The Clarity of Cold Steel

MISS DEVAR’S LOVELY in painted-on, high-necked, dark green velvet, and that about tallies up the triumphs of my day so far. It’s nearing dusk, and I’m once again at the shitheel’s office. Chirag. He’s standing back from his table when I enter, glowering over a portrait of himself glaring down from on high. It seems a fairly expensive piece; it’s large, well-formed and accentuates the finer complexities of his minute, troll-like rigidity. The frame is tapped bronze. He could have probably fed an entire Malabar clan for a year for what that monstrosity cost, but then, when I had the scratch to cobble together such frivolities, I wasn’t dropping it at the food bank, either.

“Looks just like you.” I slide through the doorway, Miss Devar holding it open for me. I brush past her. Decadent.

“Mister Shakteel…” She lowers her eyes.

“Miss Devar,” I reply. She smells simply ethereal.

Chirag doesn’t turn when I enter his office; he just stands there, admiring himself, hand poised to chin. An abysmal state of affairs all around. “Do you think it lends an air of … stature to the office?”

“Certainly, Mister Khanna,” Miss Devar answers immediately.

“And you, Mister Shakteel?”

“It certainly lends an air of something,” I offer.

Miss Devar stiffens, adjusts her glasses, stifling a giggle, and there it is, I’ve won the day.

Chirag turns, eyebrow raised, frown fixed.

“I’d move it to the west wall, over here.” I point at the opposite wall for clarification. “Across from Shiva. Then it’s the first thing you see when you walk in, and the light catches it,” I hold up my hands, creating a frame with my fingers and ’see’ the portrait there, “just so.”

Chirag holds my gaze for a moment, trying to suss out whether I’m being straight or flippant — joke’s on him, I’m being both. “That will be all, Miss Devar.” He waves a hand, and she’s off like a shot out the door as Chirag takes his seat. And I mine. “What is it you want?”

“Did the man in the iron mask visit you here?”

“What?” Pouring himself a drink, he spills a bit. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

He pads his desk dry with a handkerchief. “I think I would remember.” From within a desk drawer, he removes a bottle of pills, sets it on his desk. I can practically hear my liver groan. “Here.”

“Okay.” I just stare at him for a moment, ignoring the pills even though I’m running lean. Distraction tactic. “What was it prompted you to reconnect with your brother?”

“I told you before, Gortham’s profile alerted me.” He leans forward, glaring me down. “Besides, is two decades of estrangement not enough?”

“Ask my family.”

He takes a drink. Doesn’t offer me one or answer my question. “Are we going to rehash everything we’ve already trod over?”

I wave a hand, cut to the chase. “This look familiar?” I pull Gortham’s data-board profile from my inner coat pocket, dangle it in front of his flaccid mug.

Chirag presses his lips together and leans forward, takes the data-board in hand. He lowers his glasses and looks over them, inspecting it. He turns the board over, shrugs. “It’s a data board,” he says, and not without the prerequisite condescension.

“It’s Gortham’s. His profile.”

“And…?”

“And?” I scoff. “What’s it say?”

“I can’t read it.” He shakes his head. “Really. The sheer amount of information—”

“I know you can’t read it. Where’s your difference engine? Run it through.”

“I’m running a business here, Mister Shakteel. I can’t divert its energies to satisfy your little curiosities. Now take the pills and—”

“Sure,” I glance up at his illustrious new portrait, raise an eyebrow, “you’re barely scraping by.”

Chirag follows my gaze, stutters to a halt, copping wise. “So what is it you need to know?”

“That’s the trick. Might not know until after I know it. So I need to know something, anything, everything. I know who took him, but I need to know why the hell they took him, too. What is it about Gortham that made it worthwhile for someone big — and they had to be someone big — to snatch him. My current theory is that the someone big needed a match for something and Gortham was it.”

Chirag stares with reptilian eyes. He blinks. Finally.

“Can you do that?”

He studies the data-board tepidly then nods. “Certainly.” He presses a button on his desk. Hopefully, it’s the Miss Devar button and not the Kalighat-killer button. “It will take a short while.”

The door behind me opens, and, blessedly, Miss Devar saunters into the office; the word walk just doesn’t do what she does justice. “Mister Khanna?”

Chirag waves the data-board in his hand impatiently. “Run this for possible matches,” he says. “Donors, recipient, and otherwise. Anyone in the system. Have it tabulated and printed.”

Grin flashing, I raise a cool hand and Miss Devar nods ever so slightly and exits.

“You should say please to her.” I turn back on the troll. “I’d say please. And I’d say thank you.”

“I’ve had about enough of your shenanigans, Mister Shakteel.” As Chirag speaks through gritted teeth, I can only think of the mechanical hackles rising on his dog Kali as she pounced at the monstrosity in that pit. Then the aftermath as they mopped up what was left of her.

I lean back and throw my feet up on his desk. My boots are muddy. I made sure of that before I came it.

Chirag’s eyes nearly bug out of his head as he stands and swipes back the pills, stuffing them in his overcoat pocket. “Have you forgotten your place?” Spittle flies from his mouth.

“Nope.” I hold up a hand. “I’m rock bottom but moving on up.” I grin expectantly at the cradle holding the data-cards. “Just wanted to sit here and watch you move me back up to the top of the queue.”

“Mister Shakteel—”

“How’s my Kshatriya liver doing?” I cross my legs, rub my hands together. “All ready to go?”

“Mister Shakteel, I suffered a considerable loss that evening. I would think—”

“Sure, and I suffered a considerable win.” I stand, pointing at the queue. “And we had a deal, so move me back up to the top.”

“Mister Shakteel, I was inebriated that night—”

“And so was I.”

“Be that as it may, the Kshatriya liver you have apparently pinned all of your earthly hopes on has fallen by the wayside.”

“Huh…?”

“A tragic story, really.” Not so tragic as he makes out, though, cause his prim lips are stretching into a quivering rictus. “It seems the young gentleman was cloven with a weapon that was not properly maintained. Rusty and such. Our young lad’s wound became septicemic, you see? He passed in the night.”

“Septicemic?” I collapse back into the chair.

“Blood poisoning,” he explains. “I did all that could be done for him, but in the end, it just wasn’t enough.” He smirks and we stare at each other for an uncomfortable length of time.

“Can I have those pills, then?” I have no shame, I know.

Chirag continues glaring silently until a light knock sounds at the door. “Come in.”

Miss Devar reenters, approaches, leans past me, closer than I think necessary, and places a thin sheaf of papers on the desk. “The summary is on top, Mister Khanna.” Chirag casually lifts the top sheet and rolls an eyeball over it. “The rest is printing.”

I glance over my shoulder at Miss Devar, standing at attention.

“Ahem…” Chirag clears his throat in that way that says ’stop leering at my property,’ and I turn my vaunted attentions back upon him.

“Well?” I ask. “Anything special about him?”

“Besides being my kin?” Chirag lowers the paper. “No. Nothing.”

“How about any matches?”

“None.”

“And how many people are in the system?”

“Thousands, tens of thousands,” he answers without hesitation, taking up the next page. “I’ve compiled all of my donors and recipients as well as any bulletins that have crossed my path. It’s a considerable database spanning years.”

“And what are the chances of a perfect match?”

Miss Devar coughs politely.

“Not good, Mister Shakteel.” Chirag smiles up at her as he tosses me his handkerchief. “Now clean off my desk.”