by M. A. Ray
Dingus wove around the trees, over to her. “You want me to take your tent down?”
“Catch that babe!” she cried, tangled in canvas and poles, as the baby crawled toward the burned-out firepit. Dingus suffered a moment’s agonized indecision, then lunged and snatched the baby around its chubby waist, just before it stuck its hand in the ash heap. It squalled almost as a cat would’ve as he lifted it up and held it out to the woman—at arm’s length.
“Oh, and do my hands look free just now?” she said. “Hold him, he won’t kill you!”
“Uh—” He gave in and drew the baby’s back against his chest, tucking his arm under its butt. At least it didn’t have a wet nappy. His hand covered its entire torso.
It stopped squalling and started to bounce alarmingly, making clutching motions toward the woman and saying, “Ma-ma-ma!”
“Stay with Dingus half a moment, laddie mine,” she said to it, wrestling her way free of the canvas. “That’ll be Dominic the Second there,” she added to Dingus. “And I’m Missus Donnelly—Lady Sionnan to you.”
“I’m—well, I guess you know.” Dominic the Second squirmed and tilted his head to look up. Huge, blue-gray eyes gazed out of the baby’s face, and Dingus gazed back. That warm, soft feeling melted inside his chest, even faster than it had when he’d met Kessa: his heart going to breakfast mush. Dominic the Second didn’t know anything about Muscoda, dilihi, or dirty sons of bitches like Arkady. He didn’t know anything but Ma, hugs, and milk, and his look was full of nothing but good.
The baby cackled, showing a few tiny teeth, and reached up to grab Dingus’s chin with a dirty, soft hand. In a flash so sudden, so fierce the knowledge was pain, Dingus knew what he wanted, and wanted it more than anything in the world. He grinned, and the baby tried to bounce up high enough to get his nose, squealing with delight. Dingus tickled the pale skin on the fat little belly—people tickled babies, he’d seen that a hundred times at least. Dominic the Second kicked his little legs and gave a real, full-throated laugh, and it did for Dingus completely. If he had one of his own, would it be as red-headed as he was? Have to get a wife, first, he thought, or somebody who wants to be with me at least. It’d be so good, he just knew it, in a cabin in the quiet depths of the forest maybe, him and a family of his own.
“All right, lad, I’ve done with that,” said Lady Sionnan, reaching out. “I’ll take him back, and give you my thanks.”
“No problem.” Reluctantly, Dingus handed off the baby.
“And have a good year,” she said. He realized he’d been standing there kind of a long time, looking at Dominic the Second, and he blushed.
“You, too,” he said, and headed back to the camp. His stuff was already packed, but Vandis would probably want him to help Kessa with hers. Before he went into the woods, though, he saw something on the ground. Leaning over, he saw it was a weasel, all twisted around, swell-bellied, with bloody foam oozing from its mouth. About five feet away, there was half a chewed pastry: strawberry, it looked to be.
Vandis’s favorite. Dingus went cold, then hot. He barged through the trees to the camp with his heart thudding away, yelling, “Vandis!”
“What?” Vandis kicked dirt over the firepit. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He pressed a hand to his chest. “Tell me you didn’t eat any of that strawberry bear claw.”
“Nah, I couldn’t. Too full. Kessa didn’t want it either. Guess I should’ve saved it for you; sorry, I didn’t even think of that.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Someone gave it to me. They do that sometimes, if they don’t want to take it all the way home.”
“You better come look at this.”
Vandis turned to Kessa. “Keep working on that bedroll.”
“Yes, Vandis,” she said, while Dingus dragged Vandis out to where he’d found the weasel.
Vandis stared at the little carcass in the scatter of pine needles where it had thrashed out its life. Slow, real slow, he lifted a hand and pressed it to his gut, and real slow, he looked up at Dingus, his mouth hanging wide.
“Somebody tried to kill you,” Dingus said. “If you got any more food from people, maybe you want to throw it out.”
Vandis blinked. His mouth snapped shut. “Up to the fair. Booth eighty-six, looking for a blond girl, mole just the left of her mouth. Run.” He leapt into the air and zipped in the direction of the valley mouth. Dingus bolted to the fairground. Up here it was just as deserted, but he found a privy mucker and got directions to booth eighty-six.
