, meet, and work.”
“The Useless and the Miniscules.”
“The Selfless and the Trivals.”
“Right. And you’re thinking that some of these worshippers of Salish-Bozar may have dedicated their thoughts to these knotted straps, and may be able to tell us something about them.”
“Exactly.”
“But doesn’t that force us into another ethical question?” Indrajit asked.
Fix frowned.
“If some Trivial’s knowledge of this knotted-rope matter helps us, say, solve a murder,” Indrajit said, “or save our own lives, then it’s not useless information. And we’ll have revealed that the Trivial’s efforts have been in vain. We strip away the sacral value of his knowledge.”
Fix nodded. “We’ll have to talk about the matter indirectly. Maybe it’s best if I do most of the talking.”
“As in the Paper Sook.” Indrajit yawned. “Interest rites and funding sinks and so on.”
“Interest rates and sinking funds. Never mind, follow my lead.”
Fix headed to the ashrama’s gate and Indrajit came one step behind him. In the gate, sheltered from the steady falling mist, stood two women in dirty white robes. One was a long-snouted, lavender-skinned Zalapting and the other was a coppery Kishi like Fix, with short black hair. They made a gesture of greeting by splitting their fingers left and right, and Fix repeated it back to them. Indrajit tried, couldn’t get his fingers to move in quite the right way, and finally just bowed.
“We’ve brought a gift for the White,” Fix said. “A mystery, found in the world.”
The women’s faces lit up.
“The world, and all its mysteries,” they said together.
“May we see the Selfless Bonk?” Fix asked.
“Come this way.” The Zalapting opened a door within the gate and led them; her Kishi companion stayed on door duty.
“What’s a Bonk?” Indrajit whispered as he walked down a hallway behind Fix. At first, he took it for a narrow hall, but then he realized that a wide hallway had been subdivided by running tall, freestanding shelves down its middle as well as by standing shelves against both walls. The shelves stood pregnant with scrolls and codices.
“Bonk is a person’s name,” Fix whispered back. “The Selfless Bonk is the head of this ashrama.”
Indrajit nodded.
The Zalapting Trivial left them in a shaft-like room that was narrow in two dimensions but rose up three stories to the height of the building. The room’s ceiling was a skylight; water leaked in around the edges of that light and trickled down the plaster of the walls. A thin man with skin so pale that Indrajit thought he could see the man’s organs sat cross-legged on a small mat on the brick floor. He had large, shell-like ears, no hair, and skinny shanks wrapped up in puffy pantaloons.
“Fix, my son!” he cried.
“Are you kin to the Lord Stargazer?” Indrajit blurted out. He’d met the Lord Stargazer once, and the man had been similarly translucent. “Or the same race of man, anyway?”
The Selfless Bonk grinned, revealing a complete absence of teeth. “I’m kin. Wonderfully, that knowledge is useless to you, as I have absolutely no influence over my cousin, Bolo Bit Sodani.”
“Why is that wonderful?” Indrajit asked.
“Because today you have learned at least one useless piece of information,” the Selfless said. “That is one step on the road to a mind of complete and restful contemplation, in tune with the glory of Salish-Bozar.”
“Be careful,” Fix warned Indrajit. He greeted the Selfless by kneeling and bowing to the floor, making the split-fingers gesture as he did so.
Indrajit tried to imitate the bow, at least.
“I have a theory,” Indrajit said as he climbed to his feet. “Though this may be useless information.”
“A theory isn’t actually information,” Fix said. “It’s an attempt to explain information.”
“Tell us your theory,” the Selfless said.
“You’re not a religion about information at all,” Indrajit said.
The other two men both looked at him as if he’d said something shocking. Maybe even rude.
“Salish-Bozar is really a god of beauty,” Indrajit said.
Fix scowled.
“What do you mean?” Bonk asked.
“Information that is useless is information that no one understands,” Indrajit said. “Which means that it’s not really information at all. Or it may as well not be information. It’s just patterns, or images, or parallels. What you like is weird patterns, strange things that should have an explanation, but don’t. Or the explanation is unknown. Pretty colors, shining lights, weird syllables, forgotten tongues—you like the strange beauty of the world.”
