Oath Bound (Book 3)

by M. A. Ray

  They’re doing just as they ought, My own.

  Well, that’s something, I guess. His eyes traced down the curve of the globe resting in the bronze limbs of the oak and gleaming faintly in what light he carried. He laid his hand on the bottom, in the space between branches and burden, as high as he could reach, and its coolness seeped even through his glove. The fiery pleasure that morning seemed a hundred years ago, the burning shock up his arm on the lift at least fifty. He felt scooped out, like any moment his skin would collapse in on itself, and he wanted, so damned badly, to touch it again. Do You think I could…?

  There’s only one way to find out, She said, amusement touching Her Voice.

  His free hand went to his belt and rested on the one weapon he carried everywhere: the mid-sized, all-purpose hunting knife.

  He wanted to see it. He’d wanted to see it since he’d first laid eyes on the motionless globe, with Regis hurrying in front of him on the way up to the file room, the first time of countless times. He drew the knife and gashed across his left palm, hissing with the sting as the blade parted callused skin. Blood welled to the surface, then spilled from the end of the cut. A drop fell to the floor. He slid his hand between bronze branches and globe again. Almost before he settled his hand at the bottom curve, the thing began to wake.

  Slowly, pulling at the edges of his cut, the world slid away to the right. Golden light kindled at its heart and grew, igniting tiny lines that traced and crossed over its surface in a neat, belling grid. Vandis’s heart leapt into his mouth; power shivered up his arm again, and he felt utterly eclipsed. Glittering pinpricks swept up the enameled surface—a few at first, but more and gradually more as Rothganar rolled into sight. The continent swarmed with lights. With leaves. His own tattoo prickled, whether by some magic in the globe or by the power of suggestion, he didn’t know.

  He didn’t dare pull away, didn’t want it to stop. He stretched back as far as he could and craned his neck to take in as much of the sight as his eyes could fall on; the light, glowing out from the deepest center of the globe, illuminated the dark entryway for the first time in nearly fifty years, and he could hardly breathe, it was so surpassingly lovely.

  Why me?

  When I laid My hand upon you, I set you apart in more ways than one, My own…

  Why me—and nobody else? If You could do this— He couldn’t tear his eyes from the miracle.

  Because, She said, I cannot. I’m limited, My own, and to give you your gift required great effort. I could only give you such power because you were open to Me. When you were younger, it was far easier to dream with you… to broaden the way, as it were. And now I can speak to you with very little work.

  And Dingus?

  A bit of a different case, rather like stoking a fire that waits banked. It was already in his blood, you see, the gift I gave to Xavier—and little babies are terribly open. She let a sound like a sigh into his mind. If I’d had a choice… I would sooner have spared him that pain.

  Vandis had nothing to say to that. He wished She could have, too. He wished She had, but how could he tell Her so? He gazed up at the globe, his eyes going to Windish when it rolled around again, where only two lights burned, one almost on top of the other: Tikka, he imagined, and Dingus.

  “And do you still doubt that you’re menyoral?”

  Marcus Xavier came around the globe. He’d kept the beard since Moot, and he’d at least changed out of his court robes, but he still dressed in silk and the finest cotton, and a fur-collared cloak draped his imposing frame.

  Vandis took in the Duke at a glance and returned his eyes to the glory in front of him. “No.”

  “Anything you need. Say the word and it’s yours,” Marcus said, coming to his side.

  “I don’t—”

  “You don’t realize what hope you bring. It was the humblest of magics, this globe. Taken, I must say, to its farthest extreme, but a quiet sort of thing. Looking at it now, I wonder how we ever took it all for granted.”

  “I’ve got to wonder that myself,” Vandis said, and took his hand away. With its power source gone, the globe dimmed, and slowed its ponderous motion.

  “It was in everything. Down to the smallest activity of life. In our food, our children’s toys. I had a pillow that was bespelled for peaceful rest. It was in our shitters, Vandis. And now that you’ve tasted it twice over, I imagine you think it’s well that such things are gone from the world.”

