by Ray, M. A.
The next day was hot and still, even in the morning. Summer was supposed to be winding down by now, but in Wealaia that didn’t always matter; it’d be pretty warm well into autumn, which was fine with Dingus. He could put up with a little sweat during archery practice if that meant he didn’t have to wear shoes or boots. They always pinched, and besides that, trapped all the foot stink. So what if Vandis bitched at him at least twice a week to wear the boots they gave him at Elwin’s Ford, and said his feet were filthy? He could put up with that, too, because it was a lot more comfortable to go without, so much more that during archery practice he could hit at least two more out of ten than he did wearing boots.
So the boots stayed in his pack, crammed way in the bottom, even under the pemmican and hardtack, and Dingus shot barefoot. Everyone was loosing forty this morning, and he was doing real well: hitting ten out of ten, and seven or eight out of ten in the bull’s-eye. One more reason his name was mud with Everett: every day, Dingus did a little bit better than Everett. Everett usually did nine out of ten, and six or seven in the bull’s-eye. He loosed next to Dingus today, too, which was annoying because instead of trying to do better himself, Everett kept trying to make Dingus flub. That girl with the carrot curls was watching, so Dingus especially didn’t want to mess up.
For the fifth time, Everett put his boot out and stepped on Dingus’s bare toes. “You—” Dingus started to say, but stopped, focusing on his own target. It was making him mad enough to spit, but he didn’t want to start trouble, and he definitely didn’t want to get stomped, which he would. Everett wasn’t as tall as Dingus, but he was half again as wide, and he’d already put bruises under Dingus’s clothes.
The world collapsed to a narrow tunnel between the target and the arrowhead. When he loosed, Everett didn’t even exist.
“How the hell do you do that every time?” Everett groused, when the range-master popped up from behind the target and signaled another bull’s-eye. Dingus tugged another arrow out of the ground in front of him.
“Hey, Thingus, I asked you a question.”
“You could, too,” he said, and it was only the truth. Everett glared, so he explained. “It’s only you close your one eye. You can’t see right that way.” He loosed again and got proved right.
“Bullshit. You closed your eye on the other side, where I can’t see it.”
“He got it shut up tight, Ev,” Mason lied from the other side of him. He swallowed his anger. Nothing for it. He pulled his last arrow out of the dirt, nocked, drew, and let himself forget for a moment more.
It was another bull’s-eye. That made it ten out of ten, a personal best, and he couldn’t even enjoy it on account of being able to smell a thrashing in the air. That was his forty, too, so he went over to a bench on the west edge of the training yard and checked his string—he made a note to tell Vandis he’d need a new one soon—and his bow—it was perfectly fine, for a standard-issue bow from the way station. He missed the longbow he’d made for himself, but that was long gone. He unstrung this one and settled to wait in the sunshine. There was that girl, in her same hiding spot behind some barrels stacked around the fence at the northeast corner, facing away from the flying arrows. She always sat there, and he’d seen her the very first day. He thought he had a better hiding place for her. Telling her about it would be a good excuse to talk to her, he figured.
From his spot on the west side he could see her pretty good through a gap in the barrels, crouched down with her skirts puddled around her legs and feet. She had a face that belonged on somebody nice, and right now it was pink and smiling, from the heat and from excitement. To be honest, though, his eyes rested a little lower. The way she had her arms and knees, it pushed on her chest, and pushed her tits, which were amazing to begin with, right against her bodice, and that was partway unlaced. He thought if he put his arms around her she’d be soft—and she was even a human girl, so it wouldn’t be anywhere near the kind of problem it’d be if she was of the People. Then he thought, Don’t get ahead of yourself. She looked like a nice person, but that didn’t mean she had a nice bone in her whole curvy body.
Just then, practice finished up. Dingus had to help put the targets away, but he knew she’d still be there when he got through; she always showed up partway into the archery and stayed all through the sword work. Somehow he ended up hauling the same target as Everett, and when it was put away Everett said, “See you later, Thingus,” as if he didn’t already know they were planning to thrash him. He pretended like he hadn’t heard and went to get his bow.