It was empty. Dingus went behind anyway, looking for—anything, he wasn’t sure what. On the ground inside, he found an oddly-shaped oilcloth bag, sewn shut and filled with some kind of liquid. He shook it, frowning, but didn’t dare open it; it might be the poison. He laid it on the front counter of the booth and searched around a little more.
A few minutes later, Vandis touched down in front of the booth, jogging to a stop. “Anything?”
Dingus pointed at the bag. “Just that.”
Vandis snorted. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. If I didn’t feel so stupid right now, I’d be laughing.”
“Why? What is it?”
“It’s a falsie.” At Dingus’s confused frown, Vandis said, “A fake breast. Actors use them when they portray women.”
“I touched it!”
“Ha!” Vandis let out a belly laugh. “Thank you for that. You make me feel better that I’m never going to find this guy. Hell, it could’ve been a woman—just in disguise.”
“What about whoever rented the booth? Wouldn’t they have to leave their name?”
“Sure, but how likely do you think it is that they used their actual name?”
“Oh.”
“Exactly,” Vandis said, picking up the falsie and flapping it around.
“Could you please not do that?”
He laughed again and tossed it aside. Then he seemed to fold in on himself. “Dingus…”
“Who wants you dead bad enough to wear those?”
“Order of Aurelius,” he said. “At least, I hope so. Otherwise, I’d be looking for it from two angles.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open.”
Vandis nodded. All of a sudden he looked every minute of fifty. “Please do.”
“You better be careful,” Dingus said. “Don’t take any more gifts or whatever. You shouldn’t—”
“I know.”
When they got back into camp, Dingus insisted on going through his Master’s pack, plus his own and Kessa’s. He tossed everything edible into the nearest latrine and buried it. He made Vandis promise not to eat anything Kessa or Dingus hadn’t cooked for him. He wiped down every last blade with a wet cloth, and when Vandis called him paranoid, he just scowled.
Let them try. They wouldn’t get Vandis, not while he drew breath.
The Stone
Midnight.
The stars glanced through wispy, shifting curtains of cloud. An old man stood in a fallow field with a sandstone fort rising behind him. The night wind whipped around his ankles and tugged at his white robes. The long grass bowed and rippled before it.
The old man stared at the stone in front of him, a great gray stone that, though it had lain untouched for nearly half a century, still gleamed in the faint moonlight like the surface of the stillest water. He longed to run his hand over it and feel the runes etched there, to run his finger through the crack, but to touch the Stone was death, and Lech Valitchka was far from ready to die.
A nacreous tear dangled from the bottom of the crack, suspended, growing. For long minutes, he watched it shiver there. The bottom rounded, oh, so slowly, and the top stretched until it was no thicker than a thread.
It fell into a bald patch in the grass at the stone’s base. The earth drank the thick fluid until only a wet, softly glittering patch was left behind.
“I can’t do it,” Lech said, hushed, as if in the presence of something huge and holy.
Fell whispe
ring rushed through the grass. It might have been the sound of the wind, but it might have been speech, if one were to bend an ear close enough.
“Ah…” The softest of exhalations from Lech’s lips. His eyes fell shut and white light burned through the darkness behind his lids. He saw.
When he opened his eyes, the etched inscription on the stone had subtly changed, not enough to notice unless one strained sight; but Lech did not. He turned and strode back toward the fort, passing the guards along the way. Their shifts were carefully structured so that no one guard saw him come twice.
He had letters to write.
To be continued in Saga of Menyoral #3: Oath Bound
Coming Soon
Acknowledgements
This book would not be what it is without my husband’s unflagging understanding and love. I thank him for everything.
This book would not be what it is without the many wonderful friends I have made since first unleashing Dingus onto the world. I thank them for their sincere support, affection, and love of my fiction-babies.
This book would not be what it is without my beta-readers, who can look upon this work with smug satisfaction, knowing that I would be lost without them.
This book would not be what it is without the editor, John Hart, who delivers ruthlessness with grace and charm. I thank him for helping me to make it beautiful.
This book would not be what it is without the cover artist, Joel Lagerwall, who made an image so lovely I could not but raise my expectations of the prose that would go behind it.
Special thanks to M.L. John, for her wonderful support, and to PK Thunder, for his expert advice on snakes and reptiles.
About the Author
M.A. Ray is a madwoman. She lives on a military installation with a husband, two kids, a cat, and a metric ton of printed matter.
For the latest, like her page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/marayauthor), follow along on Twitter (https://twitter.com/menyoral), or join her at http://menyoral.com for short stories and more.
