Oath Bound (Book 3) (9 page)

Dingus drew a breath.
“Are you hungry?”

The Ishling let out a
disgusted chuff that shook at the end, and when he inhaled after it was almost
a sob.

“Well, that was a stupid
question.” The Ishling stared, and Dingus’s heart twisted. He could count ribs
through the holes in the tunic. “Go on, you can say it.”

“You is at least enough
smart to know.”

He laughed. “Kessa, take
my purse,” he said, and she came over to untie it from his belt. “Get us
dinner. As much as you can carry.”

“I’ll be right back,” she
said.

“Listen,” he told the
boy, “I’m gonna put you down, but if you run away you won’t get any food.”

The coal eyes sharpened.
“Food?”

“Yeah.”

“If I stays, I eats?”

“You got it. As much as
you want.”

Dingus’s prisoner
stilled, thinking. “Okay. You is put me down and I stays.”

He stooped and set the
Ishling gently on the ground. The little one crouched there, still staring, and
Dingus sat back on his heels.

“You speak Traders’
pretty good,” he offered.

“Uh, market?”

“Right.” He rubbed the
back of his neck.
What now?
“My name’s Dingus. What’s yours?”

The Ishling eyed him. “Is
Tai.”

“I like yours better than
mine,” he joked, and Tai sniggered.

“I isn’t wonder. In
Ishian, you know what is
deengoos?
” When Dingus shook his head, Tai
said, “Is for smoke. Smell like skunk.”

“Better than Hayedi,” he
decided. “In Hayedi it’s—”

“
Den ghus.
Horseshit. And in Traders’ it’s mean this.” Tai grabbed his crotch. “In Oasan,
is
jingass
. Bad luck, and in Muscodite is
dyinveys
for dog. I
isn’t can think of any way ‘dingus’ is nice for saying. Your mama is name you
that?”

“My father. Where I come
from it means ‘blue sock.’”

One side of Tai’s brow
lifted: a raised eyebrow, even though he didn’t really have eyebrows—just fur.
“Who is name a person as a sock?”

“I don’t know. I never
met him. Anyways he was human, so he was really naming me dick.” Dingus made a
face.

“In what language it’s
‘blue sock,’ then?”

“It’s
hituleti.
The People’s tongue.” At Tai’s confused look, he tried, “The elves’ language.”

“
Hituleti,
” Tai
said, mimicking Dingus’s accent perfectly. “You is speak it?”

“Yeah. Traders’ and
hituleti.
”

“I is speak more than
you.” Tai’s little chest puffed out. “Ishian and Traders’ most, and Oasan.
Hayedi and Muscodite and Portese. Only a little of Kuo. They isn’t come too
often. Now you is give me some
hituleti,
and I can know that.”

Dingus, with food on the
brain, taught him some food words: apple, mutton, pancake. While Tai was
telling him how to say “pancake” in Ishian, Kessa came back with dinner, half a
dozen paper cones full of noodles, vegetables, and shellfish. When she gave one
to Tai he shoved his face into it and started gobbling. It was all gone before
Dingus even took three bites, and he looked at the others with longing.

“As much as you want,”
Dingus prompted him.

“You is a crazy Big,” Tai
said, snatched another cone, and disappeared, leaving Dingus staring off in the
direction he’d gone.

“Uh-oh,” Kessa muttered.
“I’ve seen
that
look before.”

“What’s that supposed to
mean?”

“You put it on me once,
and the same night you and Vandis took me away.”

“Are you sorry we did?”

She held up her palms.
“No way! I’m just saying.”

“And what,” he demanded,
“are you saying?”

“Aw, come on! I don’t
know, Dingus, it’s just… you can’t fix everybody’s life!”

The hell I can’t.
“You can’t tell me it’s right, a little kid living that way.”

“’Course I can’t, but—”
She broke off, shaking her head. “Never mind. Can we go back to camp after
this?”

“Good idea,” he said. The
clockwork in his head struggled to tick. He’d figure this out, but he wanted
quiet to think in.

Dreamport

Vandis stood in chilly
water to the bottom of his ribs with the cliffy shoreline looming above him.
The waves dragged at his clothes; he held a lit brand over his head. The
sobbing of Hjaldi’s widow dragged at his heart, until he felt like he’d drown
with his head above the surface. The four Knights around him—Reed; Adeon, who’d
been Hjaldi’s Master; Hjaldi’s Junior, Guthlaf; and his fifteen-year-old
Squire, Skerne—held the bier boat still so Vandis could toss the brand onto the
oil-soaked wood.