He vaulted over the fence a moment later and made like he was going off toward the privy, when really he went around behind the summer kitchen shed and waited a little while for the garrison to get involved in their sword drills. Once he saw they weren’t paying the rest of the world much mind he sneaked around the other way, checked nobody else was watching, and walked quickly and quietly out past the chicken yard, until he ended up behind the barrels, right behind the girl. She didn’t seem to see him, even when he crouched to one side so he wasn’t cornering her.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
She bounced—that was the only word for it—fascinatingly and turned to him. Her head whipped from side to side, her eyes darting, and when she’d decided nobody was watching she pressed a chapped finger over her lips and said, “Shhh!” He winced. That’d carry for sure, but he didn’t get a chance to tell her so because she grabbed the front of his jerkin, stood up, and practically dragged him off the other way. They wound up between the dairy shed and the castle wall. It wouldn’t have been his choice; the dairy maids were still in there churning. He kept his voice low, even when she trapped him with his back to the stone.
“You need a new—”
“What do you want me to do?” she interrupted, angry tears in her eyes and a hot blush on her face.
“Huh?”
“So you won’t tell. Anything you want, but you gotta hurry. I don’t wanna miss the whole practice.”
“I just—”
“Fine. I’ll do this. But you can’t tell once I do.” She lunged out with her red laundry hands and started pulling down his pants. “I’m gonna suck on your thing ’til—”
“No,” Dingus said, fighting to keep his pants up. Not that it didn’t sound good. Moira used to do that and it’d been a few months, but he’d rather it be someone he knew he liked, and that he knew liked him.
She sighed, resigned, and turned her back on him. "You better hurry up," she said, propping her hands on the outer wall.
"What are you doing?"
"Hurry up and fuck me."
Dingus blinked. "What?"
"Are you stupid, or what?"
"No." He hitched at his pants and retied the drawstring. "But—" Steeling himself, he reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. It was soft, but with muscle underneath. "You don't want me to."
"You really are stupid."
He dropped his hand. "What's so stupid about that?"
"What do you want?" She looked miserable.
He shrugged. "Just wanted to talk to you. What's your name? I'm Dingus."
"You're not gonna tell on me?" she asked, blinking. Her face cleared.
“Why would I?"
She turned, leaning against the wall, and looked at him, tugging on one of her braids and chewing her lip. In the middle of that moment he didn’t think she was near as old as she looked. “It’s Kessa,” she said finally. He stuck out his hand to clasp wrists with her, even though he probably shouldn’t so much as talk to her. Kessa. Everett’s Kessa, the girl he was always bragging about in the barracks, making himself even more contemptible to Dingus on account of how he talked about her, but that look she wore made breakfast mush of Dingus's heart. "Your story was completely great."
“You liked it?”
“It was so exciting. I wish I could go on an adventure like that.”
“My grandpa always says it wasn’t as much fun as it sounds,” he offered.
&
nbsp; “I bet it’s more fun than laundry.”
He laughed. “No bet.” For another moment they looked at each other, straight across; she was about exactly as tall as he was. Right when he was about to open his mouth and offer her the hiding place, she opened her mouth instead.
“So, if you don't want to fuck me, why'd you come to me? Only to talk?"
I do want to, he thought regretfully, but he shrugged. “Wanted to show you a better hiding place. You need one.”
“I guess so. I keep getting found.”
He turned and motioned her to follow him out from behind the dairy shed. She stuck her hand in his. It was chapped and rough and terrifying.
“Oh, uh—better not,” he said, trying not to hurt her feelings. He didn’t want to get stomped on any more than he already had coming.
“How come? Aren’t you gonna be friends with me?”
The second he looked at her eyes he got that warm, mushy feeling in his chest again. She couldn’t be any older than he was and she was probably younger. “’Course I am,” he said, like it was a stupid question, but he real gently took his hand out of hers. “But if your boyfriend sees me with you, he’s gonna thrash me.” More.
