by M. A. Ray
“They stink!” she complained under her breath.
“We’ll deal with that tomorrow if they stay.”
Tai said, “Forget Bigs and Ish. You is more crazy than any person I is ever meet. What is you do with all us, Dingus?”
“Uh—” He hadn’t thought that far.
Zeeta said, “Stupid Tai. We is pick pockets for Dingus now.”
“I isn’t think so.” Tai gave him a long, measuring look. “We isn’t, is we?”
“Nobody picks pockets. Not if they wanna stay with me. We don’t pick pockets here,” Dingus said.
Zeeta frowned. “Then how we is going to eat? No work, no food.”
“If anybody works, it’ll be me. Let me worry about food. No picking pockets. No stealing from stalls. Stay away from the markets. No stealing. If you need something, on my honor, I’ll help you get it.” Zeeta’s gaze picked him apart; she seemed to think he was stupid, completely insane, or both. “That’s what it means when you’re my friend,” he explained. “When we need something, we’ll work together and figure out how to get it without taking things that belong to other people.”
“You is listen.” Tai put his hand on her knee where it stuck up. “I is telling you, he’s feed me. Right now he is cook, see? I is trying to take from him, and I can’t. Instead he is give to me. Over and over he’s give to me, and never is he ask for anything.”
“If you guys stay, I might ask for some help, on account of there’s a lot of you, but it won’t be stealing, or anything else bad or dangerous.”
“What about Laben?” another of the girls peeped. She was a tiny thing as dirty as the rest, with an empty eye socket Dingus couldn’t believe had healed as well as it had. She clung to a little boy just her size.
Dingus smiled at her. “It’s Vylee, right?”
“I is Voo,” said the little boy, “and my sister, yes, she is Vylee. Laben is hurt her eye! It isn’t work now.”
“You listen to me, Vylee, and all you kids.” Dingus crouched in front of the twins. “Laben isn’t even shit, that’s how low he is. He’s a low-down, dirty piece of worthless trash, and I won’t let him near you again.”
Vylee’s remaining eye, yellow except for the big black button in the middle, went wide. Dingus glanced over at the water; it wasn’t near boiling, but there was some clean in a bowl over by Tai, where the medical kit lay open. “Pass that stuff,” he said to Zeeta, who pushed the box of equipment over to him. He stretched back to snag the clean water. “C’mon, Vylee. I can’t fix your eye, but maybe I can keep it from getting worse.”
He cleaned the socket as best he could while the noodles cooked, and tried to learn all their names. He didn’t do as well with that as he would’ve liked, but Reeb stuck in his head just fine, especially after throwing shit at another Ishling—twice. They ate, and although Dingus had expected chaos when it came time for bed, everybody was tired enough that heads went down in a hurry.
Dingus settled in to sit watch while Kessa and the little ones slept, but he woke up late morning curled on his side, sweating, in a pile of seventeen Ishlings. He itched, whether from the dirt or from the bites he’d gotten from the kids’ parasites testing him out, he didn’t know. Lice and fleas, everybody had ’em, and Dingus had gotten nibbled on a little in the night. He couldn’t move to scratch.
“Guys, I gotta get up.” Nobody moved. They snored away, cheeping and chirping. “Guys! Please!”
Nobody moved. Dingus tried to shift them, but he didn’t want to wake them up. Eventually Kessa rushed out of her tent, scratching wildly. “Dingus!” she cried, tears in her eyes. “Dingus, I got fleas!”
“No, you don’t,” he said. “They tasted you a little is all. You’re not the right kind.”
“Dingus—!”
“All right, all right, help me up.”
She lifted Ishlings away, and soon he was free, surrounded by cavernous, adorable yawns. He scratched himself all over. “I’m going to the market.”
“Now? But—”
“I don’t have enough stuff to get the bugs off everybody,” he said grimly.
“Let me go.” When he scowled at her, she added, “Someone might recognize you. It’s less likely for me, right?”
She might have a point. He sent her off with his purse, bulging with most of his stipend, a stern warning to keep her hand on it, and an extensive mental shopping list.
