Oath Bound (Book 3) (12 page)

“You give up?”

Tai scowled again and
went back for more. He tried three times, and seized a sizeable fish each time,
but couldn’t lift them out of the water. “They is too big!” he squalled,
crouching in the water, as if it was Dingus’s fault.

“Try a littler one. It
counts just as much.”

“I can do it as good as
you is!”

“I bet you can,” Dingus
said. “It’s a matter of proportion. Look at these fish I got. They’re bigger
than you are! But to me they’re not that big at all. If you got a little fish,
it’d be real small to me, but plenty big to you. See what I mean?”

“I is think.”

“Little fish,” he added,
“are a lot faster than big ones.”

Tai went back at it. On
the second try, he came up with a minnow. A couple of those would make a nice
meal for a tiny Ishling. “I is do it, Dingus, look!”

“Hey-la-hey, you sure
did!”

He hopped over to give
Dingus the prize, and Dingus pushed it down on the needle, right through its
eyes. He didn’t want to ruin the meat, so he didn’t pull it down onto the
twine.

“I got a royal says you
can’t get another.”

“If I gets another fish,
you is give me a whole royal?”

Dingus took a silver coin
from his pocket and turned it so it flashed in the dim. “It’s a bet, and I’m
gonna bet you can’t do it.”
Sucker bet,
he thought, suppressing his grin
at the gleam in Tai’s eye. “You prove you can…”

“I is win the royal.”

“That’s right.”

Tai all but dove back
into the water. No more than five minutes, and he brought another minnow.
Dingus paid up. Best royal he’d ever lost—and Tai smelled a hell of a lot
better.

“Think you could do that
on your own?”

The Ishling shook himself,
scattering water from his fur. “I gets the way of it.”

“C’mon then,” Dingus
said. He picked up his boots and jerkin and extended his hand. Tai leapt on and
scampered up his arm to perch on his shoulder. He set off for the camp under
the cedars. Tai huddled, shivering, against his neck.

“We isn’t go to market?”

“Naw. You can eat these
little guys raw,” he said, holding up the needle with the two minnows stuck on
it, “but they won’t taste half as good. I’ll show you how to fix ’em up, and
then if you got time you can do it, and if you don’t you can just slurp ’em
down. Once we all eat, I’ll take you back to the market.”

“Okay,” Tai said, with a
resigned sigh. “But you is trick me. I says I isn’t want, so you is say I
can’t
.
And then I is have to.”

“You mad?”

“Not lots.” Tai muttered,
“I isn’t know why I isn’t, but I isn’t,” which Dingus probably wasn’t meant to
hear.

Not everybody’s cruel,
he wanted to say.
Not everybody’s out to get what they can and leave you
bleeding.
He thought about all Vandis had done for him in the past year,
everything he’d seen with his Master; about what it was like to have somebody
give a damn just because they gave one, and not because they were kin.

Dingus walked the rest of
the way to the camp in silence, with Tai pressed quiet to his neck.

Dingus—with his soft eyes
and his clean clothes and his Vandis, whatever a Vandis was—didn’t know much.
He was crazy for sure, with his pigshit stories. The
hituleti
was
interesting, and like a dummy, he used his money to share food, so Tai stuck
around a little every day. Sometimes when he thought about Dingus’s stupid
stories, they didn’t sound so much like pigshit, but Dingus didn’t know much.

Tai had thought so, anyway.
After today he was starting to think maybe Dingus knew more than he showed.
Food with no stealing, food with no money at all, and he’d taught Tai to get
it, and how to take away all the parts that didn’t taste good, with his
humongous hands guiding Tai’s. And Tai sort of liked Dingus, well, really liked
him, just couldn’t help it. He had funny ears, and he was as tall as one of the
giants in his pigshit stories, and he ran so
fast!
He even let Tai ride
on his shoulder, which was warm, and didn’t complain about how bad Tai stank.
And he brought Tai to his sleeping place.

