Oath Bound (Book 3) (7 page)

What was it like?
he asked, soaring out to the black, gleaming sea over the hulk of the sewage
treatment plant spangled with squatters’ lights. He banked into a wide turn to
slow his flight and let himself drop to the level of the cliff tops.

You always ask Me
that,
She said, warming him with the affection in Her voice.

So? Tell me again.
Please.

Like a star on the
land. Bright and clean, it was, with the light of magic shining from clear
glass globes along every street, and the cobbles so well laid you couldn’t
slide more than a hair into the cracks between. And there was music… oh,
everywhere. People had time, you see, for art.

As he flew back in
overland, he passed Last Resort, the black-granite seat of Friedhelm. The
castle sat on the promontory jutting out farthest from the crater, guarding the
city from the sea, and a watchman on the highest tower waved a greeting to Vandis.
He returned it. Friendly glow illuminated the arrow-slit windows along the top
edge of what he knew to be the Great Hall and flowed across the balcony off the
Duke’s apartments. He could land just there if he wanted to see His Grace, but
he decided not to—not tonight. An audience with Marcus sounded utterly
exhausting.

Besides, his Lady spoke
on.
If you looked about, at any hour, you might have seen a homunculus
with a long, tufted tail picking up trash or scrubbing a statue. They used to
roam continually, keeping things neat.

Vandis dipped lower and
lower into the crater, into Old Town. Many of the oldest temples were here,
along with fancy houses, mostly taken over by merchants and traders when the
nobles had moved to higher ground. The roofs were all slate or wooden shingles;
no thatch in Old Town. Since it was so readily accessed from the wharves, there
was plenty of market space, too, with shops and bars marking out squares
waiting eagerly for stalls, wagons, and basket-carriers.
This quarter
wasn’t only a market in those days, My own. Galleries and outdoor stages jammed
in with the shops. There was always a place for a talented musician or
storyteller in the taverns, and My Knights were first among them. With only a
wave of the hand, such pictures! Illusions of sight and scent and sound to
enhance a tale—they knew how to trick the mind of the listener, right down to
changing their own voices to fit the players in the story.

As Vandis eased down
Temple Row, She filled his head with how it used to be, the great panoply of
religious practice in Rothganar Before. The remnants were there all around him:
the greenhouse atop Reeda’s temple, for example, still produced food and
flowers, and the temple of Dareen still had its long reflecting pool, but it
didn’t, as the Lady described to him, lie still and smooth as glass no matter
the weather. It purled at his passing. When he reached Hadrok’s temple, with
its crystal pillars that used to radiate cold and stand rimed with frost even
on the hottest summer day, he crunched his abdominals to pull his feet under
him and touched down on muddy cobbles, stumbling a little.

He stood panting in the
middle of the street, hands on his thighs.
You’d better get something to
eat,
She said.

I will, but once I get
in at HQ, I won’t want to leave again.
HQ’s tempting lights shone
catty-corner from the Glacier’s Heart, set well back from the thoroughfare so
that the first third of the lot could be dedicated to the open-air chapel. Most
of the windows were shuttered for the night, but a few were cracked open or
even flung wide. To Vandis, it was home in a way Vick’s Hollow never had been.
He’d lived here since he’d taken the Oath, in one capacity or another: as a
Junior to shy, fluttering Regis, a clerk only just into his Mastership; for his
single year as a Senior, attending the university; and the wildly busy times as
new-minted Master and Head-in-Training, trying to finish his degree and learn,
at the same time, how to administer and guide the Knights.

Because your life
settled so much after Hieronymus stepped down for good.

Right?
He shook
his head, chuckling.
Might as well get it over with and see Disa before I
fall asleep on my feet.
The Cathedral of the Winds was, in fact, closer
than HQ. It lay directly across the street from the Glacier’s Heart. The church
proper housed itself in the soaring cathedral, a heavy edifice of limestone and
marble with Akeere’s triple spires on the roof, each taller than the
last—unlike the Knights, who held that the spires ought all to be the same
height.

Neither he nor Disa were
actually accountable to one other, but Disa liked to think “Her Holiness” put
her in authority over mere Sir Vandis. Sometimes Vandis was tempted to let the
hard-ass old bat slide on it, just to make his own life easier, but if he gave
in to her once, he’d never stop the giving. The Knights were technically part
of Akeere’s church, but in reality they were something of a church themselves.
They served the same Lady and so were allied, but they disagreed on quite a few
points of doctrine and held separate services which bore only a little
resemblance to each other. The twain came together only for joint charity
ventures, and when Vandis met with Disa.

