The Lady in The Pit
D. J. Butler
“I need your help.”
The woman sitting across the round wooden table wore a black cloak. The hood was up, entirely obscuring her face, other than her slightly pointed, pale slip of a chin. Her voice was soft, but firm, with a whisper of silk in its tones.
Indrajit turned to look at his partner. Fix nodded. “Tell us more.” Fix was Kishi, or something closely related to Kishi; he was short, with brown skin and straight black hair cut in a simple bowl shape. His voice was soft, almost girlish, belying his broad frame and the array of weapons hanging at his belt.
Their sole employee, the only member of the jobber company called the Protagonists who was not a partner, stood across the street. Munahim was tall and had a doglike head covered in black fur, so he was hardly conspicuous, but from behind the flap of a tack shop’s tent, he watched, ready to intervene if the client pulled any untoward tricks. He’d secreted himself in that station well before the client had arrived for her appointment.
“We don’t specialize in damsels in distress,” Indrajit added, “but it’s definitely in our portfolio.”
“My name is Oleandra Holt.”
“Your message said that you’re a priestess of the Unnamed,” Fix suggested.
She purred. “An acolyte. It’s unlikely I’ll ever make priestess proper.”
Indrajit rubbed a finger along his bony nose ridge. The ridge rose into a crest along the top of his hairless skull. It pushed Indrajit’s eyes out to the side of his skull, but definitely did not make him look like a fish. Also, no fish had Indrajit’s pleasing complexion, mahogany with nuanced hints of green. He was the tallest of the three Protagonists, though maybe the least muscle-bound.
“Is that because you’re not an assassin?” Indrajit had no idea whether the rumors about the worshippers of the Unnamed were true, but sitting in the common room of the tavern below his own lodgings, with broad beams of afternoon sunlight and the smell of camels wafting in through the windows, he felt brave enough to ask.
Oleandra laughed. “If I deny the substance of the rumors you’re alluding to, you won’t believe me. An assassin-thief sworn to lie, steal, and kill in the service of the New Moon would lie in any case, wouldn’t she? That’s what you would tell yourself, if I offered a denial.”
“And yet you deny nothing,” Indrajit said.
She purred again.
“In any case, the message was eye-catching.” Fix cleared his throat and shot Indrajit a withering look, probably reminding his partner that Fix was literate, and Indrajit was not. “The devotees of the Unnamed, the Unseen, the Goddess of the New Moon, rarely disclose their affiliation in public.”
“Rarely,” Oleandra Holt agreed. “Not never.”
“May we see your face?” Fix asked. “I find it disconcerting to speak to someone whose eyes I can’t see.”
Oleandra didn’t touch her veil. “You were recommended to me by a certain…woman. A rich woman.”
“Connected with the Lord Chamberlain?” Indrajit asked.
Fix said nothing, but his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.
“One of the scholars of the Hall of Guesses?” Indrajit tried again.
“No,” Oleandra said. “But a wealthy woman and a friend.”
“Will you name her?” Fix’s muscles were visibly taut, as if he were prepared to leap into hand-to-hand combat at any moment. “Are she and her husband connected with the Paper Sook?”
“You ask too many questions.” Oleandra stood as if to leave, her black cloak falling over her shoulders and framing a body clad in white linen. Her limbs were well muscled, but she hunched forward slightly as she stood. Was that why she covered herself with a cloak? She had a tail, too, barely visible as a bulge in the fabric around her ankles.
“Please,” Indrajit said, “we’re investigators by nature. I apologize if our questions are intrusive.”
Fix’s eyes burned.
Oleandra Holt seated herself again, slowly.
With exaggerated slowness. And she’d never really moved toward the door, and she hadn’t picked up the canvas sack sitting on the floor beside her. A bluff.
“My friend said that you were bold men,” she said. “The Protagonists, you call yourselves. I have heard that you are valiant fighters in the causes of other people. That you risk life and limb to rescue kidnapped and threatened people, for instance. That you uncover mysteries and brought justice to wrongdoers. That you are dogged, reliable, honest, and highly skilled.”
“Ah, good,” Indrajit said. “Those rumors I spread are working. Only you forgot the part about how handsome we are.”
Oleandra purred again.
“Does your friend need help for herself?” Fix asked. “Rescuing from her…husband, for instance?”
The acolyte of the Unnamed shook her head. “I come on my own behalf.”
Fix slumped the tiniest bit. “Go on.”
