Oath Bound (Book 3) (5 page)

His thick legs launched
them off the rocks. He threw them both backward, headfirst, and peeled away
mid-somersault, leaving Dingus disoriented, swallowing seawater. When he broke
the surface again, Vandis already sat on the ledge, cracking up and dripping
from hair, clothes, and nose. Dingus swam over and started to climb up, but
Vandis nudged him off again with a foot, laughing harder. “Yield?”

“I yield,” Dingus gasped.
Vandis let him flop out and onto his back. “Not fair when you can fly
underwater.”

“I can’t.” Vandis slicked
back his hair, grinning. “That’s how I learned to maneuver, though. It’s the
closest I could get.” When Dingus got his breath back, they climbed to the top
of the fjord wall with the bucket of mussels and squelched to the Slippery
Seal, where Kessa laughed at them over dinner.

It went on like that,
good day after good day, until they walked up the gangplank of the
Jellyfish
one morning before the Queen started Her climb. In spite of the pickled
herring, Dingus felt like refusing to leave. It wasn’t just the scenery he’d
miss; like crazy, he’d miss Vandis, who’d leave from Windish in less than six
days, once Dingus and Kessa were settled. If only the sea voyage would last
forever—and damn, it did, just not the way Dingus wanted it to.

The time Kessa and Vandis
spent watching orcas, Dingus spent leaning over the rail. The whole ship danced
under his feet in a dizzying roll, and when Vandis helped him lie down in a
cabin below decks, it made matters worse. He couldn’t imagine why ships were
supposed to be women; if he ever met a woman who reeked like the
Jellyfish
,
he’d run the other way. The bilge, the single “head”—which was what the sailors
called the privy—and the people, not to mention the barrels of pickled herring
they’d brought for the journey to Windish and beyond: it all stank together.
The whole five days were a fetid, swaying, crowded dream. Vandis didn’t get
seasick a bit, and Kessa got used to it after about a day, but Dingus couldn’t
adjust. He spent his last five days with Vandis, puking up what had to be the
entire contents of his skin.

He’d never been so glad
to see anything as Windish Harbor, even though it was raining at the time, a
steady, soaking rain. The inlet was too wide to see both sides clearly, and
masses of gray-shaded hills and mountains receded from the water. As they got
close Dingus’s nose filled with fish and salt, rain and fresh evergreen. If he
hadn’t already been reeling, the scent would’ve spun him like a whirligig. When
they finally came to berth, he needed to spread his arms for balance down the
gangplank, and the wharf itself swayed beneath him—he swore it did, even though
Vandis told him it was rooted to the bottom of the bay with thick beams.

“Never again,” he rasped
as he staggered after the others, trying not to bump into any of the stevedores
that rushed the opposite way to unload the
Jellyfish
’s cargo of seal
pelts. “Never.”

“Fair enough,” Vandis said.
“It takes some people that way. I didn’t think you’d be one of them.”

Dingus stopped once they
got off the boards of the wharf and muffled a sickly burp. He couldn’t abide
all the swaying. “Can we sit down?” When Vandis paused and turned to look at him,
he added, “Please.”

Vandis considered. “All
right. Let’s find you a spot to sit for a little while.”

Dingus followed him
gratefully, feeling ready to move, if only so he could at some point stop.

Windish to Dreamport

The first time Vandis had
landed in Windish—almost exactly eighteen years ago, but who was counting?—he’d
been enchanted. He’d never seen a place like it: wet, but fiercely green to
match, and exploding with life in the dim beneath the great trees. He’d wandered
around, a man dreaming, slurping it all up like strawberries and cream; and he
hadn’t noticed, at first, how nobody addressed him directly, hadn’t seen the
scowls directed his way because he was alone.

He’d never forget the
statue, the pretty little oak tree carved out of wood that he’d wanted for his
office. Long story short: he’d tried to buy it and wound up talking faster than
he ever had in his life to keep the stall owner from calling on the
Treehoppers.

