Oath Bound (Book 3) (3 page)

“Enough.”

“I’m just saying.” Ingavi
faced him and spread platter hands. “I’d give a lot for my nephew to be like
that crazy Parsifal of yours.”

“Let’s get to it,
Ingavi.”

“A while ago two men came
to me, all in black. Stupid haircuts, they had, but they offered me money. ‘Go
to Dreamport,’ they said, ‘and kill Vandis Vail.’ It was a
lot
of
money.”

Vandis curled his fingers
around the hilt of his sword, taking a step back. Why had he sent Dingus away?

“You’re lucky my people
don’t go to Dreamport, Vandis Vail. I didn’t take their offer—but I might have.
So you see, your little berserk has the right of me.”

“Make a move.”

“Why should I? There’s
nothing in it for me. Just another dead body. But next time, maybe you should
let him stay. He’d be happy to take a sword through the belly for you, wouldn’t
he?” Ingavi boomed another laugh and thumped Vandis’s shoulder on his way past.

Vandis stood rigid,
breathing hard. His face worked, and his hand clasped and loosened around the
hilt. Damn Ingavi, damn him, and damn Dingus, too, for being right all along.
Damn Vandis, for that matter, because he’d been a stubborn old ass—too stubborn
to listen to a man who, though he was young and under Vandis’s charge, had
excellent instincts. Damn Vandis, because he still had to dish out an
ass-chewing. Damn everyone.

Dingus strode over the
plain, feeling the scrubby grass crunch under his boots.
It’ll serve you
right, old man,
he kept thinking.
You get yourself killed, it’ll serve
you right.
Vandis thought Dingus was trying to boss him, but it wasn’t that
way—it was just that Vandis wouldn’t be
careful.

Pausing, Dingus scowled
around him. He wished for a quiet spot: a tree, a hollow, anything, but as far
as he could see it was empty, and even by starlight he could see pretty far,
since there was nothing in the way. He missed the woods. Eventually he sat
where he was, pulling his knees to his chest, to wait for his ass-chewing. It
didn’t seem quite right that he hoped he’d get yelled at, but it’d mean Vandis
was okay.

After a little while, he
lay down, resting his head on interlocked hands to look up at the stars. There
were so many of them he could hardly pick out constellations: clusters and
clumps and swaths of light, some places so full of stars that they looked misty
and bright against the depths of the sky. He found the pole star. Iunder’s Eye,
the People called it, though human stories had it that Naheel Queen of Heaven
watched over Her children by night, and that it was Her eye looking down on
them.

He heard a noise, steps,
and he rolled to his feet in a flash, thumbing his swords loose. Four of the
young men from the tribe stood in a semicircle between him and the fires. If
they decided to thrash him, it’d hurt like hell. They were all taller than he
was, and broader. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk,” one said.
Orddot, the chieftain’s nephew; Dingus could tell by the soft beard and the
wolf charms braided into his long hair. They’d been introduced, and he was
maybe Dingus’s age, maybe a little younger. “You’re right about my uncle. He’s
a murderer—not like that,” he added, seeing Dingus tense. “He killed those
monks and took their money, but there’s nothing in it for him to kill Vandis.
He killed my father and took my mother to bed. Now he’s the chief.”

“What’s that to me?”
Dingus asked, but he felt the injustice of it.

“He did it, and then he
called me back from school. I was in Dreamport. My father sent me to learn—he
wanted more for us than this.” Orddot opened his arms, indicating the vast
emptiness of the plain. “He called me back, and my father was dead, and my
mother was fucking
him.
Now she’s pregnant and her baby’s going to take
my birthright.”

“I saw it,” said one of
the others. “Ingavi killed Engist while he was drunk, from behind. Not like a
man kills.”

Dingus kept his hands on
his swords. Touching them steadied him. “That’s a low-down dirty thing to do,
no doubt about it, but I don’t see what it’s got to do with
me.
”

“Ingavi’s full of shit.
He laughed at you when he called you a berserk, but you’re a
real
berserk,” Orddot said, his eyes gleaming, face avid in the starlight.