Despite their weeks of working together, Indrajit didn’t know the entire story of Fix’s unrequited love. He knew the woman had married. He knew Fix still pined for her, and that one reason Fix wanted to become wealthy and successful was to be in a position to woo her back.
“Like all the women of my family,” Oleandra said, “I have served the Unnamed since the moon first turned for me.”
“What?” Fix asked.
“You need more poetry in your soul,” Indrajit said. “She means, since she reached womanhood. Only she said it in a very moon kind of way.”
Fix frowned, then nodded.
“Like all the women of my family, my first encounter with the goddess was on my entry into her temple at that time. As is the custom, I took with me a votive, and deposited it there. There is a niche that my mothers before me have all used, in the temple. They passed down knowledge of it to me, and when I knelt and consecrated my votive to the New Moon, I laid it among many other objects placed by my forebears.”
“This was what?” Indrajit asked. “A statue? An offering of money? A stolen item?” He didn’t know what votive offerings the worshippers of the Unnamed would make. “An assassination victim?”
Oleandra hesitated.
“You don’t have to tell us,” Indrajit said. “Unless, of course, it matters to what you’re going to ask us to do.”
“It was a statue of the Unnamed,” Oleandra said. “In her most traditional appearance.”
“That’s a paradox, isn’t it?” Fix pushed back. “Her most traditional appearance is as the Unseen, without an image. The new moon is the invisible moon. Is this a riddle? Are you testing us?”
“Things that appear are visible,” Oleandra said. “Her most traditional appearance is as a woman with no face.”
“No head, in fact,” Indrajit said. “I’ve seen that image.”
“It’s often scratched on the lintel-posts of shopkeepers to ward off theft.” Oleandra nodded.
“Not assassination?” Fix asked.
A hint of a smile played at the edge of the shadow within the hood.
“Okay, you deposited a statue of a headless woman,” Indrajit said. “What, twenty years ago? Don’t be offended, but…maybe even thirty years ago?” It was hard to tell from just the voice and the chin.
“Among the other votive sculptures standing within my family’s sacred niche,” Oleandra continued, “I saw the famed gift left by my great-great-grandmother.”
“An even fancier statuette,” Indrajit guessed.
Oleandra shook her head. “In fact, it was a much less elaborate statue. My granddam found a stone, a chunk of black, smooth rock, while she was journeying around the Sea of Rains. It was a stone that had never known a chisel, but nevertheless was a clear image of the kneeling goddess. A natural idol, and obviously an item of great power.”
“Obviously,” Indrajit said.
Fix’s jaw clenched.
“That statuette brought great power to my granddam and to our family,” Oleandra continued. “We waxed wealthy, and the Lords of Kish began to give us heed.”
“You attribute this to the statue,” Fix said.
“To the goddess,” Oleandra countered, “whom we honored with the gift of the idol.”
“This is all interesting,” Indrajit said. “Indeed, I’m already considering how to capture it in a pithy, moving, and yet thrilling fashion, in a few lines for the Blaatshi Epic.”
“You don’t have to,” Fix said.
Indrajit shrugged. “But I have not yet heard anything that explains to me why you need our help.”
“I am but an acolyte.” Oleandra’s tail swished, disturbing her cloak. “I serve the goddess in ritual ways only, and only for discrete periods of time. When it is my turn, I am permitted briefly into the temple, and when my time of service is past, I am ushered out again. My worship is genuine, but my appointment is social.”
“You’re not an assassin,” Fix suggested, “you just go to the assassins club with your friends.”
“That’s glib,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” Indrajit said, “and I’m the one who’s supposed to make the glib observations.”
“Are glib observations really consonant with the somber calling of an epic poet?” Fix asked.
“I’m wounded,” Indrajit said. “And I take your point.”
“Your description,” Oleandra said, “however glib, is not wrong. And my appointment means that, although I am regularly allowed inside the Unnamed’s temple, I have little freedom within its walls, and little time.”
Indrajit rested his hand on the pommel of Vacho, his leaf-bladed sword, and nodded. “Go on.”
“My grandmother’s votive has been moved from its place.”
“Stolen?” Fix’s gaze was cool and piercing. “Ironic.”
“I think not,” Oleandra said. “The family niche became too crowded when my niece was initiated, two new moons ago, and I believe that the temple staff made room by throwing out older votives, including that of my granddam.”
“What, thrown out into the trash?” Indrajit gulped. “That seems like a poor way to dispose of an item of power.”
“Or at least, a poor way to show respect to your own tradition,” Fix suggested.