In Windish, men hardly
had the right to live. At the time, he’d blazed with rage at the injustice of
it: men had no property rights and all of a gnat’s power to buy and sell.
Instead, they were reduced to little more than bits of jewelry, selected from
the Men’s House for the strength in the secretions of their balls. Oh, he’d
burned
at that. It wasn’t fair.

Only after he’d gotten a
cheap bed in the common room of an inn—all he was allowed to pay for—and a
supper of watered-down fish stew, only when he lay on his back listening to
teakettle snores in the dark, did he stop to think. It was unfair, of course it
was, but he couldn’t maintain his rage. Men in Windish weren’t any more
oppressed than women were elsewhere, but he was lucky enough to have a dick,
and the ill treatment of the opposite sex in general society rarely registered
with him. After all, what someone had in his or her breeches didn’t make a lick
of difference to the Knights. He still didn’t think about it very often, but
whenever he was in Windish, he couldn’t help it, and one of the most beautiful
places in Rothganar made him itch with uneasy guilt instead.

It’ll be all right,
he told himself, looking down at Dingus slumped against the side of a young
cedar at the edge of the forest.
He’s good at keeping his head down.
Putting Dingus somewhere he might be stepped on again, just for what he’d been
born, wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was the least of many evils.

Vandis hoped, anyway.
He’d made certain to brief the kids on the ship, telling Kessa not to let
Dingus go anywhere by himself, to watch out for him. The Ish would expect her
to do the talking, if it came down to brass tacks. The difficulty now was a
question of how much Dingus had been able to take in. On land, Vandis’s boy had
a cat’s balance, but on the
Jellyfish
, he hadn’t done much more than
lurch to the railing. Vandis felt bad about that; he’d honestly thought they’d
have a good time sailing.

“How come there are so
many ships?” Kessa asked now. “There must be a score, and there’s room for a
whole bunch more at the—what’s it called?”

“The wharf,” Vandis
supplied.

“The wharf.” Kessa tested
the word. “The wharf. Anyways, I thought you said Windish wasn’t that big.”

“The city of Dreamport,”
Vandis said, “is home to just over a million people. Brightwater just under
half. Windish, though, has under a quarter million. It is small, when you’re
talking about the great cities of Rothganar, but compared to the places you’ve
been so far…”

“It’s humongous,” she
said, her eyes rounding. Dingus uttered a quiet groan and covered his head with
his hands.

Vandis’s conscience
jabbed at him. He turned and opened his arms. “Look, though. It’s beautiful—a
beautiful city for a beautiful people.” The streets, lit softly by covered
lanterns, twisted and turned under forest giants: cedar, cypress, sequoia, two
or three hundred feet high. In the shadowy heights, the lights of houses
gleamed like clusters of fireflies, and the lights strung on the rope bridges
that crossed from tree to tree wove together like constellations. Some trees
held only one house; some held two or even three. Sound felt different here,
hushed, so that the shrieks from Ish to Ish sounded sweeter than they would
have in open air. To Vandis, coming under the canopy here always felt like
crossing a threshold into magic.

The Ish people only
reinforced the impression. On average, they reached Vandis’s waist, no higher;
an Ish Vandis’s height would have been even more obtrusive than a human as tall
as Dingus. Even the biggest males didn’t top his sternum. Their skin was
furred, in a multitude of colors. Their bare feet were long, thin, with toes
that could grasp nearly as well as fingers; their hips were strange and skinny,
as if they were made to go on all fours, and their arms hung low around their
knees. They pranced by on their toes, a never-ending parade of them, carrying
string bags or parcels, with Ishlings—what they called their children—clinging
to their backs or frisking about on the ground. Except where weighted down with
charms and ornaments, their tails bobbed along high: smooth, tufted, bushy. The
crests that marked adults were just as diverse: coarse, wiry, sticking up;
soft, shiny, tumbling; short or long, wide or narrow, back from the forehead
clear to the napes of their necks.

“Oh, Vandis,” Kessa
breathed, grasping his shoulder.

He reached up and patted
her hand. “It’s something, all right.”

“I like how it smells,”
Dingus said. When Vandis and Kessa looked back, he was on his feet, and he
lifted his face to the canopy. His eyes fell shut and his nostrils flared.