  When he glanced at Marcus again, the Duke wore a smirk so like Dingus’s twitting-Vandis expression that he had to look away. “Nobody should have that much power,” he muttered, thinking of the wild sensation of calling lightning to smite his foes. The light in the globe had settled to a faint glow, and it winked suddenly out, plunging them into darkness but for Vandis’s little candle.

  “There was a certain balance in those days,” Marcus said, disembodied, “but that you say so assures me that if any one man must have it, you ought to be the one.”

  “Fuck you for agreeing with me.”

  Shadowy Marcus threw back his head and laughed, loud and long, clapping Vandis on the shoulder. Vandis staggered.

  “You nearly make me forget my purpose in coming.” He reached into his rich cloak, still chuckling. “I’ve brought you something. If blood outs, it’ll come in handy sooner rather than later.” He produced a sealed folder of fine leather and handed it over, then dived back into the pocket.

  “What is it?”

  “No, you mustn’t open it. It’s to remain sealed, at least until it’s needed.”

  “It’s a patent,” Vandis said, distaste dripping from every syllable.

  “That’s right. Dingus’s patent of blood. And this belongs to him as well.” Marcus extended a small, flat case held shut with a clasp, explaining, “Ennis’s crest, for the young Earl to wear.”

  Vandis opened his mouth to protest.

  “I know,” Marcus said, with a quelling wave of his hand. Vandis could see him better now. “When you judge it’s time, I trust you’ll give it to him. And you have it now, in case there isn’t a choice.”

  “I’m not saying when I’ll tell him.” Vandis took the case and stuck both of the offending items into his own pocket, getting them out of sight. “But when I tell him, it’ll be when I think he’s ready to decide. I want it to be his choice to come to you—or not to. Not mine. Not yours. His.”

  “Are you so confident he’ll make the right decision?”

  “Yes. I don’t know what he’ll do, but whatever he decides, you’d better believe it’ll be the right thing for him, and whatever he decides, I’ll stand behind him to the bitter fucking end. Good night, Marcus.” He strode away around the globe, to the doors.

  “Vandis,” Marcus called. “Your hand is still bleeding.”

  “So it is.” Vandis took out his handkerchief, balled it in his fist, and left without another word. He’d gotten halfway through the chapel before Marcus strode past, throwing a cold look over his shoulder. By the time Vandis got down to the street and turned his feet west, Marcus’s huge figure receded in the distance. Actually won one, Vandis thought, laughing to himself. Sort of.

  It was a bit of a walk to Wynn’s place, past the lifts, clear to the westward wall of the crater, but the night was just on the comfortable side of cold; his breath smoked, trailing away on the wind. Some of his weariness was wicked away with it, and he stepped out lively with all the attractions of his destination on his mind.

  The Lucky Strike had been a derelict warehouse when he’d first come to Dreamport as a Junior. At some point during Vandis’s dull, slogging five years with Regis, Wynn had bought and converted it. Now it was a pleasant place, assuming you didn’t mind a little blood sport with your supper and drinks. He considered the fighting atmosphere, since it only happened in the ring. When it spread out, it didn’t go far.

  The first time he’d wandered in, he’d been twenty-seven, fresh off the promotion ceremony at the last Moot. Thirteen years ago, he’d met W
ynn, and thirteen years hadn’t changed a hair on her head since that first time, when she’d come his way with a refill and asked his name.

  “Vandis!” he’d said, and then thrust both fists high in drunken jubilation, nearly overturning his stool. “And I’m free!”

  She’d lifted a perfect eyebrow. “Of?”

  “Regis, and that fuckin’ old man, too! I just made Senior—I’m free!”

  “Knight of the Air, are you?” she’d said, and given her icebreaker of a smile, the same then as it was now. She’d propped her forearms on the bar and leaned in to talk, to listen. “And what will you do with your freedom?”

  “I’m going to University.”

  If she’d thought he was exchanging one prison for another, she hadn’t said so. She’d laughed at him, and they’d gotten to talking, first about University, then about the Knights. By the end of the evening, Vandis had turned down a blatant, blush-worthy proposition—and he hadn’t paid a clipped bit in the Lucky Strike ever since. Maybe he shouldn’t be such a regular customer, but he ate free, he drank free, and the view was spectacular. He liked Wynn, and yeah, he enjoyed her interest, even if he had absolutely no intention of acting on the interest she somehow stirred in him.