That was a lot of trust,
because there was money here. Tai knew it. This wasn’t a poor place. He knew
the Boss Man would want him to find it, to bring back as much as he could
carry, but he didn’t
want
to take from Dingus. He just wanted to be
here. Probably that was stupid, but he couldn’t make himself really consider
taking money, not when he’d have to look into Dingus’s face afterward.

Kessa didn’t like it, him
being here. Tai had seen that much right away. Kessa knew a little better what
was what and how things worked, but she humored crazy Dingus all the time. She
was over on the other side of the nurse log doing some weird Big thing that
involved lying on her stomach and pushing herself up on her arms over and over
again.

Dingus had showed him how
to make a spit and put some of the fish on it, but he had also showed Tai how
to wrap the fish in wet leaves and put them on a rock right next to the fire.
It was easier, Dingus said. He’d given Tai a salmon bun when they got back to
camp, but it fell all the way to the bottom of his empty stomach. After he’d
eaten that, and the little fish he caught, he was still hungry, always hungry.
is nice, like Dingus is nice, but when your stomach gets empty again you feel
it more, and when Dingus goes away and your real life comes back, you feel that
more too,>
he thought, being clean and warm by the fire and smelling the
fish on the spit. He was going to get in trouble. Laben would thrash him for
sure. It felt worth it, but after this he definitely wouldn’t be able to have
any more Dingus Times. He would make Dingus understand. Somehow.

For now, though, he could
sit here warm and look forward to an even bigger fish supper, and listen to
Dingus sing to himself in his deep, soft voice, a song in
hituleti
.

After a while Kessa
finished with her weirdness and came to sit by them. “Will you tell me a story,
Dingus?”

“Sure,” he said. “You
want a new one?”

Kessa shook her head and
her springy orange curls flew around her face. “I want one about our Lady.”

“Let me think of one.” He
turned the spit around and around, for a long time. Then he cleared his throat
and said, in his pigshit story voice that sounded magic, if Tai let it sink
into his bones: “Now hear this. A long time ago, before the Bearded Ones sold
Men the secret of steel, the Lady Akeere was new in Her power and walking,
without ever stopping or sleeping, along the Golden Road. Nobody’d learned Her
name yet, and nobody called on Her as a goddess, but already three times She’d
walked around the whole world, and every time She took a step, She saw
something new. The road sloped up over mountains and dived into valleys. She
crossed places that had never seen snow and walked through lands where the snow
and ice never melted. The world amazed Her, and since nobody called Her name
for help or to worship, She never yet had seen anything to make Her angry.

“One day She came to a
huge tree in Her path, a cedar, but taller and thicker times a hundred than any
other cedar in the world. The Road ran up to it, and ran on behind it, but She
didn’t want to step off long enough to go around, because it was so thick even
two hundred men together couldn’t have embraced it.”

Tai shut his eyes,
imagining the cedar.

Dingus went on. “There
was only one thing the Lady could do. She tied Her magic walking stick over Her
shoulder and set Her foot in the first hold She saw. For days and nights and
nights and days She climbed, while the sun swept overhead and while the stars
turned in their spheres. She heard the music the heavens make and saw every
beautiful thing in the skies. She climbed for a year and a day, and when She
got to the top, She was in the Hall of Heaven.

“Naheel the Queen was
there on Her golden throne, and Oda King of Hell lurked around the fringes,
wearing his shifting mask of shadow and light that changed like the moon. There
was Kradon, Old Man War, with all His bastard sons, and Elemer and Cerama all
wrapped around and into each other, staring into each other’s eyes. Hadrok and
Dareen were there, who the Lady had known as gods since childhood: Hadrok with
His cruel spear of ice, which is named Winter, and Dareen wearing Her shining
blue cloak that was all the oceans and seas in the world. Reeda was there
pruning a rosebush, and Vard; of course Vard was drunk, slurping right from the
bung of His never-empty ale keg.