Bonk stood with the spryness of a child and took Indrajit by the elbow. “Have you considered a life in the ashrama?”
“We’ve brought a gift,” Fix said, shooting Indrajit a sour look. “We asked to see you first so as to know which of the Selfless or the Trivials we should share it with.”
The Selfless Bonk seated himself again, smiling benignly. “Tell me the mystery you have seen.”
Fix gestured to Indrajit, who brought the knotted lengths out from his pocket.
Bonk’s face lit up. “Ah,” he said. “I have seen such strands before.”
Fix nodded, a satisfied look on his face. “Are they studied by one of the Selfless?”
“Yes. If you leave them with me, I will pass them on.”
“We can’t leave them, unfortunately,” Fix said.
Bonk’s smile collapsed. “You have a use for them?”
Fix hesitated.
“No one has a use for them,” Indrajit said, “but we promised to give them to someone. Only we thought we should show them to you first. Perhaps you could make a replica, or draw a picture. Aren’t they beautiful?”
The Selfless Bonk sighed and shook himself, like a dog sloughing off worry. “Do you remember Meroit, Fix?”
Fix nodded. “I remember the Trivial Meroit well. Does he still sell his paintings in the market? He worked hard on the geometric patterns of damage caused to stone buildings by rubble. The falling directions of ruined walls, the cuts made by wind as opposed to the cuts made by water.”
“Until the risk-merchants of the Paper Sook learned of his work.” The Selfless shook his head, eyes drooping heavily. “They delighted in the knowledge, which they said would allow them to write more precise risk-selling contracts. They offered Meroit large sums of money and employment in the Paper Sook.”
“He didn’t take it?” Fix asked.
“He tried to take his own life instead. Years of study wasted, because it turned out that the subject of his study had practical value. We had to watch him closely for months, to stop him from simply walking into the sea.”
“Perhaps he should have been an artist,” Fix murmured, “and left the mystery of the world to others.”
“So the study wasn’t wasted,” Indrajit said, “it just wasn’t the right kind of beautiful for Salish-Bozar.”
Bonk bobbled his head, a gesture that circled around and became a nod. “But then, on one occasion when we thought we had to rescue him from the waves, we found him staring in great fascination at the sea-kelp.”
“Ah.” Indrajit nodded, as if remembering the beauty of kelp.
“Meroit undertook then to learn all he could about the kelp,” Bonk said. “Its thickness at different depths, its length at different times of the year, the changes in color and texture the plant undergoes at different proximities to the habitations of man. And, in particular, man’s sewers.”
Indrajit and Fix nodded. Fix seemed genuinely interested, but Indrajit had long since degenerated into a state of complete pretense.
“To the astonishment of the entire ashrama,” the Selfless continued, “the Lord Archer turns out to have large kelp farms. They’re on the southern coasts, managed by Fanchee sea-farmers, and none of us was aware of them.”
“You’re focused on useless information,” Indrajit said, “but kelp turns out to be useful. No wonder you were astonished.”
“It feeds many people.” The Selfless shrugged. “Meroit had memorized ten thousand pieces of information and was preparing to defend his knowledge and seek to ascend to Selflessness when one of the Lord Archer’s Fanchee came and offered him a job managing kelp plantations.”
“How did Meroit take that?” Indrajit asked.
“He ran to the Crown and climbed the Spike. The only thing that stopped him from throwing himself off and plummeting to his death was that a group of dried-goods merchants up there, preparing to consecrate their annual accounts to Spilkar, saw him.”
“They saved him?” Fix asked.
“They saw him running up and assumed he was a criminal, come to rob them.” Bonk frowned. “Their bodyguards subdued him.”
“Lucky Meroit,” Indrajit said.
The other men nodded.
“The good news for me,” Indrajit added, “is that I have absorbed several hundred useless facts about the life of Meroit this morning. I’m well on my way to becoming a Selfless!”