“What do you smell?”
Kessa asked. Vandis was curious himself. He’d seen Dingus take a scent like
this before, but it’d never seemed quite right to ask him.

“Rain,” he said. “Mold
and mushrooms. Acid—from the needles, I think. Pigs and goats and people. Cut
cedar.” He raised his head again and took another deep sniff, and then opened
his eyes to look at them. “You and Vandis. Thyme and rosemary. Somebody’s
cooking a fish supper. Somebody else is baking apples in honey. With nuts, I’m
pretty sure.”

Kessa frowned. “You can
smell us? Way over there? What do I smell like?”

A grin darted across
Dingus’s face. “Sweat and butt.”

“Aw…”

“What about me?” Vandis
asked.

“Sweat and butt. Like
everybody else in the world.”

“You’re not always so
fresh yourself.”

“True.” Dingus stuck his
hands in his pockets, pulling his shoulders around his ears. “I don’t mind my
own ’less I’m real bad. Don’t much mind you guys either. Except Kessa’s on her
monthly.”

Vandis told him, “I did
not need to know that.” He struck north and east, toward Tikka’s house.

“I can’t help it!” she
protested.

“I can’t help smelling
it. It’s just what we are.”

“The whole world stinks
to you, doesn’t it?” Vandis said.

Dingus pulled his
shoulders up again, then let them fall. “Basically. I don’t pay attention most of
the time is all, ’cause I’d never get anything done.”

“Well, keep your guard
up. Petty theft’s an institution here. The pickpockets will mark you two
quicker than sneezing.” Vandis looked the two of them up and down. “Staring
around at everything won’t help you.”

“I never saw anything
like this place,” Kessa said defensively. “I never even knew a place like this
existed.”

Vandis grinned. “You’re
not wrong to stare. There’s nowhere else like Windish. Just be careful.” As
they walked, he told Kessa and Dingus what he knew about the city: main
streets, points of interest, temples. He told them about the rocky beaches and
the tide pools choked with anemones and shellfish. He showed them nurse logs
that babied trees, and trees so old the nurse logs had rotted out from beneath
them, leaving arcane root formations behind. He showed them a few of the mosses
that carpeted the forest floor, the sphagnum mosses that dripped from the
boughs. “More types of fungi grow in a square mile of Windish than in the whole
of Dixon Forest,” he told them. “Look at those.” He pointed out a tree with a
white shelf fungus growing like steps up the trunk.

“Bet they don’t eat
pickled herring here,” Dingus said. “Can we try the food soon?” As if on cue,
his stomach let out a ferocious growl, and Vandis laughed.

“Tikka’s going to want to
feed us. It’d be rude to disappoint her. Don’t worry, though—good cooks in her
house.”

“Who’s Tikka?”

Kessa scoffed. “Weren’t
you paying any attention?”

“Hell no, I wasn’t. You
saw me. Just tell me who Tikka is.”

“She’s the lady who’s
going to let us camp on her land,” she explained. “She used to be a Knight but
she’s retired now.”

“Was that so hard?”

“Would it have been so
hard to listen when Vandis told us?”

“I—” Dingus began, but
Vandis cut him off.

“Quit bickering. We’re
almost there.”

Tikka lived about four
miles inland, away from the obscenely huge, tightly packed houses of the North
Coast, in a quiet neighborhood with plenty of space. She had two acres to
spread out on, and a good-sized place: privy on the ground, kitchen and
smokehouse in one cedar, and a tidy four-level house in another, larger tree,
connected by a rope-and-board bridge. A forest of small metal chimneys ran out
of the mossy roofs to funnel smoke above the canopy and minimize damage to the
trees. “Hello, up there!” he shouted when they came under the branches of the
bigger tree. “It’s Vandis plus two!”

Nothing happened. He drew
breath to shout again, but Dingus said, “They’re coming.”