“Casting out sacrifices into the trash would incur the wrath of the goddess.” Oleandra shook her head, and the hood shifted slightly. The top of her skull seemed to be square, and to have pointed corners. “Offered food is eaten by the priestesses, in the place of the goddess herself.”
“That sounds pretty typical,” Fix said.
“Old votive statues are thrown into a pit,” Oleandra said.
“And we are back to the garbage heap again.” Indrajit shook his head. “Why doesn’t your goddess of assassins strike dead people who disrespect her in this fashion? Mother Blaat is a peaceful goddess of the sea and its life—”
“That’s Indrajit’s granddam,” Fix said. “That’s why he looks like a koi with legs.”
Indrajit ignored his partner. “—and I would never spurn her so.”
“The pit is a holy pit, in consecrated ground. I have seen it only once; I asked about my granddam’s votive, and a priestess took me to see the pit. The pit lies beneath the temple, and is therefore itself a sacred and appropriate receptacle into which to throw such consecrated items as old votives, worn-out ritual garb, and successfully used assassins’ blades.”
“You saw your granddam’s votive?” Indrajit asked. “Lying in this pit?”
“I saw the pit, in the shaky light of a lantern. I saw many sacred items. Before I could see my granddam’s idol, I was led away. But the statuette must lie close to the surface of the mound of items in the pit, since it has only recently been removed.”
“I begin to understand the picture,” Fix said. “You don’t have the time while you’re in the temple to go after the idol yourself, so you want us to recover it.”
“I can let you in,” Oleandra said, “by a secret entrance. But I only have time to open the door, I can’t stand in the pit and search, or my absence will be noticed.”
“A secret passage?” Fix asked. “Where’s the temple? It’s rumored to exist somewhere in the Dregs, but even the building is a secret. Much less some back door.”
Oleandra only smiled.
“All this makes sense,” Indrajit said. “But if we break in to the temple and steal an idol, won’t the goddess feel…discomfited?”
“You really worry that she might feel vengeful,” Oleandra said.
“Of course,” Indrajit said.
“Or perhaps there are no gods,” Fix said. “Not really. Perhaps they’re just stories, and if you and I go into that pit, my long-limbed, green-skinned friend, we can find items of value to sell.”
“Green is just one of the ones of my skin color,” Indrajit said. “I am more mahogany than green.”
“You’re brown,” Fix said. “We’re both brown. That’s a good shade, you don’t need to be any fancier than that.”
“Let’s focus on the possibility that there is a real goddess here,” Indrajit countered, “and a goddess of assassins, at that.”
“Assassins and thieves,” Oleandra pointed out.
“What are you saying, that she’ll look the other way for us because she favors burglars?” That didn’t sound…impossible.
“Yes,” Oleandra said. “But also, you won’t steal the idol. You’ll find it, and hide it just within the door by which I admit you. You will just have moved the idol within the temple’s sanctified grounds.”
“Downgraded from burglars to trespassers,” Fix said.
“Also, I’ll give you sacred garb to disguise yourselves with. The goddess won’t even see you.”
“If the sacred garb disguises us from other believers, that’s enough for me,” Fix said.
Indrajit’s stomach felt unsettled. “This feels like we’re really tempting fate.”
Oleandra set a purse on the table. “One hundred Imperials, paid now. Another hundred Imperials when I have the statuette in my possession.”
“But the story doesn’t quite add up,” Fix said. “You’re so religious that you want this statuette of the goddess back, but so impious that you will go ahead and trick the goddess to get it?”
Oleandra hesitated. “The idol is important to my family because of our history with it.”
“I still don’t believe it.” Fix shook his head, but without taking his eyes from the woman. “You’re risking some pretty big consequences for a few memories and a warm feeling.”
Oleandra wrapped her fingers around the purse and gripped it tightly, until her knuckles whitened. “You’re investigators, as you say. Very well. Scratched onto the underside of the idol is secret information that my family needs.”
“Ah ha.” Indrajit leaned forward. “Now we have a real story going.”
Oleandra said nothing.
“What is it?” Fix asked. “A bank account password? A map to treasure? A dirty secret to hold over the Lord Stargazer?”
Oleandra pressed her lips together.
“Does the nature of this secret make the job more dangerous for us?” Fix asked.
“The temple staff don’t know the secret,” Oleandra said. “They couldn’t read the secret information, even if they saw it.”
“Reading.” Indrajit snorted, but he did wonder what the information could be.
“If they knew what they held in their hands, they would never have thrown the lady into the pit.” Oleandra spoke as if her words were final.
