Tooth and Nail, Fur and Scale Page 15

  ‘What happened to the first three?’

  ‘Long visits to the vaidya, I would imagine, involving the administration of painkilling salves and extensive bone-setting.’

  I grinned despite myself. This was getting very interesting. ‘So you’re stronger than you look.’

  ‘Looks can be deceiving, as was the case with the man who took my jewel from me. He was far stronger than his frame suggested.’

  ‘Hmm . . . did you get a good look at him?’

  ‘It was very dark, and he was quick.’

  ‘You’re suggesting that this man—if it was a man—possesses strength far greater than most humans?’

  ‘It was indeed a man—or at least looked like one. And yes.’

  ‘And that . . . that you possess strength of a similar nature?’

  She shrugged, maintaining eye contact.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘That was a very detailed description of this jewel you’re looking for, and if I see it, I bet I’ll know it instantly.’ I leaned back in my chair. ‘But the problem with thieves is that they tend not to walk around with their booty held up over their heads. Sure, I could go around checking the pockets of puny guys who are stronger than they look, but it would really help to have more . . . details.’

  She looked up at the ceiling, her eyes unfocused, and inhaled deeply. I watched her as she considered how much she might reveal. The mechanism of my mind was already whirring. The details she’d given me weren’t as insignificant as I’d made them sound, but I thirsted for more. She’d left too many gaps in the story, and my curiosity flooded into them, interrogating their shapes.

  ‘The finer points of this situation are very . . . sensitive,’ she said. ‘What assurance do I have that you’ll keep them confidential?’

  ‘If you’ve heard anything about me,’ I said, ‘you’ve heard that I’m discreet. I might buy information, but I don’t sell it. I do not partake of madira5 or any other intoxicants that may loosen my tongue. My profession depends on my reputation, which is in turn based on the fact that I’m true to my word. And you have my word.’

  She looked down, considering this. ‘What would you like to know?’ she said finally.

  I crossed my arms, trying not to seem too eager. ‘Hmm . . . I don’t know. How about you start with this gem?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What is it, exactly? I mean, I have guesses, but they’re all quite . . . fantastic.’

  She hesitated for a moment before saying, ‘It’s a nagamani.’

  I tried to be cool. ‘A nagamani . . . And you said it belonged to you?’

  She was gritting her teeth behind pursed lips and her nod was almost imperceptible. ‘It’s mine. I was born with it embedded in my hood.’

  I swallowed slowly, trying not to make my excitement apparent. Was this woman really telling me she was a naga?

  ‘Without it, I can’t turn back into my serpent form,’ she said, anxiety in her eyes. ‘I will be stuck in this body, and unable to return to my father’s abode in Patala.’

  ‘Your nagamani,’ I said, letting my tongue get used to this unfamiliar word, ‘why would someone steal it?’

  She looked incredulous. ‘Do you really not know?’ she said. ‘A nagamani is one of the most priceless magical objects in the world! Once properly installed in a home, it brings great fortune upon the resident.’

  ‘Fortune?’

  ‘Luck and wealth, and things in between.’

  ‘Hmm . . . and what do you mean, once it’s properly installed?’

  ‘The mani retains a connection to the naga who was born with it, so it’s not enough to just steal one. You have to establish ownership through a specific ritual.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘The ritual is a crude device—it upsets the natural order of things. Done right, it summons dark energies and causes strange weather phenomena.’

  ‘Interesting . . . so if we look for unseasonable weather, we may be able to track the gem?’

  She grimaced. ‘I’d rather it didn’t go that far. Also, the thief might want to sell it to someone in another city—how far would you go in search of “unseasonable weather”?’

  ‘Well, if he’s skipped town, I don’t know how much I could do anyway . . .’

  ‘He’s still here for now. I can tell you that much.’

  ‘How?’

  She touched a hand to her chest. ‘I can feel my mani. Its signal is weak, but it’s not yet out of reach. It’s in the city, and it hasn’t been installed.’

