by M. A. Ray
He took a deeper drink from his glass, cleared his throat, and repeated, more emphatically, “Conclave has no authority. Not to solve the kind of problem Lech has become. Conclave has the power of influence, not of temporal strength. Are you taking my meaning here, or do I have to spell it out for you?”
Hendrick swallowed audibly, larynx bobbing under a white face. “That sounds… drastic.”
“No, son,” Vandis said, pushing his age, his experience, up against Hendrick’s youth and newness to the position. He remembered being that fresh. “What Lech did to us—to my Order, to your Church—that was drastic.”
“Don’t forget Disa,” Hendrick murmured. His plate might as well have held the secret to eternal life. “She got lucky there.”
“She had Gudrun there. And her own sweet self.” Vandis smirked when he said that, and Hendrick snorted a laugh.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever heard refer to Disa as ‘sweet.’”
“She’s a hard-ass old bat, but you get used to her.”
“I know. I’ve been having dinner with her once a week. Just like my mother did.”
“Your mother?”
“Solveig,” Hendrick said.
“He killed your mother.”
“Well, it wasn’t—”
“You’d better believe it was him. Sure as if his hand were on the sword that struck your mother’s head from her shoulders. Lech Valitchka killed your mother, Hendrick. He spilled her blood, and for what? No other reason than he disagreed with how she served the Queen they both professed to worship—and you don’t need to think he wouldn’t do the same to you in a heartbeat, either.” Vandis watched Hendrick’s eyes. It was always in the eyes. He saw the thoughts running across Hendrick’s eyes like they were written on a ribbon sliding through the High Priest’s head, and he pushed, unwilling to lose the younger man. “Not even a moment’s thought would he give to wiping you off the face of the earth, you and all your people, just like he tried to do, is still trying to do, with me and mine. Easier for him than taking a shit.”
“Vandis…” Hendrick fiddled with his spoon. “Vengeance belongs to the Queen.”
“When vengeance and right come together, we get this lovely little thing called justice,” Vandis said, lacing his fingers.
Naheel’s young High Priest drained his bottle to the dregs and rose from his chair, wavering a little under the wine’s influence. “Do what you need to do. I won’t stand in your way. Farewell, Vandis.”
“Good meeting you,” Vandis said.
“Yes. It was—informative.” Hendrick left. The under-priest scuttled after him, abandoning a similar dinner. Adeon lifted his own plate and came to sit at the table opposite Vandis. To his credit, he didn’t speak, only finished his cutlets and rice in silence. Vandis nursed his whiskey, morose, loath to leave the relative peace of the cookshop for the people probably gathering outside. They were more miserable than he had ever known, groaning under the weight of a world with no magic but what Vandis carried in his veins—Vandis and Dingus, that was. He shuddered internally when he pictured another mob out for his boy’s blood. And his own. Not even whiskey quelled the thought.
“Are you going to eat that?” Adeon asked, indicating Vandis’s full plate.
Vandis pushed it across the table to him, and he dug in with every appearance of pleasure. How he ate so much and stayed slim as a boy was beyond Vandis, who’d already begun to soften after only a month of riding a desk. Just as well he wasn’t hungry.
When Adeon finished, the two Knights stood and joined Hui outside. It was a slow drag of a walk back to HQ under a wretched drizzle that did nothing to deter the petitioners dogging Vandis’s every step. He referred them to real help wherever he could, and sent them away with a blessing when he couldn’t, too often by far for his taste.
Up in the main office, Vandis whipped by Jimmy’s vacant desk, desperate for space, ignoring his secretary’s greeting from the file room and the letters that slipped off the top of the in-tray in the wake of his passing. He shut his door firmly in Adeon’s face and leaned against it, scrubbing at his face with both hands.
Unseen, a letter slipped off the desk and fell into the crack between furniture and floor, a letter with a pauper’s seal in cheap red wax, a letter franked from Windish.
