Oath Bound (Book 3) (18 page)

“Vandis left you under my
protection. That means nothing to you?”

“You might not agree with
me having it, but this leaf here means I’m fit to be on my own for a while.”
Dingus strode toward the firepit, toward Tikka, and started breaking camp.

“I can’t imagine what
Vandis was thinking!” Tikka shrilled. “To give a little boy a leaf and toss him
out into the wilderness was the pinnacle of irresponsibility!”

Dingus’s big hands shook
and he nearly dropped the awning into the fire. “You talk shit about me all you
want, but talk shit about Vandis and we’re gonna have a problem.”

Tikka stretched up as
high as she could on the nurse log and slapped Dingus hard across the face; he
stared at her, and Kessa watched the color climb his neck. He drew in a breath
that shivered.

Kessa had never moved
faster in her life. She nudged between Dingus and Tikka and grabbed his
shoulders. “Guys!” she called to the Ishlings. “Help Dingus pack up! Dingus,
make sure we don’t take anything of Lady Tikka’s, okay?”

“I—”

“
Okay?
”

Dingus shut his eyes. “Yeah.”
He breathed, and spun away to do what Kessa said.

Kessa faced Tikka now.
“Everybody keeps saying that, in Windish, the woman is in charge. Well,
I
say we’re going. Dingus is right. The Lady would want this. It
is
in the
Oath, and I know that ’cause I heard him take it myself.”

“Everything’s so black
and white to you children, isn’t it?” Tikka hissed. “One day, when you’re a
mother, you’ll understand what it is to protect a family of your own.”

No,
Kessa thought.
I never will.
She pushed away the memories of her own mom and said,
“Dingus is my family. You’ve got your mind made up, and I’ve got mine.”

“Then there’s nothing
more to say.” Tikka leapt off the log and pranced out of camp. At the edge, she
turned and added, in a hard voice, “I’ll be checking that you’ve left.”

When she was gone, Kessa
went to take down her tent. “What a bitch,” she muttered.

They were packed in no
time at all. The last thing Dingus did before he shouldered his heavy pack was
lay the two books he’d borrowed on the nurse log. “Everybody got their tails?”
he asked the kids.

“Yes, Dingus,” they
chorused.

“Let’s go.”

On the way out, Dingus
hooked an arm around Kessa’s shoulders and squeezed her in a sideways hug. “You
were great,” he said. “Like Margaret fuckin’ Dragonslayer.” He let her go and
left her grinning by the faint light of the last embers as she smothered them.
It took her a minute to catch up with him and the all-footing Ishlings.

“Hey, Dingus.”

“What?”

“Do you know where we’re
going?” she ventured.

He laughed. “Yeah, I got
an idea. Trust me.” Scarier words were never spoken.

Dreamport

Vandis stamped his seal
into a blob of blue wax. He rubbed at his face, gathered his writing things,
and blew out the candle. He hadn’t had any supper yet, and it must be midnight—no,
he saw when he stepped out into the dim main office and saw the grandfather
clock from Before, it was about half past one. Well, maybe he could scrounge
some leftovers from the kitchen. It wouldn’t be much, but it’d tide him over
until breakfast.

He dropped his letter to
Dingus on Jimmy’s desk for his secretary to frank in the morning and wandered
downstairs, carrying the candle he’d used to melt the sealing wax. It didn’t
take long to discover there was nothing he wanted to eat in the empty mess
hall. Vandis didn’t want day-old bread and a slab of pickled herring washed
down with sour dregs from the bottom of the barrel. After the day he’d had—he
wanted something
hot
, something that would fill his stomach, and a
drink.
Fair winds. Make that a lot of drinks.
Sobriety felt like a
crushing weight.

Instead of grabbing the
leavings, Vandis hurried back upstairs for his cloak. Amid all the chaos and
stress of his visit, he’d forgotten to stop by and see Wynn, and short of
flying straight over to Windish, he couldn’t think of anything that would make
him feel better than that.

