Oath Bound (Book 3) (16 page)

Pick it up. The
Staff! Pick it up, Vandis, My own.

“Yah!” one of the
passengers sneered, cutting into the monk’s diatribe as Vandis looked down at
the Staff of Office. The sapphires shimmered oddly against his spattered blood.
“Treason, my ass! He got us a tax cut last time they reviewed the codes!”

“That Knights hospital
saved my brother’s life!” shouted another, and Vandis laid his hand over the Staff.
His fingers curled around it; but the sword lifted, and he braced.

An ugly thud sounded,
metal on flesh, and a split heartbeat later the sword fell, clashing on
Vandis’s cuirass with a force that almost flattened him. A shock sizzled up his
arm; the scent of a storm prickled the inside of his nose. Sparks crackled from
the gems set into the Staff.

“When I couldn’t find a
job, the Knights took in my whole family!”

“What’s defiling about
that? What’ve the Aurelians ever—”

Vandis rose to his knees,
clutching the Staff of Office in a hand gone numb. A blinding light erupted
from its end, and the sound of a thunderclap. If he’d used his ears to hear
Her, he wouldn’t have caught the
huzzah!
She shouted. As he
blinked the radiance away, he saw an Aurelian topple slowly backward, trailing
smoke from mouth, nose, eyes—and the scorched pit in his robes. His executioner
curled on the ground, clutching his ears.

The echoes died away.

“The Wayfarer protects
him!” someone bellowed. “With Her own hand! You saw it! You all saw it! She
gave him magic!”

It was mayhem. The other
passengers seized on the gaping Aurelians, dragging them down. Vandis lunged to
his feet, grabbed the little girl, and pulled her as far away from the chaos as
he could. The mother jerked after, still clinging to her daughter’s hand.

“Are you hurt?” he asked,
putting himself between the woman and the crowd. The monk who’d tried to behead
him slid away, screeching, as the passengers pulled him in. The woman drew her
daughter close, pressed the girl closer, covering her brown head with a hand.

She shook her head
wordlessly, gazing at Vandis, and then over his head at the small mob busily
kicking the guts out of the monks.

“It’ll be okay,” he said,
and she gave him a watery smile.

“I know.”

He smiled back at her
through the blood on his face. “Stay here. I’m going to release the emergency
brake.” His hand stung with returning circulation, and he flexed it while he
edged around the railing to the brake lever. His shoulders felt lighter, and
when he glanced back, he saw his cloak in a disordered heap on the boards. His
lips stretched in a grim smirk. Before he threw the lever, he leaned back
against it for a moment to catch his breath, and when the lift moved again, he
relaxed a little. There were a few flaking, black spots on the Staff. He
brushed them away with his thumb, but underneath the metal was stained black,
and he couldn’t rub the spots off.
My Lady…

Yes?

Something niggled at the
back of his mind—a memory, a long time ago, or it seemed that way. The stains
on the message dome at Elwin’s Ford.

Now you’re
thinking.

But I didn’t—

Nae, you did not.

Oh, fuck
.
Dingus.
Vandis got a sudden, horrid rush of images: what might happen to his
soft-spoken Junior if anyone were to find out. He clutched the Staff more
tightly. There had to be a way to spin this, make everyone forget about Dingus,
make sure nobody ever found out.
Is it anyone’s blood? Or just his and mine?

The effect is
likely quite specific,
She said, with a whiff of affront.

At least there’s that.
As if I didn’t have a hundred reasons to worry about him already.

My own, you might
want to be worrying over yourself. Nobody knows about Dingus’s blood, but
yours?

I—

“Sir Vandis! I’ve had a
tumor for years—bless me, please, Sir Vandis!”

Vandis raised one finger.
He opened his mouth, but no words came, and he stood there gaping like a
particularly stupid trout.

“Bless me, Sir Vandis! I
can’t weave half the time with my arthritis!”

What do I do?

Why not bless them?

It won’t do
anything!

Oh, My own, again
you miss the point. Even if it does nothing, they’ll go away comforted—healed
in heart, if not in body.