Bonk frowned and Fix shook his head.
“Caveat number seven,” the Selfless said. “‘The deeds of no man’s life can ever be considered useless.’”
“Wow,” Indrajit said, “you guys are really strict.”
Fix glared at him.
“Sorry,” Indrajit said, “bad joke. Please continue. I think we had yet to hear about how Meroit became involved in the study of knotted thongs.”
“I don’t know how that happened,” the Selfless said. “You can ask Meroit himself, if you like. But after the incident on the Spike, he took to his pallet for a month. When he arose, he showed me the first of his knotted strands, to be weighted.”
“Weighted?” Indrajit asked.
“Caveat number three,” the Selfless said. “‘All useless facts shall be accounted according to the weight assigned to them by the Hierophant Selfless.’”
“Bonk is not merely Selfless,” Fix said. “He is the Hierophant Selfless, the senior priest of the ashrama.”
Bonk shrugged modestly.
“I understand.” Indrajit stretched out one of the strands with his fingers. “And someone has to decide how many facts can be extracted from a strand such as this.”
“Length,” Fix said. “Weight. Elasticity, strength. Number and size and position of knots and piercings. Color, texture, taste.”
“Sure,” Indrajit agreed. “So Meroit wouldn’t have to commit ten thousand of these things to memory. But how many? A thousand?”
The Selfless Bonk flared his nostrils and arched his eyebrows. “That number is within the sole purview of the Hierophant Selfless to decide.”
“I don’t want to argue,” Indrajit said. “Just trying to understand. The beauty of the world interests me. And the beauty of the followers of Salish-Bozar the White, too.”
“Caveat number four,” Bonk said. “‘No fact about the organization of the followers of Salish-Bozar shall ever be deemed useless.’”
“Makes sense.” Indrajit nodded. “That and the deeds one prevent an aspirant from creating ten thousand useless facts.”
“Exactly how many of these strands Meroit shall have to know will depend on the strands themselves,” Bonk said. “But it will be nearer to one hundred than one thousand.”
Indrajit nodded. “Wonderful.”
Bonk chuckled. “The mystery of the world is indeed wonderful. Fix, do you remember where Meroit sleeps? I believe he is there now, reflecting on the mystery.”
They took their leave of the Selfless. They passed through a long chamber containing cubbies full of stones, sorted by color and size, along the walls. At a staircase at the end, Indrajit expected to climb, but instead they descended.
Beneath the ashrama spread a maze, winding and radial like the roots of a tree. Indrajit followed Fix out along a narrow, low-ceilinged root that ended in a circular room bristling with doors.
“What is a Fanchee sea-farmer?” Indrajit asked.
“I assume Fanchee is a race of man,” Fix said. “Do you not know any epithets for them?”
Indrajit did not. “We’re not under the building anymore,” he observed.
Fix shrugged and knocked on a door. Without waiting, he opened it.
Inside, a lone man sat on a straw pallet. He had a bulbous, rootlike head, pointed and covered with thick bristles of hair and impaled by a bulbous, rootlike nose. His skin was a weedy yellow and what seemed to be his ears were two little flowerlike buds attached beneath his jaw. The buds curled forward and swiveled slowly to face the direction of any sound as he listened. No eyes were visible in his face.
A lattice of wood crossed the room just below the ceiling. From it hung dozens of knotted and punched leather strands. The four strings in Indrajit’s pocket would have fit instantly and perfectly among them. The walls were hung with paintings of complex buildings. They looked like temples, with multiple stories, windows, gables, and columns, each scene dotted with dozens of men and women in togas of various colors.
“Are we not disturbing meditation?” Indrajit murmured.
“Meroit!” Fix bellowed.
Two black beads rose to visibility from beneath the surface of Meroit’s skin. “Fix? Have you returned?” The voice was dull and blurred, the mouth a tiny crescent in danger of being filled entirely, should the nose ever slip from its position.
“Not in the way you mean.” Fix made the Salish-Bozar greeting gesture and Meroit echoed it instantly. “We wanted to come show you something. A gift for the White.”
