Oath Bound (Book 3)

by M. A. Ray

  Vandis bent to scoop the Ishling into his arms, but the little one choked a howl and thrashed away, clamping onto Dingus’s thigh.

  “It’s okay now, Tai,” Dingus repeated. “That’s Vandis. Did you know that? I can’t carry you right now. Would you let Vandis do it?”

  Tai sobbed hoarsely into Dingus’s leg, but when Vandis reached for him he came away with only minimal clutching and balled himself at the crook of Vandis’s elbow, a trembling little knot of damp fuzz and a tunic wet with Yatan’s blood. Vandis laid a hand on his back, reflex, and Dingus smiled gratefully.

  “Sir Dingus—why?” the bright woman whispered. Her tiny, dark-skinned hands ghosted down his forearms, and he flinched, took his feet again. “Why did you do it?”

  “It needed doing.”

  Her face worked. “Now I have to drop you at dawn. How does that need doing?”

  “‘Even to the cost of my life,’ Captain Dar,” he said, and Vandis’s stomach cramped. Tai squirmed in his hold.

  “Take them off.” He stepped between Dingus and the captain. “Take them off him. Wipe him up. You put those cuffs on me.”

  “No!” Dingus spun, backing away, a white streak in the gathering dark, bare chest, blanched face. “No! You can’t!”

  Vandis grabbed his arm, stopping him. “You don’t get to tell me—”

  “The hell I don’t! I’m no liar and I’m no coward! I let you die for something I did, that makes me both!”

  “Captain,” Vandis said, pleading now and not ashamed in the least. “Is there any way? I could get him an advocate.” He juggled Tai, trying to keep a hold on the Ishling.

  Dar ruffled her silky crest with one hand. “I—I could stall it. At least a little while. Through tomorrow, but I don’t think I can hold it any longer, given how quickly—whoa!”

  Tai squirted out of Vandis’s fingers and flung himself at the Hopper’s face. She caught him and held him away at arm’s length, no easy feat with him thrashing and clawing like he’d gone rabid. “Bitch Hop!” he screamed. “Run away, Dingus, run away, you isn’t can let the Hops take you! Run!”

  “Oh, Tai,” Dingus said. “It disappoints me, seeing you act this way. You need to stop.” As if he’d been enchanted, Tai fell slack in the captain’s grip, breathing hard. Tears cut tracks in his fur. “You go by Vandis now, and act right for him. He’ll help you better than I could.”

  “That isn’t so.” But Tai let Vandis take him back from Dar, and when Vandis brought him close, he sagged over Vandis’s arm, defeated dead weight.

  With a nod, Dingus set off back to the camp, slowly enough that Captain Dar could catch him up and lead him by the elbow. Vandis followed, wishing in all honesty that he could pull a Tai. He felt like a discarded rag, wrung out and flung aside—and about as useful to his boy. Except for Tai’s little sobs and the cries of evening birds, they walked in silence, and heavy misery settled over them all, bowing shoulders.

  Not Dingus’s, though. He walked straighter than Vandis had ever seen him do, even just after he’d gotten his leaf. He was proud of himself, Vandis realized, and Vandis would’ve been proud, too, if he weren’t so worried. As they came closer to the edge of the wood, he heard muffled shouting, and Dingus bolted, actually dragging Dar for a couple of steps before she released his elbow. Vandis charged after him, but couldn’t keep up. His heels disappeared into the gloom.

  Vandis cleared the trees just in time to see Dingus leap the stream to the higher opposite bank, stumble, fall onto one of the Treehoppers—Vandis couldn’t tell them apart anymore—struggling to corral the Ishlings into a small cart. The Hoppers Dar had brought with her fought under two others apiece, while the Rodanskan sailor held a red-faced Kessa back, his arms crossed over her torso. Her sword lay on the ground.

  All of the original Hoppers descended on Dingus, truncheons whaling, and Vandis struggled up to the bank. “Stop!” he bellowed, advancing on the Hoppers, waving his free arm. “He’s in manacles! That’s brutality! I could bring you before the Council—stop!” The last word cracked.

  “That’s enough!” Dar shrieked, cutting through the noise. The Ishlings had all scattered, but for a little red baby already chained to the bottom of the cart, who’d tried to escape over the side and now clung to the chain, whimpering.

