Oath Bound (Book 3) (10 page)

Jimmy came up behind and
opened it. “There we are, Vandis!” he said, beaming with every inch of his
gums. “Ready for another busy day, I hope!”

“Mm. Not really, but
let’s make the best of it. Who’s first today?”

“Zoltan Miro at ten o’
the clock, and shall I change out the coffee pot for you?”

“You’re a prince among
secretaries if you do,” Vandis said, feeling grandiose now that he’d dealt with
Reed, and Jimmy cackled.

“Right away, Vandis, two
shakes.” Jimmy hustled in to take the coffee pot Vandis had used last night
away for washing, and Vandis settled in to work and nibble at his breakfast.
He’d sort of thought to leave the door open today, but Jimmy shut him in like
always, and he found he preferred it that way. “Now you be sure to keep me in
filing work!” his secretary scolded when he returned to hang the kettle on the
pothook and swing it over the hearth, and went off chuckling at his own joke.
Vandis rolled his eyes, but he laughed a little, too. The apocalypse might’ve
taken the shine off Jimmy’s cheer—might’ve.

Zoltan wasn’t due for
half an hour, or so he estimated from the slight change in the square of light
from the window, when a voice drifted in from just outside his door. His ears
opened.

“…Vail,” was the only
word he caught.

“Do you have an
appointment?” Jimmy asked brightly—it couldn’t be Zoltan. That was the
hell-if-you-do tone.

“We’ll see him now.”

Vandis scowled and came
out around the desk just as the latch lifted from the outside.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,
were I you!” Jimmy said, the brightness in his voice untarnished.

“Old man, be silent, or
share the judgment,” said a second man, and the door opened. They were hooded,
dressed all in black, and the first into the room wore a sword on his hip. As
one, they reached into their cloaks, and Vandis knew what they’d show him an
instant before they each drew out the copper disk-and-rays of the Order of
Aurelius.

“Vandis Vail!” the one in
the lead shouted, throwing out a hand. “I say unto you—”

“I say unto
you,
make a damned appointment. I’ll tell you to get out,” he said, thumbing his own
sword loose, “but I’m really hoping you’ll refuse.”

“Repent, I say!” the monk
howled. “Repent of serving the demoness Akeere, and you may yet—”

Vandis drew. “
What
did you call my Lady?”

“Repent and be redeemed!
Repent or be judged!”

“Come on and judge me
then.” They might even make a mess on some of these papers. That’d be a prime
excuse to toss them on the fire. Vandis was all in favor—but both monks turned
and started back through the main office. The thought of Aurelians on the loose
in Headquarters chilled him. “Get back here!” he yelled, taking a few steps
after them. “I’m not finished throwing your asses out!”

“We
will
come for
you,” the Mendicant said over his shoulder. “It isn’t given to you to know the
hour, but—”

Vandis grabbed the first
thing that came to hand: Jimmy’s heavy glass paperweight. “Right fucking now!”
he screamed, and hurled the paperweight. It thudded into the side of the monk’s
face, knocking him down. “Man to man! We’ll see who serves his Lady better!”
The Militant caught his injured Brother around the middle before he hit the
floor and hustled him out onto the balcony. Vandis bolted after, but he’d only
made the balcony by the time they hit the next floor down. He’d never catch
them, not on his legs. Knights poked their heads out of rooms along the balcony
or ran past—taller Knights, with better chances of catching up.

Vandis waited for a clear
space. He dashed across to the balustrade, slapped a hand to the railing, and
vaulted over into space, invoking a breath of his gift to arc wide, slow his
fall, so he landed with a satisfying thud in front of the portal from entry to
mess. “Boy, get the Watch!” he bellowed at Lukas Kalt, who leapt up from behind
one of the desks and darted out the front doors. Vandis’s heart thundered with
excitement. A target at last, two of them; they’d come and all but mooned him,
unlike Lech Valitchka, sitting pretty in Muscoda where no Knight could reach.