Even after what had
happened on the lift that day, the entrance hall was deserted. Earlier, things
hadn’t been so sedate; when he’d gotten back from the audience, he’d found
Headquarters crammed with notables, all wanting to know what Vandis could do
for them.
Thank You for the quiet,
he thought. His footfalls echoed off
the polished floor.

She laughed, echoless.
Thank
Jimmy for that, My own. You ought to have seen the place before he shooed them
all away.

Well, thanks for
Jimmy.

You’re very
welcome. Since Dingus isn’t here, someone’s got to be looking out for you.

He wouldn’t be able to
do anything.
Vandis passed between the welcome desks, running his gloved
fingertips across the surface and rapping them at the corner.

Oh, I don’t know.
He does snarl rather convincingly,
She said, with an airy giggle.

His mouth curved up.
He’d
laugh himself sick at my vestments. Kessa, too.

Aye, that they
would, but it would be no bad thing.

No.
He sighed
heavily into the high-ceilinged, empty space, closing his eyes.
Next time I
set out to make a mistake this stupid, would You mind giving me a hint that it
is
a mistake?

Even I can’t say
what would have happened on the lift today if he’d been there. It was a mistake
for your heart, but your mind… well, your reasoning was sound, at least at the
time.

Maybe.
He stopped
in front of the enameled globe and lifted his half-burnt candle high, seeking
out Windish. The light flicked off the shiny surface, but it didn’t reveal what
he most wanted to see.

They’re doing just
as they ought, My own.

Well, that’s
something, I guess.
His eyes traced down the curve of the globe resting in
the bronze limbs of the oak and gleaming faintly in what light he carried. He
laid his hand on the bottom, in the space between branches and burden, as high
as he could reach, and its coolness seeped even through his glove. The fiery
pleasure that morning seemed a hundred years ago, the burning shock up his arm
on the lift at least fifty. He felt scooped out, like any moment his skin would
collapse in on itself, and he wanted, so damned badly, to touch it again.
Do
You think I could…?

There’s only one
way to find out,
She said, amusement touching Her Voice.

His free hand went to his
belt and rested on the one weapon he carried everywhere: the mid-sized,
all-purpose hunting knife.

He wanted to see it. He’d
wanted to see it since he’d first laid eyes on the motionless globe, with Regis
hurrying in front of him on the way up to the file room, the first time of
countless times. He drew the knife and gashed across his left palm, hissing
with the sting as the blade parted callused skin. Blood welled to the surface,
then spilled from the end of the cut. A drop fell to the floor. He slid his hand
between bronze branches and globe again. Almost before he settled his hand at
the bottom curve, the thing began to wake.

Slowly, pulling at the
edges of his cut, the world slid away to the right. Golden light kindled at its
heart and grew, igniting tiny lines that traced and crossed over its surface in
a neat, belling grid. Vandis’s heart leapt into his mouth; power shivered up
his arm again, and he felt utterly eclipsed. Glittering pinpricks swept up the
enameled surface—a few at first, but more and gradually more as Rothganar
rolled into sight. The continent swarmed with lights. With
leaves.
His
own tattoo prickled, whether by some magic in the globe or by the power of
suggestion, he didn’t know.

He didn’t dare pull away,
didn’t want it to stop. He stretched back as far as he could and craned his
neck to take in as much of the sight as his eyes could fall on; the light,
glowing out from the deepest center of the globe, illuminated the dark entryway
for the first time in nearly fifty years, and he could hardly breathe, it was
so surpassingly lovely.

Why me?

When I laid My hand
upon you, I set you apart in more ways than one, My own…

Why me—and nobody
else? If You could do this—
He couldn’t tear his eyes from the miracle.

Because,
She
said,
I cannot. I’m limited, My own, and to give you your gift required
great effort. I could only give you such power because you were
open
to
Me. When you were younger, it was far easier to dream with you… to broaden the
way, as it were. And now I can speak to you with very little work.