They sat in silence a moment. Fix turned to his partner. “And think how much more fun this is than trying to enforce the regulations of the Paper Sook.”
That clinched the argument. Indrajit barely understood the language of the merchants of the Paper Sook. When the Lord Chamberlain and his spymaster Grit Wopal gave Indrajit and Fix tasks among those merchants, which was often, Indrajit found himself repeating back to Fix the words his partner said, usually without comprehending them at all. “I’m in.”
Fix leaned forward. “Your friend who recommended us…she isn’t a devotee of the Unnamed.”
“But she is my close friend.” Oleandra smiled warmly. “And she will hear of this bold exploit and be pleased.”
“Show us where this secret door is,” Indrajit said, “and tell us when to meet you.”
* * *
There was no moon. The Spike rose in the middle distance, blocking out a chunk of the night sky with its knuckle of rock gripping the temples of the city’s five acknowledged gods. Light from lamps and torches splashed up in yellow streaks against the tall walls of the buildings of the Crown, Kish’s most elegant and exclusive quarter. The Crown was home to the palaces of the rich and the buildings of government as well as the temple district. Indrajit and Fix stood beside a small, unimportant-looking wooden door, on a dull, untrafficked side street.
“Strange,” Indrajit said. “The temple to Kish’s secret sixth god is located awfully close to the temples of the other five.”
“Don’t get cold feet,” Fix said.
“I don’t have cold feet. I’m just marveling at how much I still have to learn about this rotten old city.”
“We’re close enough to the Spike that the Temple of the Unnamed could be on the Spike itself,” Fix said. “Right alongside the other five.”
“Hmm.” Indrajit frowned.
“Or underneath it.”
Kish was an ancient city, perched on a knob of rock riddled with catacombs, in turn stuffed with ruins, strange beasts, ancient machinery, poisons, and peril. It was not an insane thought that the goddess of thieves and assassins might make her home down in that warren. But it wasn’t a comforting thought, either.
Indrajit pointed. “Also, this looks more like a side entrance into that dry goods shop than a secret back door into the temple of the new moon.”
“What should a secret back door into the temple look like, then?”
“Point taken. But maybe the temple isn’t on the Spike, it’s inside that shop. And you know, it might be that the best possible outcome for us here is that Oleandra never shows up, we don’t trespass on sacred ground, and you and I get to keep the hundred Imperials.”
“But then you wouldn’t accomplish any mighty deeds worth recounting in the epic,” Fix countered.
They were dressed in simple kilts and sandals, given the warm night. Indrajit wore Vacho at his belt, and Fix wore his falchion, his hand ax, and two long knives. He favored fighting with a spear when possible, but he’d left his spear behind, saying it might become awkward in narrow hallways. In a pocket in his kilt, Indrajit had a few items—a lantern, a flask of oil, flint and steel, and chalk.
Munahim, lurking in a shadowed doorway farther along the street, had his long, straight sword strapped to his back and carried a bow. He also had a two-handed wood ax in his possession, but it wasn’t for fighting.
Munahim’s role was protection. He was a selling of risk, in the language of the Paper Sook. He hung back because Indrajit couldn’t quite bring himself to trust Oleandra Holt. Despite his inflamed and stricken looks, neither could Fix.
Indrajit stroked his chin. “You make a good point.”
There was a triple rap on the inside of the door. Indrajit checked to be certain they were alone in the quiet street, then responded with the countersign, which was two double knocks, with a pause between.
Oleandra opened the door. She again wore her black cloak, with its hood up. “Quickly, please.”
Indrajit and Fix stepped inside. The door was sturdy, and bound with iron bars. Indrajit pulled the door to, deliberately not quite shutting it, while attempting to look careless at the same time.
Oleandra yanked the door completely shut. A narrow passage descended immediately over brick steps into darkness. An oil lamp sat flickering at the top step beside a tall orange clay jar. From beneath her cloak, Oleandra produced a bundle of cloth, which she peeled apart into two smaller bundles, handing one to each man.
“Wear these to stay unobserved by the goddess.” She kept her voice to a whisper.
They unrolled the fabric.
“This is a woman’s dress,” Indrajit said. It was the same style of dress Oleandra herself wore.
“I don’t have access to the men’s garb.” Oleandra took down her hood, revealing a pale face with large eyes. She had no hair on her head, and four inwardly curving horns protruded from the top of her skull, making four corners. “I got the largest that I could find.”