Dingus didn’t say a word;
he looked at Orddot, hard, trying to see into him.

“Don’t deny it. I know
you are one.”

“How would you know a
thing like that?”

“I can feel your magic.
You burn on my skin like the sun, especially when you get angry. You’re angry
now.” The chieftain’s nephew smacked his lips, like he tasted something good.

“Four guys come on me
outta nowhere, what am I supposed to think?”

“Sorry,” Orddot said,
laughing. “Watch this.” And he flicked his hand as if tossing something. There
was a brilliant flash, a sizzle, and a crack. Dingus’s vision whited out and his
ears rang. His nose filled with burning grass and electric stink.

“Lightning.”

“Yeah. I can do other
things, too. I could make it rain.”

“Right now?” Last he
checked—two heartbeats ago, maybe—the sky’d been as clear as he’d ever seen it.

“Right now. Do you want
to see?” Orddot sounded more than a little eager. “I’ll show you.”

“Seems a little showy,”
Dingus said, trying to blink the blackness out of his sight. “Do you need help?
I could ask Vandis—”

“The only help I need is
yours.”

So you don’t get your
friends killed going after Ingavi.
“No.”

“You don’t know what
you’re turning down. Anything you want. The best tent. The best food. Any woman
you can lay hands on.”

“I made an Oath to my
Lady.”

“Who’s that? The
sword-swinging gash you’re traveling with? The one who looks like she’s got
cunt hair on her head?”

Didn’t matter how big he
was, he’d go down the same as anybody else. “You talk about my sister like that
again, I’ll tear your throat out. Akeere’s my Lady.” Dingus spread his right
hand on his chest. He didn’t know if they could see his leaf in the dark, but
he showed it. “I’m sworn to Her.”

Orddot laughed again.
“We’re men. We make oaths to our whores all the time, oaths we’ve got no
intention—”

“Push me,” Dingus said,
real quiet. “Insult my vow one more time, only one of us walks away from here a
man.”

“That’s two threats
you’ve made against me.”

Like that, just like
that, Dingus was right up in Orddot’s face. “You feel me now?” Orddot fell back
a step and Dingus sneered. He walked right past, back to the fires, where he
saw Vandis sitting—not quite like before, because he wasn’t next to Ingavi, but
between Kessa and Farid. His Master rose, and the grizzled head jerked,
indicating that Dingus should follow into the dark. Resigned, he trailed Vandis
away from the camp. It wasn’t like he wanted to get chewed out—but he’d take
it.

Fort Rule, Section Two

The clouds hung gray, and
an unrelenting mist that sometimes broke into real rain but never really went
away drizzled over the Fort. Krakus could wish himself drier, but he’d put this
off long enough already. He could wish himself a little less nauseated—but he’d
put it off too long. He and Fillip worked in Droshky’s shed, clearing it out
for the next Director of Medicine. Interviews would begin in two days’ time,
and Krakus wanted to show the candidates their prospective quarters, which
meant Droshky could no longer inhabit the place.

Just as well. Krakus
couldn’t deny the pleasure he took in stripping the shed. That morning, he and
Fillip had gone in with distant thunder rumbling a near-constant chorus. Under
Droshky’s rabid weasel gaze, they’d begun to clear the bookshelves into trunks.
Some of the books, though, the chubby doctor’s journals in particular, were so
blazingly objectionable that Krakus had started a “to burn” pile. It grew with
alarming speed.

Droshky sat unspeaking,
perched in the chair that, just a few weeks before, Krakus had broken to take
Danny away. His stare followed their every move, and Krakus didn’t doubt he had
plenty to say, but—all praise to the Bright Lady—his jaw was still trapped
under a heavy bandage stiffened with egg white. He twitched, and his eyes
glittered every time Krakus tossed something onto that pile.