Meroit held very still. “What?” His voice was tiny.
Fix gestured at the strands hanging overhead. “We came across four of these, and we’re trying to understand them. I thought that the ashrama might be the right place to come, and I was right.”
“Well you know, I . . . I don’t understand them,” Meroit said.
“If you understood them,” Indrajit said, “they wouldn’t do you any good. Wait . . . is there a caveat that says helping one to achieve the status of Selfless doesn’t count as being useful?”
“There is,” Fix said.
“That’s the second caveat,” Meroit added.
“See?” Indrajit grinned. “I’m getting this.”
“Next thing you know, you’ll be reading,” Fix said.
“Let’s not go crazy.” Indrajit cleared his throat and addressed Meroit. “But you’ve got quite a collection there. Forty? Fifty?”
“Something like that,” Meroit agreed.
“The Hierophant Selfless suggested you might be up for consideration when you get to a hundred or so,” Indrajit said.
Meroit nodded. “May I see yours?”
Indrajit fished a strand from his pocket and handed it over. Fix shot him a quizzical look, and Indrajit winked.
Meroit took the strap in hand and ran it through his fingers slowly. He started at one end, where there was a triple knot, and caressed the entire length from that end to the other. His lips moved slightly as he touched each knot and divot. Once or twice, he backtracked to run his fingers over a particular section a second time.
“Where did you find this?” he asked when he had finished.
“We came across it in a brothel,” Fix said quickly. “So many corpses from a fight that had just happened, we couldn’t even tell who had dropped it.”
“How about you?” Indrajit asked. “You have fifty of these. The Trivials of Salish-Bozar can’t spend that much time with harlots.”
Meroit turned a slightly darker shade, and his eyes sank into his puffy flesh almost to the point of disappearing. “I found the first one. I . . . don’t remember where. On the beach. And then I put out the word that I would pay money if people found more of them. They just come to me.”
“You don’t worry that putting the word out causes people to just make these for you?” Indrajit asked. “There’s got to be a caveat there, somewhere.”
“I think I can tell the real ones,” Meroit said.
“What do you mean, real ones?” Indrajit asked. “Real strands of knotted leather? I can make you a thousand real leather strips, just give me a week.”
“I mean strands that weren’t just faked for me. That would have existed without me.” Meroit shook his head. “You know what I mean.”
“One thing that has to really worry you,” Indrajit said, “is that you can’t be sure there will be enough of these for you to get to your ten thousand useless facts.”
Meroit nodded. “The path of the White is hedged about by peril.”
“So you can’t tell us where these come from,” Fix said, “or even where they’re usually found, can you?”
Meroit chuckled. “Just the useless knowledge here, I’m afraid.”
Indrajit noticed the question that Fix was scrupulously avoiding: You can’t read these strings, can you? He kept his own mouth shut, too.
“You said you had four,” Meroit reminded them.
“The others are back at our room,” Indrajit said. “We just brought the one.”
“Room?” Meroit asked. “I mean, ah, are you sleeping at the ashrama?”
“We’re in an inn,” Fix said casually. “Doesn’t have a name, actually, but it’s next to a big camel merchant off the Crooked Mile.”
Meroit handed the string back to Indrajit. “I see, I see.”
“Don’t you want to write something down?” Indrajit asked. “Paint a picture of the string, count out its knots or something?”
“Ah, yes.” Meroit rummaged around in the corner behind his pallet and came up with a roll of paper, inkpot, and pen. He stretched the string out across the floor and laboriously scratched a series of marks on the paper, presumably recording all the information the Selfless Bonk had said he would have to know.
Indrajit stood humming an old tune and raising his eyebrows at Fix.
When Meroit had finished, he handed the strap back to Indrajit. “When can I, ah, see the others?”
Indrajit and Fix shrugged at each other. “Next week?” Fix suggested.
Meroit’s hand shook. “No sooner? What if I came to your room to look at them?”
