Oath Bound (Book 3)

by M. A. Ray

  “It’s just different. She’s got her problems, which I have no more idea how to unwind than I do his, but she’s stronger. Dingus is—” He popped a piece of meat into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Damn, that’s good. If you want the flat truth of it, he’s fucked the hell up. You can only get stomped on so many times before it starts to tell, and he’s been stomped flat too many times to count.”

  “He has you.”

  “For what it’s worth. I don’t know how to help him.”

  “You want to. Don’t underestimate it.” She patted his hand. “We’ve gotten busy. I’m going to pitch in for a bit, but I’ll be back.”

  He nodded and turned his full attention to the food, which was more than worth his while. People packed the bar, and since he’d taken a stool with space on either side, the spaces had filled; he’d gotten sandwiched between a heavy drinker (already tipsy) and a bravo watching the current fight with interest. Oddly enough, he felt safer here than he had anywhere else in the city. Maybe that was down to Wynn’s iron fist and Eamon Baird’s legendary drunk-toss. Maybe it was that in his ordinary clothes, he blended easily even with the wild variety of dress here. He didn’t really know, but he liked people-watching in Wynn’s place, the warmth of so many active bodies, even the cheerful violence that hung in the air. For all the blood that spilled here every night, it felt friendly inside.

  When he’d finished, the barmaid Priscilla came by to take his plates. She wore her blond hair in a braided crown, and a surprisingly modest dress. “Can I get you something else, Sir Vandis?”

  “What about another whiskey?”

  She dimpled at him, rather like Kessa might have, and fetched the bottle. “Is this the right one?”

  “That’s it.”

  She didn’t pour as quickly as Wynn, and one end of her tongue poked out between her lips while she concentrated on measuring the liquor.

  “Are you new?”

  “Pretty new! But I’ve been here long enough to know the comp list.” She gave him a big, tip-me smile and replaced the cork.

  “You like it?”

  “I love it here. I was so worried when I came to the city that I wouldn’t find a safe place to work, but here I get great tips and I don’t have to whore. This one girl, Jana, she was doing it on the side, and the Boss fired her, just like that.” She snapped her fingers and laughed. “If anyone gets fresh, out they go. It’s a great job, with great people.”

  “Good to hear. If you ever have problems at home, come down to Temple Row and the Knights’ll help you out.”

  “I know, but let me tell you something. I had this boyfriend when I came here, we were gonna get married and all, and one night he hit me. And the Boss saw it next day. She walked me home and Chip, that was his name, Chip was gone. He must not have really loved me, she said. Guys, right?” She slapped the bar-top. “It was great meeting you, Sir Vandis, but I better get back to work. Need anything else?” When he shook his head, she dimpled at him again and whirled away.

  He wished that were more difficult to reconcile with what he suspected of Wynn. Whatever she really was, she ruthlessly weeded undesirables out of her staff, and apparently, from her workers’ lives. He figured the books were bleached clean, every clipped bit accounted for, and every penny of the taxes paid. Lady only knew where they found the time, but the place was swept and scrubbed; when it wasn’t busy, sometimes the cats came out, licking rats’ blood from their chops. The kitchen, he had no doubt, was a health inspector’s wet dream.

  Like Wynn herself, things at the Lucky Strike were just a little too perfect. People popped in to see her, but the meetings almost always took place in her back-room office. Just tonight he’d seen Baron Recht sidle into that back room, and he tried not to think about it. He liked her. What employees she kept, she treated better than most, and asking her stupid questions like, “Where does your money really come from?” or, horrors, “Are you in organized crime?” would probably destroy one of his more valuable friendships, whether she lied to him or told the truth. He didn’t know which he’d rather, so he kept his mouth shut and didn’t bet on the matches.

  He had a couple more drinks, watching the people and the fights: the serving maids weaving in and out of the crowd in whorls and snaps of skirts, the bouncers stationed around the room with their sharp eyes and thick muscles, Eamon Baird working the door, the fighters more or less bruised and bloody. Whatever its real nature, he wouldn’t be surprised if this was the safest place in Dreamport.