“Okay,” he said, and laid
his hand on the tumor man’s head. “I bless you in the name of my Lady.” He did
the same for the woman with arthritis, and then extended his hand over the rest
of the people on the lift platform, who’d finished with the Aurelians by now.
“You’re all blessed, the Wayfarer blesses you all, and go, and—uh—remember to
consider the rights of your fellow travelers on this road of life.”

“We will!” cried
Arthritis Woman. Tears sparkled in her eyes, almost lost in the wrinkles around
them. “Oh, Sir Vandis, we will!”

Vandis’s mouth worked
again. “…good,” he decided. “That’s good.” Mercifully, the lift shuddered to a
stop, and the operators rushed to get the gate open. Vandis leapt for it,
desperate to escape, only to find the landing clogged with navy-uniformed,
gold-braided City Watchmen. He stifled his groan of despair. His face throbbed,
his arm felt like a chunk of half-molten metal, and if he didn’t leave the lift
right now,
he’d be late for a royal audience.

Of course, it took
forever: the questioning, and the acclamations, and the accusations, and the
don’t-leave-town-until-we-say—which Vandis had already promised for one thing,
and now had to promise for another. All his plans to leave for Windish as soon
as Reed gave him a clean-enough bill of health blew away on the stiff breeze at
the crater top. He’d been forcing himself through paperwork the last few days
with the hope of tossing it all aside to see Kessa and Dingus again. The
Aurelians had a lot to answer for. He could deal with the repeated attempts on
his own life—but this, no, this was it—the straw that broke the donkey’s
back—not that he wasn’t still angry about the slaughter—but—

Vandis clenched his
fists, loosing a howl of frustration. All the Watchmen and assorted bystanders,
plus Pearl and Adeon, craned their necks to look at him. He dragged in a breath
and, unable to keep the bite out of his tone, said, “If you gentlemen don’t
mind, I’m fucking late for an audience with His Majesty. If there’s anything
more, you know where to find me—but I’ve told you everything, so here’s a bit
of friendly advice: don’t come up with any more bullshit.”

He wheeled and stalked
off in the direction of the palace. Only a moment passed before Adeon and Pearl
ran up on either side of him.

“Diplomatic, Vandis,”
Adeon said.

“You were great,” Pearl
said. “How’d you do the lightning bolt?”

“If you have to ask me
questions, ask me questions I can answer,” Vandis snapped. “And
not
when
I’m two hours fucking late to stand before the—the King.”

“Well, excuse the hell
out of me. It’s not my fault you’re late! If you’d just stayed with us like you
were supposed—”

“Oh, sure!” Vandis
rounded on her, throwing his arms wide. “Next time I’ll just stand still and
get trampled! And as a matter of fact—”

“
Vandis
,” Adeon
bit off.

“
What?
”

“Believe me, we all
understand you have had quite enough, and are fully in sympathy with you, but
shouting will get you nowhere… particularly with His Majesty. Am I mistaken?”

Vandis had nothing for
that but a venomous glower.

“I think you understand
that the best tool in this instance, the most efficient tactic, is
cooperation.” Adeon came closer and dared to put an arm around Vandis’s
shoulders. “The readier you are to cooperate with the authorities, the more
you’ll grease the wheels… and that means you’ll be with your children in no
time at all, friend.”

“I don’t want to be
here,” Vandis muttered.

Adeon steered him off the
main road to New Town market and onto a side street dotted with expansive
houses, decorative pines, and thick juniper hedges. Pearl followed at the other
side. “You could not have made that more abundantly clear if you’d blazoned it
on your breastplate,” Adeon said, tapping on the piece. “No amount of sighing
out the windows is going to help you, or us. We need the divine spark of
two-fisted diplomacy here. You’ve got to pull this out, Vandis. We need you.”

“Right,” he said, knowing
it was true and wishing it weren’t. He broke into a heavy trot that made his
back twinge, heading for the palace, a massive complex at the heart of New
Town. It was all white-and-silver granite, and as they approached, its high
polish glistened and sparkled in the afternoon sun. The Cathedral of the Winds
looked downright sensible by comparison. The four liveried guards at the
wrought-iron gate let him and the other two Knights pass without challenge, but
not without staring. Vandis clanked through the grounds at a dead run, not even
pausing to sneer at the wild opulence of the public gardens. He thought his
sabatons cracked a cobble or two on one of the twisting, manicured paths.