“No rush, right?” Indrajit said. “You’re still dozens of strings short of your hundred. Besides, we’re not actually going back now. We have to be elsewhere.”
“Deeds of derring-do for the Lord Chamberlain,” Fix said. “Makes me miss the days of contemplation in the ashrama.”
“You never missed us.” Meroit laughed. “Did you marry that lady of yours, Fix?”
Fix shook his head slowly. “I did miss the ashrama, Meroit. Still do. And I’m afraid the lady went another way.”
* * *
“Meroit’s not telling us the truth,” Indrajit said as they left the ashrama. “At least not the whole truth. Did you see the way he trembled?”
“He’s not telling us any of the truth,” Fix said. “He can read that string. He read it right in front of us.”
“That’s what reading is supposed to look like?” Indrajit asked. “Moving your mouth like that?”
“He’s not a very good reader,” Fix said.
“We should tell on him,” Indrajit said. “We tell Selfless Bonk he’s reading messages, and that guys never makes Selfless. They probably throw him right out of the ashrama. How many tries do you get before they kick you out?”
“He started at the end with three knots,” Fix said. “Do all four have an end with three knots?”
Indrajit pulled the string out and looked. “Yes.”
“He’s reading messages,” Fix said. “They’re secret. And he’s hiding them in plain sight, by pretending he’s studying some kind of mysterious phenomenon. Maybe he does pay people to bring him strings they find, and those who want to send him a message just leave the strings lying about.”
“This sounds like thief- and assassin-craft,” Indrajit said. As he said it, he turned his head slightly to one side. His eyes, set far apart in his head, gave him good peripheral vision. As they ascended the hill above the ashrama, toward the long street called the Crooked Mile, he saw a flash of red and yellow scales behind them.
Just a flash, and then whatever it was dipped out of sight.
“I would say spies,” Fix suggested. “This sounds like a system for transmitting stolen information to foreign powers.”
“That makes it a matter for Grit Wopal.” There was altogether too much reading and writing going on here, and Indrajit was happy to have what looked like a way out.
“Let’s learn a little more about it first,” Fix said. “Let’s be sure we’re bringing him something real.”
“How did you guess that we should go to the ashrama to look for information?” Indrajit asked.
Fix hesitated. “I go back to the ashrama from time to time. I’m generally aware of what the Trivials are researching. I thought I remembered seeing one of these strands there.”
“You go back . . . because you miss it?” Indrajit asked.
“That’s not it.”
“Because you think the woman you love might go back there looking for you?”
Fix shook his head. “Almost, though. I . . . just feel close to her there. I can remember my times with her. And it’s safer than standing outside her house at night, watching her bedroom window.”
“Well, if Meroit is going to try to seize the other three strings, surely he’ll do it now.” Indrajit yawned. He’d missed most of a night’s sleep from pain, after battling on the Duke’s Mistress. “He’ll think we’re elsewhere.”
“You should go back to the inn and lie in wait, then,” Fix suggested. “See what turns up. Don’t get into any fights unless you’re sure you can win.”
“When do I not win fights?” Indrajit asked.
“Just be discreet. I’m going to go back to the docks.”
“What for?”
“I want to dig around a little into Forfa. See if he was real.”
They parted ways, Fix turning left at the next alley and heading to the water. Indrajit reached the Crooked Mile and followed it straight down. He stopped twice to pretend he was shopping and look for pursuit, but he didn’t see anyone.
The rain stopped, leaving a cool afternoon with a general blanket of humidity lying over the city, begging for a breeze to lift it.
At the nameless inn that served as the Protagonists’ headquarters, he avoided the front door. He reasoned that if Meroit came or sent someone to search their room, he might ask the innkeeper before trying to break in. So instead of alerting the innkeeper to his return, Indrajit climbed a bakery that backed onto the inn. From the bakery’s roof, he dragged himself over the wall and onto the roof of the inn’s stables, then forced his way up the corner of the building onto the rooftop. Lying on his belly, he peered over the lip of the roof and watched the door to their chambers from the inside.