The Letter
Feej Park, Windish
Dingus walked back to the tiny peninsula with his hands in his pockets and Tai on his shoulder. He’d been down the Hopper station for the third time since they’d come to the park; once, the day after they’d gotten there, to talk to Captain Dar about keeping the Ishlings on public land; the day after that to talk to Commander Jezlee about the same thing; and today, a couple weeks on, to answer a few questions about Laben—who’d just happened to float up in the harbor overnight. That worried Dingus, even though he wasn’t under suspicion now that he’d talked to the earnest young Hop assigned to the case, and even though Dar had given him a relieved thumbs-up as he left. She’d spent almost all her free time up at the camp, and he for sure appreciated her help. The kids were getting used to her, especially since—after the first, disastrous time she’d come, in her uniform tunic—she’d switched to civilian clothes.
He tried not to think about Yatan, but after the questions he’d been asked, he was hard put to keep the tiny old Ish out of his head. What am I going to do? Even Tai’s chattering away in his ear couldn’t drive the question away. If he’d thought taking the Ishlings out of the city would help, he’d have taken them, but he thought maybe it was better to be here, with the Hops close by. And now he had less than a fortnight to think of something, just in case.
His stomach hurt. He hadn’t felt too hungry lately, but that wasn’t all bad; he didn’t think the money would last until Vandis got back. Soon. Only a few more days, he told himself, but it wasn’t real encouraging, on account of Vandis was already late. They were gathering all the food they could, but seventeen little kids, Dingus had found, were not an economical proposition. Just this morning, he’d had to send Kessa to drop more coin on noodles and soap. They’d even sold the goat. He walked through the park, up the path to the peninsula with Tai jabbering the whole way, too lost in his own mind to enjoy the scenery, let alone the Ishling’s talk. At least he hadn’t been dreaming. That would probably change any night now. He was so worn out he couldn’t imagine the nightmares staying away for long.
“Dingus!” all the Ishlings squealed when he and Tai came through the pines. It was his signal to go down on one knee and open his arms, which he did, and that was the Ishlings’ signal to sweep over him in a furry wave of warm little bodies. They knocked him on his ass every time. Today they bowled him over flat, covered his face in Ishling kisses, and squeezed him in tiny Ishling hugs, until he was breathless with laughter. It never failed to remind him of why.
He sat up in the middle of the swarm. “Oof! Okay, guys—enough for now. What are you doing today?”
“Kessa is meet the Salmon ladies,” Zeeta said, and fifteen other voices chimed in to explain. He laughed again at the cacophony of chitters and cheeps.
“Hang on now, hang on,” he said, holding up his hands. “The Salmon ladies? What Salmon ladies?”
“Thems,” Voo said, pointing toward the firepit, where two Ish women sat with Kessa, who had a pile of embroidery in her lap. She’d been trying to put names on all the Ishlings’ tunics, and running into trouble with the spelling. He didn’t blame her. However you were supposed to spell “Vylee” was a mystery to him. He stood and walked over with Tai skipping behind, and when he stopped, Tai scrambled back to his shoulder.
The two women wore loose, salmon-pink robes that rippled like silk when they stood to greet Dingus. “Why, what a wonderful job you’re doing here!” exclaimed the older of the two, in a thin, whispery voice. “Everything an Ishling could need—barring a mother and a big-mama, of course.” She tinkled a little laugh. “You must be Dingus.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and resisted t
he urge to demand who she was to judge his work.
“I am High Priestess Meep, and this is Leega.” She indicated the younger woman and fingered the fine, polished wooden pin on the high neck of her robe: the Salmon of Plenty. “My, my, yes, beautiful work. Hello, little one!” she said, spotting Tai and giving him a jaunty wave.
Tai wrinkled his brow, answering the wave with a disbelieving stare, until Dingus jiggled his shoulder. Tai cleared his throat. “Hello,” he said. “Ma’am.”
“And how are you getting along here?”
“Oh, I is—very much fine, ma’am, is nice. Dingus is very much nice, better than Laben, yes, and he—um—he is treat us very much nice, and he is tell us we isn’t to steal.”
“And when you do steal? What then?” the Salmon Priestess asked brightly.
“We isn’t,” Tai said, sounding confused. They hadn’t stolen, not once; Dingus had kept his eyes peeled for it. “Dingus is tell us we isn’t to do it, and we isn’t.”
“But surely—”
“Why is we do it when Dingus is telling us no? When the Kunu is tell you not to do a thing, is you doing it?”