  At last he sighed, slid off the stool, and patted his full stomach. He felt tipsy, warm to his fingertips, but he’d have to be getting back. When he stopped to collect his knife and cloak, Wynn appeared as if he’d conjured her with the mere thought of leaving.

  “We’ve hardly had a chance to talk,” she said. “Let me walk you home.”

  “Okay,” Vandis said, fingers clumsy on the frogs of his cloak. If he’d been sober, he never would’ve accepted. “Don’t you want a jumper or anything? It’s chilly.”

  She smiled, putting her hands in the pockets of her loose cotton breeches. She’d changed her jerkin for a leather doublet quilted in thread-of-gold swirls. “It won’t bother me. Let’s go.”

  When they stepped outside, he had to pull up his hood against thin needles of sleet biting down from the sky. It had to be four o’ the clock by now, and the air had grown colder while Vandis ate and drank. “Go back in. I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s well enough. I do want to talk with you a bit more.”

  “Who’s going to walk you back?”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “Neither am I,” he said, but when he went out onto the board walkway his legs wobbled.

  She laughed and followed him, drawing level quickly on her longer, steadier legs. “Liar.”

  “It’s not safe for you to walk alone at night.”

  “Ever the Knight on the white charger. You wouldn’t say that if you knew how many knives I’m carrying.” Her teeth flashed in the low light from the streetlamp as they passed beneath it. “Don’t worry about me. The menyoral has enough on his mind, I imagine.”

  “Why am I surprised you know about that?”

  “You ought not to be. Consider my unique position. Very little happens in this city that I don’t, eventually, hear about—and that was quite the topic of conversation in my bar this evening. I’m not certain how much of the gossip to believe, but come, Vandis, you fly. Your Lady lifts you in Her own hand. If you don’t qualify as menyoral, no one does.”

  Vandis huffed and huddled more deeply in his cloak.

  “The lightning—was that true? Did you smite them with lightning?”

  “Just the one.”

  “You aren’t just menyoral,” she said, swinging around in front of him and walking backward so they could talk face-to-face. “You’re the only one. You are The Menyoral. Which is why you need to be far more careful than you have been.”

  “You, too? How many times—”

  “Until you listen, or until you die.” She stabbed a spear of a finger at him. “You are not careful. You are observant, most of the time, but you are not careful. You came to the Strike alone tonight.”

  “Three times they’ve tried for me, and failed. Don’t you think they’ve given up by now?”

  “Four.” She stopped at the center of another streetlight’s illumination and produced something out of her pocket, pressing it on him. “Four times.”

  He stopped, too, and unwrapped the handkerchief. Two disk-and-rays pendants, browning bloodstains on the white cloth. Here she’d put it, in his face: what she was. “Wynn—”

  “I can only protect you so far, Vandis.” Softly she said it, cold. “They’re fanatics. They won’t give up until they’ve pissed on your corpse. I would have thought you’d understand that.”

  “Even fanatics should be able to recognize a lost cause.”

  “You know better.” She began to walk again, more slowly this time. “If you think they’v
e finished with you, you’re a damned fool. If they decide they can’t get at you directly, where do you think they’ll go next?”

  Vandis paled. “Do you think they’d—”

  “Wherever you’ve stashed them, I suggest you get to them before someone else does.”

  “I haven’t told anyone where they are.”

  “Perhaps not, but I suspect I could suss it out in less than a day, and you can bet they will have thought of it.” She stopped by HQ’s front walk. She might have a point; he’d hardly noticed where they were. When she spoke again, it was harder, colder. “Don’t act so much the fool that you lose what you love most.”

  “Well, good night to you, too,” he snapped, and turned up the walk. If she weren’t so right, it wouldn’t make him so angry.

  “What sin is it that I don’t want to see you hurt?” she asked, and when he turned she lifted a palm. Her voice softened again. “I know that I joke, but a world without Vandis in it isn’t a world I’d care to inhabit.”

  “There’s nothing more I can do! I’m stuck here until the Watch finishes up. Do you have any idea how long that could be?”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Right,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Right. But in the meantime, I can’t go to them. I can’t get away!”