  “All right,” said a thick woman with a scrubby crest. She stepped back from where she’d been kicking Dingus’s ribs. “Let’s have done with it, ladies, or squeaky-clean Dar is going to scream. Somebody round up those damned kids already.”

  “No!” Dingus cried, facedown on the ground as the other Hoppers moved away. “No! Not the kids, Captain, please! They didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Taking kids in will also earn you a complaint to the Council,” Vandis said, hating his impotence. “Your career will burn to ashes, and I will dance around the fire.”

  “Who do you think you are?” the woman demanded.

  Vandis drew himself up, hoping he didn’t sound as hollow as he felt. “I’m Vandis fucking Vail, lady, and if my Junior’s harmed in custody I’ll know just where to look. And you—let go of my Squire!” He jabbed his finger at the big Rodanskan, who promptly dropped Kessa into a heap.

  “I wasn’t going to hurt her,” the man protested.

  “I know that. But I’m here now.”

  “Just as well. I’m not.” The sailor turned and stalked into the shadows without another word as Kessa leapt up and rushed, not to Vandis, but to Dingus.

  “Let’s go,” Dar said, while Kessa helped Dingus off the ground. Vandis could swear he’d seen his Junior beaten all to hell more often than not. The Treehoppers wrangled over who’d take Dingus back to her station, but Vandis didn’t bend more than half an ear. Instead he crossed the short distance to his Junior and Squire.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “He’s dead,” Dingus said, low, for her ears—though Vandis was close enough to hear. “I killed him, Kess. Don’t forget my swords. They’re back in the woods.”

  “They’ll be evidence,” Vandis said, and let Tai scoot to the top of his arm, from which the little Ishling leapt to Dingus’s shoulder—Dingus winced when he landed—and clutched fistfuls of sweaty, dirty red hair, burying his face.

  “Really?” Dingus frowned. “If I—I mean, if they don’t—I’d sure like to have ’em. And even if they do—” He swallowed hard. “If they do execute me, it’d be good if you sold ’em for the kids’ expenses.” Kessa clutched at his arm, panicky, and he winced again when Tai clutched tighter in his hair. Tiny shoulders quivered.

  “I’ll get them back,” Vandis said. He thought of the patent and crest in his desk drawer, next to his whiskey bottle. If I have to. It’s there if I have to use it. “I won’t let them execute you.”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  The look Dingus gave him cut to the bone.

  “I guess I deserve that.”

  “I thought you’d—” But the argument between the Treehoppers had broken apart, and now Dar approached. Dingus shut his mouth.

  “Are you ready, Sir Dingus?” she asked heavily.

  Tai sobbed, muffled. “No, no, no!”

  “I’m ready. Tai, you act right for Vandis, hear me?”

  “No!” Vandis reached up and eased the Ishling’s exhausted fingers out of Dingus’s hair. Tai went limp again. “Don’t take Dingus,” he pleaded. “Don’t take Dingus, Captain!”

  “I have to,” Dar said. She looked away, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.

  “No, you isn’t!” Tai lifted his head, his whole little body taut against Vandis’s chest. “Hops is doing however they please!”

  “Not me.” She took Dingus by the forearm. “Get him that advocate, Sir Vandis. Hoop, go and guard the scene. I’ll send someone. Kaylee, please escort Sir Vandis and all these kids to my tree. They can stay underneath it for now.”

  “Yes, Captain Dar,” said a very young Hop with blood staining the cream-colored fur under he
r nose.

  It might’ve been comical if Vandis weren’t so sick to his stomach; Dar didn’t even reach Dingus’s waist, and there he was letting her take him away in irons, with no shirt and no boots, and covered in blooming bruises. He didn’t look back.

  “We’d better go,” said Kaylee. “Anything to fetch?”

  Kessa called to all the Ishlings, who assembled while everything got packed. Vandis wound up shouldering Dingus’s pack. It was heavy enough to drag him down even before she asked some of the kids to ride along with him. They crawled through the park at a snail’s pace. “How many of these little guys are there?” he demanded. It certainly seemed as if he were covered in them.

  “Seventeen,” Kessa said. “You know Tai. There’s Zeeta, Vylee, Voo, Reeb, Mim, Teeya, Koosh, Veep, Jooga, Loolee, Noom, Fleer, Keela, Teep, and Shree.” She paused. “Oh yeah, and Peepa. She’s in your hair.”