The Ishlings kept him on the jump all morning, especially the baby. Her name was Peepa and he had to rescue her at least four times: from his bark-soaking bucket, from reaching into the fire, from a tree, from the bucket again. The kids ate everything in the camp for their breakfast, leaving him not a scrap of smoked salmon, and except for Tai, who sat hurting, they played a raucous game of Tag, the object of which seemed to be to discover how many times they could make him be It. Except for the few itchy bites, and no breakfast, he had a great morning. He didn’t mind being It, especially since he got to surprise them all with how well he could climb and jump.
He teetered way out on a limb, trying to tag a capering Voo, when Tai shrieked that Kessa had come back. Dingus swung himself down and dropped; sixteen Ishlings scuttled to the ground after him. “What’s all this?” he asked, looking at the small, laden cart—and the black nanny goat pulling it.
“Everything you asked me to get,” she said. “I couldn’t carry it all, so I got the cart and the goat to pull it. Wasn’t too expensive, plus I thought we could milk her. She dropped a kid this spring. I made sure.”
“That’s a goddamn good idea,” Dingus said. “Let’s get the bugs off these kids.”
She smiled at the compliment. They stowed everything neatly away except the bushel basket of garlic and the bag of lemons, and Dingus set the Ishlings to separating the garlic heads into their big pot. “Bigs eat this?” Voo asked at one point.
“Just you wait and see,” Dingus told him, squeezing lemon juice in with the garlic. They watched curiously while he took the stone pestle from the storage pit and crushed it all together—and then gasped when he stuck his hand in it and rubbed it through his hair, just in case. He slapped a glob into Kessa’s hand. “Your turn.”
While she worked it through her hair, he turned to Zeeta. “What do you think it’s for?”
“For—for smell like food?”
“We will, but that’s not why we’re doing it. I need you to, uh—” He mimed undressing, and she stared at him. “You’re gonna do your, uh…”
“Cunt?” she suggested, when he gestured.
“Privates,” he said firmly. “Just on your fur. And I’ll help you get the rest. It kills lice.”
Zeeta stripped down lickety-split, tossing her grubby little tunic aside. “If you is kill them, I never disobey you, not one word you say, ever! That is my most solemnest vow!”
He laughed and rubbed her little body with garlic and lemon paste. “You don’t have to go that far.” All the Ishlings were willing, except Peepa, who struggled and squalled and tried to eat it. She wouldn’t submit to the treatment until Kessa had a try, and then she sat nice as you please.
“She probably remembers her ma,” Kessa cooed. Once everybody had the paste on, they all went for a swim in the stream where Dingus had taught Tai to fish, taking the clothes, bedding, and two pounds of soap with them.
The kids cleaned up like a dream. They were still skinny, and their fur was dull from the bad diet, but they were so colorful: black, yellow, brown, and even—in the case of Vylee and Voo—silvery gray. Since he’d known Tai the longest, Dingus was most curious about him. He was a muted brown. Zeeta was blacker than midnight, with white blazes going from her eyes almost to the back of her head and a swishy, long-haired tail. Peepa was the biggest surprise. Nobody seemed to know what color her fur was, and when she was all clean, she turned out to be a beautiful, rare shade, red as a brick, with a bright white tuft at the end of her tail and white cuffs at her wrists. “Well, look at you, pretty girl!” Dingus blurted, and she shook herself, sprayi
ng him with water.
“Teehee, pretty Peepa!” she said.
The lemon juice had put golden highlights in Kessa’s hair. It probably had in Dingus’s, too, but he shaved his head with his knife. Just in case.
“You is shave your face too, Dingus?” Zeeta asked.
“Why bother?” His face was as smooth as the day he’d been born.
“The lice isn’t get in your face hair?”
“I don’t—” he said, and was about to say “have any,” but his hand went reflexively to his face, and he felt fuzz on his chin and upper lip. “Holy shit!” Dingus did a stomping, splashing victory dance in the middle of the stream, much to Kessa’s amusement and the Ishlings’ delight. They all tried to get in on it. “Hey-la-hey! I’m growing a beard!” Okay, so “beard” was a bit generous, but one would grow.
“Beards is like crests, yes?” Vylee said in her shy way, when Dingus climbed out and wrapped a clean blanket around his waist.
“That’s right,” Kessa said.
Voo stared. “Dingus, you isn’t old?”
