by M. A. Ray
“No problem.”
Ryan made a face. “Well, I’m sure it wasn’t fun. He’s … well, he’s pretty down on you.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Ryan checked behind him; the ravine wasn’t wide enough for two abreast plus the litter, and he was the one going backwards. For a while they walked carefully on, the only sound coming from their feet and the stream gurgling by. Dingus’s stockings were soaked. “I was fairly amazed with you after the Quiz,” Ryan said suddenly, and he looked so young all of a sudden, compared with Vandis or Santo. “I probably should’ve told you that, instead of speaking to Arkady about it.”
“Thanks,” Dingus said. No wonder Arkady was so angry. He swallowed his sigh and when they got to the gentler slope—definitely a relative term—he helped attach the ropes to the litter so people up top could drag Arkady out of the ravine.
“Thanks for your help,” Ryan said, clapping him on the shoulder, and rushed away with Santo and Tania, carrying Arkady toward base camp. Dingus trailed at a distance, stinging with guilt—at least until he remembered the shit Arkady had said.
He scowled and pushed the feeling away. Fuck him anyways.
The Assembly
Vandis stood in the empty space in the center of Assembly Hall, watching Knights and Squires file in for the end-of-Moot meeting. The afternoon sun slanted down on the building, warming the cedar boards to a blush of aroma. Dingus had thought to open the shutters; he stood by the last set now, and drew them open. His thin shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath, and a cross-breeze kicked up, chasing the dust many boots had brought in.
It hadn’t quite been a year since they’d met, he and Dingus. The healing bruises looked familiar, and Dingus hadn’t gained much—if any—weight, but his shape had changed even since coming to Knightsvalley. He looked taller, probably because he held his shoulders in a straight, square line, rather than rounding them over hoping not to be noticed. “I’m a man grown,” he’d said to Vandis, wonderingly, when Vandis had given him belt, scabbards, and swords, though of course nobody carried swords in Knightsvalley.
“You’re a man who’s earned the right to be called one,” Vandis had told him, and his back had gone straight and hadn’t hunched since. Even now, weaving through the clusters of Knights finding seats, he didn’t creep; he strode to the Head’s bench and folded himself on it with Kessa at his right hand. Vandis’s little girl leaned over on the bench to speak with Pearl and Francine, and every so often Vandis caught a few words of sword talk filtering through the general noise. It made him smile, especially given what she’d chosen to buy with her prize money from the arm-wrestling tournament. Admittedly, he didn’t know much about thirteen-year-old girls, but he didn’t think the beauty contest winner had chosen to spend her winnings on a sword. The hand-and-a-half lay stashed in the storage pit, ready for Vandis to strap to his pack when they left, at least until they got to the broad, lawless steppe known as the Wastes.
Dingus sat forward, almost relaxed, at least for him. He rested his forearms on his thighs and looked expectantly at Vandis. Vandis sent him a grin, and he sent it right back. Dingus, smiling in public. Who would have thought?
At last the Hall filled, and the chattering many Knights always made together quieted a little. Vandis raised his arms, lifting his hands over the Assembly, and they all fell quieter still. “In our Lady’s sight, I call to order this meeting of the Assembly of the Knights of the Air,” he pronounced.
He waited for the last of the talk to trail off before he went on. “Friends, when we last came together, this Hall burst at the seams. Since then, we’ve suffered a terrible loss as an organization, and each of us, personally, losses no less terrible: friends, lovers, brothers and sisters. The Order of Aurelius killed our people because of the Oath we take and the word we spread. Our continued existence is an insult to the warped dogma they preach to the people of Muscoda.” He paused to let it sink in; then another broad smile crossed his face. “Which is why it is such a great pleasure for me to welcome the new voting members to the Assembly. Of the thirty-three Squires who stood Trials this year, twenty-eight have taken the Oath of Service and been awarded their leaves. It may seem to be a small class, but the percentage of successes is, I’m delighted to announce, an all-time record. I know some of you were concerned when I asked the Advancement Committee, for the first time, to allow seventeen-year-olds to stand, but I think the new Juniors have proven me right. Nothing will ever replace the ones we lost, but we are coming back. We will continue to come back, stronger than ever.”