“Everett? Yeah…I guess he’d beat you up.” In a real tiny voice, she added, “I don’t really like him.”
Why are you telling me this? Dingus thought, in agony. “Why don’t you bust up then?” he blurted.
“He caught me too. At first he was really nice. He told me if I let him, he'd teach me the sword, but he keeps doing it to me and he hasn't taught me one thing.” She looked up again. Her pretty blue eyes flashed. “He's a dirty, rotten liar. He said it wouldn't hurt."
"He's a sneak, too," Dingus offered. "He already thrashed me twice, where it wouldn't show."
She frowned. "Why'd he do that?"
"I don't know. It's a thing some guys gotta do, I guess. Calls me Thingus and he thinks he's smart. What he don't know is, that's what they all called me growing up."
"You don't look grown," she said. "How old are you anyways?"
"Sixteen."
"I'm twelve." She smiled sunnily. "I guess I feel better. I didn't think you were that old. I'd never live down taking it from a little kid."
"Uh," he said. You're a little kid, he thought. So help me, I will never look at your tits ever again. He felt like an asshole for looking so often in the first place. From this moment, she would not exist from the neck down, he vowed.
“What’s wrong?” The happy slid right off her face. “You don’t like me anymore, do you? You thought I was older. Everybody does. Then when they find out…”
Dingus cleared his throat. “Don’t matter to me.” His stomach cramped up when he thought how her life must be: lonely, and he knew from lonely. Then he thought how Everett was probably two times her age at least, and the back of his neck prickled with heat like it did when the red came on him.
“It doesn’t?”
“Not to be friends, it don’t,” he assured her, as nice as he could given how mad he was getting.
“What’s wrong then?”
“Nothing you did.” He forced a smile. “But listen, maybe you’re gonna want to kinda, maybe…stay away from Everett a while. It ain’t the best thing. You know? You could get a baby.”
She laughed and waved it away. “Oh, that’s okay. I can’t.”
“No?”
“He said I wouldn’t.”
“Did he,” Dingus said between his teeth. “Excuse me asking, but you get your monthlies?” He couldn’t believe that came out his mouth. She blushed so hot he knew she got ’em. “Then,” he said, “he lied. Like he did about everything else.”
”Oh." She spread a hand over the bottom of her belly. "Oh."
"Your ma didn’t tell you how it works?"
She shook her head. "I saw the horses one time. When I asked her, she got mad."
He raked his hands through his hair. "Listen. You know when the—" He couldn't call Everett a man. "—the guy, he gets real happy and—and—"
"You mean when he comes."
His face burned. "Yeah, that. The stuff that comes out—"
"The come."
Dammit. “The come is what makes the girl get pregnant. If he don't pull out..."
"Oh, shit," she breathed, and Dingus thought murder about Everett Jones.
“Dingus!” he heard Vandis yell. Oh, thank You, Lady… “Dingus, where are you?”
“Coming!” he yelled back, and told Kessa, “I gotta go. Vandis wants me. Meet me up there tomorrow, after archery practice.” He pointed to the battlements. “Don't go down to the yard.”
“Okay,” she said. "Vandis. That's got to be something else."
"Sure is," he said. "Bye now. Don't go down to the yard. Swear you won't."
"I swear," she said, and he ran out from behind the dairy shed with his brain whirling and his heart aching with worry. He'd said he wasn't going to tell, but how was he going to make things better with his mouth shut?