He also watched the courtyard and the stables; anyone looking up from that direction would be hard pressed to miss seeing him, lying on the roof.
He tried to think about the events of the day before and this morning, but in his fatigue and recumbent position, he quickly dozed off.
A loud click awakened him. Peering into the room, he saw the lock to the door rotate, pulling the bar from its socket in the wall. He held his breath as the door pushed open, and then bit his tongue as the four-armed, red-and-yellow-scaled man named Chark entered.
Chark had been some sort of officer on the Duke’s Mistress, the ship he and Fix had just burned down. Indrajit had last seen him locked in battle with Squite the rope-monster.
Which Indrajit had taken as a sign of Chark’s noninvolvement. So what was he doing here?
Indrajit eased a few fingers back from the edge of the roof without losing his view of the interior. Chark proceeded to toss their quarters with a vengeance. He shredded mattresses, ripped off table legs, pulled at loose bricks, and even shattered the chamber pot. He came away looking dissatisfied.
For the first time, Indrajit was happy he’d agreed to let Fix put their money in a bank, rather than hidden in their rooms.
Chark had torn apart two spare kilts belonging to Indrajit and was beginning to circle the room, as if for a second look at everything, when Indrajit heard voices at the door. They were muffled and Indrajit couldn’t make out words, but Chark heard enough to make him bolt for the window.
Indrajit pushed himself slightly farther back and gripped the hilt of his sword, ready to draw and fight if the scaly man climbed up the wall. Instead, Chark dropped down into the courtyard. Indrajit kept out of sight until he heard the scratching sounds of the man’s taloned feet running, and then he peeped over just enough to see Chark’s back disappearing out the stable doors, running toward the Crooked Mile.
He looked into the Protagonists’ chambers as the door opened again.
“Oh, my,” the innkeeper said. “Oh, my.”
The person standing with the innkeeper was Meroit. The little Trivial seemed not so much disturbed as annoyed. “I take it this is not just bad housekeeping?”
“Something has happened,” the innkeeper gasped. “I don’t know. I can’t. Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t wait here for my old friend, Fix the Trivial,” Meroit said, nodding. “He’ll have enough to do to clean this up without dealing with me, too. Perhaps I can leave him a note?”
The innkeeper leaned against the wall, gasping for breath and nodding.
Meroit walked through the chambers. Indrajit watched him through one window and then a second; the little acolyte of Salish-Bozar didn’t leave a note at any point, but searched briskly through the trashed remains of the rooms.
Looking for the other three knotted thongs.
“Thank you,” Meroit said to the innkeeper. He produced a couple of copper coins. They didn’t stop the innkeeper’s hyperventilation, but they produced a smile and a nervous laugh.
They closed the door.
Indrajit had never in his life more than this moment wanted to be able to write. If he could have left Fix a letter, it would have said, Meroit came and I am following him.
But Indrajit could not write. He climbed down through the window into their chambers. He found an inkpot, but couldn’t find any of Fix’s scraps of paper—they were probably on his person. So he located the biggest scrap he could of his slashed pallet. He spread the fabric out on the floor, and using his own finger as a rough pen, he drew a picture of Meroit. Root head, root nose, beady eyes. Surely, Fix would recognize the picture.
Then he drew a rough picture of himself, a man-shaped image who was mostly stick, but had a long, bony nose ridge and held a leaf-bladed sword. He did a careful job, he thought, of drawing himself following Meroit, even though he hacked out the entire picture, both images, in under two minutes.
Then he took a cloak from the mess on his floor and hurled himself down the wall into the courtyard. He took the ink bottle with him, not entirely sure what he was going to do with it. Stepping around fresh camel dung, he crept to the door to the street, in time to see the little root-headed man in dirty white walking away down the Crooked Mile.
Indrajit followed, wrapping the cloak about him to hide his distinctive facial features. Mercifully, the cool, damp afternoon meant that many other pedestrians on the street were hooded.
He splashed a line of ink with one finger on a doorpost as he started out, at the level of his own eyes. He wanted to stop and draw a little picture of Meroit, but there was no time for that.