“Well, no. Of course not,” Meep said, her eyes wide with shock.
“There you is.”
“Tai, go play with the other kids, please,” Dingus said, his voice coming out squeaky with suppressed laughter. He exchanged bemused glances with Kessa, making a note to ask what Kunu meant.
Tai said okay and hopped off his shoulder to join the others, who’d fallen into a game of Tag—their favorite—a little ways off. Dingus was relieved they weren’t digging worms today; they looked clean, and their skinny bodies were starting to fill out. He grinned at them.
“They’re all healthy,” Leega ventured, calling his attention back. “No parasites, no swollen bellies. There are some old fractures, and of course that little girl’s eye—”
“Vylee,” he said.
“Yes.” She smiled. “No infection there, though. It’s healing beautifully.”
“You’re working miracles here!” Meep trilled. “Salmon’s work! So! What can we do for you?”
“I—” Dingus shook his head. “I didn’t expect that. If you can swing it, we could use food. These little guys are always hungry.”
“I imagine so! Tomorrow we’ll come with food, and a religious instructor for these poor unfortunates.”
“Oh.” Dingus frowned. It wasn’t like he could come out and say no. The Lady wouldn’t care for that. “Well, I think I got that covered, but—”
“Excuse me?”
“Ma’am, I got my own religion, but they should have the choice. I just thought, maybe, if you could also give ’em something practical along with it, it’d help ’em out more.” He laid his right hand over his heart to show his leaf, watched their eyes go wide, and took a deep, steadying breath. It was for the kids. “See, I’m a Knight of the Air, and I been giving ’em some woodcraft and all, and also a little letters and manners and how to live honest, but I can’t do it all at once. Maybe if you could teach ’em some more letters, or figuring, with the Salmon stuff, that’d be good.”
“Letters. Figuring.”
“Yes, ma’am. None of ’em can read much, let alone write.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t be out of order,” the priestess said with a little laugh. “After all, we school Ishlings, but we’ve never really— All the same, I catch your meaning! It’s a grand experiment, seeing if children without family can, in fact, be raised to function in society.” She beamed at him.
“Uh—” He didn’t think he could even begin unwinding that one. He forced a smile. “Yeah.”
She patted her palms together delightedly. “Oh, this is so exciting! Come, Leega, we must prepare everything for tomorrow! You can count on Salmon Temple, dear boy, oh, yes! Until tomorrow!”
“See you then,” Dingus said. Leega smiled at him and touched his hip—as high as she could reach—and they left, with much waving and chirruping from Meep. He turned to Kessa. “Well, that was different.”
“Was it ever,” she said, shaking her head. “That old Meep is crazy as a bag full of bats. Leega seemed okay. She checked everybody over, you know, medically.”
“That’s good. I been wondering how I was gonna get ’em looked at. Wasn’t a real healthy life they had. I better go tell ’em how they gotta have manners tomorrow.”
“You should’ve seen Reeb earlier. I’m just glad he missed.”
“Aw, not again!”
“Again. I spanked his little butt for it though.”
“I guess I better go over the shit rules, too,” Dingus said.
He was just working into a lecture on The Rules, attended by seventeen Ishlings lounging on the rocks they’d arranged in a circle, when a tall Rodanskan, thirtyish, with a sailor’s kit bag over his shoulder, a neat blond beard, and woad tattoos curling up his arms walked into the trees.
“Are you Dingus?” he interrupted.
“Yeah, what’s it to you?”
“I is liking your pictures!” Zeeta cried, bouncing up from her rock to grab at the distraction.
The sailor sent her a tight smile, and thrust something at Dingus: an envelope, sealed with Vandis’s arms in bright blue wax. Dingus seized it. “Boy,” the sailor said, “why are you not where Sir Vandis thinks you are?”
“Didn’t he get my letter?”
“I don’t know, but I have this one, and I don’t find you at the address Sir Vandis has put on it. I am here to help, but I want you to tell me—”
“Long story.” The envelope was franked to “Sir Dingus Xavier, in the care of Lady Tikka daughter of Koelar, 558 Sequoia Street, Windish.” It was heavy, and jingled.