He pivoted on his heel
toward the ends of the tables. His face stretched, for a moment, into a savage
grin. Most of the benches were empty now, and Knights crowded the bottom of the
stairs, waiting for the Aurelian Brothers, who’d stopped in the middle of the
lowest flight. The Militant looked behind him to the Knights pursuing, released
his Brother—who groaned and tumbled to the bottom—and drew his sword.

The air snapped and
sizzled. Nobody moved. “The Watch is coming!” Vandis called. “Do you want to
make it murder, too?”

“For my Queen!” the
Militant Brother cried, sword high, legs poised to pounce. Vandis bounded two
steps before he loosed himself into the air like an arrow from a bow. He caught
the Aurelian at the apex of the leap, just when the sword began to fall, right
in the stomach—right in the breastplate. Vandis yelped with sudden pain. His
shoulder hadn’t even finished popping free of its socket when he drove the
Brother into the staircase. Amidst the cracking of risers, the sword came down
on Vandis’s back, a burning line from shoulder to opposite hip. Awkward angle
for a blow, but it sliced through jerkin, tunic, and skin.

Vandis grunted and
stretched his neck up, searching for the Brother’s sword arm with his free
hand. The monk thrashed, struggling with his thick weight. Another riser broke.
The monk shifted down, and so did Vandis.

“Hold still! Hold—”

With a mighty, crashing
crack, the staircase gave. The Brother fell, but came to a jerking halt with
his cloak tight in Vandis’s fist and his legs flopping beneath. Vandis clung
desperately with his good hand, pushing
up
with all his strength through
the strain in his arm and the tearing pain along his back. For a heartbeat,
they hung there. The broken boards crashed to the cellar floor. Vandis began to
sink, borne down by the Aurelian fighting to get loose. He fought to slow their
fall, groaning between his teeth.

Footsteps thundered
across the floor above. The Brother’s feet were about a yard and a half over
the rammed-earth floor when Vandis had to drop him. He thumped into a gasping
heap and snapped his eyes up to Vandis’s form. “What are you planning to do
with me?” he snapped. “What rite will you—”

“Shut—the fuck—up,”
Vandis said, landing on his feet, still gasping in agony. He wouldn’t shit
right for a week after that stunt.

The sword flashed in the
light that poured down from above, and he stamped hard on the monk’s blade
hand. His reward was a crunch and a scream. “Nice gratitude. I like it,” he
said, swaying. His tunic stuck to his skin. The wet chilled him, and he cupped
his right elbow—the bad one—in his left hand. The Knights from the mess charged
down into the cellar. Somebody brushed his right arm, and he cried out.

“Now, watch out, watch
out for our Vandis!” someone else bellowed. Alf, he was pretty sure. “Come on,
Vandis, let’s get you up to hospital, you’re bleeding like a stuck hog.” Vandis
staggered to the stairs with Alf hovering behind. One foot in front of the
other. When he poked his head out of the cellar door to one side of the mess
hall, he found several Watchmen and short, round Zoltan in his plain dress,
staring at him.

With Alf steadying him,
he managed to climb out of the trapdoor and stand in front of them.

“This is a bad time,
isn’t it?” Zoltan asked.

“I think,” Vandis said
slowly, “I think—we’re going to need to reschedule.” And then he went flat on
his face.

Fort Rule

Krakus rolled up his
sleeves. The morning sunlight warmed his skin and glinted off the dark brown
surface of the lustral bath. Frothy green scum drifted peacefully across the
fetid water. He made a face at it and decided to roll up his breeches legs a little
farther—not that it would help much when he got in chest-deep.

This needed doing, and it
wasn’t a task he’d wish on the worst of malefactors.
Maybe Lech.
He
thought about the unpleasant sermon Lech had preached at service. Well, he
assumed it was unpleasant. One mention of Glorious Muscoda, Beloved of the
Queen, and Krakus had closed his ears.

