Oath Bound (Book 3) (14 page)

He teetered way out on a
limb, trying to tag a capering Voo, when Tai shrieked that Kessa had come back.
Dingus swung himself down and dropped; sixteen Ishlings scuttled to the ground
after him. “What’s all this?” he asked, looking at the small, laden cart—and
the black nanny goat pulling it.

“Everything you asked me
to get,” she said. “I couldn’t carry it all, so I got the cart and the goat to
pull it. Wasn’t too expensive, plus I thought we could milk her. She dropped a
kid this spring. I made sure.”

“That’s a goddamn good
idea,” Dingus said. “Let’s get the bugs off
these
kids
.”

She smiled at the
compliment. They stowed everything neatly away except the bushel basket of
garlic and the bag of lemons, and Dingus set the Ishlings to separating the
garlic heads into their big pot. “Bigs eat this?” Voo asked at one point.

“Just you wait and see,”
Dingus told him, squeezing lemon juice in with the garlic. They watched
curiously while he took the stone pestle from the storage pit and crushed it
all together—and then gasped when he stuck his hand in it and rubbed it through
his hair, just in case. He slapped a glob into Kessa’s hand. “Your turn.”

While she worked it through
her hair, he turned to Zeeta. “What do you think it’s for?”

“For—for smell like
food?”

“We will, but that’s not
why
we’re doing it. I need you to, uh—” He mimed undressing, and she stared at him.
“You’re gonna do your, uh…”

“Cunt?” she suggested, when
he gestured.

“Privates,” he said
firmly. “Just on your fur. And I’ll help you get the rest. It kills lice.”

Zeeta stripped down
lickety-split, tossing her grubby little tunic aside. “If you is kill them, I
never disobey you, not one word you say, ever! That is my most solemnest vow!”

He laughed and rubbed her
little body with garlic and lemon paste. “You don’t have to go that far.” All
the Ishlings were willing, except Peepa, who struggled and squalled and tried
to eat it. She wouldn’t submit to the treatment until Kessa had a try, and then
she sat nice as you please.

“She probably remembers
her ma,” Kessa cooed. Once everybody had the paste on, they all went for a swim
in the stream where Dingus had taught Tai to fish, taking the clothes, bedding,
and two pounds of soap with them.

The kids cleaned up like
a dream. They were still skinny, and their fur was dull from the bad diet, but
they were so colorful: black, yellow, brown, and even—in the case of Vylee and
Voo—silvery gray. Since he’d known Tai the longest, Dingus was most curious
about him. He was a muted brown. Zeeta was blacker than midnight, with white
blazes going from her eyes almost to the back of her head and a swishy,
long-haired tail. Peepa was the biggest surprise. Nobody seemed to know what
color her fur was, and when she was all clean, she turned out to be a
beautiful, rare shade, red as a brick, with a bright white tuft at the end of
her tail and white cuffs at her wrists. “Well, look at you, pretty girl!”
Dingus blurted, and she shook herself, spraying him with water.

“Teehee, pretty Peepa!”
she said.

The lemon juice had put
golden highlights in Kessa’s hair. It probably had in Dingus’s, too, but he
shaved his head with his knife. Just in case.

“You is shave your face
too, Dingus?” Zeeta asked.

“Why bother?” His face
was as smooth as the day he’d been born.

“The lice isn’t get in
your face hair?”

“I don’t—” he said, and
was about to say “have any,” but his hand went reflexively to his face, and he
felt fuzz on his chin and upper lip. “Holy shit!” Dingus did a stomping,
splashing victory dance in the middle of the stream, much to Kessa’s amusement
and the Ishlings’ delight. They all tried to get in on it. “Hey-la-hey! I’m
growing a beard!” Okay, so “beard” was a bit generous, but one
would
grow.

“Beards is like crests,
yes?” Vylee said in her shy way, when Dingus climbed out and wrapped a clean
blanket around his waist.

“That’s right,” Kessa
said.

Voo stared. “Dingus, you
isn’t
old?
”

Dingus stretched out on
the bank with the rest of them to wait for fur and laundry to dry. “I’m the
oldest one here,” he said. “I’m seventeen.” Every one of the kids turned saucer
eyes on him. “What?”