The Assembly murmured approval, and Vandis said, “First item on the agenda, as usual, is annual committee reports. Let me turn over the floor to Santo here.” Santo had sat on the Advancement Committee for an age. He’d gotten reelected no fewer than three times, and Vandis thought he’d probably get it again next time. When they crossed paths, he clapped Vandis on the shoulder.
Once Vandis got to the Head’s bench, he settled himself to listen to Santo with Dingus and Kessa at his right hand.
“So the Advancement Committee’s met twice this Moot,” Santo said, “and the one thing we’re gonna do is, we wanna write a list of questions that’ll be the Quiz for next year and we’ll try to satisfy everybody a little bit, which means we ain’t gonna satisfy nobody.” He waggled his eyebrows, getting a laugh. “And the other thing is, we decided we’re gonna let seventeen-year-olds stand from now on, ’cause of how everybody did in Trials this year. You guys up next year, you better watch out.”
A couple of sixteen-year-old Squires groaned behind Vandis. Santo gave a few more words about testing standards, which, he said, they’d examine at next year’s Trials. It was probably about time, though the sour look on Santo’s face meant it had probably been Reed’s motion.
The rest of the committee reports went smoothly, if depressingly. Valley Committee wasn’t so bad, but Way Stations had losses in facilities to report and Missions a distinct decline in interest, each as a direct result of the horror in Muscoda. Budget reported a surplus in both areas, which Vandis would much rather not have. As it was they’d be updating the rolls for at least five years, over and above what was necessary for entry, advancement, and ordinary deaths—a few Knights Vandis had been sure weren’t in Muscoda hadn’t come in for the Moot, probably because of distance. Refugees—once a subcommittee of Missions, now its own committee as the Monmouths War stretched—reported overcrowding in the camps due to a particularly nasty offensive on the part of Lightsbridge. Partway through the reports, Kessa started swinging her foot where the leg was crossed, and Dingus rubbed his thumbnail along the bottoms of his fingers, but overall they didn’t fidget as much as Vandis had thought they would, and neither one bit at his or her fingernails.
When the reports finished and Betty, who chaired Missions, sat down, Vandis returned to the center floor.
“Thanks, everyone,” he said. “Moving on. The next item is mine. This is not an item for debate. First, I want to stress to everyone that the war is still going on down south, and no Knight possessing a rank below Master is to enter the war zone around Brightwater and Lightsbridge. This prohibition includes Squires and Juniors in the company of a Master.” It went down with nods, as it had every year. This, at least, was standard procedure during wartime.
“In addition, until further notice, no Knight is to cross the borders of the Kingdom of Muscoda. Any action taken within those borders will be in no way sanctioned by the Order, and should the Knight or Knights in question survive, they will be subject to immediate dismissal. Now—”
“Vandis, no!” Ryan came to his feet and threw his arms wide. “Plenty of us still have family in Muscoda, and now you want to cut us off from them?”
“I don’t want that. The government of Muscoda wants that. They were the ones to close the border, and they were the ones who slaughtered our people. What I want now is to protect the Knights we have left.”
“How does it protect the young kids who can’
t see their parents? Maybe ever again?” Ryan demanded.
Vandis rubbed his forehead. “How does it protect them to allow them to go somewhere they’ll be killed out of hand, just for Whom they choose to serve? This is not a debate. Did I not say that?”
“He’s got a point,” Terrie said, flipping her blond hair. She was a Senior from Dreamport, Vandis remembered, out of the slums in the Pit—one of a very few success stories from there. “How are we supposed to get from place to place if we can’t go through Muscoda, Lightsbridge, or Brightwater? The whole middle of Rothganar’s off limits.”
“Figure it out,” Vandis snapped. “I know I said this wasn’t a discussion.”
“But Vandis,” three people said at once, from different parts of the Hall, and he didn’t know where to put the perch-eye, which meant they all went on at once, and about different things.