He sighed and walked down
the center of the stone steps into the bath. Couldn’t be too careful; pond
slime grew along the edges of the steps where feet didn’t usually fall, brought
in with the river water. There was a plate down here somewhere that covered the
drain. Probably in the middle. He’d never actually seen the thing, but he
figured it must be there. He searched with his toes, grimacing at the slimy
stone floor under his soles. Usually, in the morning, he tried not to notice
this stuff. He just got in, held his nose, dunked his head, and got out again,
but it was too disgusting now, after half a summer of sitting.

How was a guy supposed to
get cleansed and purified by a mosquito-infested, stagnant bath? It didn’t make
sense
.
He couldn’t stand it any longer, and besides, he wanted to do
something he didn’t have to think about, to use his muscles instead of his
brain. He always was better at that. He’d already sworn out a bounty on
Droshky—the best he could think to do—and made sure the order, stamped with his
personal seal in white wax with gold flecks, went out with the post. He’d
scheduled interviews for the Director of Medicine’s position. He thought he’d
earned the chance to mark something a little simpler off his list, even if it
was
disgusting.

At last, he found the
plate at the center of the bath by its shifting to his probing toes. He pushed
it aside to expose the drain, which went to work in a hurry. At least the thing
wasn’t covered with a grate, as he discovered when he put his foot into it and
nearly fell. He wouldn’t have to stand here with a stick to poke things
through.

Krakus waded to the edge
of the tub and got out while it drained. He sat in the sun, drying his smelly
clothes. The sinking water gradually revealed the walls, which sight tied his
stomach in a knot. No, this couldn’t be right. Patches of black and green
coated the stone, shining with wet.
Penance, Krakus
, he reminded himself.
It’s penance. Think of it that way and maybe you won’t puke.

It took nearly an hour
for the tub to drain completely. It was, after all, big enough for ten monks at
once. Before it had finished Krakus had grown bored and started to fetch
buckets of clean water from the well in Section Three. He already had a bucket
of sand and a bar of brown soap, and a scrub brush besides, not to mention a
trowel of the kind the plasterers used: all benefits of making friends with the
staff—and, since Nadia had died, he’d started helping them. He was doing it for
his sins, but now, all he needed to say was, “I’ve got a project. What do I
need to do this?” and the servants sprang to help him. He’d found he liked
working with his hands nearly as much as he liked teaching, but beyond that, it
was damned good to feel useful now and then, rather than a fat slug who ate,
played with silly little toys, and left all the work to someone else.

Now that the tub had
drained, Krakus climbed into it again and began on the mammoth task of scraping
the layers of horrible off the walls with the trowel. Blobs of algae and bits
of mold landed around his bare feet, and he wished he could hold his nose, but
that wouldn’t help; his hands had already been in it, and besides, it would
just take longer that way. He gritted his teeth, and before too long he’d
gotten used to it. He scraped away, and a little while into the afternoon he’d
finished with that part of the job, at least.

He used the water in his
buckets to rinse what he could down the drain. Now for the scrubbing. He was
just getting into it with soap, sand, and scrub brush when young Fillip came
along. “Father Krakus, you’ve missed dinner—what are you
doing?
”

Krakus shrugged and kept
scrubbing his way down a section of the stone wall. “I guess I am a bit
hungry,” he admitted.

“Father—you—this—”

“Needs to be done.”

“You can’t!”

“Can,” Krakus said, with
satisfaction. “Am.”

“But Father!”

Krakus turned to the
young Militant, raising two fingers. “You can go away, or you can help. Those
are your only two options.”

“Oh, well, I’ll help, of
course I’ll help,” Fillip said, hurrying for the steps.

“Hold on. I’d take those
boots off, Brother.”

“Oh! Oh. I’ll get another
brush, first, shouldn’t I, Father Krakus?”

“Probably.” Krakus looked
at the river sand he was using to scrub. It’d tear up a man’s hands; he’d
already gotten a couple of abrasions where he wasn’t careful. “Yeah.”