  I stood up and began pacing the length of my office. It’s a tiny room, no more than six dandas from the entrance to the door in the far wall, which opens up to my modest living quarters. You’ll usually find me sitting at my table, facing the door. There’s a south-facing window in the wall to the right and a large wooden shelf against the one to the left, crammed with objects and documents pertaining to my cases. And as I paced, I established a rather erratic circuit—one that often veered close to the table on which she sat.

  ‘How did the guy know that you were a naga? How did he know to steal the mani?’

  ‘He might have been watching me, caught me while I was . . . turning from serpent to human. He might then have followed me down Vasu’s Way. Like I said, I got into a few other scuffles down the road before he got to me. He might have guessed that I was a naga from the way I handled myself.’

  ‘What were you doing on Vasu’s Way anyhow?’

  ‘That’s . . . confidential.’

  I shrugged like it was no big deal. ‘So we’re looking for a slight-framed man, possessing enormous strength, who might want to use a shady ritual to instal a magical gem in his home. Or who might have sold the mani to someone intending to do the same.’

  She stood up and turned to watch me.

  ‘And this ritual, if it’s completed, will cause noticeably weird weather, so that’s something we could keep an eye out for.’

  ‘Yes, but I’d prefer it if we didn’t wait around until then. I’d like to find the thief before he palms the mani off.’

  ‘And what will you do once you find him?’

  She made a fist and cracked her knuckles against the palm of her other hand. ‘I’d rather not say,’ she answered. ‘But I have elaborate plans.’

  I was across the table from her now, staring at the ceiling as I walked. ‘Hmm . . .’ I said, trying to look like I was thinking deeply about something. I kept to the circuit that I’d been pacing, but this time stepped a bit too close to the table.

  ‘What if—’ I began before making a show of tripping against the table’s edge and falling forward within her reach.

  She extended an arm in my path and caught me across the abdomen. I felt like I’d run into a bar of iron. She didn’t even dip to let her back absorb the shock nor dropped her forearm with my body to soften the impact.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said and drew myself up, inhaling deeply to recover the air that she’d knocked out of me. She smirked at me knowingly, but didn’t comment.

  ‘I think I can help you out, client,’ I said. ‘I’ll accept your case.’

  ‘How long do you think it’ll take you to find the mani?’

  ‘I can’t promise anything. To be honest, you still haven’t given me much to go on.’

  She crossed over to the door and held it open. For a moment, I was afraid that she would try to leave without sorting out the business of payment, as so many prospective clients did. But she just stood there, the sunlight spilling on her face. After a while, her hand retrieved something from the silver girdle around her waist and tossed it towards me.

  I caught the little velvet pouch and loosened the drawstrings to peek inside. Three tiny stones shone for me, a little glimmer at each one’s core.

  I looked up, wide-eyed.

  ‘Gemstones from Patalaloka, the realm that I come from,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to give you this before our business was done, but I think they might help you find our man.’

  I nodded and pulled
the drawstrings tight. I’d heard the stories. The nether-realms, abode of the nagas and several demonic races, were said to have no skies and no sun. They were lit instead by the luminous gems that studded the walls and floors of their caverns. The most numerous of these were in Patala, the seventh and last layer of the nether-realms, where the nagas dwelt. The manis in the nagas’ hoods resonated with the gleaming gems, so that when they were in proximity, the glow within the gems flared, lighting the nagas’ path.

  ‘So if I get close to the stolen mani, these gems will let me know?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re less ignorant than I thought,’ she said with a smirk. ‘I hope you’ll accept these as a retainer. They might not be easy to sell, but for a man of your connections . . .’

  I touched the pouch to my forehead in a salute. It was true—though they were highly illegal to possess and trade, the money I could make by fencing these gems on the black market would keep me in business for a year.

  She was about to head out when something caught her eye. She pointed at the shelf on the north wall of my office, which I use to store all the items that I find professionally useful. It is always overfull, but I always manage to stuff more into it.

