by M. A. Ray
Stas flipped to the next page. He wanted to look at all the pictures before thinking about what to paint. If he could echo something Brother Vadim had made, so much the better.
Brother Vadim had done ravens on this page, ravens and mice. At the bottom, under the text, he’d painted a little mouse—on fire. Stas swallowed hard. He didn’t care for the idea of anything on fire these days. The ravens flew up the left margin, and caught in a bird’s claws, behind a confusion of wingtips, was another tiny mouse with a halo inked around its thrown-back head. The mouse’s teeth showed, and Stas thought its mouth looked miserable.
As miserable as Jan’s mouth had looked.
He looked up at Brother Vadim’s back, but the monk worked as usual, humming a chant under his breath while he burnished gilding. Was it a coincidence? It must have been—just Brother Vadim thinking about what had happened, that was all. Most times Stas did that, put what he was thinking about in his work one way or another. When he’d done the N he’d been trying to think of nothing but beauty, but the little eyes had sneaked in anyway.
He slipped away from his desk to return the pages to Brother Jerzy, and went to the cupboard to fetch down his silverpoint stylus and some scrap paper to make sketches. It was a beautiful day, and Stas wanted to sketch the saints on the pole outside, today, in the sunshine—but when he sat back from the sketch, he’d drawn what was on his mind after all: a murder of crows encircled the men.
Any Price
Windish
Dingus stared at the nothingness of the holding cell’s wall, on the lowest platform in one of the sequoias that supported the Hopper station. At least the cell had been built for Bigs; across the hall there were four more, stacked on top of one another, holding Ish. The building smelled like unwashed drunks: puke, body odor, piss, and old stale booze. He did not look at the sailor snoring thunderously on the shelf just below his eye level, who’d passed out and promptly shat his pants. He looked at the rough plank wall and imagined himself with Ishlings, Kessa, and Vandis.
He’d been here overnight and all day today, shirtless, bootless, sitting in the stink and ignoring the angry cheeping of the Ish prisoners across the way. He wished he could’ve gotten the chance to introduce Vandis and Tai under better circumstances. Tai was as mouthy as his Master. They’d either take to each other right away or hate each other forever, and either way, it would’ve been vastly entertaining. I’m probably missing a whole lot of fun, he thought, for the tenth time in the last hour, and let out a sigh. Maybe they were having supper now. He hoped the Ishlings weren’t having another food fight. Besides being wasteful, it was sure to burn Vandis’s ass.
Then he got an image of Vandis with mashed yams in his hair and sliding down his hard face, and couldn’t help laughing. Whoever threw ’em best be running.
The door clicked open. Dingus sat up quick, pressing against the bars to get a breath of the fresh breeze that blew in, and before bodies blocked the door he caught a glimpse of spectacular pink and purple: the sun sinking into the bay. “Here you are, Sir Vandis,” said an Ish voice, and Sergeant Mee came in with an Ish chair, which she set in front of the cell, and Vandis. Dingus’s eyes rounded, and he clutched the bars. Once the sergeant left, Vandis kicked the chair aside and came close, eye-to-eye.
“What are you doing here?” Dingus asked.
“You’re surprised I’d come to see you?”
“I thought you’d be with the kids.”
“I spent a little time.” Vandis grimaced. “They’re damned squeaky. I had to hire you an advocate, though, so that was most of the day gone. You’re going to Culoo in the morning.”
His stomach writhed. “The prison.”
“That’s right.”
“Figures.” Dingus frowned. “Well, it’s not the gallows, that’s something.”
“Yet,” Vandis snapped, his face twisting into an angry mask.
Dingus bristled. “If you think I’m gonna apologize, you better walk out now.”
“I don’t think you are. I don’t think you should. I wish I’d been here to—”
“Got along just fine without you.”
Vandis’s face relaxed and he wrapped a hand around the bars, close enough to fill Dingus’s nose with the smell of him. It was more comforting than Dingus would ever admit. “You’d better believe you did. It was a tough decision you—”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Dingus…” Vandis rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t think I heard that correctly.”
“It wasn’t hard at all. Other than going with you? Easiest decision I ever made. It needed doing.”
He massaged his temple, a sure sign he was getting a headache, which Dingus sort of felt he deserved. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘pick your battles’? Because I think that would’ve come in handy here.”
“Sometimes you don’t get to pick. Sometimes the battle picks you. They’re not little monkeys, Vandis! They’re kids like any other kid! They deserve the Knights’ help!”
“I’m not arguing against that. I’d call you the same kind of moron if you’d done this with human kids. There’s only so much we can do. We can’t fix every—”
“That doesn’t mean we get to stop trying! There’s nothing in the Oath about ‘only if I think I’ll succeed!’”