Fillip dashed off across
the lawn to the kitchens, calling, “I’ll be right back!” Krakus laughed to
himself and fell to scrubbing. Fillip did come right back, and flopped down on
the scrubby, summer-bleached grass to pull off his boots and stockings. When he
came down into the tub, he looked furtively around before leaning closer to say
in an undertone, “This thing’s nasty! What a good idea, Father!”

“My least favorite part
of the morning,” Krakus confided, in the same undertone. “I don’t think it’s
supposed to be like this, do you?”

Fillip, wide-eyed, shook
his head vigorously. “No—no, I don’t think it is, but I don’t know who’s
supposed to clean it!”

“We are, I think. The
monks.”

“Probably.” Fillip made a
face, and they put their backs into it, working clear around the walls by
midafternoon. Krakus scrubbed the cornered junctures of walls and floor, and
Fillip started on the bottom.

People crossed through
the yard on this business or that, but nobody had the poor taste to comment, or
the good grace to offer help. That was all right by Krakus. He enjoyed Fillip’s
company and his occasional jokes, not to mention the way he laughed at the
jokes Krakus told—but then, ever since Krakus had started working with the
other Militants, Fillip had been his favorite, and not just because Fillip
cleaned his armor and oiled his weapons. He was quieter than most of the young
Militants, and shyer, but he was a dab hand with a mace, and getting better
with a longsword by the day. Krakus appreciated him. He smiled wider, ate
heartier, since they’d become, what? Friends?

Maybe. If he could be
friends with someone he so far outranked. If he couldn’t fool himself that
Fillip would share real confidences with him, or joke around with him the same
way as with the others, at least he could pretend; and if they weren’t exactly
friends
,
they were friendly. It might be nice to have someone with whom position wasn’t
an issue, but the only one available for that was—well, it was Lech, and that
wagon train had long since—

“Krakus!”

He drew in breath through
his nose, which was a mistake. The tub smelled a lot better, but it didn’t
smell good by any stretch of the imagination. Krakus stood, well aware that
sandy suds dripped off the bottoms of his breeches where he’d been kneeling in
the mess, and ran down the fronts of his shins. Lech was fully, formally
vested, like always, and sweat beaded on his upper lip. He wore his
near-constant smelled-something-foul expression. Krakus wondered if his face
really
had
frozen that way, like Mom had warned. “Yes, Lech?”

“What are you doing?”

He spread his arms, at least
until he noticed his brush dripping filthy suds onto Fillip’s neck. He folded
them instead. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks as if you’re…”
Lech’s face soured even further. Maybe it wasn’t frozen. “…scrubbing.”

“Good eye.” He lowered
himself again. His knees hurt like a bitch, he noticed, now that he’d been off
them. Sometimes he wished he’d figured things out before he got so old.

“Abasing yourself, when
you ought to be—”

“Shut up,” Krakus said
evenly.

Lech stiffened. “Your
position requires slightly more dignity than a scullion’s, though I am certain
you would find the scullion’s job more suited to your abilities.”

“I’m serving how I can.”
Krakus scrubbed doggedly at a stubborn spot of black mold. “How did you serve
today?”

“I find it ironic that a
man who—”

“Look, Lechie, I’ll give
you the same choices I gave Fillip here. Either you help, or you go away.”

“You—”

“Standing around making
snide comments is
not
one of your options!” Krakus roared. Lech spun on
his sandaled heel, and presented with his back, Krakus couldn’t resist. He
whipped the scrub-brush overhand. It smacked between Lech’s shoulder blades,
leaving a sandy, filthy smear on his snowy vestments when it fell.

Lech squawked and
staggered. He whirled on Krakus with a look like a freezing blast.

Krakus smiled sunnily.

“Don’t be late for
service,” Lech snarled, and he turned again and stormed away, arms rigid at his
sides, hands in white-knuckle fists.

Krakus struggled up again
and reached out of the tub for his brush. “Asshole,” he muttered, returning to
his work.

Fillip choked on a laugh.