Fix pulled the dress on over his kilt. After a moment’s hesitation, Indrajit did the same. The dresses were white and sleeveless. Fix’s was long enough for him, but not big enough to accommodate his muscular chest, so the seams of his dress squeaked out a brief complaint and then split apart. Indrajit’s dress was big enough, but short, so its waist rode halfway between his armpits and his hips, and his kilt protruded below the dress.
“Oh, we look fine,” Fix said.
“You look right to the goddess,” Oleandra said.
“When you tell your friend this part,” Fix told her, “you could emphasize to her the heroism and downplay how ridiculous I look.”
“That’s certainly how I will recite this episode,” Indrajit said. “Also, you will be tall.”
Oleandra picked up the jar and moved it to the corner behind the door. “This is big enough for the statuette. You can leave the dresses here too, when you’re finished.”
“You have little time,” Fix said. “Show us the pit.”
Oleandra took the lamp and led them down the stairs. The air vibrated with a sound that Indrajit could not quite hear. He pressed his cheek to the wall and could make out chanting. He heard each syllable clearly, seemed to feel them in his bones, and he even felt that the syllables were familiar…but somehow, they didn’t add up to words he could understand.
“Worship is beginning,” Oleandra said. “The sacrifices are only a few minutes away, and I will be missed.” She quickened her pace.
“We must be beneath the Spike about now,” Fix said.
They made several turns and Oleandra didn’t slow down for them. Trying not to attract attention to himself, Indrajit took the chalk from his pocket and marked the turnings. Was it a desecration to write on the temple’s walls? He didn’t know what sacred gesture to make to placate the goddess in case it was, but he pressed his palms together in an attitude of prayer, bowing and looking up in the general direction of where the moon might be.
Then they arrived, and he made one last mark before putting the chalk away.
The room was much larger than Indrajit had imagined it would be, and so was the pit. Seven pillars carved like headless women were spaced evenly about the walls, supporting the vaulted ceiling with their shoulders. Each of the women held a different item before her: a dagger, a garotte, a vial, a caltrop, a sword, a crossbow, and a spiked cestus. Between every pair of pillars gaped an opening and a hallway. Around all sides of the room, two paces’ worth of open floor separated the walls from the pit.
The sides of the pit were steep but scalable. Within the pit lay a tangled heap of objects, including blades, trophies, clothing, and idols. There were also bones.
“This will take us some time,” Fix noted.
“I’ll leave my lamp,” she said. “The statuette should be near the edge. Items are dropped in, not thrown into the center.”
She set down the light and left them, circling around the pit to leave by a different exit.
“Is it my imagination,” Indrajit asked, “or is the chanting getting louder?”
Fix cocked his head to one side. “I think you’re wrong.”
Indrajit eyed the shadows with suspicion. “Okay, let’s do this.”
They let themselves down into the pit. The climb was half again Indrajit’s height, maybe seven cubits, and the handholds were generous, so Indrajit could climb down while carrying the lamp. When Indrajit stepped into the heap of objects filling the pit, he sank up to his knees.
“There are a lot more bones down here than our employer led me to expect,” he grumbled.
Fix arrived beside him. “What kind of bones?”
Indrajit pointed. “The bones of men. I mean, of all kinds. Look, that must have been a Luzzazza, you can see the sockets for four arms. And these little ones everywhere are probably Zalaptings.”
“Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.” Fix slogged inward two steps, putting himself between Indrajit and the center of the pit. Oleandra had been right that objects cast into the hole were thrown in from the sides, so the heap sank to a depression in its center. “We walk side by side, slowly, around the pit. We’re looking for a black stone that looks like a headless idol. Use your imagination, people can see images in rocks and clouds with very little provocation. Anything made of black or blackish stone, we at least pick it up and look at it.”
“Agreed,” Indrajit said.
“If we see anything else valuable, I say we steal it.”
Would that enrage the goddess? But they were helping one of her acolytes. “Yes,” he said weakly.
They combed their way around the edge of the pit. Indrajit held the lamp high, because he was taller, but he occasionally passed it to Fix when the shorter partner needed to examine some object.
He noticed that the ceiling above them was pierced by a circular hole. He could see a few stars winking through it. How must that hole be disguised on the surface? Was it unseen because surrounded by buildings? Or within the courtyard of one of the Crown’s palaces? Or a temple disguised as a palace?
Indrajit also took what opportunity he had to study the skeletons. They were wrapped in layers of rotting cloth, but not with the care that a mummy would be. He saw smashed skulls and deeply nicked neck bones, and three times he saw rib cages with crossbow bolts lodged between the ribs.
When he looked up to see how much progress they had made, he was disappointed.