  ‘That’s a nice bow you’ve got there,’ she said, and I followed her gaze to the weapon leaning against the shelf, next to a quiver full of arrows. ‘Not from around here, is it?’

  I smiled. ‘It’s a recurve. Used by archers on horseback in Kamboja and further west.’

  ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘I made it myself,’ I said, and noticed a bit too late that I was standing with my chest puffed out, a big smile on my face. What am I trying to do? I thought, feeling stupid. Impress her?

  ‘You make bows,’ she said.

  ‘I saw a man make one once, and I just tried out his method when I got back home,’ I said, unable to stop bragging.

  ‘And it works?’

  ‘It works great.’

  ‘Strange,’ she said. ‘Everything on that shelf’s caked with dust apart from that bow and that quiver. I’d imagined such a weapon isn’t much use to a man without a thumb,’ she said.

  I rubbed my chin with my right hand, in an attempt to show that I hadn’t been trying to hide that it was missing a digit. ‘You’d be surprised,’ I said.

  She gave me a half-smile, and left my doorway looking as empty as it ever had.

  I spent the next half hour getting my things together and setting up charms around my office.

  I’ve never bothered to learn much about the mystical arts, but I’ve gathered from experience that it’s important to at least know how to protect yourself from them. Over the years, I’ve hung around a lot of paranoid men who were dealing with (or thought they were dealing with) entities that were not quite human, and I’ve done my best to absorb some of the basic techniques they used. Now whenever I am on a job, I try to keep my guard up.

  I strung evil-eye amulets from the door handle—talismans against forces that meant me harm—and drew an ugly diagram just inside the doorway with rice flour—a yantra6 to guard against magical intrusion. I’m not much for presentation, but I tried to make sure my designs worked.

  I retrieved my coin-pouch from the safe that was hidden in an alcove behind the shelf. In the safe there was also a tiny little thing that I thought might be useful to me at some point in this game. I swiped it between two fingers and dropped it into the coin-pouch, which I wore openly at my waist. The velvet pouch with the gemstones from Patala I tucked into a fold in my antariya, ensuring that it was concealed and secure.

  I decided against taking my bow. Today was going to be about legwork and wagging tongues. The dirty stuff would come later.

  Shastri Adridev sold goods used in religious rituals, and his shop on Sura Street never had any customers. None that came for the wares it displayed, anyway.

  ‘Napping on the job, old man!’ I said as I ducked through the narrow doorway into a room that was half filled with Adridev’s bulk. He was spread out on a divan behind a small display case, his head resting on a stack of cushions. He snored in extended grunts and whistles, blowing his ashy moustache and snow-white beard in and out.

  Startled by my voice, he awoke and squinted in the darkness. Then a goofy smile spread across his face and he greeted me enthusiastically.

  ‘It’s been a while!’ he said. ‘When was the last time you came by? To consult on the matter of some dark ritual or the other, I believe.’

  ‘Why else would anyone pay you a visit?’ I retorted, squeezing myself on to the little stool across from the display case. ‘Certainly not for the company.’

  He sniggered, raised himself to a sitting position and readjusted the cushions behind his back.

  ‘It was two months and nine days ago,’ I said. ‘And I wanted to know about the curdling curse that had been inflicted on that dairy farmer in Chedi.’

  ‘Ah . . . yes, yes,’ he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. ‘None can match you in precision, my friend. So, what can I do for you today?’

  ‘I’m afraid today’s business is a lot more confidential, so I can’t offer too many details.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What do you know about the installation ritual for stolen nagamanis?’

  Adridev’s eyebrows slowly came together in a frown, and then he giggled like a child. ‘A nagamani! Please tell me you’re not helping move one of those!’

  ‘Hey, I said I couldn’t tell.’