Krakus didn’t care what
Droshky thought of it. Every time he flipped open a book, the pages inside
accused him, the cold anatomical drawings representing all the people he could
have saved, had he only looked. He hadn’t seen it any more than he’d seen his
toes. Now his breastbone cracked and split, and his rib cage yawned wide,
exposing his buried, beating heart to the scalpel’s slice like so many of the
people whose insides the doctor had drawn. However long they’d lasted
afterward, they had been living when Droshky had carved from their flesh the
things that made them
different.
When he saw his distorted reflection in
a bone saw that shone with loving maintenance, he packed it in its case,
snapped the lid shut, and put it aside for burning.

It took all day. Once
they’d finished with the books, he and Fillip moved on to the jars that filled
tables and shelves. As quickly as they could, they transferred the jars to a
wheelbarrow and out to the broadest clear space in Section Two, a small green
where sometimes the doctors and nurses took the air. The job required several
trips. Krakus felt like weeping, and Fillip swiped at his eyes, when they
dropped off the first load: clawed hands and strange eyes, bleached pieces of
people suspended in straw-tinted liquid, their souls forever trapped in the
abomination of body parts that hadn’t gone up in the smoke of a pyre. The
drizzle dampened Krakus’s hair, Fillip’s blacks, and stuck in beads to the
glass, blurring the jars’ contents to formless, whitish blobs.

By the time they’d
dropped off the third load, Krakus had a buzzing, smeared sensation in his
chest. He dragged the rusting pig-iron weight of his heart back and forth until
nothing remained in the shed but tables, the terrible chair, and Droshky
himself.

In a dull voice, Krakus
said, “Brother Fillip, fetch me a couple of soldiers.”

“Yes, Father,” Fillip
said, hardly above a whisper, and ran from the shed.

While he was gone, the
whole endless time, Krakus and Droshky didn’t unlock stares for a moment. A
hundred questions, a thousand imprecations, seethed in the doctor’s expression,
but Krakus didn’t say a word.
You’re not owed,
he thought.
You’re not
owed a chance to talk. You’re not owed an explanation.
Again and again he
thought it; he was convinced, if only by himself, that he did right, and that
he would do right this evening, and as much after as he could.

At last, Brother Fillip
returned with two of the soldiers who inhabited the Fort: a corporal so fresh
he still had spots and a private who looked to Krakus as though he should have been
on leading-strings. They came waiting for orders, and Krakus said, “Bear
witness.” He didn’t look away from Droshky, but took a deep breath and lifted
his hand in a holy gesture—he’d never done this.

“By the power granted me
by Naheel Queen of Heaven, and the wisdom my Brothers trust me to possess, I
hereby condemn Tadeusz Droshky to death by the sword this night after the
Office of Vespers, for crimes against those I hold under my protection. I
myself condemn him. My own hand will strike him down. And if I err in judgment,
may the Queen have mercy on my soul.”

Droshky blanched at the
beginning of the Ordinance of Summary Justice. By the end he shook, green in
the face.

“Take him to the
stockade,” Krakus ordered quietly. The young soldiers lunged to obey, and
marched Droshky out with his legs wobbling, rubbery under the strain. After
they’d gone, Krakus stood with Fillip, gazing sightlessly, but all too aware of
the Brother’s gaze on him. The drizzle hissed on outside the open door. Water
dripped from the eaves; gray, filtered light and the damp scent of rain filled
the shed. “Well,” he said. “Well. Let’s go and burn it all.”

They smashed the jars
into the pile so it’d burn in spite of the wet, and wound up bent over an arrow
trying to light a pitchy rag in the rain. Fillip, the better shot, loosed the
arrow into the bottom of the pile, and it went up in a spectacular fireball
that toasted Krakus’s face even from a distance. When the flame died down, it
all smoldered, charred specimens, sooty broken glass.

“You can go,” he told
Fillip.

“I’ll stay, if that’s all
right, Father.”

Krakus put his hand on
Fillip’s shoulder. The young man felt chilled through his damp habit, but he
didn’t shiver. They stood for some time, watching the pile collapse slowly in
on itself.