Tai said, in a tiny
voice, “You is seventeen only?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I is think—think you are
more a grown-up.”

“I haven’t been one for
long, but I’m doing okay by you, don’t you think?”

“You is doing
wonderful
,”
Zeeta said. He bent his neck back to smile at her, and she kissed him on the
forehead. His heart felt like a bowl of porridge, squishy and warm, and he knew
he’d done the right thing.

Dreamport, Knights HQ;
the Head’s apartments

Nothing had gone right
for Vandis on this trip. He lay on his belly in the bed he hadn’t used once before
last night, a pillow in his armpits for support, seething as he went over the
reports he’d had Jimmy bring in to him. The long cut the Aurelian Brother had
opened along his back hadn’t been deep enough, even after he tore it trying to
fly, to take stitches. It burned and itched under the bandages plastered to his
skin. It would have bothered him less if it had been deeper—but then, very much
deeper and nothing would’ve bothered him at all.

Adeon sat in a chair near
his feet. He couldn’t see the
tulon
without twisting in a highly
unpleasant manner, but he knew a long, slim blade rested across Adeon’s knees.
Vandis hadn’t been able to stop them taking shifts to sit over him. If he
managed to find out whose idea
that
was—well, they’d get a stern
talking-to for certain. He suspected Jimmy. His secretary was old enough to be
his father, but he resented being treated like a child, never mind that he also
suspected he was acting like one. If only he could hit something, he was sure
he’d feel better, but the featherbed and cotton counterpane didn’t provide
enough resistance to satisfy. Besides, it hurt to move. At least he’d been
allowed to dress. Not without assistance, but he’d been allowed to get out of
his nightshirt and into breeches, tunic, and jerkin. He’d left off his boots so
they wouldn’t dirty the bed, and his stocking feet stretched out behind him.

Bar the office, Vandis’s
apartments were so spotless he almost hated to sleep under the covers or eat at
the table. Not a fleck of dust marred the bookshelves; not a smudge marked the
single glass window a few feet from the bed. It was cleaner than Aunt Pru’s had
been, back when he was just a boy. Once, five-year-old Vandis had tracked mud
all over her clean rag rug—only the once. He felt as uncomfortable here as he
had there. He didn’t live here; he lived, had lived, in the office. Even that
didn’t feel like home anymore.

He picked up another
damned budget thing. He really ought to stop blindly signing off on them just
because it bored him to read them. It never used to be like this. Year before
last, he’d read every line with zest, and zealously chased every inconsistency
down to the last copper bit. He remembered his enthusiasm for the work, but
couldn’t bring it back; it all felt lifeless, and instead he found himself
daydreaming about campfires, about stories in young voices, and two sets of
eager eyes on him when he told. About Dingus’s cooking, which the fare
available in the mess hall couldn’t approach on its best day.

The road drew at Vandis’s
bones. It
was
where he belonged, and now he couldn’t leave here, not
without tearing his back open further, and the trapped feeling turned his
wanderlust into a mad, clawing little beast at the pit of his belly, so bad
that when Jimmy opened the door connecting office with bedroom, he had to
swallow a pointless bellow of frustration. He settled for a poisonous glower.

“Sorry to disturb you,
Vandis,” Jimmy said airily, “but I figured you’d want to know Prince Emmerick
is on his way down from the palace.”

“Well, shit.”
Reason
Number One to be glad I got dressed today.
“Adeon, get my boots. And—”

“I do have something
resembling manners,” Adeon said, sheathing his sword, “but I’m afraid they end
at the precise point where you ask me to leave the room.”

Vandis floundered, trying
to sit up without tearing his cut, and finally rolled to his stinging back and
scooted forward until his legs hung off the edge at the knee. His feet didn’t
touch the floor, even when he used his hands to lever his upper body off the
mattress.

Adeon knelt and opened
his high boot. “Now,” said the
tulon
with faint amusement, “you can
truly appreciate the power of your position. I haven’t bent the knee since I
last went before High King Bearach.”

“That must’ve been a
while back.” For sure, it would’ve been Before, since all the stories said the
last High King died with the fairies.