“We’re a quarter of the way around.” His voice sounded huge, and it echoed. “What time is it?”
Fix shrugged.
“Where’s Munahim?”
Fix shrugged.
Indrajit grumbled, but carried on.
Fix plucked jewelry from the heap, and even picked up a codex to examine it. Indrajit didn’t have the nerve, and contented himself with scouring the pile of discarded temple items for any sign of the black stone idol.
Then they encountered the first body with flesh on its bones. It was a Grokonk Third, of middling height and rotting from yellow to a limpid gray. It had been strangled to death—the gashes left by a wire circled its neck, and the skin around the gashes was rotting black and peeling away from the corpse.
The second fleshly corpse was a furred Wixit, whose tongue was black and bloated in his mouth. The third, in quick succession, was a Zalapting whose chest was feathered with crossbow bolts. All three wore white dresses, rotting as quickly as the bodies were.
White dresses.
“We’re getting out of here right now.” Indrajit turned to climb up the wall of the pit—and saw Oleandra standing at the top.
“Too late.” Her voice was hollow.
To either side of her stood two men. All four wore black trousers and shirt and a black cloak over the top, hoods hiding their faces. All four held crossbows in their hands, and they all aimed at Indrajit.
“Do you not know…?” Fix’s voice was anguished. “You didn’t…there is no friend who recommended us, is there?”
Oleandra shook her head.
An arrow struck one of the four men in the chest with a twang and a wet slapping sound. He fell into a puddle of his own cloak with a soft grunt, and then Munahim came crashing out of the dark, long sword raised over his head.
Indrajit sprang forward. He jammed his foot into a depression in the stone and threw himself upward. The remaining three cloaked men turned to face Munahim, and Indrajit grabbed the man in the middle by his ankles.
Oleandra turned and ran.
Munahim slashed through the crossbow of the man in front and Indrajit yanked the second down into the pit. The man lost his grip on his crossbow and Indrajit pulled him down over himself as a shield.
He felt a satisfying thud as a crossbow bolt buried itself in the man’s back.
Indrajit landed flat and hard on a knobby pile of statues and bones, all the wind knocked out of him. His peripheral vision was excellent, so despite feeling stunned, he saw Fix scoop up the dropped crossbow and shoot one of their attackers with it. By the time Indrajit rolled the dead man off himself and stood, all four attackers had been shot or cut down.
“Munahim,” he grumbled. “Glad you could make it.”
“Your timing was perfect,” Fix said.
By a stroke of good fortune, the lamp had not been extinguished in the fracas. They climbed out of the pit.
Munahim was wounded. Blood seeped from cuts on both arms, and he had a long scratch along the side of his doglike muzzle. “They have men behind us in the tunnels. I was traveling without light, following you by your scent, so they didn’t see me coming. But I don’t advise going back that way.”
“There have to be other exits,” Indrajit said.
Fix stared at his feet.
“Okay,” Indrajit said. “The woman—can you follow her scent?”
Munahim nodded.
“Then we follow her out,” Indrajit said. “She clearly led us into a trap here, so for all we know, she might now lead us into another. But probably not. Probably, she’s running for her life and will head for the nearest exist.”
Munahim grinned. “Frightened of the Protagonists.”
Indrajit clapped the dog-headed warrior, the first recruit into the Protagonists since he and Fix had formed the jobber company, on the shoulder. “Frightened of you. Lead out, Munahim. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Munahim stooped to sniff at the bricks, and then quickly jogged into one of the room’s seven exits. Not, Indrajit noted, the one that he had marked with chalk.
Indrajit pushed Fix to get him in motion. Once the small man was moving, he went quickly, but he still seemed distracted.
“There’s no idol,” he murmured, shuddering down a staircase into a wide gallery.
“If there is, we were never meant to get it.” Indrajit hesitated at the top of the stairs and shielded the lamp with his body to look back. Was that a glimmer of light behind them?
“Why?” Fix asked.
“Maybe someone took out a contract,” Indrajit said. “Any number of people might want us killed, starting with Mote Gannon, who can’t use his own men to do it without getting into trouble. This whole thing was clearly a trap.”
“Maybe you were meant to be sacrifices?” Munahim called back over his shoulder. His voice, when asking questions, sounded like the mournful yodeling of a hunting dog to the moon.
“The bodies in the pit,” Fix said.
“Maybe they were earlier sacrifices.” Indrajit tried to think through what he’d seen. “Maybe we were next. Maybe these aren’t really priestly dresses we’re wearing. Maybe they mark us as offerings.”