  Vandis looked up through his eyebrows at the littlest one, whose fingers were wound in tight. “How do you remember all that?”

  “Their names are on their shirts.”

  “Kessa is put them on for us,” the black-and-white girl on her shoulder said, showing “ZEETA” embroidered across the right breast.

  “That’s pretty smart.” Vandis sighed. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know everything,” she said. “We met Tai first. He tried to cut Dingus’s purse.” Tai trembled and let out a fresh, Ishling-sized sob, twisting the knife in Vandis. As Kessa explained the food and the fishing, the little one sobbed harder. “Then Tai came back—”

  “I is killed Dingus!” he cried. “I is killed Dingus… if I isn’t let him talk to me, Hops isn’t hang him!”

  “But then he isn’t save us,” whispered a silvery girl with a bright patch covering one eye. She rode Kessa’s arm, and even though tears stood in her remaining eye, she added, “Tai, he isn’t want you crying, I is know that. He’s always tell us don’t to cry…” She started to anyway, and a lot of the other ones did, too.

  Black-and-white Zeeta wasn’t one of them. She said, “Vandis isn’t let Dingus die. The Lady is help Dingus always. Remember she is sending Vandis for helping him.”

  “That’s right,” Vandis said, concealing his pride. Whatever else he’d done, Dingus had kept his Oath to the letter, and damned well. “So then what happened?”

  Kessa told the rest of the story, with liberal help from the Ishlings, when they could get it around their crying. Tai didn’t move or speak. He lay back against Vandis’s chest with silent tears streaming down his face, shivering every so often with the effort of holding back. Vandis thought he would gladly have wrung necks to make it stop.

  Kaylee dropped them off at Dar’s house, in a medium-sized cedar near the park. There was plenty of room under the branches for everyone to lie down. Before she went to sleep, Kessa came to squeeze Vandis hard enough to crack ribs. He squeezed her back almost as hard. “I missed you, honey,” he said.

  “I missed you, too.” She looked at him. “Are you sure you’re gonna be able to stop it?”

  “Positive,” he said firmly. “Go get some rest.”

  “Yes, Vandis,” she said, and went to roll herself up in her blanket. In less than ten minutes, everyone was asleep: cried out and exhausted by the evening—everyone but Tai, who slumped on one of the four chairs Dar had set out, sniffling convulsively every so often.

  With a grunt, Vandis sat on the ground next to the chair. He couldn’t get comfortable in those damned things. “He’ll be okay.”

  “Fuck you,” Tai said. “Dingus is a great Kunu. He’s Tatcheegan Kunu come back to us—and Tatcheegan Kunu is always have to die…”

  “Dingus isn’t the Great Red Shaman. He’s not even Ish. He’s a redheaded guy, that’s it.”

  “You isn’t knowing one thing!” Tai dashed away fresh tears. “Only a Kunu can break Laben! Only the greatest Kunu can kill Yatan! He’s making food from nothing and hear our hearts beat! He’s take away fleas and heal our hurts! And you! What you is, Vandis? What you is to fling shit at a magic man?”

  Vandis straightened. “I don’t fling shit.”

  “Oh, no? Every day, Dingus is telling us: ‘Vandis is gonna be here soon.’” Dingus’s voice came pitch-perfect out of the tiny boy’s mouth, Dingus’s words, and it ripped at Vandis like an animal’s teeth. “‘Vandis is gonna help us. He’ll know what to do.’ And every day, what? No Vandis, the one the Kunu thinks is Kunu!”

  “You don’t understand what—”

  “I isn’t?” The boy gave a bitter, chirping laugh. “You isn’t understand what you do to him. I isn’t old, and I isn’t smart, but I is see a little something. In all his heart Dingus is love you the most, and he’s break every day you don’t come.”

  “All right, I fucked up, but if I hadn’t made the mistake I made, if I hadn’t left them here, you’d never have met him.”

  “I isn’t much. Dingus isn’t understand that. When he’s having dreams, he’s screaming, is you know?” The Ishling tipped back his head and mimicked again: Dingus crying out, every syllable vibrating with panic. “‘Not Vandis! No, please! Vandis!’”

  Anger washed to the very tips of Vandis’s extremities: with himself, with the boy for grinding it into his face. His hands tightened into fists.

  “If it isn’t make him angry, you know what I do? I is kill you. I want to stick my knife in your neck for what you do to Dingus, and if he’s die, you die too.”

