Oath Bound (Book 3)
Page 12
“The Lady’s for everybody.” Dingus’s smile broadened, right next to Tai. “She doesn’t discriminate. Look at me. I’m not all the way human. I barely knew who She was, but when I was in real bad trouble She sent Vandis to save me. I bet She’s watching us right this minute.”
“Huh!” Tai said, and he wouldn’t say more, even if he was dying to know what Dingus—with his giant laugh and gentle hands—considered “real bad trouble.” He wished the Lady sent Dingus for him. When they got close to the market he said, “I is getting off here. You go, yes?”
“If you want.” Dingus stopped, laughing when Tai tickled his back on the way down.
Tai thought, and all-footed away.
“Hey, see you tomorrow.”
Tai halted at the edge of the road, rising to his two legs, and turned. “No. I isn’t do this no more. Dingus, I is maybe in trouble already.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dingus repeated.
“No!” It came out a screech. “No! I isn’t want you get in trouble! You is leave me alone—stay away! You is hear?”
“I—” Dingus looked at the ground, then up again, pinning Tai on sad eyes. “I’ll be here another fortnight. Okay? Come visit.”
“I isn’t.” Tai scuttled away before Dingus could see him cry, hiding in the trees so he could watch a tiny bit longer.
“Fuck,” Dingus said, so only Ish ears could have heard him. He spun away, kicking a rock in the road. “Fuck!” He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked back toward his camp, his shoulders sagging, his head down low. It was better if he hurt Dingus’s heart than if Laben killed Dingus’s body, and Dingus was too good to understand that Laben would.
He scrubbed at his face to get the tears off and swung away toward Coom and Oo, to the world Dingus—with his Lady and his good food and his magic voice—would never see or know: the world where the bad kids lived. A day away from the shack under the veeklootz tree was enough to make him realize how it stank, and his nose wrinkled when he dropped to the ground. He didn’t want to go in to his dirty blanket, moldy bread, and withered apples. His belly was full for once, anyway. That was something.
“
He didn’t want to face the Boss Man, fat mean Laben, with his kicks and slaps. “”
“
“” he said, louder.
“
“
“” Laben said, kicking him flat on his face in the dirt and pressing that foot on Tai’s back. “
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“
Tai couldn’t manage a word, not even a moan. He wheezed. Laben picked him up by the back of his tunic, and he felt himself airborne, felt himself thump hard against the veeklootz. He whimpered when he hit the ground. An hour ago he was eating the most delicious fish he ever tasted while a low, soft voice rubbed his ears with a wonderful story, and now—he hurt so much, and Laben kept saying the worst thing in the world about Dingus. It wasn’t true, it wasn’t right, and Tai was so angry, but he could hardly move.
Laben picked him up by the tunic again, the front this time, pushed his back to the veeklootz, and spat on his face. “
He struggled up, not all the way, but part. He would’ve liked to walk away proud, but he could only stagger and lurch, all-footing like a baby. He started to cry all over again. When he got away a little, so that Laben couldn’t see him, he slumped against a nurse log and took out the silver royal Dingus had given him; it was a miracle he hadn’t lost it. It was as big as his hand, and shiny, with a picture of a Big wearing a crown on one side, and a stone building sort of like the Council House on the other. He turned it over and over. He could spend it on a room—maybe. Most like, the innkeeper would take his money and kick him out, because who’d take in an Ishling alone, even if it was just until he found another place? He was a good thief. Zula might have him on her crew, or Janeen. Maybe one of them would let him rest until he didn’t hurt as much, and could work.
It took hours. At one point Tai was sure he’d been going in circles, but he saw the camping place, he saw it, and almost sobbed with relief. Dingus looked mad and miserable, sitting there, twisting something wet into a long skein like yarn, but the fire behind his back gave him a glow all his own, and Tai fixed his eyes there. If he stopped he wouldn’t start again, and he didn’t know if Dingus had seen him.
Tai crawled along, slow, so slow, and Dingus moved so fast, all of a sudden, rocking up to one knee and drawing a weapon. The long, curved sword glinted in the firelight. Tai had not known he had that. Smooth, swift, Dingus stood. “Who’s there?”
“You is fling shit,” Tai said, slumping into a heap. “You is fling shit right at my face, and I isn’t dodge in time—the Lady isn’t watch over me…”
Dingus dropped the sword and—he was just there, lifting Tai into strong, skinny arms.
“Laben’s see me leave with you.” Tai shuddered and curled his aching body into the crook of Dingus’s elbow. Dingus held him close, up to a hot, bony chest. “I isn’t bring back enough. He’s see me and you all the time. He’s say—” But he couldn’t bring himself to repeat that, not to Dingus, the pure-white Knight.
“I can guess what he said.” Dingus’s voice sounded hard. He stooped to pick up a blanket, his very own blanket, and he wrapped Tai’s dirty, flea-bitten body into it. “Look at me,” he said, an order, laying Tai in his very own hammock.