  ‘Well, if you are, I’d advise you to forget about it. Nagamanis are incredibly hard to come by, and there are a thousand forgeries floating around in the black market at any given time. If I had a mudra7 for every man who claimed to be selling an authentic naga gem . . .’ He raised his hands to the sky and grinned.

  ‘You know me better than that,’ I said, leaning forward. ‘I asked about the ritual, not about the mani.’

  ‘What do you want to know? It’s just a ritual, like any other, except for the storm it’s supposed to end with.’

  ‘What kind of supplies would you need for one, for instance?’

  ‘Hmm . . .’ He brought out a thick manuscript from under the mattress of the divan and flipped through it. ‘Naabhi . . . naadi . . . ah . . . nagamani!’ he said, finally putting his finger on the right page. ‘Here it is.’ He put the book on the surface of the display case and spun it around for me.

  On it, in Adridev’s almost unintelligible scrawl, was a list of about thirty-five items, fifteen of which were standard fare in any attempt to please the gods.

  I sighed and slid it back to him. ‘Quite a few illegal items there,’ I said. ‘Must be difficult to acquire.’

  Adridev smiled. ‘Want a quill and some parchment?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said, tapping my right temple. ‘I’ve got the list right here.’

  He raised his eyebrows and then laughed heartily. ‘I keep forgetting about that steel-trap brain of yours. Handy thing, isn’t it?’

  I shrugged.

  He bent forward, leaning against the display case on his elbows. ‘Since you’re a friend,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I might as well tell you my personal opinion about this particular ritual.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘I think most of these items are bogus,’ he said. ‘Padding added by pandits over the years for fun and profit, or just auxiliary stuff meant to reinforce the binding. The invocations themselves are very simple—crude, almost—and the incantations involved cover everything. A simple fire and the requisite mandala should be enough to get it done. The reason the installations usually fail is, of course, that the manis are fake, but people are always trying to find other excuses when they’ve paid their life savings for a worthless stone.’

  I nodded gravely, making a show of taking him seriously. I hadn’t come to Adridev for his technical opinions. I’d come to him because he was the biggest trafficker of contraband supplies for practitioners of dark magic. ‘Anyone visited you with this particular list of requirements recently,
though?’

  ‘You know it!’ he said, displaying brown teeth and blood-red gums. ‘Like I said, it’s one of the most common scams out there. In fact, I made a delivery just this morning.’

  ‘Care to give me a name and address?’

  ‘For a man of your discretion, no problem,’ he said, still grinning. ‘I assume you’ll be billing the client . . .’

  I got to the storehouse that Adridev had directed me to at almost the same time as the scrawny pandit who was supposed to be conducting the ceremony. The tall, stooping merchant who had hired him wasn’t happy about having to wait, lugging around so many illicit ritual supplies and what might be one of the most precious stones in the world, and he quibbled with the pandit outside the building, giving me time to find a hiding place.

  I crawled in through a skylight and found a shadowed corner in the rafters that I could squeeze myself into. The ritual began almost immediately after I’d settled in for the long wait.

  The pandit placed the gem on the floor at roughly the geometric centre of the storehouse and drew a mandala around it in charcoal, which he then annotated with runes in sacred ash. The fire was kindled in a brick havankund8 set up to the west of the gem, and an identical mandala was drawn around it. Then the pandit sat between the fire and the mandala, facing south, and arranged in front of himself nine rectangles of cloth in three rows of three, each dyed a different colour. On every one of these, he placed an offering to a different god and then began the rite, chanting invocations and pouring ghee into the fire. From time to time, he would unwrap a grisly looking ingredient from the lot that Adridev had delivered and toss it into the fire.

  The smoke hurt my eyes and the pandit’s loud monotone made me sleepy, but the series of cramps working their way up my right leg kept me straight. It seemed to take forever, but I finally recognized a series of mantras that were typically used to end rituals intended for the transfer of ownership. Soon, the pandit fell silent and then waited.

  ‘That’s it?’ asked the merchant, who had been glancing at the door furtively the whole time. ‘Is it done?’