Dingus stretched out on the bank with the rest of them to wait for fur and laundry to dry. “I’m the oldest one here,” he said. “I’m seventeen.” Every one of the kids turned saucer eyes on him. “What?”
Tai said, in a tiny voice, “You is seventeen only?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I is think—think you are more a grown-up.”
“I haven’t been one for long, but I’m doing okay by you, don’t you think?”
“You is doing wonderful,” Zeeta said. He bent his neck back to smile at her, and she kissed him on the forehead. His heart felt like a bowl of porridge, squishy and warm, and he knew he’d done the right thing.
The High King of Shirith
Dreamport, Knights HQ; the Head’s apartments
Nothing had gone right for Vandis on this trip. He lay on his belly in the bed he hadn’t used once before last night, a pillow in his armpits for support, seething as he went over the reports he’d had Jimmy bring in to him. The long cut the Aurelian Brother had opened along his back hadn’t been deep enough, even after he tore it trying to fly, to take stitches. It burned and itched under the bandages plastered to his skin. It would have bothered him less if it had been deeper—but then, very much deeper and nothing would’ve bothered him at all.
Adeon sat in a chair near his feet. He couldn’t see the tulon without twisting in a highly unpleasant manner, but he knew a long, slim blade rested across Adeon’s knees. Vandis hadn’t been able to stop them taking shifts to sit over him. If he managed to find out whose idea that was—well, they’d get a stern talking-to for certain. He suspected Jimmy. His secretary was old enough to be his father, but he resented being treated like a child, never mind that he also suspected he was acting like one. If only he could hit something, he was sure he’d feel better, but the featherbed and cotton counterpane didn’t provide enough resistance to satisfy. Besides, it hurt to move. At least he’d been allowed to dress. Not without assistance, but he’d been allowed to get out of his nightshirt and into breeches, tunic, and jerkin. He’d left off his boots so they wouldn’t dirty the bed, and his stocking feet stretched out behind him.
Bar the office, Vandis’s apartments were so spotless he almost hated to sleep under the covers or eat at the table. Not a fleck of dust marred the bookshelves; not a smudge marked the single glass window a few feet from the bed. It was cleaner than Aunt Pru’s had been, back when he was just a boy. Once, five-year-old Vandis had tracked mud all over her clean rag rug—only the once. He felt as uncomfortable here as he had there. He didn’t live here; he lived, had lived, in the office. Even that didn’t feel like home anymore.
He picked up another damned budget thing. He really ought to stop blindly signing off on them just because it bored him to read them. It never used to be like this. Year before last, he’d read every line with zest, and zealously chased every inconsistency down to the last copper bit. He remembered his enthusiasm for the work, but couldn’t bring it back; it all felt lifeless, and instead he found himself daydreaming about campfires, about stories in young voices, and two sets of eager eyes on him when he told. About Dingus’s cooking, which the fare available in the mess hall couldn’t approach on its best day.
The road drew at Vandis’s bones. It was where he belonged, and now he couldn’t leave here, not without tearing his back open further, and the trapped feeling turned his wanderlust into a mad, clawing little beast at the pit of his belly, so bad that when Jimmy opened the door connecting office with bedroom, he had to swallow a pointless bellow of frustration. He settled for a poisonous glower.
“Sorry to disturb you, Vandis,” Jimmy said airily, “but I figured you’d want to know Prince Emmerick is on his way down from the palace.”
“Well, shit.” Reason Number One to be glad I got dressed today. “Adeon, get my boots. And—”
“I do have something resembling manners,” Adeon said, sheathing his sword, “but I’m afraid they end at the precise point where you ask me to leave the room.”
Vandis floundered, trying to sit up without tearing his cut, and finally rolled to his stinging back and scooted forward until his legs hung off the edge at the knee. His feet didn’t touch the floor, even when he used his hands to lever his upper body off the mattress.
Adeon knelt and opened his high boot. “Now,” said the tulon with faint amusement, “you can truly appreciate the power of your position. I haven’t bent the knee since I last went before High King Bearach.”
“That must’ve been a while back.” For sure, it would’ve been Before, since all the stories said the last High King died with the fairies.