“I don’t think maybe,” Fix said.
“I don’t think maybe, either.”
Flowing water crossed the end of the gallery. Munahim splashed through the stream, sniffing at the opposite bank, and then picked up the scent again at the leftmost of three circular openings.
As he and Fix raced on, Indrajit pressed himself into the curve of the arch. A light appeared at the far end of the gallery. He heard slapping feet, too, but the men pursuing them wore soft-soled shoes and they had the knack of treading lightly. He couldn’t make out how many were coming.
He ran to catch up to the other Protagonists.
“We’re followed,” he hissed.
“It could be both.” Fix’s voice was glum.
“Both…meaning, maybe someone took out a contract on us with the priests of the Unnamed, and the temple is trying to carry out the contract by sacrificing us?” It was not a comforting thought. “Uh…how do we terminate a hit on us?”
Munahim led them across an octagonal chamber whose floor was an iron lattice. Green light glowed beneath their feet. Indrajit had seen such light several times before, and generally thought it was a sign of ancient Druvash sorcery at work. At the far end of the chamber, they climbed a groaning iron staircase bolted into the wall. At the top, they stopped to catch their breath, and Indrajit and Fix both shucked off their white dresses.
“Oleandra is a fast runner.” Munahim was panting.
“Help me get rid of these stairs,” Indrajit said.
Munahim had left his great ax on the street after chopping through the door with it, but Fix had his smaller hatchet. The iron of the staircase was rusted, but solid—but when Indrajit threw his weight against the stairs, he discovered that the brick around the screws bolting the stairs to the wall was crumbling. He lay on his back and kicked repeatedly, until the stairs curled away from the wall and fell.
As the stairs crashed to the brick below, the lights of their pursuers entered the other side of the room. “Hey,” Indrajit suggested to Munahim. “Let’s make them put out those lights, shall we?”
Munahim fired three arrows at their pursuers, forcing them to scatter and douse their lamps. Then the Protagonists ran.
“Why does it feel like people always want to kill us?” Indrajit asked.
“Because people always want to kill us,” Fix said.
“I don’t think that pit was the garbage heap for old votives,” Indrajit said. “I mean, everything Oleandra told us seems to have been a lie, but that in particular.”
“That was the altar,” Fix said.
“That’s what I think, too.”
They passed through an open door into a room lit by torches. The sudden flickering flames burned Indrajit’s eyes like bonfires and he blinked away tears. The chamber was furnished with four thickly upholstered divans facing a low, square table in the center. Opposite, Indrajit saw through an archway into a stone-flagged room with large double doors. High, paneless windows let in cool air. They must be aboveground again.
Oleandra stood beside the low table. Her cloak was gone. She seemed to be on the tips of her toes, and it took Indrajit a moment to realize that there was a man behind her, holding her up. He wore black from head to foot, including a cloak. Silver stitching around the edges of the cloak might represent writing of some sort. He also wore a black mask that showed no skin beneath, or teeth or anything, giving him the impression of being headless.
He held a long, thin blade to Oleandra’s throat.
Fix shut the door behind them. Indrajit drew Vacho from its sheath and he heard the sound of Fix sliding a bolt into place.
“You’re going to let us past,” Indrajit said. “But first, you’re going to give us information.”
“I will hurt the woman if you move,” the man in black said.
“She’s on your side,” Indrajit said. “What kind of threat is that?”
“She’s dressed as a sacrifice,” Fix added. His mild voice contained a strained note. Fear? Preoccupation?
“It’s a threat because you care,” the masked man said.
“We’re going to leave,” Indrajit said. He looked for a moment of inattention on the man’s part, so he could leap in and free Oleandra. Such a bold move could make for several good minutes of Epic recitation: a description of tensed muscles and sweat trickling down his back, a reminder of the weapons he bore, a call back to his heroic ancestry. “We never picked a fight with you.”
“The goddess claims sacrifices,” the masked man said. “The goddess herself chooses. This moon, when we consulted her, she said we should take you.”
“We don’t want trouble in the future,” Indrajit said. “Live and let live. Unless you commit fraud in the Paper Sook. Or anger the Lord Chamberlain, I guess. Otherwise, we’ll leave you alone.”
“I will trade,” the man in black said. “Her life for yours.”
Oleandra’s expression was unreadable. Her lips moved as if she were singing or reciting, but her eyes were glazed over. She might have been in a trance, or drugged, except that she must have been sprinting away from them only moments earlier.