“Not so very long, I
think. The first time I was at Shirith, though, Queen Saoirse yet lived.” Adeon
glanced up, as if gauging Vandis’s interest, and Vandis nodded slightly for him
to go on. “She was pregnant then, with the Prince who would kill her in the
birthing, and lovelier than anyone could possibly report. I made quite a fool
of myself later that night, drowning in wine and in her eyes. Her Majesty’s
skin was like new cream, but she had the most compelling dark eyes…”

“Beautiful, then,” Vandis
said dryly.

Adeon shook his head,
laughing to himself as he laced Vandis’s boots. “To describe the beauty of the
High Queen at Shirith, no words can suffice. Picture, perhaps, a wood in the
depths of winter, with ice that hangs in sparkling drops from the dark, bare
branches. And mighty Bearach’s beauty was no less, the shadow of a hawk in
flight on a cloudless autumn day. They were the last glory of my People, they
and the Princess, and the Prince who yet lives, but cannot be King.”

He meant Bey, of
course—Beagan, that was, Little Fox. It was appropriate, somehow, that he
should have come to the Knights. Vandis had met him a time or two, and only
learned he’d once been Prince of Shirith on becoming Head.

“I was there,” the
tulon
added. “At Shirith, that night. We’d stopped for a few days, I and my Junior at
the time. Colum had just taken the Oath, and I thought that perhaps I would
take a new Squire from among the People. We were wakened by the alarum bell—the
coast, sometimes, proved too tempting for raiders from north or south—and the
High King burst from his closeted bed, crying ‘To arms!’ in a thundering voice,
with the flames already rippling over his mighty blade. His daughter the
Princess came from her own bed close behind, and before they ran together out
of the Palace, he paused to touch her with a spell of armor through which no
blade could bite. The Prince was a small boy then, and unused to steel; his
Guard closed around him, weaving magics to keep him safe. Colum and I armed
with the rest.

“The earth shivered
beneath us as we ran to give battle, and there was fear in the King’s face. He
stopped, briefly, and I saw him reaching forth with closed eyes. The High King,
you see, he kept the fire of the mountain Fimberevell in check, and in return
received all the power of flame. The Princess’s shield flickered like a
firefly, and more than one of the warriors called out that he could not cast.

“I cannot convey the
feeling to you. I reached for my own small magic—but it was as if we went forth
crippled and weaponless, and we all looked to the King. Sweat ran down his face
and he said to us, ‘Go. Make for the boats.’ Already the pirates had set ablaze
some of the buildings. Their arrows came in among us, O, the God!” He stopped
for a moment, breathing hard. “They brought fire against the High King and his
family. The arrows were lit, and the young Prince took one just above the
elbow. I could live a thousand years more and never forget his screams when the
fire ate his clothing, his flesh. Three of his Guard fell when extinguishing
him took their attention, and he lay under their bodies, crying out, though
none could now hear him over the noise. Colum, my Colum, was the one to free
him, and when he lifted the Prince in his arms and turned to me, a raider cut
him down. The Princess Angharadh had come to her brother’s aid, and she cut
down the pirate in turn. When her eyes met mine the earth trembled again.

“She said to me, ‘The
Mountain is angry tonight.’

“And I to her, ‘Yes, Your
Highness,’ for I knew not what other answer to make.

“She bared her teeth.
Hardly a woman, she was. She smiled like a ghoul and told me, ‘So am I, Sir
Adeon, for my brother is come to harm and my father is afraid, and tonight we
may all go up to Father Sky; but first I shall send a few of these down to
freeze in the Hell they are so fond of cursing by.’ O! what a Queen she would
have made! With the shield of her father’s magic shredding around her like fog shreds
in a strong wind, and blood dripping from her sword—she feared nothing, the
Princess of Shirith! Though the earth danced beneath us, she feared nothing,
and it was my honor to fight at her side that night.”

The curtain of silvery
hair shrouded his face. Only the ends of his ears showed, but his shoulders
rose and fell, and Vandis found himself breathing in time.

“Together we stood off
the raiders, and slew enough that I could at last lift the senseless Prince
into my arms. ‘Come,’ she told me. ‘Let us go down to the boats, and you will
take my brother away with you, and save my father’s line.’ I could not but obey
her, for though she was young, still she could command, and a Queen she would
be if the High King fell. The last of her Guard and the Prince’s closed about
us, me with the young Prince, and they would have shielded her also, but she
would have none, saying instead that her place was beside them to shield the
People.