  What man wouldn’t find it flattering? Wynn, without a doubt, was the most beautiful woman Vandis had seen with waking eyes—impossibly, ridiculously beautiful, even for a tulua, and they were all something else. She had dark doe’s eyes in an oval face so lovely it was like a punch to the chest, and she had skin the color of golden caramels, and she had a killer body besides: ten inches taller than Vandis, and every last inch of her taut and lithe. She strutted around the bar on her long, perfect legs, in her man’s clothing, that walk of hers screaming let’s-fuck every step, screaming she had so much money she didn’t have to care what anyone thought.

  Looking at her, a guy could almost forget how she’d gotten where she was, and how she stayed there. Vandis had seen it happen, and there was only one way it could end: some unfortunate bastard went out on a stretcher.

  It was never boring in the Lucky Strike; he could hear the noise clear down the street, a muffled roar. He considered it the best bar in the world. The torchlit entrance outshone the streetlamps. On his way past, he patted the unassuming signpost by the neat boards of the front walk: no image, only “Lucky Strike” in plain lettering. When he pushed one of the heavy double doors aside and went in, it was like walking into another world: nearly hot, cheerfully bright, and amazingly loud instead of chilly, dark, and mostly quiet. A scarred bar-top stretched the entire south wall, crewed by a dozen maids. In the northwest corner, ledgers teetered in high stacks around a table—but most often that was hidden by a long queue of people waiting to settle with the bookie. In pride of place, surrounded by tables and chairs, was the ring, a big, square dais enclosed in thin iron bars.

  Inside it, a perfunctory boxing match went on, or didn’t. The crowd was growing bored, restive and catcalling. Wynn herself clung one-handed to the outside of the cage, shouting to the fighters. “Come on, lads!” she urged. “Five sovereigns to the one who gets first blood on his knuckles!”

  Vandis sucked it all in with hungry eyes while he undid his cloak and gave it over to the cloak-check girl, and then while he slid his knife’s sheath off his belt and handed the weapon to big Eamon Baird, who took it in hairy hands. Vandis had seen him shirtless in the ring a time or two, and he nearly had a black pelt.

  “Been a while, Sir Vandis,” Baird said, grinning so his gold front tooth flashed.

  “How’re things?”

  “A little of this and a touch of that. The money’s in the till, mate, and that makes the Boss happy as diamonds for Longnight.”

  “She doesn’t look displeased.” Vandis grinned and gestured with his chin as the crowd, and Wynn, broke into ecstatic cheering.

  “She hasn’t the right to be displeased. She just mopped the floor with Eirik Bjarkissen. Boss!” he bellowed. “Someone to see you!”

  When Wynn swung around to face the check stand, Vandis saw she had a beauty of a shiner growing over one eye, and she held a stained handkerchief to her mouth, but their eyes met and she beamed, dropping the hanky. Even under the split, swelling lip, it was a gorgeous smile, and Vandis returned it with one of his own. He felt better by the minute. She pointed to the bar and leapt from the dais to land lightly on a nearby table, and then stepped down without knocking over a single drink.

  He made it to the bar just in time to meet her there. She vaulted gracefully over the marred top and glanced over her shoulder to say, “It’s been ages,” before she turned to study the wall of bottles. Her long body stretched as she reached up to take down Vandis’s favorite whiskey. “Your usual?”

  “Yeah, please.” He settled himself on a stool.

  She brought over the whiskey and two small stoneware tumblers. With a thumb, she popped the cork from the bottle and poured two precise jiggers into each.

  “The last one scored on you.” He gestured at his face. “Losing your touch?”

  “He wishes.” One of the cups slid across the bar and stopped exactly in front of Vandis’s right hand. “Or he will when he wakes up. What about you, then?”

  “Ugh,” he said, and raised his cup to her before draining it. “Could I get another?”

  “That’s a sipping whiskey, I’ll have you know,” she said, but poured him another. When she sipped at her own, she grimaced, licking at the split lip while he downed his second. “All right, perhaps you’ve the right idea. Another for you already?”