And Dingus?

A bit of a
different case, rather like stoking a fire that waits banked. It was already in
his blood, you see, the gift I gave to Xavier—and little babies are terribly
open.
She let a sound like a sigh into his mind.
If I’d had a
choice… I would sooner have spared him that pain.

Vandis had nothing to say
to that. He wished She could have, too. He wished She had, but how could he
tell Her so? He gazed up at the globe, his eyes going to Windish when it rolled
around again, where only two lights burned, one almost on top of the other:
Tikka, he imagined, and Dingus.

“And do you still doubt
that you’re
menyoral?
”

Marcus Xavier came around
the globe. He’d kept the beard since Moot, and he’d at least changed out of his
court robes, but he still dressed in silk and the finest cotton, and a
fur-collared cloak draped his imposing frame.

Vandis took in the Duke
at a glance and returned his eyes to the glory in front of him. “No.”

“Anything you need. Say
the word and it’s yours,” Marcus said, coming to his side.

“I don’t—”

“You don’t realize what
hope you bring. It was the humblest of magics, this globe. Taken, I must say,
to its farthest extreme, but a quiet sort of thing. Looking at it now, I wonder
how we ever took it all for granted.”

“I’ve got to wonder that
myself,” Vandis said, and took his hand away. With its power source gone, the
globe dimmed, and slowed its ponderous motion.

“It was in everything.
Down to the smallest activity of life. In our food, our children’s toys. I had
a pillow that was bespelled for peaceful rest. It was in our shitters, Vandis.
And now that you’ve tasted it twice over, I imagine you think it’s well that
such things are gone from the world.”

When he glanced at Marcus
again, the Duke wore a smirk so like Dingus’s twitting-Vandis expression that
he had to look away. “Nobody should have that much power,” he muttered,
thinking of the wild sensation of calling lightning to smite his foes. The
light in the globe had settled to a faint glow, and it winked suddenly out,
plunging them into darkness but for Vandis’s little candle.

“There was a certain
balance in those days,” Marcus said, disembodied, “but that you say so assures
me that if any one man must have it, you ought to be the one.”

“Fuck you for agreeing
with me.”

Shadowy Marcus threw back
his head and laughed, loud and long, clapping Vandis on the shoulder. Vandis
staggered.

“You nearly make me
forget my purpose in coming.” He reached into his rich cloak, still chuckling.
“I’ve brought you something. If blood outs, it’ll come in handy sooner rather
than later.” He produced a sealed folder of fine leather and handed it over,
then dived back into the pocket.

“What is it?”

“No, you mustn’t open it.
It’s to remain sealed, at least until it’s needed.”

“It’s a patent,” Vandis
said, distaste dripping from every syllable.

“That’s right. Dingus’s
patent of blood. And this belongs to him as well.” Marcus extended a small,
flat case held shut with a clasp, explaining, “Ennis’s crest, for the young
Earl to wear.”

Vandis opened his mouth
to protest.

“I know,” Marcus said,
with a quelling wave of his hand. Vandis could see him better now. “When you
judge it’s time, I trust you’ll give it to him. And you have it now, in case
there isn’t a choice.”

“I’m not saying when I’ll
tell him.” Vandis took the case and stuck both of the offending items into his
own pocket, getting them out of sight. “But when I tell him, it’ll be when I
think he’s ready to decide. I want it to be his choice to come to you—or not
to. Not mine. Not yours. His
.
”

“Are you so confident
he’ll make the right decision?”

“Yes. I don’t know what
he’ll do, but whatever he decides, you’d better believe it’ll be the right
thing for him, and whatever he decides, I’ll stand behind him to the bitter
fucking end. Good night, Marcus.” He strode away around the globe, to the
doors.

“Vandis,” Marcus called.
“Your hand is still bleeding.”