“Not so very long, I think. The first time I was at Shirith, though, Queen Saoirse yet lived.” Adeon glanced up, as if gauging Vandis’s interest, and Vandis nodded slightly for him to go on. “She was pregnant then, with the Prince who would kill her in the birthing, and lovelier than anyone could possibly report. I made quite a fool of myself later that night, drowning in wine and in her eyes. Her Majesty’s skin was like new cream, but she had the most compelling dark eyes…”
“Beautiful, then,” Vandis said dryly.
Adeon shook his head, laughing to himself as he laced Vandis’s boots. “To describe the beauty of the High Queen at Shirith, no words can suffice. Picture, perhaps, a wood in the depths of winter, with ice that hangs in sparkling drops from the dark, bare branches. And mighty Bearach’s beauty was no less, the shadow of a hawk in flight on a cloudless autumn day. They were the last glory of my People, they and the Princess, and the Prince who yet lives, but cannot be King.”
He meant Bey, of course—Beagan, that was, Little Fox. It was appropriate, somehow, that he should have come to the Knights. Vandis had met him a time or two, and only learned he’d once been Prince of Shirith on becoming Head.
“I was there,” the tulon added. “At Shirith, that night. We’d stopped for a few days, I and my Junior at the time. Colum had just taken the Oath, and I thought that perhaps I would take a new Squire from among the People. We were wakened by the alarum bell—the coast, sometimes, proved too tempting for raiders from north or south—and the High King burst from his closeted bed, crying ‘To arms!’ in a thundering voice, with the flames already rippling over his mighty blade. His daughter the Princess came from her own bed close behind, and before they ran together out of the Palace, he paused to touch her with a spell of armor through which no blade could bite. The Prince was a small boy then, and unused to steel; his Guard closed around him, weaving magics to keep him safe. Colum and I armed with the rest.
“The earth shivered beneath us as we ran to give battle, and there was fear in the King’s face. He stopped, briefly, and I saw him reaching forth with closed eyes. The High King, you see, he kept the fire of the mountain Fimberevell in check, and in return received all the power of flame. The Princess’s shield flickered like a firefly, and more than one of the warriors called out that he could not cas
t.
“I cannot convey the feeling to you. I reached for my own small magic—but it was as if we went forth crippled and weaponless, and we all looked to the King. Sweat ran down his face and he said to us, ‘Go. Make for the boats.’ Already the pirates had set ablaze some of the buildings. Their arrows came in among us, O, the God!” He stopped for a moment, breathing hard. “They brought fire against the High King and his family. The arrows were lit, and the young Prince took one just above the elbow. I could live a thousand years more and never forget his screams when the fire ate his clothing, his flesh. Three of his Guard fell when extinguishing him took their attention, and he lay under their bodies, crying out, though none could now hear him over the noise. Colum, my Colum, was the one to free him, and when he lifted the Prince in his arms and turned to me, a raider cut him down. The Princess Angharadh had come to her brother’s aid, and she cut down the pirate in turn. When her eyes met mine the earth trembled again.
“She said to me, ‘The Mountain is angry tonight.’
“And I to her, ‘Yes, Your Highness,’ for I knew not what other answer to make.
“She bared her teeth. Hardly a woman, she was. She smiled like a ghoul and told me, ‘So am I, Sir Adeon, for my brother is come to harm and my father is afraid, and tonight we may all go up to Father Sky; but first I shall send a few of these down to freeze in the Hell they are so fond of cursing by.’ O! what a Queen she would have made! With the shield of her father’s magic shredding around her like fog shreds in a strong wind, and blood dripping from her sword—she feared nothing, the Princess of Shirith! Though the earth danced beneath us, she feared nothing, and it was my honor to fight at her side that night.”
The curtain of silvery hair shrouded his face. Only the ends of his ears showed, but his shoulders rose and fell, and Vandis found himself breathing in time.
“Together we stood off the raiders, and slew enough that I could at last lift the senseless Prince into my arms. ‘Come,’ she told me. ‘Let us go down to the boats, and you will take my brother away with you, and save my father’s line.’ I could not but obey her, for though she was young, still she could command, and a Queen she would be if the High King fell. The last of her Guard and the Prince’s closed about us, me with the young Prince, and they would have shielded her also, but she would have none, saying instead that her place was beside them to shield the People.