The flames roared up and
licked at Hjaldi’s kind face, blistering the skin. Skerne muffled a sob as the
four pushed the boat out where the waves could take it.

“Fly with the Wayfarer,”
Vandis said, and Skerne choked, splashing up onto the beach. Vandis watched the
boat drift into the sunset. He’d admired Hjaldi’s gentleness of spirit, maybe
because he so utterly lacked it.

Reed sloshed back to the
beach while the boat receded, but Adeon and Guthlaf stood next to Vandis in the
cold sea.

“What’ll we do?” Guthlaf
asked after a few moments.

Vandis looked over at
him. Was he twenty? Twenty-one? He had a bluff, earnest face spattered with
freckles, and when he met Vandis’s eyes, his were blue, too shiny. “I’ll place
you,” Vandis said.

“And Skerne?”

“It’ll be up to him. He
hasn’t taken the Oath. If he wants to, he can go home.”

“He doesn’t have
anybody,” Guthlaf said, brusque with suppressed tears. “Just Hjaldi and me. I
guess just me now.”

“Then I won’t place you
without him.”

“No more talk of
placement,” Adeon said into the silence that followed. “Hjaldi was dear to me.
It would be my honor to finish his work with you and with Skerne.”

Guthlaf looked past
Vandis to the
tulon
. “Really?”

“If Vandis approves.”

“I do,” Vandis said, and
turned. He waded back up to the beach, to Hjaldi’s wife.

She was a couple of
inches taller than he was, and slight, except that her belly was swollen with
child number seven; she and Hjaldi had six others, all under twelve. She curled
her fingers around the purse Vandis pressed into her palm. “When—” She stopped,
glancing away, then looked back. “When do you need us to move out?”

“HQ’s been your home as
long as you’ve been married. Your kids don’t know anything else. Stay as long
as you live, if you want to.”

“Oh, Vandis…” She
clutched around his neck and proceeded to soak his shoulder. Awkwardly, he
patted her back, staring at the face of the cliff behind her. What had he said
in the sermon? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t even think of her name, only
the hole Reed had drilled in Hjaldi’s skull to try to relieve the pressure
around his brain. They’d stoned him. Hjaldi, warm as a hearth fire, with a good
word for everyone—they’d stoned Hjaldi. Vandis’s eyes burned.

“I have to go,” he said
roughly, and she released him. He leapt into the air, back to HQ.
It should
have been me.

He went up to the office.
The big room was as busy as always, warm from the two hearths and the people
who crowded it. In the heat of the room, he realized how damned cold he was.
His toes were numb inside his wet boots; his legs burned inside his wet breeches.
He stepped over the threshold, staring at the desks that lined the walls and
the clerks working at them; at the open door to the file room, where the walls
were all cubbies overfull with papers. Over the muted talk from clerk to clerk,
he heard Jimmy at work, whistling a cheerful tune.

Vandis stared at the
carpet on the floor, once red, now worn to a soft pink in the places people
most often walked, and he ached. Heavily, he walked through to the back, past
Jimmy’s pin-neat desk, to the door that led to his own small office. Nobody
spoke to him. The week that Hjaldi had clung to life had seen him though the
stacks of work that had accumulated on his sofa in the year he’d been gone. He
wanted to curl up on the cushions and sleep forever, but when he opened the
door, his heart sank even farther, down to the soles of his boots.

Papers still clogged the
dark, chilly office. He’d felt so accomplished clearing off the sofa—but there
were piles and piles and more piles, slipping on his desk, sagging on the floor,
stacked on every available surface. On the north wall, he had a cabinet with a
few spare sets of clothing, and he picked his way over. Once he’d gotten
changed, hung his wet clothes on the pothook, and poked up the fire, he dodged
piles to sit at his desk.

He sagged in the hard
chair and flipped open his leather calendar. Almost every space was filled with
appointments. He flipped to next week, and the next, and the next. Jimmy had
scheduled out day after day of meetings and suppers and events. He flipped to
the week after that, where he himself had written: “WINDISH.” He closed the
cover and picked up the planner to move it aside.