He drew in a breath, let it out, and projected “Stop!” in the voice that could ring off the valley, muffled here by wood and bodies, but audible clear to the back. “Moving on!”
“You can’t—”
“If you want to be executed by exposure, you can do it on your own time! Not the Knights’! Bad enough they’ll blame all the rest of us for whatever shit you get up to, no matter how hard I disavow your selfish prick faces!” Vandis pressed his fingertips into his scalp. “It’s not just about you. Keep out for our sake. You think I just pull these things out of my ass? Moving. On! Next item is the row of maples on the east side of the lake. Gregory, what did you want to discuss about the maples?”
Gregory stood. He was a heavyset—though fit—Muscodite with dark hair and beard, and he spoke slowly. “I submit that the trees must come down.”
“I love those trees!” Lucinda cried indignantly. “I climbed them as a little girl!”
“They’re rotten,” Gregory said.
Reed said, “Indeed they are. I personally treated three young Squires for dislocated joints acquired when a branch broke.”
“Those trees have been a beautiful asset to Knightsvalley for decades!”
“They’re dangerous,” Reed said, and Lucinda had answers for that too, and so did a few others, and before long Vandis conspicuously reached into his jerkin pocket and brought out a little ten-minute glass he kept specifically for these occasions. He made sure all the sand was in the bottom before he went back to the Head’s bench, upended the glass on the seat next to him, and settled in to let them argue.
Dingus leaned over and muttered, “Should I say something?”
“Do you have something to contribute?”
“I think so.”
“Then you should contribute it.”
Dingus nodded, but didn’t say anything, only sat gripping his knees; if he was waiting for a break in the conversation, he wasn’t going to get it. “They’re—” he began, but shut his mouth when another Master weighed in. “They’re—” he tried again, a moment later. Then he let out a sigh and said, more loudly, “They are rotten. They got mushrooms on the roots and red dust and all. I seen—I saw it myself. They oughtta come down.”
Nobody paid him much attention, but he turned to Vandis and asked, “Was that good?”
“Sure,” Vandis said. So what if nobody had listened? He’d jumped out with it. “You went and looked, didn’t you?”
“After you put up the whatsit, the agenda.” At Vandis’s approving nod, he went on, “Went out and took a look at those latrines, too. We move ’em over to where Sir Albert wants ’em, they’re gonna flood.”
“Let them know.”
“I’ll try.”
Vandis’s glass ran down after no fewer than six failed motions, without any sort of consensus being reached, and with everyone still clinging fiercely to his or her position. As the last grain fell from top to bottom, he put in, “I move we turn this issue over to the Valley Committee.”
Kirsten pounced. “Second.” The motion carried. After that, Vandis only had to use his glass once, when there was a little too much dickering over Trent’s proposal that Knights be allowed to engage in trade for profit. He didn’t use it at all, even if he might have, when the Assembly debated whether or not to ban Muscodite merchants from doing business at the Moot. Vandis weighed in on the discussion very little. He had his own reasons for wanting the merchants from Muscoda to return next year—quite aside from the slippery slope that judging people based on the actions of their government would present.
In the middle of the debate, a couple of Squires tasked beforehand slipped out and brought in torches to bolster the fading light. To his relief, the proposal failed by a narrow margin. The last item on the agenda was the motion to move a set of latrines from close to the campground to nearer the lake. Vandis got ready to use his glass, but somehow, Dingus edged in with his dire pronouncement that the latrines would flood closer to the lake.
“I move we keep them where they are,” Nigel said hastily, though a moment ago he’d advocated the change.
“Yes, second,” said Alfred, who’d introduced the idea in the first place. “Let’s not have another year like that one.”
“Aye!” said all but a few, before Vandis had a chance to ask for those in favor.
“Motion carries. Now, if there’s no new business…” He paused expectantly, but nobody had anything. They’d all gotten used to meetings that ran six hours rather than three days, and put in their agenda items dutifully on time. “…I’d like to move that we adjourn.”
It was unanimous. After his benediction, stepping from the sweaty Hall into the fresh late-night air with his two favorite people, Vandis didn’t feel the least bit irritated—unusual in the wake of an Assembly meeting. “Well,” he asked, “what’d you guys think?”