“He’s evil,” Fillip said
suddenly. “I, all the others, we think he killed a Brother once. Boleslav
always teased him. And when Boleslav got hurt and went under his care…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Fillip looked at him; he
felt the eyes and looked over, too. “I didn’t think you’d care.”

“You were probably
right,” Krakus said, bowing his head under the shame of it.

“Thanks and praise to the
Queen of Heaven, from Whom all goodness shines, and Who makes us holier than
yesterday,” Fillip recited. He turned from under Krakus’s hand and headed for
the gate to Section Three: Commissars. “I think it’s almost time for Vespers.”

Krakus put his all into
the service that evening. Things were going to get better here. He’d fight for
that, and he swore it to Her over and over in his heart. When Lech pronounced
the benediction, he went straight to the stockade in Section Four. The square
stone building hulked in the darkness, and mist swirled around the single torch
that burned to show its position, collecting on Krakus’s white armor and in his
hair.

His sabatons clacked on
the boardwalk leading up to the front door. When he opened it, the light in the
anteroom hit him in the face. “I’m here for Droshky,” he said, when the soldier
manning the desk had finished saluting.

“Droshky?” The soldier’s
broad face scrunched in confusion. “Father, why would Doctor Droshky be here?”

“Are you serious?” he
blurted.

“I’m sorry, Father. He
wasn’t here when we did shift change at sundown. I didn’t know he was meant to
be here.”

Krakus rubbed at his
tonsure with a gauntleted hand. “Let me onto the block.”

“Yes, Father Krakus,
right away.” The soldier rose, pulling a jingling mass of keys on a chain out
from his belt, and came around the desk. Krakus followed him to the plain door
that led to the block of four cells, and stepped inside ahead of him.

The place was swallowed
in night, until the soldier followed him in with a candle. The flame danced
over three empty cells, over the form of another soldier with a torn uniform
and dark blood on his stubbly face, curled in the straw. Krakus approached the
barred door.

“That’s Nosek. He was
drunk,” the soldier said helpfully.

And Krakus had thought
“seeing red” was just an expression. He shut his eyes, vibrating inside his
prison of enameled steel.

“Father Krakus?”

He whirled and stalked
out of the block, on, down the wooden walkway into the dark. When he reached
his apartments, he doffed his armor and hung it up with shaking hands. He could
hardly see anything at all now, let alone red. He sank to his knees and laid
his forehead against the door of the wardrobe, pleading wordlessly for grace.
His knees protested when he rose again, and he tottered to the office, gaining
flexibility and strength as he went, until he strode in straight and tall.

Lech didn’t even look up
from his end of the desk. Krakus grabbed the back of his hard wooden armchair
and jerked it around to the side. Lech’s quill scudded down his parchment,
leaving a long, black slash at the end of whatever he’d been writing.

“What can I do for you,
Krakus?” he said, seemingly even, though his face looked sour. Always looked
sour.

Krakus bent, hands on the
arms of the chair, leaning into Lech’s space so far that the back of his head
struck wood, so far that he had to tilt his head up to hold the stare. “It’s
not enough that I’ve forsworn my vows a thousand times over?” Krakus asked, in
a flinty voice, nose to nose. “Now you have to make me forswear again?”

“I don’t know what you’re
talking about.” But Lech’s larynx bobbed.

“Don’t
bullshit
me, Lech. And don’t dare to stand between me and my duty again. Are we clear?”

“I don’t—”

“Are we
clear?
”

Lech curled his lip.

Without thinking, Krakus
slapped him hard across the face. He stepped back to suck air through his
teeth, hands in fists.
Control,
he thought.
Control yourself.
“Don’t do it again,” he said, in the most reasonable tone he could muster.
Before Lech could respond, he left. His urge was to run out of the building and
turn the world upside down to shake Droshky out of his hole, but his reason
told him the doctor was long gone. He went to his bedroom to think.