  Vandis regarded him for a long moment, the tiny creature with deadly intent written over every line of his cat-sized body. Then he snatched out. With cat speed, the boy dodged, but Vandis ended up with his tail in a fist, and he squalled like a demon when Vandis pulled him off the chair. “Listen, Tai—it’s Tai, right?”

  Tai screeched, dangling head-down, and tried to curl his body up. Vandis grabbed the scruff of his neck and lifted him higher, until they were nose-to-nose—though he kept his face outside of Tai’s reach.

  “Let’s get something straight, Tai. Right from the jump.” Tai twisted, scrabbling at Vandis’s fist with his tiny hands, but he quieted when Vandis said, “You love Dingus, don’t you? You love him with every smelly inch of your scrawny little body, and you know how I know?” He paused for effect. “I love him, too. I love him better than my own blood, and if you think I’m about to let a bunch of louse-riddled, ignorant old whores hang him for doing the right thing by you, you’re stone stupid. If I have to snatch him from the rope a second time to save his life, damned if I won’t. Are we clear?”

  Tai hung, staring at Vandis with utter loathing.

  “You can help me and help him, or you can work against me and hurt him. What’s it going to be? What matters more? That you hate me, or that you love him?”

  “You stupid old nithing Big. Not even Dingus is knowing what he is done for me, and I is love him for always. I can help you, but I is hating you.”

  “You go ahead.” Vandis set him on the table. “You do that. Just remember Dingus trusts me.” Used to trust me.

  “He isn’t knowing much, my Dingus.” Tai drew himself up straight. “He is Tatcheegan Kunu, but he isn’t knowing how the world is go. I see you, Vandis. I see how you is.” He bounded off the table and scuttled into the darkness on all fours.

  Vandis went to lie down with the rest, but he didn’t sleep much. When dawn came, he sat up, scrubbed at his face with both hands, and decided to shave. That done, he walked over to the legal district to scare up the best advocate in town for his boy.

  Art Speaks

  the cloisters

  Stas stood before Brother Jerzy at his desk in the scriptorium, with all the mullioned windows thrown open to catch the late summer. A breeze ruffled the edges of the parchment pages pinned to dry and stirred the dust, fresh mixing with old. The fields outside the window ripened and swelled with corn nearly ready for the harvest. “This is beautiful work, Stasya,” Brother Jerzy said, smiling down at him.

  Stas got a thrill of pride from Brother Je
rzy’s words. He himself was proud of the drop capital he’d done, a large N at the head of the page, traced out with gilding, painted green and blue. He had painted a vine that twisted around the letter and done his best work yet on the blue trumpet flowers, bright at the edges, fading to white around their tiny fleck-of-gold hearts. Round black eyes peeped here and there through the curtain of leaves and flowers.

  Things outside the scriptorium could be bad, so bad, but Stas had painting. He had, always, an escape to a quieter world, where it didn’t matter that he could hardly force out a word, because in his little hands the tooth of a long-dead dog could make gilding shine and a stylus or a brush could work magic.

  Brother Jerzy touched his head with a soft, paint-stained hand. “Now, what shall we give you for your next project? You’ve done a lot of drop capitals. Would you like to try a plate this time?”

  Stas perked visibly. Yes, he would, oh! he would. He’d be happy to paint as assigned, even. The prospect of an entire page for his work put a delighted wriggle in his toes.

  The head illuminator smiled. “I have the pages, and they’re already dry. It’s the story of Saints Novgorod and Alessandr—here they are. You can plan this afternoon.”

  Stas nearly groaned. Saint Novgorod’s story was a dull one; he and his Militant, Saint Alessandr, had attained sainthood by sitting atop a pole for forty years, and being as pure and holy and boring as two people could be. They must have at least argued, he reasoned. They were people, weren’t they? He’d certainly argued with Boris before, and over the silliest things, too. He wondered if it would be blasphemy if he painted the saints bickering. Probably. He took the pages back to his own little desk.

  Brother Vadim had done the illustrations. The drop capitals, an O, the largest, at the beginning of the first page; a pair of black foxes peeked around the right-hand edge. The fur the Brother had painted was so lush Stas wanted to stroke it—though of course he resisted the urge. He always liked Brother Vadim’s clever marginalia, the tiny animal scenes. The quiet young monk always put a few bees into his paintings, and usually a proud hawk, too.