Saga of Menyoral: The Service
Page 16
Neat blocks of buildings sat in Section Two, covered in darkness. Here and there, a light burned in one of the medics’ windows, but that wasn’t what Krakus was after. He rounded the bends, tight around the higher walls of Section One, until he reached Droshky’s shed: a smaller square of stone, windowless, kept shut tight.
Light shot out of the shed when he cracked the door. He squeezed in and shut it carefully behind him. Tables cluttered the interior, their tops covered with papers, thick-bound books, and specimen jars holding nameless things that floated in clear liquid. Droshky showed a chubby back to Krakus from the rear of the room, at the side of a reclining chair covered with straps.
Two bare, scaly legs were strapped into that chair, and strained against their bonds, trying to bend; scaly toes flexed and extended, convulsively. Krakus hesitated, then took a step toward Droshky, toward the chair—toward Danny. Another step, and another, between the tables full of open books with anatomical illustrations showing on their pages. A long hiss, so faint Krakus could hardly make it out, came from that chair, and a black-and-orange hand clenched tight. He’d known … but his stomach churned at the sight of it.
His bare feet fell soft on the packed earth of the floor. How could he have let this go on? Danny issued a sibilant squeal, and Krakus’s hands tightened into fists as he padded up behind Droshky. He saw Danny’s face change when it came into view over Droshky’s shoulder—Bright Lady, what did that sick son of a bitch think he was doing, with some horrible metal thing holding the poor kid’s mouth open so wide? Blood drained from the side of Danny’s mouth down his gullet, which worked as he swallowed repeatedly. His thin black tongue flickered under the restraint. When he saw Krakus, his jewel eyes shot wide.
Krakus gave a slight nod. Droshky must have noticed something different about his subject’s body language, because he stopped whatever unspeakable thing he was doing inside Danny’s mouth and looked over his shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing?” Krakus asked. It came out much calmer than he’d anticipated.
Droshky scowled, and tried to conceal it. “Fancy seeing you here at this hour, Father K—” But he didn’t finish. Krakus hit him in the face. He swayed on his feet, but didn’t fall, not until Krakus hit him again, and harder, hard enough to feel something crack in his mouth.
“You’re a monster,” Krakus said, his voice shaking now. He stooped and picked up the tubby little Droshky by the apron front. A butcher’s apron on a doctor.
“You’ve never objected before,” Droshky gasped, with blood running down his chin. The weasel eyes glittered in the light of many candles.
Krakus smashed his head into the tall instrument table next to the chair, scattering metal implements. “Monster!” he cried. How had it happened? Monsters all around him, Bright Lady, everywhere he looked, and in his own heart the most terrible beast of all, because he’d known and hadn’t stopped it. He could’ve stopped it. He thrashed Droshky the way he himself ought to be thrashed. His fist fell again and again, meaty thumps on the face, the body, in the fork. How long he did it, he had no idea, but when he dropped the doctor, Droshky didn’t even twitch.
A leather-gloved hand sprawled limply out from Droshky’s body. Krakus’s face worked. He stamped his bare heel down on the hand with all the force he could summon, all his weight, wishing he’d thought to put on his boots. A bone gave, and another when he did it again. He couldn’t stop. There couldn’t be much left of the doctor’s hand inside the mangled glove, but he couldn’t stop.
Krakus wiped at his cheeks with a white sleeve spotted in red. He wiped his hands on his dressing-gown, leaving red streaks that would surely stain, and pulled the fairy-dust ring from his finger. “I’m sorry, Danny,” he said dully. “I’m sorry.” He put the ring in his mouth; it fluttered against his tongue.
Long minutes he spent, trying to figure out the straps on the damned thing holding Danny’s mouth open. Finally he took up a pair of shears that had fallen from the instrument table, cut through the leather, and threw the contraption aside with such force and negligence that it shattered three specimen jars on a nearby table. The clear fluid inside ran onto the floor and thinned into a noisy dribble.