His fingers gripped it,
shaking, and he hurled it into the fire. How had he lived like this? Day after
day, week after week, month after month—year after year after fucking year? The
burning leather and vellum stank, and he got up to open one of the small
windows behind his desk. Then he went to the door and out to the file room. The
office was mostly empty now, except for a few stragglers.

“Jimmy,” he said, “can I
get some coffee?”

“Well, I suppose you
can,” Jimmy said, looking around from where he crammed papers into an
already-overflowing cubby, “but hadn’t you better get some rest, Vandis? Far be
it from me to say you look awful, but you look awful.”

Vandis opened his mouth
to snap something horrible, but instead ran a hand through his hair, thinking
better of it. “Coffee, please.”

Jimmy gazed out of rheumy
eyes, sucking his gums. “Sure thing, Vandis.”

“Also, I, ah—my calendar
might have found its way into the fire.”

“I’ve got a copy.”

Vandis nodded and
returned to his office. He sat at the desk again and pulled a stack toward him,
but before dipping his quill he opened the bottom-left drawer, took out his
openly-secret bottle of whiskey, and popped the cork. Alcohol seared his
nostrils. He tipped it back and took a long, deep draught, then replaced cork
in bottle, bottle in drawer.

Warmth spread inside his
chest, and he set to work. After a few minutes his secretary came in, already
wearing a cloak, and put the duplicate calendar in front of him. Jimmy
exchanged the wet clothes on the pothook for a kettle. “I’m heading home now,
unless you think you’ll need anything more.”

“No. Thank you. Good
night, Jimmy.”

“Good night, Vandis.
Expect your supper tray in a little while,” Jimmy said, and left before Vandis
could protest being babied. He got through half an inch of paper and two cups
of coffee before Lukas Kalt arrived with the tray.

“Hi, Vandis!” He beamed a
wide, white smile. “Aunt Kirsten and I just got in. How are you?”

“I’ll live.” Vandis
looked at the sausage-and-bean stew and slab of brown bread. He didn’t want it.
“How are you, Lukas?”

“I’ll live.” Lukas
scuffed a boot in the tiny, paper-free space, blushing faintly. “I haven’t seen
Dingus yet. Guess I’ll go hunt him up.”

“Dingus isn’t here.”

Lukas’s smile fell off.
Vandis felt about the same way. “Oh—okay.” The Junior rubbed the nape of his
neck. “When—when you see him, please tell him hi from me. Will you?”

“I will.”

“Thanks, Vandis, ’bye,”
the young man said, and hurried out the door.

Vandis poured another cup
of coffee and took a few bites of the bread before he laid it aside. It was
late, he didn’t know how late, when he heard staggering footfalls outside the
door. He stood, hand on the pommel of his sword, just before the door slammed
wide.

“
You,
” Reed said,
and then stopped, blinking in the sudden light. The long finger he’d thrust at
Vandis drooped.

Vandis shook his head,
relieved, and propped his hands on the desk. “This is my office. Who’d you
think you’d find, Lech Valitchka?”

“You might as well be.”
Reed slumped against the jamb, his reddened eyes burning on Vandis. “You might
as well be, you prick. It should have been you, not Hjaldi.”

“Since when have you had
any use for Hjaldi?”

Reed snorted wetly,
scrubbing at his nose with a balled-up handkerchief. “I wish it had been you.”

“That makes two of us.
Get out, Reed.”

“What good have you done
us? Ever? What have you ever done but precisely what pleased you? Do you think
me a simpleton? As if I couldn’t see what’s right in front of my face!”

“
Reed.
”

“As if I couldn’t see,”
Reed pressed, “
exactly
whom that boy resembles. Is he the old man’s get?
He’s even—”

“That’s between Dingus
and me.”

“He’s even using the
name. What do you take me for?”

“I don’t think you want
me to answer that.”

They stared at each other
across the ocean of paper.

“You go pass out now,”
Vandis said, in a low, hard voice. “I’ll find you in the morning.”

“You sit in this—this
disaster of an office, or you range all over Rothganar with a Duke’s bastard.
Doing His Grace a favor, I imagine. And you don’t do a damned thing to help us.
People are dying! Some Head you are! People died in Muscoda, and what did you
do? You snuggled down at Elwin’s Ford with the boy, warm and cozy, to wait it—”

Vandis’s diaphragm
practically trembled with the desire to shout, but he kept his voice as even as
he could. “Unbelievable. You’re beyond lucky you’re drunk right now, because if
you were sober, I’d lay you out.”