Fix produced jewelry from the pocket of his kilt. “We’ll give you these back, for her life.” His voice was pitched too high, even for Fix.
“You know this woman is not your lover,” Indrajit murmured.
Fix didn’t answer.
The masked man spat. “What is sacrificed is dead and gone, and nothing to me, or to the goddess. The jewels are nothing.”
“Did your oracle say you must actually sacrifice us?” Indrajit asked. “Or just try to? Because you’ve gone and given it a good try. Best efforts. Maybe now it would be okay to accept failure. Maybe the Unnamed just wants you to make the attempt.”
“And did your divination mention me at all?” Munahim asked. “I’m new, and maybe your goddess really had Indrajit and Fix personally in mind.”
Hammering sounds at their backs suggested that their pursuers had caught up, and were beating against the door.
“I’ll take any one of you,” the masked man said. “Even the dog head, I don’t care.”
“Hey,” Munahim said.
Indrajit sheathed Vacho. He walked slowly toward the masked man, preparing to grab him by the wrist, disarm him, trip him, or do whatever was necessary to save Oleandra. Not that she deserved it, since she had lured them into this place to sacrifice them to her goddess, but…well, a hero would save her, and Indrajit wanted to be that hero.
Also, Fix stared at her as if he were staring at his former lover. He must know that this woman was not the same woman who had jilted him, but in his head, he seemed to have made a connection that he couldn’t shake.
And then again, Oleandra herself appeared to be a victim.
Indrajit raised his hands to show that they were empty. The hammering on the door was joined by muffled shouting noises.
“Just let her go,” Indrajit said.
Three things happened so quickly, so closely together, that to Indrajit they seemed to happen simultaneously. The masked man leaped forward, lunging at Indrajit with his knife, stabbing for the throat. At the same moment, Oleandra’s haze of uncertainty and her mumbling fell away like a veil cast aside, and she hurled herself into the masked man’s path. Finally, his thrusting blade struck her in the back of her neck and passed completely through, the tip of the dagger stabbing out the front of her throat. Blood spurted down her white sacrificial gown.
She fell forward, dead on the table.
Fix leaped upon the masked man with fury in his face. His ax was in his hand, and before the man in black could even turn to face him, Fix had shattered his skull. A second blow nearly severed one of the man’s arms and a third took his head completely off.
Fix screamed.
“Hey,” Indrajit said.
Fix took a swing at Indrajit with his ax, and only Indrajit’s quick reflexes let him dodge the attack.
“We should get out of here,” Munahim muttered.
“It wasn’t her,” Indrajit said.
The dog-headed Protagonist knelt and scooped up jewelry that Fix had dropped. He led the way to the archway into the next room, but stood waiting.
Fix dropped his ax. He knelt beside Oleandra’s corpse, cradling it in his arms.
“You know that’s not your love,” Indrajit said, slowly and firmly.
Fix blinked and rubbed his eyes with his fists, smearing blood all over his face in the process. He looked at Oleandra one last time, then laid her back on the table. “It could have been, though. It could have been her. And someone should have loved her the way I love…If she’d had the love in her life that she deserved, she might not have ended this way.”
The knocking and yelling had stopped.
“We should go,” Munahim said. “They’ll find a way around.”
Fix took a small book from his kilt. Indrajit didn’t recognize the volume—his partner must have found it in the pit. He tore a page from it and took a bit of writing charcoal from his pocket. He wrote, face tight in concentration, and then he took the dead man’s dagger and used it to pin the note to the man’s chest, sinking the blade in all the way to the hilt.
The double doors in the next room opened onto the street. Fix was shaking as they walked out.
“We got this jewelry,” Munahim said.
“There’s also the hundred Imperials.” Fix spoke mechanically, as if without thought. “We’ll divide it all by shares.”
They took several turns in quick succession, to throw off pursuit. Once Indrajit realized that they had emerged in the Spill, he took the lead and directed their path back to the inn that served as both home and office.
“What did you write?” he asked his partner. The sea breeze was cooling the sweat that poured off him and filling his lungs with stiff, bracing air. The lurid chambers beneath the city, the skeletons, and the heap of sacrificed loot, were beginning to fade and to seem unreal. Would the assassin cult come after them another day? It seemed impossible to predict, but, for the moment, it didn’t feel imminent.
“I told them we know where their temple is now,” Fix said, grinding out the words through clenched teeth. “I told them that, if we ever see them again, the Lord Chamberlain will kill every single one of them, scorch their cult from off the face of the earth. And I told them that, for this moon, enough sacrifices have been thrown into the pit.”