“So it is.” Vandis took
out his handkerchief, balled it in his fist, and left without another word.
He’d gotten halfway through the chapel before Marcus strode past, throwing a
cold look over his shoulder. By the time Vandis got down to the street and
turned his feet west, Marcus’s huge figure receded in the distance.
Actually
won one,
Vandis thought, laughing to himself.
Sort of.

It was a bit of a walk to
Wynn’s place, past the lifts, clear to the westward wall of the crater, but the
night was just on the comfortable side of cold; his breath smoked, trailing
away on the wind. Some of his weariness was wicked away with it, and he stepped
out lively with all the attractions of his destination on his mind.

The Lucky Strike had been
a derelict warehouse when he’d first come to Dreamport as a Junior. At some
point during Vandis’s dull, slogging five years with Regis, Wynn had bought and
converted it. Now it was a pleasant place, assuming you didn’t mind a little
blood sport with your supper and drinks. He considered the fighting atmosphere,
since it only happened in the ring. When it spread out, it didn’t go far.

The first time he’d wandered
in, he’d been twenty-seven, fresh off the promotion ceremony at the last Moot.
Thirteen years ago, he’d met Wynn, and thirteen years hadn’t changed a hair on
her head since that first time, when she’d come his way with a refill and asked
his name.

“Vandis!” he’d said, and
then thrust both fists high in drunken jubilation, nearly overturning his
stool. “And I’m
free!
”

She’d lifted a perfect
eyebrow. “Of?”

“Regis, and that fuckin’
old man, too! I just made Senior—I’m free!”

“Knight of the Air, are you?”
she’d said, and given her icebreaker of a smile, the same then as it was now.
She’d propped her forearms on the bar and leaned in to talk, to listen. “And
what will you do with your freedom?”

“I’m going to
University.”

If she’d thought he was
exchanging one prison for another, she hadn’t said so. She’d laughed at him,
and they’d gotten to talking, first about University, then about the Knights.
By the end of the evening, Vandis had turned down a blatant, blush-worthy
proposition—and he hadn’t paid a clipped bit in the Lucky Strike ever since.
Maybe he shouldn’t be such a regular customer, but he ate free, he drank free,
and the view was spectacular. He liked Wynn, and yeah, he enjoyed her interest,
even if he had absolutely no intention of acting on the interest she somehow
stirred in him.

What man wouldn’t find it
flattering? Wynn, without a doubt, was the most beautiful woman Vandis had seen
with waking eyes—impossibly, ridiculously beautiful, even for a
tulua,
and they were all something else. She had dark doe’s eyes in an oval face so
lovely it was like a punch to the chest, and she had skin the color of golden
caramels, and she had a killer body besides: ten inches taller than Vandis, and
every last inch of her taut and lithe. She strutted around the bar on her long,
perfect legs, in her man’s clothing, that walk of hers screaming let’s-fuck
every step, screaming she had so much money she didn’t have to care what anyone
thought.

Looking at her, a guy
could almost forget how she’d gotten where she was, and how she stayed there.
Vandis had seen it happen, and there was only one way it could end: some
unfortunate bastard went out on a stretcher.

It was never boring in
the Lucky Strike; he could hear the noise clear down the street, a muffled
roar. He considered it the best bar in the world. The torchlit entrance
outshone the streetlamps. On his way past, he patted the unassuming signpost by
the neat boards of the front walk: no image, only “Lucky Strike” in plain
lettering. When he pushed one of the heavy double doors aside and went in, it
was like walking into another world: nearly hot, cheerfully bright, and
amazingly loud instead of chilly, dark, and mostly quiet. A scarred bar-top
stretched the entire south wall, crewed by a dozen maids. In the northwest
corner, ledgers teetered in high stacks around a table—but most often that was
hidden by a long queue of people waiting to settle with the bookie. In pride of
place, surrounded by tables and chairs, was the ring, a big, square dais
enclosed in thin iron bars.