“Boring,” Kessa decided. “Except when you yelled at everybody, it was boring.”
“It always is. What about you, Dingus?”
Dingus lifted a shoulder. “It wasn’t the way I thought.”
“How did you think it would be?”
“Arkady wasn’t there. He still hurting?”
“Yeah, Ryan talked to me about it.”
Dingus nodded slowly. “I guess I didn’t think so many people’d be arguing. That made it long.”
“That was the shortest Assembly meeting I’ve attended, I think,” Adeon said from behind. He had Marla, his new Junior, with him, but she hung back from Vandis and the men. “If Hieronymus were Head yet, we’d still be turning circles about the trees.”
“At least, until Vandis made Junior,” Evan said happily, twisting to look back at them. He slowed to match the three of them, and Wally fell in next to Dingus. “He’d just make motion after motion until enough people agreed with him to pass it. Didn’t usually take long, either, what with his being right a good bit of the time.”
“Don’t you mean ‘loud enough to make myself heard’?”
“No, I mean ‘right,’” Evan said. “And if you’re wrong, at least you keep us moving.”
Knights drifted around them, talking over the meeting or making plans for one last drink tonight or tomorrow. “It’s been a good Moot,” Vandis said, changing the subject.
“Aye.” Evan lifted his face and took a deep breath of night air. “I wasn’t after thinking it would be, but it was. Let’s you and me scare up Santo and Pearly for a drink, what do you say? After all, it’s not as though these young ones want to be dangling after their old Masters all night.”
Kessa rolled her eyes. “I know when I’m not wanted. I’m gonna go find Skerne.”
“Say hello to Hjaldi if you see him,” Vandis told her as she left.
“C’mon, last party,” Wally said to Dingus. “You’d better show up for this’n.”
“I’ve showed up at all of ’em. Just didn’t stay that long,” Dingus told him. “Rather not play Spin-the-Dagger. Or watch.”
The party games had always been Vandis’s least favorite part of being a Junior. “You guys still play that?”
“I don’t,” Wally and Dingus said at t
he same time. They grinned at each other as the crowd dwindled.
“Royals,” Evan said, and at that, an evil laugh escaped Vandis. The boys looked expectant, and Evan went on, “That was Vandis’s game.”
“Now ’tis Dingus’s,” Wally said, and jerked his head in the direction of the bonfire on the beach. “C’mon, I wanna see you get all those last-years three sheets to again.” Dingus laughed and followed Wally across the cobbled square, lakeward.
“Don’t do anything we would’ve done!” Vandis called after. As they neared the edge of the square, Tony Scalietti scampered over to join them, and in a moment Santo came over to Vandis and Evan.
“We gonna have a drink?” Santo asked, and Vandis felt his face go devilish.
“Let’s play Royals.”
Last Days
Whenever Dingus walked through the campground, more sites lay empty, the firepits cold. He breathed easier every time; it’d been good, yeah it had, way better than he’d expected, but he itched to move again. One by one, his new friends left; Tony and Santo were the last, once Tony got a couple nights’ sleep. “Next year,” they all promised, “see you next year.” Dingus hoped so, though he’d sat through about an hour of his first Junior party, and then slipped away after a couple of drinks. The Juniors went at it a lot harder than the Squires, and they played the kind of slap-and-tickle, random-kissing, tell-your-secrets games that seemed calculated to make him uncomfortable. There was plenty of beer (which Squires weren’t supposed to have), and besides that, herb, which stank like a skunk and made everybody laugh and laugh at the stupidest shit. Dingus didn’t try any, even though Wallace said it was “bloody marvelous, I can see why Evan smokes it.” The upshot of all this was, nobody noticed when Dingus left, even during that very last party.
This morning was the end. Dingus made his way back to Vandis’s spot, his hair damp from washing, across a deserted campground. One last woman struggled with her tent while a baby crawled nearby, tasting pine cones, and when Dingus passed, she called to him a little desperately in a lilting accent the same as Evan’s: “Lad, lad!”