Then he slouched, kept his eyes down, and tried generally to make himself smaller and less conspicuous as he followed the little acolyte across the Spill.
It wasn’t difficult. Meroit looked over his shoulder from time to time, but he did so awkwardly, bouncing and stopping before he looked back. Indrajit was able to adjust his position, drifting back, pulling closer, or turning sideways, and he was confident Meroit didn’t see him.
He’d have liked to be able to trade off following with Fix, and he blotted his path with ink dots as he went. His trailblazing earned him glares and kicks and more than once an evil eye. A grain merchant even shouted, “Witch!” and chased him past her shop, but if Meroit heard, he didn’t turn around.
The Trivial left the Spill and headed into the Dregs. The shops ended at the wall, replaced abruptly with gambling dens, taverns, bordellos, squalid tenements, and ruins. Indrajit nodded warily at the jobber crew handling security at the gate—he recognized them as some of Mote Gannon’s Handlers: Zalaptings, a Luzzazza, and a Thûlian powder priest. He and Fix had an uneasy truce with the Handlers, who had tried to kill them, and he would have preferred to run into them with Fix at his side.
He didn’t look closely to see whether the Luzzazza was missing an arm (which would have been Indrajit’s fault), or if the powder priest was a woman under all the swaddling (which would make her the priest he had wrestled with in an earlier scuffle). He just put his hand on Vacho’s hilt and hoped for the best.
But the Handlers just bared their teeth, spat on the ground, and let him through.
Meroit walked into a seedy coffee shop and took a seat at a small table. He sat with his back facing the street.
Was he hiding his identity? Was he waiting for someone who expected to be able to sit with his back to the corner?
A server consulted with Meroit about his coffee and Indrajit looked for a place to hide. The coffee shop squatted in the corner of a small, muddy plaza. Indrajit backed to the opposite corner of the square and positioned himself on the far side of a cart selling fried tamarind. He bought a handful, wrapped in flat bread and topped with hot sauce, and took his first bite while watching Meroit.
A sharp point poked him in the back. Then a hand pulled Vacho from its sheath.
“Pull down your hood,” a thick voice muttered, “and turn around. Slowly.”
Indrajit swallowed his mouthful of tamarind and complied. The man holding a knife on him was green-skinned, noseless, and had a thicket of tentacles falling from the lower half of his face. Indrajit sighed.
The crowd on the street continued drifting sluggishly past, ignoring the knife in broad daylight: Welcome to Kish; mind your business!
“The only reason I don’t kill you now is that I want you to tell me who you are first,” the green-faced man hissed.
Then he collapsed.
Fix stood behind him, a rock in his hand. He tossed the rock aside, took the knife, handed Vacho back to Indrajit, and dragged the green man to his feet.
“Right,” Fix said. “You yourself already explained why I haven’t killed you yet. Start talking.”
The green man spat in Fix’s face; Fix dragged him past the tamarind seller and thumped his shoulder blades against a mud-brick wall.
“Did you arrange this meeting?” Indrajit asked. “Or did the Trivial?” The green man turned his face toward Indrajit, and Indrajit clapped a hand over his mouth. “No spitting.” He wolfed down the rest of the fried tamarind and flat bread.
The prisoner growled.
“Meroit did,” Fix said.
Indrajit looked up and down the street for any sign of jobbers who might interfere, and saw none. The Dregs was notoriously under-policed, though, and organized criminal gangs sometimes stepped in to fill the gap.
“Here’s what we know,” Fix said. “You’re Fanchee.”
When had Fix learned anything about the Fanchee?
“You and Forfa are part of the Fanchee clan that farms kelp for the Lord Archer,” Fix continued. “You’ve been sending information to our friend Meroit in the form of knotted ropes. The fact that he’s a Trivial makes it easy; you leave the strands in public places, and people take them to the ashrama, knowing they’ll be paid. None of your people gets exposed to Meroit, or vice versa. Only now some of the messages have gotten lost, and Meroit wants a meeting. What’s the information about? Is it about the farms themselves? Or is there some secret information about the Lord Archer or his other holdings that you’re smuggling out?”