  Wynn scanned the street. She took a deep breath, and bowed her head. She stepped in close, so close he caught a hint of scented soap. He could feel her warmth, and her lips brushed his ear when she whispered, “Where are they?”

  He turned his head to stare at her.

  “You can tell me, or I can suss it out, but the time it will take me is time they may not have.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Are you truly so dense?”

  Vandis shut his eyes. “Windish,” he barely said, barely dared to breathe.

  Her lips touched his, pressed snowflake-light and cool. He couldn’t recall a single softer thing, and it gave him a little snap of heat in his chest. “Good night, Vandis,” she said, and strode away down Temple Row, leaving him blinking and wondering what the hell he’d just done.

  Big Fat Brass Ones

  Feej Park, Windish

  Midnight had passed, but Dingus sat back against a rock, sleepless, with Peepa in his lap and Tai snuggled up to his chest. All around him, Ishlings snoozed, curled in their blankets. Their tiny bodies warmed him, and he was comfortable enough that he didn’t feel the need to move, but unlike them—unlike Kessa, who’d helped him clean up after supper and gone right to sleep—Dingus didn’t dare close his eyes. He sat there with his mind spinning in worried circles, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do next.

  He missed Vandis so bad it felt like a pit in his chest. Part of his worry, just a little part, was what would Vandis say when he found out what happened between Dingus and Tikka? Certain as sundown, Vandis would understand why Dingus had to do what he’d done, and why he had to keep doing it, but he didn’t expect his Master to like it, no, not by half. He doubted any of this would’ve happened if Vandis had been here… but if Vandis had been here, all his Ishlings would still be stealing and starving and dying, bit by bit, a little more every day. He gathered Tai up tighter. If he was to lose his leaf, which he didn’t think he would, but if he did, well… he’d have Tai and all the rest. He didn’t want a big X branded over his tattoo, but it wouldn’t stop him. “Won’t stop me,” he whispered into Tai’s fuzz, and Tai let out a tiny cheep of sleepy contentment.

  He’d found a good camp: a finger of land that stuck out into the bay, for the most part pebbly beach, but with a stand of trees in the middle, which was where they’d settled. At high tide the waves washed up almost to the edge of the trees. He hoped they’d be allowed to stay here, but if not, he’d pack the Ishlings out of the city and write a letter to Vandis telling where they were. He’d have to write one anyways, he figured, to say they’d left Tikka’s.

  Tikka was probably writing one this very minute, saying what a shithead Dingus had turned out to be, but he found he didn’t much care what Tikka thought. Vandis would hear him out. He felt that. But Vandis would also want to hear it from him before getting back to Windish—if Vandis ever got back.

  Stupid to worry. It hadn’t even been the month yet, but Dingus couldn’t help it any more than he could help breathing, and he could sure as hell use some guidance right now. Help me, he prayed. Please help me figure this out. No answer came winging out of the sky, and no Vandis landed in front of him, not that he’d expected either. He tipped his head back against the rock and—sat right back up again, setting Tai carefully aside. He shifted Peepa off his lap and stood. On his way to the place where the finger of land came off the coast—the spot the noise had come from—he stooped to pick up one of his swords.

  When he reached the edge of the copse, Dingus concealed himself partway behind a tree to size things up. Three Ish came slowly up the peninsula from the rocky mainland, two bigger ones flanking a smaller. One of the larger figures carried a lantern. Dingus thought, for a moment, of circling around them; he could have, but no. That’d put them between him and his Ishlings, and he couldn’t have that. He stepped out from behind the pine to block their path.

  He didn’t like what he saw: an old Ish with gray hair streaking his face and crest, and on either side two dark, glossy Ish men with thick muscles. He focused on the old one in the middle, and he focused in turn on Dingus, smirking as only wide Ish lips could smirk.

  “You’re Dingus, I imagine,” he said. His voice was almost clean of accent, high, but precise rather than fluting.

  “Yeah, I am.” And how’d you know my name?

  “So Laben wasn’t lying. You aren’t quite the tallest Big I’ve ever seen, but you’re close.” He paused for a heartbeat, thoughtful. “When you grow up, you might be. He didn’t mention you were a child.”

  Dingus said nothing.