Kessa No-Name
That night after supper, Vandis sat cross-legged on the bed in the plain chamber Lord Galbraith had generously provided for him, writing a letter to the beleaguered way station in Brightwater and waiting for Dingus to show up for the nightly talk. It wasn’t as if he were—precisely—using the boy for a spy, but sometimes people said or did things in front of boys that they wouldn’t in front of men. And a boy like Dingus…he’d never seen anyone work so hard at being invisible. He’d been wrong to worry Dingus would be too conspicuous; unless he had no choice in the matter, Dingus either hid or blended into the background like one of those color-changing lizards they had down in the Monmouth Islands, and even Vandis couldn’t find him without shouting for him. Unless there were little children around who wanted stories, Dingus was much happier if nobody knew he even existed, let alone noticed his presence. He certainly couldn't be blamed for that. Truthfully, Vandis liked him the way he was—especially since he unwound for Vandis, and only Vandis—but a nobleman shouldn't fade.
He wasn't sure he was quite ready to share Dingus with the entire world, but after last night, pride swelled his chest to bursting. He'd had his doubts as to whether his boy could manage an audience that size, but—
The quiet tapping at the door pulled him out of his reverie. He wiped a smile off his face and called for Dingus to come in. “What do you have for me today?”
Dingus shut the door, pulled the chair over to the bed, and blew out a gust of breath as he sat. “Vandis, I think I got a problem.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There’s this girl—”
“Dammit, I told you to stay off the maids,” Vandis said, getting a horrific vision of Dingus going no farther than this, getting leg-shackled to a fat maid, a dozen redheaded brats grubbing around. Apparently, his stern warning to "keep it in your breeches" hadn't been stern enough.
“It’s not like that,” the boy said fervently. Vandis rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead. He thought he might be getting a migraine. It had to be about sex, a subject completely out of Vandis's depth. He’d rather discuss anything else with Dingus. As far as he was concerned, his Squire ought to be blank below the waist. The thing with the tree knocked him sidewise. He had no idea how to deal with the half-blood puberty thing, and now—what? Dingus went on: “There’s this one girl Kessa—”
“That laundry maid? The one with the—” He made an expansive gesture in front of his chest.
“Yes. Please don’t talk about her like that. She’s only a little kid.” Dingus’s baby face hardened. Those soft hazel eyes took on an edge. In a few years, Vandis thought, he is going to be one scary son of a bitch. “She’s twelve.”
Vandis’s face flamed. His heart was taken, but all right, he looked, like any other man. Plenty were looking at Kessa, and he’d bet plenty weren’t thinking of her the way he was, simply as a pleasure to see.
“You know that one guard? Everett?”
“Everett Jone
s?” Oh, I do not like where this is going. “Met him a time or two.” The guy hadn’t made much of an impression, not with all the people Vandis kept track of in a day.
“He’s putting it to her.”
Vandis breathed for a moment.
“I think I want to kill him,” Dingus said. “Don’t know how I’d do it, but—it makes me burn.”
“Don’t worry. Everybody wants to hand out a beating now and then.” Vandis calmed himself. “Now tell me how you know.”
Dingus explained his reasoning, shifting in his chair and blushing the entire time. He was far more candid about it than Vandis could have expected or might have wanted, and by the time he finished laying it out, Vandis was on his feet. He could swear smoke billowed out of his ears. “What should I do, Vandis?” Dingus pleaded.
“Don’t worry about it.” Vandis straightened his jerkin. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” He strode across the room and out the door.
“But, wait!” He turned and saw his Squire in the doorway. “I can’t let her down.”
“You didn’t. You did the right thing.”
“But where are you going?”
He gave Dingus a look that sent the boy running the opposite way down the corridor. Well enough for now. Vandis wasn’t sure what would come of this, whether Dingus would trust him enough to come to him again or not, but right now, he had trouble caring. “I will use every means and device at my disposal to free the minds and bodies of this world from those who would unjustly control them,” Vandis thought, and he had a simple but effective device at his immediate disposal. He cracked his knuckles. Some days, the Oath of Service was an absolute delight.
He found Everett Jones outside the barracks, sitting on one of the benches with a couple of other morons, drinking. When Jones saw him coming he stood up. “What can I do for you, Sir Vail?”
“You know a girl named Kessa?”
“Yeah, she’s my girl,” Everett said. “How come?”