  “Keep them coming.”

  “And you’ve hardly said more than hello. The God, but you’re in a brown study tonight! What’s going on that you can’t even muster a little cheer for me?”

  “What isn’t?” He scowled at his hands as she topped him off; the cut he’d made on the left had formed a sticky scab. “Since I’ve been in town, I’ve had my authority challenged by my own people. Three times now the Aurelians have taken a crack at me, and that last time they almost got what they wanted. I’ve had audiences with Prince Emmerick, the King, Friedhelm, and Disa, and a couple of very weird experiences besides. I’m worried sick about my Junior and my Squire, and to top it off, one of the Knights decided to tell me about the fall of Shirith.”

  She poured another for herself. “That’s a sad story.”

  “Tell me about it,” he muttered. “I have earned every drop of whiskey in this joint.”

  Wynn laughed. “Now that would make for a heroic tragedy! I could take your mind off it more efficiently, if you’d let me.”

  He snorted and took a sip of this one, letting it slide down his throat and spread warmth in his chest, rather than rain fire on his belly. “If you thought for even a heartbeat I’d say yes, you’d stop propositioning me.”

  “If I thought for even a heartbeat you’d say yes,” she said, leaning over the bar so she could drop her voice, “I’d drag you into a supply closet and shag you brainless, Vandis Vail, so don’t tell me what I’d do.”

  His face burned. “You would not.”

  “I would. I’d lick you head to toe,” she said, and She said, Well! I never! So crude!

  “But I won’t,” Wynn went on, “because there’s no chance of your actually saying yes.”

  “So why keep asking?”

  “Well, there’s the obvious.” She looked him up and down, giving him the impression she saw straight through his clothes, and her swollen mouth twitched with a smirk. “You haven’t let yourself slip an inch since I first laid eyes on you.”

  He flushed, if that were possible, even more brightly.

  “Besides, as I’ve come to know you… I like your mind, Vandis, and I like your humor. I like your general intolerance for stupidity, and that, whatever your thoughts on the matter, you’re a passionate man. The question isn’t why I keep asking, but rather, why you would wonder at all that I want you.”

  Vandis looked down into the depths of his drink, the darkness insid
e the earthenware. The top of his head, he was sure, would pop off at any moment. “If there were anyone…”

  “Well, that does make me feel a bit better,” she said, patting his cheek, and then stepped back and snagged a passing barmaid. “Priscilla, the pork special for Sir Vandis, and a slab of apple pie. Don’t stint on the cream.” Priscilla hurried away, and Wynn rubbed her hands together. “Now! I want to know about this Junior of yours, the one with the unfortunate name. Dingle, is it?”

  “Dingus,” he said.

  “Poor young sod!”

  “Heh.” Vandis grinned and emptied his glass. “It is pretty unfortunate, but I guess I just don’t notice anymore. Not until somebody else says it. Works for him, though—that kid has the worst luck, I swear.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “What have you heard?” he asked sharply.

  “I’ve heard he’s a tall, skinny, redheaded half-blood bearing more than a passing resemblance to His Grace of Friedhelm. I’ve also been told that you were in Wealaia, which tells me he’s the get of Angus the Red on some silly little tulua.”

  He shook his head. “How do you hear these things?”

  “Knights like my bar.” She poured, yet again, and he was grateful he didn’t need to keep ordering. “Everyone likes my bar. I overhear. But come, you know as well as I do that those sorts of details don’t make a person. What is he like?”

  “Gifted. Amazingly gifted.” Vandis’s mouth watered when the plate slid under his nose: slices of roast pork with mashed potato and pickled cabbage—and on a separate plate, the promised slab of apple pie, looking so tasty he almost ate it first. “And… damaged. I never thought I’d take a Squire, and if I had, I wouldn’t have thought of someone like Dingus. But…” He looked up, into her dark eyes. “He needs me. I didn’t know how compelling that’d be, or how much he’d give me in return. Kessa—that was his fault—but that’s like night and day. I worry for her. I do, but she’s not quite as desperate. She doesn’t burn like he does.” He took out his eating knife and spoon and cut into a slice of pork.

  “But you love her no less.”