“They loved her for that
as long as they lived. Only half of a dozen had survived that far, and only one
made the landing with us. He was killed there while the Princess forced me
aboard one of the boats. I would have given over the Prince and stayed with her
there, but she had none of that either, and pushed the boat from the dock with
her foot. The water shuddered with the earth, and the oarsmen began to pull.
Then came the High King, shepherding more of his People to escape, and the
raiders after. I think he argued with his daughter; I saw her dark head dip as
she climbed into a boat, and what came of her I cannot say, but I cannot think
that she lived. Bearach—”

After a minute had
passed, “He died,” Vandis said.

Adeon sighed. “I saw him
fall. The raiders caught up, and they took the last boat for themselves,
killing those who rode in it already, but before that King Bearach fought to
stop them, and lost his head—and as the blood rushed from his neck, the
Mountain vomited smoke and ash and fire, and buried the beautiful Valley of the
High Kings. The rest, I think you know… how the magic died with Bearach son of
Beagar, and how my People have never been the same.” He paused, and when he
went on his voice had softened. “I had to hide young Prince Beagan. Even with
the loss of his arm and his beauty, he could have threatened the King at Long
Knife by his influence; and so I brought him to the Knights, and Hieronymus
took him to train.”

“Why not you?”

The
tulon
tilted
his head back, and all the platinum hair tumbled away from his face, striking
the breath from Vandis. The eyes, like aquamarines, shone with tears, and the
fine bones shaped angles that couldn’t fail to touch some impulse of wonder and
attraction and fear all together, otherworldly, fair. He wished he hadn’t
asked.

“I lost Colum that night,
you recall,” Adeon said quietly. “And I—didn’t want—I didn’t take another
Squire for a decade. I confess, I couldn’t look upon the boy without thinking
of everything that had gone out of the world. His father. Colum, true and
brave. And his sister the Princess, who would have been High Queen. If she had
lived, the world would be different.”

As far as Vandis was
concerned, one monarch was much the same as another, and the idea knocked him
out of the enchantment. King or Queen, human or
hitul
, they all stood on
their people’s necks, overtaxed, lived in luxury, and while he didn’t doubt
they were busy, he failed to see what it was they really did for the world. He
didn’t say this aloud to many people, and he certainly didn’t say it to Adeon
now; the
tulon
sat on his heels, lost to nostalgia.

“She was lovelier by
far,” he murmured, “even than her mother Saoirse. Bright Star, Angharadh means,
in the Traders’ tongue. And she was one, and would have grown in beauty had she
survived. So young.”

Vandis felt like a child,
sitting there with his feet dangling three inches above the floor in the
presence of a seven-hundred-year-old
tulon.
The young Princess of
Shirith—barely a woman—would’ve been at least twice his age. Were they all
children to the
hitul?
What must it have been like for Dingus, shooting
up taller by the minute while everyone around him hung static?

Adeon stood, revealing
the beautifully-rendered compass rose on the blue carpet. “Another life,” he
said. “Not so very long ago, not really, but it feels like an age. Even so
little as I touched it, magic was…” He shook his head and lifted his hair to
bind into a horsetail. “It sparkled along the nerves. The closest thing, I
suppose, is making love with a partner long desired. Likely why I always lacked
the focus necessary to take the academic approach.” He grinned at Vandis, all
the melancholy gone. “You’d have made a cracking good magus, my friend.”

“Could be,” Vandis said.
He slid carefully down until his feet touched the carpet. “But I wouldn’t trade
away the One I serve.” If he didn’t exactly love his position at the moment, it
was
his
failing; not Hers Who’d chosen it for him.

Oh, I don’t know,
She said.
Perhaps I chose you for this to make you ready for your lad,
hmm? Besides, all this politicking is so very dull. I’d worry more if you
didn’t
want to fly out the window, My own.

I used to like it
more,
he said while he took the few steps to his chair.
There was a time
I enjoyed it. Hell if I know why.

She giggled.
You
didn’t know any better!

“Heh.”
Guess I didn’t.
Are they doing all right over there?

Just as they ought.

Well, that’s
something.
It’d probably be intrusive to ask—