Sure enough, a trapdoor
swung open from the bottom level of the house, and a rope ladder unrolled
swiftly down to them, bouncing at the end of its descent. Vandis didn’t waste a
moment. He climbed the swaying ladder and pulled himself through the trapdoor
into warmth, light, and the fluting chirrups of greeting accented by native
Ishian. If Windish made him uncomfortable, well, he’d never felt uncomfortable
here
.

Tikka herself was white
with age from the top of her crest to the tips of her toes, but her black eyes
shone and snapped. She went mostly unadorned except for a gold ring around her
tail and a colorful tunic, which tonight was bright red embroidered in a black
geometric pattern around cuffs and hem. “Vandis!” she cried when he pulled his
legs from the hole in the floor, stretching out her arms and making clutching
hug-me motions with her fingers. “Hello, young man!”

Before he stood, he let
her squeeze him. The top of his head was about six inches from the ceiling.
“Hello there, Tikka.” He was hard put to do anything but smile at her. A
soft-looking, cream-and-brown Ishling clung to her back, with its skinny tail
sticking out of a nappy. “That a grand, or a great-grand?”

“No great-grands yet,
more’s the pity. This is my newest granddaughter, Hilo. Of course you know my
daughters, and their daughters…” She indicated the circle of Ish women and
girls waiting to eat. They sat cross-legged on bright rugs woven with Ishian
religious symbols: Salmon for plenty, Orca for war, and wise old Death, who
wore the Raven’s face. There were even a couple of rugs woven with images of
Otter, the trickster god. In the center of the circle, several cedar planks
laden with baked salmon and skewers of vegetables threw off delicious-smelling
steam.

“I know most of them. Is
this your little girl, Neen?”

The youngest of Tikka’s
daughters hooked a hand over her nose, looking down in delighted embarrassment.
“Yes, she is.”

“Cute,” Vandis said.
“Congratulations.”

Kessa poked her curly
head through the trapdoor, and he introduced her. Tikka’s family fussed over
her bright hair, pretty eyes, and impressive height. She couldn’t straighten
completely under the low ceiling, and ended up hunchbacking over to a seat in
the circle of Ish, on a rug woven in a pattern of Otter symbols. After another
few moments, Dingus’s hood and thin arms came up through the hole. He shut his
eyes, and Vandis watched his ribs expand as he rose, pulling a deep draught of
the steamy, food-scented air through his nose. A broad, approving grin broke
out across the homely kid face.

“This is Sir Dingus, my
Junior.” No matter how many times he introduced Dingus that way, his heart felt
like it would pop, he was so proud.

“That leaf is brand-new
like springtime, isn’t it?” Tikka said, accosting Dingus before he’d even
pulled his legs in. “Congratulations, Sir Dingus.”

“Thank you, ma’am,”
Dingus said, blushing.

“This is Hilo,” she
added, pointing her thumb back at the baby.

Dingus offered a finger.
“Hi, sweetie,” he said, and in a flash she’d bounded from his forearm to his
shoulder, pulled his hood down, and settled on his head. Tiny, quick fingers
picked through his blazing hair.

“Eee, hi, hi, hee, hee,
hi!” she cheeped. Neen bounced up and rushed over, scolding in Ishian, to
rescue Dingus, who’d started laughing along with everyone else.

“So sorry about that. She’s
very friendly,” Neen trilled, reaching for Hilo, who was the size of a barn
kitten, if the kitten weren’t particularly large.

“She can stay.” Dingus
grinned. “I don’t mind.”

The Ish woman beamed at
him. “Well, if she gets to be trouble for you, just shout for Neen!”

“This is everyone, isn’t
it, Vandis?” Tikka asked, and when Vandis nodded, she clapped her hands and
said, “Let’s sit down and eat!”

Vandis took a Salmon rug
and Dingus pulled up the trapdoor before he scooted across the floor to an
Orca; his hair looked a lot neater than usual, bar the Ishling still busy on
the crown of his head. Tikka took a red rug with Raven symbols and served out
the food: roast salmon with rosemary, green and yellow summer squashes, little,
charred tomatoes that popped hotly in the mouth, and chunks of the big white
radish the Ish called
spoo
: burnt on the outside, spicy-sweet on the
inside.