He jogged up the wide
marble steps and pulled one side of the great portal open. When he passed
through the narthex, he scowled, and when he entered the sanctuary and gazed up
the aisle, all four hundred feet carpeted in lush sky blue, the scowl deepened.
On either side, row upon row of polished, honey-colored pews provided seating
for the congregation, and great caryatids of the Lady’s saints framed the whole
mess. In daylight, the sun would shine through tall panels of stained glass and
paint the expanse with jewel tones; now, at night, the sanctuary was lit only
from the apse, where Disa stood at the altar, draped in fathoms of blue brocade
and wielding a silver shaker almost too big to hold one-handed.

Smoke rushed toward the
shadowed depths of the ceiling from the altar: a thirty-foot stone monstrosity
carved with scenes from the Lady’s life and buffed to a diamond shine. The top
was hollowed into a dish, and the under-priests kept it filled with glowing
charcoal. Vandis’s lip curled. The cost of the charcoal alone could probably
feed a score of hungry children for a week.

Disa laid the shaker
aside and intoned a prayer Vandis’s ears couldn’t quite make out, and then
picked it up again to repeat the process. She made incense offerings so often
her curtain of dry white hair showed yellow and smoke-stained in front. When
the smoke reached him, he smelled resin of galbanum, musky and bitter, meant to
remind the Lady of the suffering of the world. His eyelid twitched. Whenever he
came here, he left angry. Enough galbanum to shake over the altar even once—he
couldn’t think She wanted this, not when the money it cost on a daily basis
could go so far toward alleviating that suffering. If the priests of the
cathedral had a look at Vandis’s operating budget, they’d laugh themselves
sick.

His first, nastiest
impulse was to stomp up the aisle with his muddy boots, but it wasn’t the
priests who’d have to clean dirt out of the carpet. He went up the right side
instead, between caryatids and stained glass. As he neared the apse, he saw the
pulpit in more and more detail. He had to admit, the white oak was gorgeously
rendered in green granite, and it sparkled in the low light, but if there was
one more piece of brass inlay on that thing, it’d collapse under its own
weight. Whoever led worship perched at the top, in the deep depression carved
for the speaker. His temper flared, seeing it, but She said to him—like She
always did—
It brings them comfort, My own.

They miss the point,
he
replied, like he always did.

And so do you,
She
said, which made him scowl just as he passed Gudrun, Her Champion, standing at
ease by the edge of the apse. Gudrun wore a sword at her waist, but her shield
rested against the pulpit behind her. She stood a full foot taller than Vandis;
slightly shorter than Kessa was, as a matter of fact, but with arms and
shoulders that couldn’t fail to impress. Wouldn’t it be good for Kessa to meet
her?

“Hello, Vandis.” Gudrun
smiled. “You’re always in such a good mood when you come.”

“Gudrun,” he said. He
shook his head to clear it. He loved speaking with his Lady, but if they talked
for long, the transition from that to the physical world was a little
difficult.

“Cap.” She’d said it
hundreds of times before, and he pulled the cap off, like he always did.

“Thanks.”

Disa looked up at his
approach, glaring at him from fever-bright eyes sunken in skull and wrinkles.
She looked ghastly, that was the truth of it, all frail little bones and pale
skin as thin as an onion’s, blue veins standing out ropy in her hands: blue and
white and half dead. “Vandis,” she scraped.

“Disa. Looking a little
consumptive these days.”

She drew her lips into a
purse. “There’s a good reason for that. But
you
are insolent—and
unkempt. You might have shaved before you came to see me.”

Vandis shrugged, raising
his eyebrows. “I have to keep you on your toes somehow.” They exchanged a look:
almost resentful, not quite tolerant. “You ought to go down to Oasis. Just say
the word, and I’ll have six brawny mothers together to take you. Like that.” He
snapped his fingers.

“If I decide I’m required
in Oasis, Gudrun is more than qualified to escort me.”

“You ought to go.” It
wasn’t entirely selfish. The thought of a sick old lady sucking incense smoke day
after day in the coldest, wettest city on the continent didn’t sit well with
him.