Danny moaned, low, and flexed his jaw. His tongue flickered in and out, frantically, as if tasting the air. Krakus attacked the straps on the chair with the shears. There were four of them for each limb, one around the forehead, one in the lap, one on the chest; tough, too, so he had to work at them. As soon as he had one leg free, Danny curled it up.
The shears broke at the bolt when Krakus tried to hack through the second ankle belt. He resorted to undoing the straps, even though he would’ve far preferred to destroy the whole hideous device. When he’d finished, he stood back, breathing hard through his nose.
Danny curled into a tight, quaking ball, making distressed sounds that raked Krakus’s soul. When he reached down to lift the young man, Danny’s arms flashed out, quick as a snake’s strike, and clutched at him. Nailless fingers clenched in the back of his dressing gown, and Danny trembled with dry sobs.
Krakus gathered the light, powerful body into his arms and carried Danny to Section Three, to his own bed. He didn’t speak a word, even when faced with the slack-jawed staring of the guards. Saliva pooled around the ring, flittering there on his tongue like it wanted to escape. I’m sorry, he thought. I’m sorry, and he thought it all night long, sitting in the chair next to the bed, sleepless.
The Practical
Knightsvalley
False dawn had just begun to gray the sky when Dingus opened his eyes. The remembered taste of blood lingered on his tongue. Even the bare stone of the shelf hadn’t been able to draw the unbearable heat from his flesh. It could’ve been worse, he thought, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. He could’ve screamed everyone awake with a night terror, or they could’ve heard his desperate fuck-moans while he ate his own heart, and instead he heard snores all around him.
Too bad that didn’t make him feel any better. After the gore-stained murder images flashing and jerking around inside his head, he didn’t think anything could. He sat up, pulling his knees to his chest, and rubbed at his shaky, aching hands and forearms. Almost, he expected to feel them slick to the elbows. He wanted to sit next to Vandis, alone, and lean on the rock solidity of his Master, whether Vandis knew he was doing it or not; but that wasn’t an option, not with all the Squires and Masters up here, pressing on his consciousness and into his space.
“Are you okay?”
He whipped his head around to see Lukas Kalt, minus the dragon earring and his shirt, propped on one elbow in his bedroll and blinking sleep out of his eyes.
Dingus couldn’t force out a word. No, he wanted to say, but instead he snatched up his boots and walked, quickly and quietly, out of the mass of sleeping Squires to the firepit, where there was fresh wood and food lying ready for breakfast. He poked up the banked fire. At least there was something to do. Lukas followed him over, though, tugging a tunic over his disgustingly perfect torso.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing.” Dingus fed a few branches, thick as his wrist, into the flames.
“Come on, it’s just you and me here. What’s wrong?”
“I have bad dreams sometimes. That’s all.” And no matter what Lukas tried, Dingus wouldn’t say anything more about it. He went about the morning’s business: got the coffee on, started breakfast. Thankfully, Lukas didn’t have long to poke at him; only a few moments later, others stirred in their bedrolls, and before fifteen minutes had passed, everyone was up and at it. The shelf filled with chattering Knights and Squires donning shirts and jerkins, lacing boots, packing up bedrolls, and running up and down to find a place to piss. Dingus hadn’t brought a bedroll, so he sat by the fire, turning bacon as it fried in the big skillet.
The Masters ate first. He laid out more bacon, and when they all left, he hurried to the edge of the shelf to watch Adeon’s silvery head out of sight and m
ark the direction the tulon had gone. Then he returned to cooking.
He ate better than the rest of the Squires, who mostly poked at their food. For once, he was far from nervous: he was eager. He did as many little morning chores he could think of to kill time, ignoring the fluttering of anxious voices, the shaky gestures of anxious hands, and the moment the sun moved that last degree in the sky, he dashed down the stone steps, the very first one, feet flying after his examiner.
Dingus tracked Adeon all day. By the time he thought he’d made up an hour of Adeon’s two-hour lead, just judging from the freshness of the sign he followed, only three hours of daylight remained. At least Evan had gone the other way—he’d made sure to mark that, too—and he saw nothing he could pin to Arkady’s expensive boots.