“Are you telling me you want to throw your life away over a little shit like Yatan?”
“‘Want’ is maybe a strong word,” Dingus said, “but if all that needs to happen for little ones to be safe is for one dilihi to die, it’s my honor. Compared to that, I’m not important. ‘Even to the cost of my life.’”
Vandis pushed his hand through the bars and vised it around Dingus’s forearm. “You’re important to me. You might be ready to die for this, but I’m not ready to lose you—and I will not let you pay that price.”
“Could’ve fooled me!” Dingus jerked back. “One time’s all I heard from you these long weeks! I thought you were dead—and you can’t blame me for trying to do the right thing even though you weren’t here to help!”
Vandis cursed, creatively, obscenely, and at some length. He didn’t repeat himself once. By the time he’d finished, Dingus was laughing.
“Can’t nobody cuss like you and that’s a fact. So what’s felching anyways?”
“Never you mind. Look. I know what the Oath says. I know you only wanted to make things right for those kids, and even though the way you went about it was stupid as fuck, I don’t think I could be more proud of you than I am at this moment. I’m just—not prepared to—” But he stopped there, didn’t say any more.
Dingus had understood it the first time anyways. “Yeah, I know. That, I’ll say sorry for.” They looked at each other, and he added, “Same here, Vandis?”
Vandis cleared his throat a few times. “When we get you out of this,” he said thickly, “you’re going to pay through the nose. Tai—he is a prize little shit. He’s bitten me about ten times. Look at this!” He pulled up his sleeve to show a few spots where Tai had tried gnawing on him, and also a big bandage. “That’s all him. You are going to pay.”
“You gotta flick him in the forehead.” Dingus demonstrated with finger and thumb. “Like that. If you can get him before he bites you, so much the better. Listen, you gotta watch out for Peepa, she’s always in everything, and remind Reeb he’s not to throw shit no matter how mad he gets. Be nice to Vylee, she’s real shy, but she’s so sweet you just wanna kiss her little face. And Jooga—”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Take good care of ’em for me,” he said, with a hard twist in his chest.
“Did you think I’d throw them out on the street?”
“No, but—Vandis, there’s no place for ’em. They got no families, and nobody’ll take ’em. What’s gonna happen when you gotta leave?”
“When we leave, there will be a place for them.”
“I was working on the Salmon ladies. Think I about got ’em willing, but—”
“I’ll
take care of it.”
Dingus’s eyes swam. “Thank you.”
“They all say hi, by the way, and this ugly old Big,” he said, gesturing at himself, “had better deliver their magic man, or they’ll stick me with knives while I sleep and come to break you out.”
“Tell ’em I say hi, too, and Kessa. Tell ’em I said be patient and don’t stick Vandis.” He took in a long breath and let it out slow. “That I’ll see ’em again. In the Garden.”
For a long moment, Vandis looked at him with a face so miserable it didn’t seem like Vandis at all. His head bowed.
Dingus pushed his hand through the bars, scraping a little at the skin, but who cared? He laid it on Vandis’s shoulder. “And you, too,” he said. “Don’t doubt it.”
Vandis put his own hand over Dingus’s. “I won’t wait that long.” He turned on his heel and left. The door slammed behind him, and Dingus leaned his head back against the wall of the cell.
Prison! He’d almost rather the gallows.
to be continued in Saga of Menyoral: Summary Justice
coming 2015
If you liked this book, or any of Dingus’s other adventures, please leave a review so others can discover Rothganar. Thanks for reading!
Acknowledgements
I of course must thank my husband Chris for supporting my endeavors as a writer. I could not do it without him.
My beta-readers, Jen Ponce (to whom this book is dedicated), Matt Snyder (who had the last one), and Keith Manuel.
The Editor himself, John Hart, for once again being patient and loving with the prose and with me.
And the cover artist, Joel Lagerwall, for producing something lovely to go on the front.
I also want to thank all of Dingus’s friends for helping me see him this far. In no particular order: Sue Sherman, Michelle John, Rachel Bostwick, Sam Johnson, Fiona Skye, Melissa Drake, Kandi Wolfmeyer, Nikki Yager, Christy King, Michael Levy, Rose Campbell, Tammy Mays, JD Franx, Deb and Rick Rossing, and a thousand more I’m sure I’m missing (sorry!), plus the ones I don’t know.
About the Author
M.A. Ray may be found at menyoral.com, or in Oklahoma, but for the most part, she prefers cyberspace to meatspace. She has two kids and a husband who keep her grounded.