“My work is here,” she
said, and the old steel glinted in her eye. Vandis remembered it from when he
was younger, just into his office, and desperate to prove She, the Knights, had
been right to choose him.

“I suppose if you want to
feel like reheated shit—”

“You may have heard about
Solveig,” she said, raising her voice to cut him off, sending herself into a
coughing fit.

“Eventually,” he said
when she’d finished. “Found out at Moot. That’s mostly why I’m here. I’m
calling Conclave.”

“That won’t be
necessary.”

“After what they did to
my people? I should’ve done it months ago. I’ve just…” He looked away, down at
the floor, the mud on the carpet. “…had other things on my mind.”

“As well you should have
had!” Disa snapped. “There’s nothing more important. We can’t defend our faith
if we don’t pass it on. Let anyone say what he will. I’m behind you.”

Vandis blinked. “Do we
agree
on something?”

“Of course we agree!” She
slapped the edge of the altar, and coughs racked her little body. “We—ugh!”

He undid a buckle to
reach into his cloak and pull out one of his blue handkerchiefs. She accepted
it when he offered, and when she took it away from her mouth, it was stained
with red. Vandis waited.

“In any case,” she went
on after a minute, in a thin, straining voice, “it won’t be necessary to call
Conclave, because—hm. I’ve already called it. Hem. Five weeks after Longnight.
In Oasis.” She stopped, and gasped. “Oh. Oh, blast those black-robes to Oda’s
eternal night!”

She fell to coughing
again: dry, whistling coughs that made Vandis want to do something
,
he
didn’t know what—just
something
to help her. Instead he waited.

“That’s another thing we
agree on,” he said, as if it hadn’t happened.

“Solveig was my friend.”

He folded his arms and
took a few steps toward the altar. “They came for you, too, if I heard right.”

“Our Lady be praised,
Gudrun was watching over me. That woman is pure blessing. Where’s yours, eh?”

I left him in Windish.
“I don’t need one,” he said aloud.

“Don’t be so sure,” she
wheezed. “They’re still making trouble.” Disa turned from the altar to look him
in the eye. “They’re banned from Dreamport, but that hasn’t stopped them. Just
the other day those hoodlums staged a protest on the street, trying to keep
people out of your headquarters. I went and gave them a piece of my mind—hm.
And what do you suppose they did?”

“Threw garbage, I’ll
bet.”

“If only they’d thrown
something that pleasant.” She pursed her lips again. “What is this world coming
to?”

“Nothing new.”

She shook voluminous
brocade sleeves over her wasted arms and huffed. “I suppose not, but they
stoned Sir Hjaldi within an inch of his life.”

Vandis flinched, as if
from a blow. Hjaldi had led services in the outdoor chapel while he was away.

“If anything, the ban’s
made them more dangerous. They’re traipsing about in plain clothes.”

“Really.” He rested his
palms on the warm lip of the altar and bowed his head.

“That’s right. Lady knows
they don’t like me, and they didn’t like Solveig, but you, they hate.”

“I know that.”

“You haven’t heard what
they say of you. Seditionist, consort of demons, defiler of youth, and a
drunkard besides! In case you haven’t noticed, you blackguard, I’m telling you
to be careful.” He sent her an exhausted look, but she drew herself
poker-straight and returned it with one of her own, ice down her nose. “If I
outlive you, I shall be most displeased. At my age, the last thing I need is to
break in another troublemaking Knight.”

“All right,” he said.
“All right. I need to go, Disa. Let’s talk again before I leave town.”

She sniffed. “Just as
well. It’s past my bedtime.”

“Good night, then.” He
pushed off the altar and walked back the way he’d come. “Good night, Gudrun.”

“Good night, Vandis.
Watch yourself now.”

He grunted sourly,
wondering how many more people were going to tell him to be careful. Half-dried
mud crumbled off his feet and onto the marble floor. He stiff-armed the portal
and let his boots snap on the way down the steps. HQ was next door, but “next
door” on Temple Row didn’t mean much. The trip would’ve amounted to four or
five blocks on any other street. Across the open space of the chapel in front
of HQ, he could see the black basalt fortress built in Kradon the Warlord’s
honor, and the statue of the god raising His hand over the street in a rally
call. Torches arranged on the plinth lit the effigy from below, but once it had
been the Eternal Flame.