It wasn’t Vandis’s writing on the envelope. Dingus half shredded it to get it open, hands shaking, heart stuttering.
“Who’s it from?” Kessa asked.
“The Knights.” His voice came out shaky. He pulled out the letter, scattering coins.
“Oh, no, oh, no, oh, Dingus!” she whispered.
“Dingus,” it read, in Vandis’s sloppy, spiky hand.
“It’s from Vandis,” Dingus told her, his heart slowing a little, and read on.
I’m going to be in Dreamport longer than we discussed. Despite a royal ban, the Aurelian Order has continued aggressive action against the Knights in general, and me in particular. The Watch has told me not to leave the city while their investigation, such as it is, remains open. I would have told you in person, but I know you understand that I am a man of my word, and as such, cannot come to collect you and Kessa just yet. Keep your eyes open and your nose clean.
I’ll see you soon—
Vandis
That’s it? That’s all he’s got to write me? What about “I’m okay”? Something! Dingus shook the remains of the envelope, hoping for more, but there was only the money. He bit out a curse and kicked a rock, which did about as much good as he could’ve expected, plus gave him a sore foot.
Kessa touched his arm. “What’d he say?”
“He’s not coming!” Dingus wanted to hit someone. He wanted to hit Vandis. He wanted Vandis to come back so he, Dingus, could hit him in the fucking face.
“Sir Vandis is delayed,” said the sailor, not unkindly. “I am here to do him a favor and stay with you until he can come. He’s worried for you—but I think maybe he should be more worried than he is.” He looked around at the Ishlings with a wry face, and shrugged. “Oh, well, it’s an adventure. My name is Haakon.” The kids took further advantage of the interruption to pepper Haakon with questions about his tattoos.
Dingus didn’t care. He sat on the rock he’d kicked and stared, unseeing, at the letter. He sends me a note, some money, and a damn nanny. And they took another whack at him besides… he could’ve gotten hurt for all I know, and here I sit!
Tai hopped into his lap. “You is looking sad, Dingus.” The Ishling reached up and pulled at the corners of his mouth, trying to stretch it into a smile. “This is better!” Tai sa
id, but when he took his hands away Dingus’s mouth fell again. “You gets a letter from Vandis. It isn’t making you happy that he is make this for you?”
“No,” Dingus said, “because it says something stupid.” He wadded it up in his hand, thinking to toss it away, but he couldn’t. He hung his head. He’d felt so sure Vandis would come back and help him figure out what to do, and instead, Yatan would be here in ten days. He still had no ideas, and even if he’d had a thousand times the money Yatan had told him he owed, he wouldn’t pay that old shrunken head a single bit. It was the principle of the thing.
Tai said, “Is we eating soon, Dingus?”
“Are you hungry?”
“We misses dinner for the Hops. Now is almost supper, yes?”
“Close enough. Let’s go get it started.”
“Hey-la-hey!” Tai cheeped, leaping up to his shoulder.
Dingus moved through the supper preparations in a miserable daze and picked at his food when it was ready. Haakon charmed everybody, and tried to charm him, too. “You’re a damned fine cook, boy,” would’ve worked, except that he felt so low he could hardly muster a thank-you. He washed dishes in the same daze, gave baths, and just before the sun went down, checked for parasites and combed fur. Somehow he managed to tell a story, though five minutes later he couldn’t have said which one he’d told. Even the bedtime hugs couldn’t shake his malaise.
When everybody was down for the night, Dingus went out around the rocks and sat down to watch where the firelight wouldn’t interfere with his night sight; he was already settled when he realized he had Tai’s fuzzy body in the crook of his arm. It’d be too much work to get up, put sleeping Tai on his bed of blanket and pine needles, and calm him when he woke up again. Never mind, Dingus thought, scooted down, and shuffled Tai onto his chest.
Heavy footfalls came from the camp. A pair of rough, salt-stained boots stopped next to Dingus. “All you do, and still you sit watch?” Haakon asked, low.
“Somebody’s gotta.”
“You’re proving me wrong when I call you boy. I’m not going to order you around like you’re a ship rat, except right now. Go lie down. You’ll get sick, you have big blue moons under your eyes.”