“When Lady Akeere saw
Them all, for the first time She knew a goddess’s wrath. In the middle of the
great Hall there was a table so big, it was the whole world. When She looked at
it She saw all the peoples that lived there, struggling and toiling and crying
out with the pain of being alive, and the gods weren’t doing a thing, even
though the people called to Them again and again. They were idle, and it made
Her shout! ‘Why are You all just sitting around? Can’t You see all the people?
Can’t You hear them calling Your names?’

“‘Little Sister,’ Naheel
told the Lady, ‘whether We listen to them or not, it’s all the same, and it
goes on like it always has. The world takes care of itself. Come and sit with
Us.’

“‘No,’ said Lady Akeere.
‘I can’t sit idle while there’s so much work to be done. Come with Me, Brothers
and Sisters, and We’ll work together to make the world better!’

“‘We will not,’ said
Naheel Queen of Heaven, and Oda said so too. Their hearts were hard from being
gods so long, and seeing all the pain and suffering in the world on Their
table.

“Akeere understood She
couldn’t do much here; all the gods were too busy doing nothing, but now that
She’d seen all the world together, and seen how much trouble there was in it,
She thought that Her heart must be bleeding. ‘I won’t let them suffer alone,’
She said, and walked past all the gods to the door on the opposite side. She
was about to go through it when Vard stood up and—” Dingus belched, and Tai
giggled. He couldn’t help it.

Dingus grinned, too, even
though Kessa poked out her tongue, and took a stick to pull the wrapped fish
closer to him. “‘It might be,’ Vard said, ‘that Our Little Sister has a
point!’” He had a funny voice for Vard, all slurred, so he sounded drunk, and
he made big swishy gestures like a drunk man. Tai laughed and laughed. “‘I will
go with Her, and She will go with Me, and wherever one of Us is, the other
should be, too. What say You, Little Sister?’”

“‘I say, let’s not waste
any more time,’ the Lady said. Together They climbed down the great Tree, and
went out into the world on the golden road. That’s why in all the Lady’s
places, no matter how small, you’ll find something of Vard’s; and that’s why in
all Vard’s places, you’ll find a spot set aside for the Lady, even if it’s only
Her sign.” Dingus held up his right hand and showed, between thumb and first
finger, a tiny tattoo of a leaf. “That’s the reason us Knights do what we do.
’Cause the Lady came down to walk with us.”

“Akeere is Her name?” Tai
asked, while Dingus took out a thin knife and sliced pieces out of a roast
fish.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Not Vandis?”

Kessa laughed, and so did
Dingus. “No, Tai!” he said, laughing and laughing, but it didn’t feel like he
thought Tai was stupid. It never did. He didn’t have a mean, cackling laugh
like Laben’s,
heeheeheehee,
no; he had a laugh like a giant’s, as big as
he was, and a big smile like sunshine.

“Vandis is a Knight of
the Air. I’m a Squire,” Kessa explained, “so I have my badge, but Dingus took
the Oath of Service this summer, so he’s a full Knight, with a leaf and all.
Vandis is teaching us, so he’s our Master.”

Dingus grinned. “I guess
I should’ve explained all that, huh?”

“Maybe it’s help,” Tai
sniped, making Dingus laugh again. “So that’s why you feed me. Because the Lady
is walk.”

“That’s part of it. I
have to, ’cause I swore to do whatever I can for people.”

“Oh.” Tai was a little disappointed.
He’d sort of thought—well, it didn’t matter.

“It’s more than that,
though,” Dingus went on. He put some fish on a plate, and a small pile of
noodles. “I like talking to you. I think you’re interesting and I
want
to give to you, ’cause it keeps you around.” He put out his Big hand and rubbed
his thumb over the fuzz where Tai would someday, if he made it, get his crest.
He couldn’t remember, ever once, anybody touching him that way; it was over in
about three heartbeats, and Dingus put the plate in front of him, saying,
“Let’s eat!”