He’d had to walk all the way up to the snowline on the opposite face of Baldhead before he’d found the copper medal, which he’d checked carefully for the number thirteen before squirreling it away in its pouch on his belt. Halfway down the mountain, Adeon had started rock-hopping, and the only way he’d kept the trail was by the sign in the spots of lichen on the boulders, which the tulon disturbed or scraped when the rocks moved under his weight. It had taken more time than Dingus would’ve preferred to pick up the trail again, because Adeon had taken off his boots. Luckily, by then he was well below the snowline, because there were plenty of small plants around and he was able to find sign where they were broken or crushed.
Adeon had circled the mountain and eased into the stream coming down on another face. The only way he’d picked that up was the long, silver-blond hair dropped in just the wrong spot. He thought he was gaining; silt still clouded the water where Adeon had moved downstream. Just to make sure Adeon was doing what Dingus thought, he ran up, waded through the icy stream, and found where Adeon had laid a false trail. Then he crossed back and ran downstream again, to the spot where he’d seen the hair. It didn’t take him long to find the place where Adeon had actually gotten out, on the same side. He’d picked a good spot, where the bank was clear of plants, but the big rock he’d climbed over still had a dribbled trail of damp. I’m close! Dingus thrilled. He followed the water spots a good ways, even over the hard ground. For half a mile at least, Adeon had dripped, still working his way around the mountain and down. If Dingus were any farther behind, he wouldn’t have caught it.
What almost screwed him, once he made it down past the tree line, was the Big Tree trick, a personal favorite of Vandis’s. The person pulling the trick would walk past a big tree, right around it, then backtrack and change direction so the tree hid the new trail. He went almost a mile out of his way before he noticed the dirt wasn’t sprayed out quite right from Adeon’s tracks. Cursing freely in Trader’s and hituleti, he sprinted back to the tree and looked carefully for the place where Adeon’s scuff marks went back to normal. He checked around the tree and after a couple of minutes, found another trail heading straight down the mountain. In a few hundred yards he found the next-to-last of his medals, electrum.
The sign around it looked spanking fresh: crushed plants still oozing sap, a broken stick, an almost perfectly sharp impression of Adeon’s toes where the dirt hadn’t shifted enough to mar it. Dingus’s heartbeat sped. He’d been pretty sure, when he saw the traces of silt in the stream, that he was behind Adeon by less than an hour; now he was certain of it. If a person did things proper, which Adeon surely was, it took time to lay down a false trail. If Adeon planned to lay another one—not a big “if,” since right now he bore straight back toward Knightsvalley, but an “if” just the same—Dingus might catch him at it.
Watch how you go, he told himself, pausing to take a few slow breaths. He couldn’t do this as quick as he would’ve wanted, because Adeon still used every rock, every tree root, every inch of underbrush to his advantage. More often than not he had to look for top sign, but Adeon couldn’t be working much quicker than he was. Every so often there’d be a scuff in the dirt, sometimes more. After he’d checked to make sure there wasn’t anything he’d missed, Dingus put on a little speed, until at last, at the end of a long, faintly grazed trail, he saw Adeon.
The tulon walked backward, painstakingly approaching him, in the middle of pulling another trick. Dingus stood up straight and waited, trying to quiet his bounding heart. He was lucky as hell he’d found Adeon when he did, because night came on fast now: only about an hour ’til full dark. Then he would’ve had to camp and finish up in the morning.
When the tulon got within ten feet, Dingus said, “Sir Adeon.”
Adeon started. His blond horsetail whipped around as he turned and stared at Dingus with his aquamarine eyes round as saucers. Less than a heartbeat he stared, and then he bolted.
“Hey!” Dingus yelled. Faster than thinking about it, he gave chase. Adeon wove between trees, scrambled up big boulders, cut sharp turns. But even when he gained a little and tried to put down some hasty false sign, it didn’t fool Dingus. Doing it fast had nothing on doing it right. Unfortunately, Adeon knew how to run away; he didn’t just run ’til he couldn’t see Dingus and then hide, he ran and kept on running. Dingus, though, stood much taller, and he was younger than Adeon by a few centuries. When he lost sight, he didn’t lose it for long, and half the time he ran no more than ten feet behind the tulon—sometimes less, almost close enough to reach out and grab. He glimpsed Wallace, gaping at them when they flashed past, but he didn’t pause to wave.