  “Consider this a courtesy visit, Dingus. Given your recent takeover of Laben’s business, I want to confirm your understanding of the terms.”

  “Terms?” he asked blankly, trying to unwind what-all the old Ish had just said. A courtesy visit at midnight? “I didn’t take over any business.”

  “But you have. Nobody’s disputing your claim to Laben’s workforce. Nevertheless—”

  “You mean the kids.”

  “Mm.” The wide mouth thinned. “Yes. Seventeen Ishlings, I believe, and trained pickpockets to a tail.”

  “They’re not picking pockets though.” Dingus shook his head. “I don’t—”

  The old Ish bared his fangs in a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Whatever they’re doing for you, I couldn’t care less, but I advise you to get them earning again as quickly as you can. These are difficult times, Dingus. Someone’s got to pay me.”

  “What for? I don’t even know you. Why should I pay you anything?”

  “Now this is a hick,” he said, looking side-to-side at the muscled Ish flanking him. They laughed, stupid and nasty, a sound Dingus knew in his bones. “You have so much to learn about how the world works, Dingus. If you pay me, nothing happens to you. If you don’t…”

  “You’re threatening me!” He couldn’t believe it.

  “Oh, you’re a sharp one.” The old Ish’s eyes glittered with malicious amusement. Dingus knew that expression, too, and he wasn’t about to knuckle under, not now that he had his leaf. Not now that he had seventeen little kids plus Kessa depending on him to be a man. “Yes, I’m threatening you. Perhaps it’s a little brutish, but it’s made me a wealthy man, and I hate losing income. Four weeks from today, I’ll come back to collect in the amount of sixty sovereigns.”

  “What?” That was more than his stipend for a whole year, and he’d spent out of it besides. It might as well be a thousand.

  “From that day, your payment will be due every four weeks, in the same amount.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “Yatan always gets his money,” said one of the muscle-bound goons,
the one on Dingus’s left, though they looked enough alike that they seemed interchangeable. He cracked his thick knuckles. “You’re tall now, but wait ’til we’re done with your knees.”

  “Now, now, Teerin, let’s give Dingus the time I’ve promised him.”

  “You come back,” Dingus said, “all you’ll get from me is this.” He drew his sword about a third of the way, making sure the old Ish—Yatan—saw the metal shine before he slotted it back into the scabbard. “I won’t pay you a clipped bit. Not now. Not in a month. Never.”

  “Ask some of those Ishlings what can happen to you,” Yatan suggested. “Leem, Teerin, let’s go. Four weeks.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  Yatan laughed again. “By all the totems, you’ve got brass ones! You’ll learn, boy, you’ll learn.”

  Dingus watched the lantern bob away into the distance. No, he’d learned about all he could stomach about guys like that, guys that smirked from behind a wall of muscle, whether it was their own or somebody else’s. He watched them until the light winked out of sight, then turned back to the trees.

  “In morning,” Tai cheeped from the ground, hushed and afraid, “we is go to market. I tells the other kids. We is ready to pick pockets for you.”

  Dingus extended his arm, beckoning, and Tai leapt to grab his hand. In a moment, the Ishling settled on his shoulder. He rubbed the fur under Tai’s jaw, soft and clean, the way it should be. “No, Tai.”

  The Ishling shivered, huddling into his neck. “Yatan is bad. You isn’t can keep money from him. He is very much angry then.”

  “I dealt with Laben, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, yes, you is, but—”

  “You’re gonna have to trust me to deal with this, too.” Somehow.

  “Dingus,” Tai whispered, “you isn’t understand. You is hear Yatan’s words, but you isn’t hear what he says. Laben is dead. If you isn’t pay him, you is dead, too… slow, most like.”

  “Let him try,” Dingus said, fighting to keep his voice steady. In a fortnight, Vandis would be back—had to be back—and if Dingus couldn’t figure something out, once it was all laid out Vandis would be sure to. Hadn’t he fixed everything up with Kessa in less than an hour? When Vandis came back, this problem wouldn’t take more than a day to solve. Dingus breathed a little easier, and when they got back to camp he lay down with Tai on his chest, rubbing at his leaf, which prickled and throbbed strangely.