Tai picked up a piece of
hot fish—Dingus had cut it up small, just for him—and nibbled. He wanted it to
last and last, but he started eating and couldn’t stop. It tasted so good.
Dingus gave him more when it was gone, as much as he wanted, like always. He
ate until his stomach bulged, but he still felt hungry. He wanted—well, he
wanted a lot of things, but most of all he wanted the thing he couldn’t have
anymore. He was already in trouble, he knew that, he shouldn’t have been around
Dingus so often and he should never have left the market. He was already in the
worst trouble of his life, but if he didn’t put a stop to this, Dingus would
get in trouble too. He wouldn’t put anything past Laben, not even killing
Dingus, and he couldn’t stand it if that happened. He wished he’d thought about
that sooner, but Dingus hadn’t mattered so much, he hadn’t known, he just
hadn’t known.

Right away when Dingus
and Kessa finished eating, he said, “I has to go.”

Dingus wiped his mouth and
stood. “I’ll walk you back,” he said, and Tai should’ve told him no, told him
to go fuck himself so he wouldn’t get hurt, but he held out his hand, inviting.
Tai scrambled right up and sat on Dingus’s shoulder, wondering why he couldn’t
resist one crazy Big. It was weak and stupid, but he curled his fingers and
toes into Dingus’s jerkin, coiled his tail against Dingus’s arm. The Big hand
came up and Dingus rubbed the backs of his fingers under Tai’s jaw.

Tai leaned into it just a
little, until Dingus took his hand away and walked out of the camp. It was the
end.

“How’d you like the
story?”

“It’s sound like
pigshit,” Tai said. “Pretty pigshit, but pigshit the same. The Lady isn’t walk
with us, and anyways She is for Bigs, not for little Ish.”

“The Lady’s for
everybody.” Dingus’s smile broadened, right next to Tai. “She doesn’t
discriminate. Look at me. I’m not all the way human. I barely knew who She was,
but when I was in real bad trouble She sent Vandis to save me. I bet She’s
watching us right this minute.”

“Huh!” Tai said, and he
wouldn’t say more, even if he was dying to know what Dingus—with his giant
laugh and gentle hands—considered “real bad trouble.” He wished the Lady sent
Dingus for him. When they got close to the market he said, “I is getting off
here. You go, yes?”

“If you want.” Dingus
stopped, laughing when Tai tickled his back on the way down.

back,>
Tai thought, and all-footed away.

“Hey, see you tomorrow.”

Tai halted at the edge of
the road, rising to his two legs, and turned. “No. I isn’t do this no more.
Dingus, I is maybe in trouble already.” <
Definitely.>
“If we is
keep on do this, maybe you gets in trouble too.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,”
Dingus repeated.

“No!” It came out a
screech. “No! I isn’t want you get in trouble! You is leave me alone—stay away!
You is hear?”

“I—” Dingus looked at the
ground, then up again, pinning Tai on sad eyes. “I’ll be here another
fortnight. Okay? Come visit.”

“I isn’t.” <
I
can’t.>
Tai scuttled away before Dingus could see him cry, hiding in the
trees so he could watch a tiny bit longer.

“Fuck,” Dingus said, so
only Ish ears could have heard him. He spun away, kicking a rock in the road.
“Fuck!” He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked back toward his camp, his
shoulders sagging, his head down low. It was better if he hurt Dingus’s heart
than if Laben killed Dingus’s body, and Dingus was too good to understand that
Laben
would.

He scrubbed at his face
to get the tears off and swung away toward Coom and Oo, to the world
Dingus—with his Lady and his good food and his magic voice—would never see or
know: the world where the bad kids lived. A day away from the shack under the
veeklootz
tree was enough to make him realize how it stank, and his nose wrinkled
when he dropped to the ground. He didn’t want to go in to his dirty blanket,
moldy bread, and withered apples. His belly was full for once, anyway. That was
something.

“Tai?>”

He didn’t want to face
the Boss Man, fat mean Laben, with his kicks and slaps. “”

“shit. I’ve seen you with him every day for over a week, and today you left with
him.>”