Tai peered up, out of the huge blanket. Dingus leaned over, eye to eye with him, and it was scarier than he’d ever imagined Dingus could look. “What?” he peeped.
“Where’s he at?”
Tai clutched at the scratchy folds of fabric. “Now?”
“Right. Fucking. Now.”
He cringed. He didn’t want Dingus there, getting beat up and killed. “I isn’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me, Tai.”
“At house, most like. I know he isn’t follow me.” He stopped, huddling deeper into the blanket.
Dingus’s kind face flushed and twisted into something terrible, lips peeled back in a snarl. “Tell me where he is!” he barked.
“Off market,” Tai whispered, shaking. “Coom Street and Oo. You is go down to fifth crossroad, by a big veeklootz, on the ground left side.”
Dingus strai
ghtened, tall, so tall. “Kessa,” he said.
“On it,” Kessa said, though Tai hadn’t even seen her.
“I’ll come back.”
“No!” Tai shrieked, fighting out of the blanket, every hurt forgotten. He leapt to all fours and nearly tipped out of the hammock. “Dingus, no! Why is you go there? He’s kill you! He is kill you!”
The smile Dingus showed was white and wild. His eyes were so crazy all the hairs on Tai’s spine bristled. “He put his hands on you. Now he’ll answer to me.” He cracked his knuckles. “I gotta say, I’m gonna enjoy the asking.”
“Stupid!” Tai screamed at Dingus’s back, as the dark swallowed his white shirt. “Stupid fucking Big!”
He didn’t look back.
“Kessa, you is make him stop!” Tai begged.
“Me?” She shook her head from where she sat on her heels, wringing out a rag. “I’m not crazy enough to get in his way.”
“But isn’t he have to listen?” Tai pulled desperately on his ears. “You is the woman! You has to make Dingus behave!”
“It doesn’t work that way with Bigs. Dingus is older than me. Besides, he’ll be fine. It’s Laben you gotta be worried about—if you care,” she added. “Let’s clean you up.”
Big and Little
Dingus stood at the crossroads of Coom and Oo, in the dark across Oo from the big veeklootz—a cypress, in Traders’—and watched the Treehoppers milling around in the light from the torches they carried. They all dressed the same, in dark green tunics embroidered with a stylized Ish leaping from something that vaguely resembled a tree, and they all carried truncheons on their belts, except for one woman with bright yellow-orange fur and a long, silky crest that went from sunset to butter, who carried a little sword. She’d introduced herself as Captain Dar.
He’d left camp with every intention of dealing with Laben the way Vandis had dealt with Everett a year back, but he’d forgotten how far three miles was in city terms, and when he ran into Sergeant Mee, his plans fell apart.
She’d wanted to know what he was up to, and he doubted Vandis would want him to lie to the authorities. Not, at least, beyond the tiny white lie he’d told Sergeant Mee: that he was looking for a Hop to tell what Laben had done. He might have stretched honesty a bit far with what he told her, too, to keep Tai out of it: that he had a pretty good idea Laben was running pickpockets. Praise the Lady—if he could praise Her that it actually was so horrible there—Laben’s shack bore out his statement. The Hops piled up everything they’d found inside. He could hear them talking about it, which would’ve meant more if he understood Ishian better.
I should’ve lied more, he thought. I could’ve come back later. Smashed Laben’s face in for him but good.
Fat. He was fat, with a big gut that stretched the front of his tunic. Food stains all down his front, too, the fat fucking bastard. What kind of person could have those blubbery jowls and claim care of a kid so starved? Dingus couldn’t begin to imagine the reasoning behind that rank piece of injustice and didn’t want to either. Get his fists on Laben, shatter his mouth so he couldn’t eat a bite, he wanted that. He could’ve left to get himself under control, but instead he stood here with his hands in his pockets and watched.
Dingus didn’t give a shit about the pile of stuff the Hops took out of that lean-to, slapped together out of old boards; but he stood and waited, because when the Hops had knocked on the side, at least a dozen Ishlings had come shooting out of a hole in the top, like fuzzy comets, for the trees. He could see their eyes shining greenly out of the dark when they shifted in the branches, and even more than he wanted to destroy Laben, he wanted to make sure they were okay.
The Hops finished up and took Laben away in manacles. Captain Dar pranced over to him on her toes the way Ish did, pushing her soft crest out of her dark face. “The Treehoppers thank you, Sir Dingus,” she said in her sweet, piping voice. “This goes a long way, believe it or not. He’s amassed a significant quantity of property that we know is stolen.”
“Well, you know,” Dingus said, shifting his feet, and put his right hand over his heart so she could see the leaf again.
“Ah,” she said, as if she didn’t know at all, and left with the rest of them. Once they were all out of sight, he walked across Oo to the little shack. It stank from the outside, enough that he should’ve known not to look in, but he wanted to make sure no Ishlings had remained.
“Uh!” he said, jerking back from the door. He wouldn’t have wanted to shit here, let alone live. Inside it was tiny, mostly bare except for a hammock sized for an adult Ish and a tangle of reeking rags, tossed around from the Treehoppers’ search. Kids! Little kids in this fucking pit! He let out a hituleti obscenity and punched the side of the shack.