They ran on, and on, and on: up high spots and down into low ones. Dingus gained space when Adeon slipped on moss, lost it when he tripped over a root and went flying. He didn’t even notice how it ripped his gloves and his hands underneath. He shoved back up and kept running. Adeon splashed through the stream he’d used to try to trick Dingus before; Dingus’s long legs propelled him clean over. His breaths felt thick, gasped into a roughened throat. He saw Adeon veer off just ahead, real sharp, and he couldn’t turn quite fast enough. He came so close to plunging off the mountain, his feet scrabbled dirt over the edge as he backed up. Again he ended up cursing his lost time, until he saw Adeon climbing squirrel-quick down another slope, not far away.
Dingus bolted after in a spray of dust and pebbles. He saw where a stream used to go; it was all gravel right there, clear down the slope, and if Adeon had been thinking—but he might not have seen, going that fast. When Dingus made it to the brink there wasn’t a thought in his head. He flung himself over, left boot leading, and slid lickety-split down the wash, using the outside of his foot and his gloved fingertips to try to keep his left side away from the gravel. It hurt, especially when his hand gave out and his whole arm and side slammed and ground against the tiny stones, but it was worth the pain just to see Adeon’s face when he zipped past.
He groaned, collapsing into a heap when he hit the dirt at the bottom. It took everything he had left just to get back on his feet, but when Adeon made it down he stood arrow-straight. Please tell me we’re done, he thought, panting heavily. The rush had started to wear off, and all over, he felt cuts and scrapes from whipping twigs and cutting too close to rocks and, of course, the big raw patches from the gravel.
Adeon rested his hands on his own thighs, bent over and breathing hard as a bellows himself, but grinning, too. “
“
“
“” Now that everything was over, it hurt like a cast-iron bitch. His jerkin had big holes up the side, and his sleeve was wrecked, too. He wasn’t bleeding so much as oozing. Even his leather breeches had started to wear away over his hip, and his g
loves were out at the fingertips. He didn’t doubt he looked a mess, with all the bruises he’d already had. Adeon walked away into the sunset trees, finger-combing his hair, and Dingus followed.
Color
the Prime Cloisters of the Order of Aurelius, just outside Muscoda City
After the upset of Longday, things fell straight back into the comforting predictability Stas treasured. Yesterday was the same as any other day in the Cloisters, Matins to Matins, and today the same, Matins to Sext. Nobody had said a thing about the beetle. He grappled with that during the night, sleepless. Why wouldn’t Brother Jerzy have told? If it had been any other monk, anyone at all, they would’ve gone screaming about it to everyone who’d listen.
Today, though—when he came to the scriptorium after dinner and Sext Office, his little desk chair, with the armrest on the right, was empty. Brother Jerzy sat at his own big, slant-topped desk right next to the window. Stas looked at his desk, and then at the monk; back at the desk, then back at Brother Jerzy again. It didn’t take much work for him to bring out a hoot of dismay.
Brother Jerzy said, “Would you like to see something else, little one? Would you like to see how I paint?” He reached out his puffy hands, stained with ink, seamed with blue ropy veins, to Stas.
Stas’s nerves couldn’t stop him. He had wanted a better look at this since the first day. He reached up his own hands and let himself be settled into Brother Jerzy’s soft-but-bony lap, into the crook of his left arm. The desk had a big piece of vellum pinned out on it, gleaming in places where Brother Jerzy had done gilding yesterday: the streaming rays of the Bright Lady’s glory and the edges of the disk around Her face; Her crown, and the thinnest threads from the sketched face of Ciregor as he gazed up to Her. At the right, on the flat portion of the desk, were rows of tiny white dishes, each one filled with a brilliant color: red, green, yellow, beautiful deep blue. There was a bigger dish filled with white lead paint, and a small stack of empty dishes besides. Brother Jerzy had a row of brushes, too, each one tinier than the last, and a dry cloth next to a bowl of water.