“Drink has nothing to do
with it. I’m not the only one thinking this way. Your position is far from
unassailable, Vandis. You’d do well to—”

“I don’t give a flying
fuck!” he roared, leaning over the desk with the force of it. “Get out of my
office before I kick your ass through the door!”

Reed laughed, slurring a
little, a sloppy smile pasted on. “Typical Vandis. Brute force your first
resort. You can’t bring everyone into line with your fists, you nasty little
thug.”

Vandis’s face twisted,
and he stormed around the desk.

“Are you going to strike
me? Go on and prove me right.”

He seized the front of
Reed’s jerkin in both hands and dragged him down so they were eye-to-eye. Reed
didn’t struggle. His stupid grin widened.

“About me, you say whatever
you want. I couldn’t care less,” Vandis said, dangerous now. “But you’ve been
warned before about Dingus. He has nothing to do with what’s between you and
me, and I swear, if you keep bringing him into it, you’ll find out just how
much of a thug I am.”

“You’re so protective.”
Reed’s eyes sparkled. “It’s almost untoward.”

Vandis shoved him bodily
out the door and slammed it an inch from his nose. The sound of his laughter
came through the wood all his unsteady, shuffling way out of the main office. With
a grunt, Vandis sat down at his desk. He opened the bottom-left drawer, took
out the bottle, and had another long drink. Then he clasped his head in both
hands, massaging his skull with his fingers.

He drank again and went
back to work. When the sky lightened with gray false dawn, he splashed water on
his face and went out to give the daybreak service, a short affair, at least
the way Vandis did it. People had jobs to get to. He opened with a prayer and
incense offering, and then he’d tell a story. He always limited his homily to
five minutes and gave a benediction to close: “Lady, bless all our endeavors
this day.”

Today he had the same
prickly, unpleasant sensation of being watched as he’d had every time he’d
stepped outside, but he
was
being watched. The pews were nearly full.
Maybe it was that—or maybe it was Reed, sitting a few rows back and looking as
hung-over as Vandis felt. While the congregation dispersed, whether to work in
the city or into HQ, Vandis waited by the doors until Reed tried to pass, and
tugged him out of line by his sleeve. “Let’s talk.”

Reed sniffed, crossing
his arms. “I can’t imagine what we have to discuss, but since you’re determined
to keep me from my work, go on and have your little say.”

“Here’s the thing, Reed.
I know I haven’t been in the office very often lately. Been out on the
road—know why?” He took a step into Reed’s space, crowding him away from the
door. “That’s where we fucking belong. That’s where we can really do our jobs.
When’s the last time you ranged, Reed? When’s the last time you had a Squire?
You know, you’re not the only physician we have.”

Reed blanched.

“The Lady teaches that we
all have our own paths to walk,” Vandis went on, before Reed could reply. “Mine
is Head. The Assembly decided that over twenty years ago. Where’s your path,
Reed? I’m telling you right now to mind where it lies—and keep your fucking
feet off mine.” He turned, flung the double doors wide, and strode inside.

The early-morning clamor
struck at him. He walked to the left of the globe; it was the first thing a
visitor saw, enameled and gleaming in blues and greens traced out with gold
wire, massive, on its tall stand cast into the shape of the white oak. The
floorboards were clean and polished except where the rush of entering Knights
had left a long swath of muddy footprints. The pale-blue walls and ceiling bore
smoke stains from the hundreds of candles. The wall behind the two blond wood
reception desks had been tiled with a spectacular representation of Akeere over
Dreamport, stretching up to cover the whole height of the four-floor building.
A double-wide portal, doorless, lay between the two curving desks, and the
sounds of breakfast poured through it.

Vandis passed through to
the mess hall-cum-pub and fetched a pickled herring-and-egg and coffee to take
up to his office, exchanging greetings with city people and Knights in
residence. He wanted to get a little more paperwork done before his first
appointment, so he didn’t spend much time among the rows of trestle tables,
instead carrying his sandwich and mug up the stairs at the back of the hall,
past two of the three long balconies to the very top of the building—above the
two floors of hospital and the floor of dormitories. From the highest balcony,
he could look out over the mess hall below. He didn’t stop there, but went
through the main office, open already, still empty, and juggled his food as he
tried to lift the latch on his own door.