He clattered up the steps
to the main portal, and the guards waved him right through, but in the great,
round atrium, at the inlaid doors to the throne room, he met crossed spears.

“The throne room is
closed for the day,” said a third guard, rising from a desk set next to the
doors. He eyed Vandis with faint disdain, as well he might, given the impeccable
state of his own green-and-gold livery. Vandis recognized his artfully-tousled
brown curls and young face: Maynard Hyde, current Earl of Shreve, perpetual
shithead, and grandnephew to Vandis’s own secretary.

“I’m on the list,” Vandis
gasped.

“His Majesty is receiving
no more seekers of audience this afternoon.”

“I’m on the list! Look at
the list!”

“Sir Vandis, I am well
aware that you were, as you say, ‘on the list.’ However, your audience was
scheduled at one o’ the clock this afternoon, and it is now half past three.
His Majesty is a working King. You cannot expect to claim His Majesty’s ear if
you cannot be punctual.”

Vandis’s nostrils flared.
He closed his eyes, bending all his will toward keeping his mouth shut. A
muscle ticked in his cheek.

“Lord Hyde, please,”
Adeon said. “Is there no way? An attempt on his life kept Sir Vandis from His
Majesty’s presence, the details of which attack you may learn from the City
Watch.”

“Be that as it may—”

“Look at my face.” Vandis
jabbed a finger at his mouth and nose. The Watchmen had given him a cloth to
wipe with, but he’d bled more since, and a drop or two hung from his chin.
“Look at me! I was nearly killed on my way here. Now you go, and you check with
Watch if you have to, and then you come back and let me through those doors—or
your Uncle Jimmy’s going to hear about it.”

Hyde blanched. “You
wouldn’t.”

Vandis raised both
eyebrows.

“Have a seat, Sir Vandis.
I’ll do my best.” He disappeared through a side door.

Adeon unhooked the
remnants of cape from Vandis’s cuirass before they sat along the wall of the
entryway, on an uncomfortable mahogany bench carved to look like a crowned
dragon in flight: the crest of the royal family and of Dreamport itself. Vandis
could only just prop his toes on the floor. There was a definite dragon motif
in the decorating, from the fountain in the center of the atrium featuring a
spouting dragon and naked maiden done up in pale green marble, to the desks and
furniture carved into serpentine shapes, right down to the green carpet runner
with its border of miniature golden dragons. Even the columns that supported
the soaring height of the white marble ceiling were sculpted dragons, and the
massive wooden doors next to young Hyde’s desk were inlaid with dragon cutouts.

So many dragons. You’d
think they had something to prove.

She snickered at the back
of his mind, and stroked the base of his skull with the tiniest whisper of the
ecstasy She had wrapped him in earlier, enough to relax his sore neck and shoulders,
no more.
You left your helm.

So I did.
He’d
hated it, but it’d cost the Knights to replace it. He scowled heavily and took
out his handkerchief to wipe the blood off his aching face. Voices filtered
through the throne room doors, unintelligible beneath strains of pipe and
dulcimer. Vandis leaned his shoulders against the back of the bench, but sat up
on the edge again when a carved claw poked his head. Tired to the core and old
in his bones, he felt; stretched to the snapping point. He could think of at
least six different things he should be doing by now, but instead, here he sat,
with Adeon and Pearl silently flanking.

Lord Hyde hurried back
much sooner than he’d expected, and far more respectfully. “Sir Vandis, I regret
any inconvenience your assassins and myself have caused you. Of course, His
Majesty will see you now.”

“Thank you,” Vandis said,
and the three Knights followed Hyde up to the doors. When the young lord opened
one of them, music and laughter trilled out, along with the scent of food.
Vandis’s stomach growled, but he gave Lord Hyde a curt nod and strode past. On
either side of the throne room, from the vaulted ceiling, the banners of every
lord and noble house of the realm hung to ten feet above the granite floor,
dozens of them, in dozens of colors. Through the throng of richly-dressed
courtiers, he caught glimpses of the five hearths on each side, each fitted
with a spit that sported a suckling pig, and every so often one of the fires
would sizzle with the dripping grease, loudly enough to be heard over the talk
and music. Pork smell made his mouth water even while he sneered inside at the
flagrant excess of the King’s court.