It toppled slowly to one side. “Oh shit.” He tried to catch it, but it came to pieces, leaving slivers in his fingers, and landed in a smelly heap. He kicked the boards, cursing again, and above his head an Ishling gave a tiny, sobbing scream, quickly muffled. Nice going, you moron. Wreck their home while you’re at it.
He took a couple of slow breaths, turning his face up to the branches. “It’s okay,” he said. “I won’t hurt you, on my honor I won’t. Come on out and talk to me.”
Nothing happened.
“I know you’re there,” he said. “I just—” A foul-smelling something splattered dead center of his forehead. Luckily it wasn’t very big, and he didn’t get any in his mouth. He grimaced, took out the hanky Vandis had taught him to carry, and wiped it off. Well, I had worse for less reason. “I just wanna talk to you. I’m sorry I wrecked your house.”
A voice like the song of a tiny flute came down to him. A tiny, enraged flute. “That isn’t all you wreck! You is kill Tai! I tells him and tells him he isn’t can talk to a Big!”
“Tai isn’t dead, though. I can prove it to you.”
“Bigs,” said the Ishling, still out of sight, “is big trouble.”
“I know it,” he said. “I’m sorry for it, but if you come out and talk to me, I can show you why Tai didn’t listen, and try to make it up to you.”
“Grown peoples isn’t ‘make it up’ to Ishlings. Ish or Bigs—they isn’t notice us even, or if they is, they takes from us.”
Dingus breathed a couple more times and said, “I know. I see how nobody notices. I see you sometimes when I come for Tai. He tells me how it is for you guys and it makes me—” Hurt. It makes me hurt. “It makes me think I need more Ishlings for friends.”
A scuttling sound came out of the branches, and a moment later an Ishling gray with filth darted down and clung to the trunk just above his head. In the instant it was upside down, he saw: girl. She sat on her heels, pressing her knees together, and gazed down at him from bright brown eyes. “Who is want Ishlings for friends?”
“Who wouldn’t? You guys are tough and smart. I want you for friends. Anybody who doesn’t want Ishlings for friends doesn’t know anything about Ishlings.”
“Well,” she said, and stopped to think. A smile twitched her wide mouth. “Maybe you is thinking right.”
He grinned. “You know I am. My name’s Dingus.”
“I is Zeeta.”
“Nice to meet you, Zeeta.” He scraped up every bit of his meager charm. “Tai isn’t dead. When Laben thrashed him, he came to me, and if he doesn’t want to run away, he can stay with me ’til I have to leave Windish. Do you want to come see him?”
“I can come?”
“Everybody can. That way, if I try anything you don’t like, there’s a lot of you and only one of me. The bigger we are, the harder we fall, right?”
“Is true,” Zeeta said.
“If you come, and you decide you don’t like it by me, I won’t stop you leaving, but you’re gonna leave with your belly full of good hot food, and you’re gonna be my friends forever. That’s a promise. And if you decide you wanna stay…” He opened his arms, like he was going to hug them all. He wanted to. “…well, it’d make me real happy.”
S
he looked at him, assessing. Finally she called out in Ishian, and the swarm descended. Son of a bitch, Dingus thought, counting sixteen, including one not much more than a baby. I really know how to step in it. He pulled his net bag from his pocket and shook it out, spreading it down his back.
“It’s a ways,” he said. “Hop on.”
They did, all of them. Zeeta ended up having to cling to the front of his jerkin, and the littlest wound her fingers and toes into his hair to ride the top of his head. At least they didn’t weigh a whole lot. He sneaked them back through the woods, avoiding the market and the main road, except to cross the river; he would’ve looked downright weird to anyone who saw him, a long tall shape with over a dozen little heads sprouting from it.
He walked into camp like that, and Kessa and Tai stared, saucer-eyed, open-mouthed. “Here we are,” he said. “That’s Kessa right there. She’s my friend, too.” The Ishlings scattered through the camp, and Dingus shook his hands out—they were covered in red marks from holding the net bag—and went to start a pot of water for noodles. He’d heard more than one hungry stomach along the way.
Zeeta rushed to Tai. They were the two oldest, it seemed, and they began a squeaking conference. Kessa came to the fire, her eyes darting around at the kids, who explored the contents of the tents and the storage pit.
“Don’t open the packs, please,” Dingus said. “Friends don’t do that to friends.”
“What the hell did you do?” Kessa demanded.
“I’m keeping my Oath.”
“I guess you are,” she said, “but Vandis is gonna be pissed.”
Dingus doubted that. All right, Vandis maybe wouldn’t have gotten himself into it in the first place, and he probably wouldn’t be too happy when he got back in a fortnight and found Dingus and Kessa with a bunch of Ishlings, but Dingus was willing to bet his Master would be angrier with the situation than with him. “If he is, he is,” he decided. “Won’t be the first time, won’t be the last.”