Indrajit removed his hand. The Fanchee only hissed.
Indrajit grabbed the Fanchee’s face tentacles and yanked; the Fanchee yowled and squirmed. Fix dragged the green man down a narrow alley, stepping over two drunkards in a puddle.
Indrajit looked over at the coffee shop to be certain that Meroit was still there and then joined Fix.
Something nagged at the back of his mind, and he couldn’t focus on it.
“Who pays you?” Indrajit barked.
“Good question,” Fix growled. “Who gets this information? Pelth? The Paper Sultanates? The Free Cities?”
The Fanchee laughed. “Why do you think I would know?”
And then Indrajit understood.
He shook his head. There was no point in interrogating this Fanchee. “You’ve given away everything, you fool!” Fix shot him a quizzical look. “We’ve got an appointment, Fix. Time to leave this pawn.”
Indrajit pushed the Fanchee to the ground and turned away, dragging Fix with him.
“What are you doing?” Fix asked. “What do you know?”
“What do you know?” Indrajit shot back.
“Forfa’s body is gone,” Fix said. “But I checked those ledgers, and they aren’t about the Serpent Sea trade at all.”
Indrajit nodded. “Forfa was lying to us from the beginning. And he was using someone else’s building. Any idea whose building that is?”
“No. And I asked around the docks to see whether anyone knew Forfa, and no one did. But when I described him, several people called him a Fanchee.”
“I have a bet,” Indrajit said. He directed their footsteps uphill, toward the Crown. “I bet that building belongs to the Lord Chamberlain.”
Fix was silent for a moment. “You think that this spy ring that we’ve stumbled upon is part of the Lord Chamberlain’s Ears. And that it is spying on the Lord Archer.”
“Yes,” Indrajit said.
“How does Meroit pass the information on, and to whom?”
“My guess is that it’s something indirect, like the knotted strings.” Indrajit shrugged. “Does he still sell his paintings? Maybe the paintings are a way to pass the information on.”
“Likely.” Fix’s voice was flat.
“It would be deeply ironic if the Lord Chamberlain’s spies killed us,” Indrajit suggested, “since we also work for the Lord Chamberlain. So to avoid that unfortunate fate, I want to shortcut all the confusion and just deliver the four knotted strands to Grit Wopal himself.”
They climbed through the gate into the wealthiest part of Kish. They were heading for the Lord Chamberlain’s palace, which was not the only place to find Grit Wopal, but it was a good place.
“Tell me why you think this,” Fix said.
“Your problem is that you read,” Indrajit said.
“Your problem is that you don’t,” Fix responded. “I almost didn’t arrive in time to save your life because I couldn’t figure out that terrible triangle-headed cartoon of yours was meant to be a picture of Meroit.”
“It’s an excellent likeness,” Indrajit said.
“It’s an excellent likeness of a bulbous root.”
“Meroit looks like a vegetable. Anyway, it took me a minute to recall the information, but as we were discussing the situation with our Fanchee friend back there, I finally found the spot in my memory palace. It’s a little protrusion of earth, framed by rounded gray stones and lapped at by the water.”
“What?”
“My memory. I had to consult it, but I found the information I was looking for.”
“Your memory is a picture?”
“Yes. Isn’t yours?”
Fix shook his head. They turned down a side street—in the Crown, there were no true alleys—and headed for the tradesman’s entrance to the Lord Chamberlain’s palace. “Go on.”
“And I saw there a picture of Grit Wopal, recommending us to Forfa.”
Fix stopped and stared at the Lord Chamberlain’s door. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Forfa said that Grit Wopal recommended us to help recover these knotted strands.”
Indrajit knocked at the door. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I don’t think that was one old friend recommending a reliable service to another, as a kindness. I think Wopal was sending us in to repair a breach in one of his spy rings. Without telling us.”
The door opened. Inside stood Grit Wopal, a short man wearing a yellow turban.
“It’s about time,” he said.