by Ray, M. A.
“Say it the way I said it.”
“I’ve done it with worse injuries,” Dingus repeated.
“You might be from the scratchiest little hick town in Wealaia, but you don’t need to sound like it. Don’t give me that hillbilly shit, understand? Now let’s—oh, hold on. I forgot something.” The man leaned over and wrote in the dirt, too: Vandis Barton Vail.
Dingus gaped.
“What?”
“You’re Vandis Vail.”
“I told you my name is Vandis. Who did you think I was?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think you’d be caught dead in Thundering Hills.”
“Is that what they call this place?” Vandis looked around, then sniffed. “Talk about delusions of grandeur.” He offered his hand to help Dingus up. “Let’s go. We’re wasting daylight.”
“I get to go with you,” Dingus marveled, when he was on his feet.
“I did say ‘let’s go’. Usually that means us: me and you. Maybe you are as dumb as you look.”
“I didn’t mean—I was only saying.” He took a shaky breath. “I’m gonna be a Knight!”
“Squire,” Vandis corrected, but he was smiling.
Dingus flushed. “Next best thing.”
“You know, I agree with you. Get your satchel.”
He fetched it, but when he looked around for his longbow, he couldn’t find it, or his quiver neither.
“Is something missing?”
“My bow’s gone.”
“Oh.” Vandis made a face. “It’s broken. I’m sorry, kid.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I’m ready then,” Dingus said. The loss depressed him. It was the first bow he made without any help from Grandpa. “But, my ma—”
“She already knows.”
He really wanted to skip saying good-bye to Ma again, but it seemed kind of wrong. “Maybe I should, I don’t know, tell her I’m on my way out.”
“I don’t think so. It’s a rotten idea for you to show your face near that village right now,” Vandis said, gesturing toward Thundering Hills. Dingus looked over all the little wattle-and-daub houses snuggled among the green hills; the white puffs of the sheep; and the square with the red-roofed well where yesterday he busted up Aust. He watched the smoke tailing up from the bakery and knew Grandma’d been at it since before dawn. If he thought honest, it was the only part of town he’d miss.
“I guess you’re right.”
Vandis raised his eyebrows. “Of course I’m right. Are you sure you have everything?”
“Yes, Vandis.”
“Well, I suppose some kids run away with less,” he said, like he didn’t believe it, as they started down the hill, heading north to Elwin’s Ford.
Dingus was pretty sure they did. “Plenty of kids more desperate than me,” he managed. Maybe he wasn’t exactly a popular person in Thundering Hills, but at least he didn’t get beat on at home, not since he grew taller than Ma. At least he didn’t get worse than beatings.
“Plenty of kids don’t get lynched on their way out of town,” Vandis growled, like he was taking it personal. Dingus couldn’t keep up, try as he might. He wasn’t too fast on account of his throbbing ribs. Not even half an hour and Vandis was already in a bad mood, which made him jumpy. Already he saw the space between him and the man widening.
Vandis stopped at the bottom of the hill. Dingus hustled a little more to catch up.
“Sorry,” he said when Dingus got there. “I didn’t think. You’re probably hurting more than your share.”
“I’m—okay,” Dingus gasped thinly.
“I’ll say when you’re okay.” Vandis scowled. “Those assholes put you through hell. If I had the time, I’d see that sorry excuse for a bailiff in the stocks, for a start. He’s supposed to enforce the law, not prance around like his chain makes him a god.”
“It’s—okay.” Dingus put one foot in front of the other and started painfully up the next hill. “It’s over.” He did not want to think about last night.
“How is what they did to you even remotely okay?”
“It’s not—but—I gotta live with it. It happened. It’s over.”
Vandis kept pace with him, which he had a feeling wasn’t easy, since he could see the man twitching with agitation. Took forever to make it to the top, and Dingus had to stop a minute and catch his breath.
“I’ve got something of yours,” Vandis offered after a few heartbeats. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at his pack, which had a rolled-up blanket sticking out either side of the flap. The blanket had loosened and slipped a little, so Dingus could see the familiar pommel of one of his swords. His heart leapt again. Nothing else had been so hard to leave behind, not because they were all his father ever left him, but because he loved the way they felt in his hands, loved touching the strange, barbed skin of the massive and terrible fish that his grandparents called a shark: a real, live sea monster. When he didn’t believe Grandpa’s story about the shark that almost ate Grandma, way out in the middle of the ocean, she pulled her dress up a little and showed off the scars on her calf where it had nibbled on her.
Vandis explained, “Your grandpa gave them to me last night. If you prove to me that you can handle yourself, you’ll wear them when you’re eighteen.”
“I do all right.” The idea of going armed like any other man, even if it was a year and a half away, carried Dingus down the hill and up the next one. “So is it my turn to ask you questions?”
“If you can walk and talk at the same time.”
Like I’d pass up the chance. “We’re going to Elwin’s Ford, aren’t we?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you gonna put my name on the rolls?”
“The minute we get there. I’ll wrangle a badge for you, too.” Vandis eyed him over. “And some new clothes. I didn’t see a spare tunic in your kit.”
“This is my spare,” Dingus said, plucking at it. It was stiff with blood and dirt. “Had to leave the other. It had blood on it, too—but it wasn’t mine.” He sighed, thinking of another question. “You know if I killed him?”
“You didn’t.”
He let out another sigh, this time relieved.
“Admittedly, I don’t know the situation, but it sounded like you gave him what he deserved. No more and no less.”
Dingus’s hands flexed. He didn’t remember all what he done, but he remembered how it felt. The rushing in his ears; the power clean through him. The heat, mostly, when Aust kicked over the wheelbarrow of eggs and called his ma a fat slut. He’d stood there for what seemed like a century while Aust threw eggs at him, fighting himself, and then it was dilihi, and dilihi did it. “What’re you gonna do, you big dumb thingus? What’re you gonna do, dilihi?” With all the people walking on by in the square and watching him, get humiliated and not saying one goddamn word—he went up in flames and the next thing he knew, his fists pounded on Aust’s face.
“Wasn’t there a road around here somewhere?” Now Vandis looked around, one hand shading his eyes. “I could have sworn I saw one yesterday.”
“Not for a ways,” Dingus said, seizing on the opportunity to think about something different. “Ten miles maybe. We keep going the way we’re going, we’ll bump into it.”
“I forgot how long it takes to walk ten miles,” Vandis crabbed.
“We ain’t even gone one.”
“We haven’t.”
“Nope.”
“That wasn’t what I meant. You will not use ‘ain’t’. You are smarter than that, and you will damned well show it.”
“Yes, Vandis.” For a minute he felt like sighing, but then he thought how much better it was to get taken to task on his language than it was to get thrashed at least twice a week for no good reason, and he kept it in after that, no matter how many times Vandis corrected him.
The Wire
Muscoda, twenty-eight miles north of Fort Rule
The Orphan House
Far away, in a grubby little hall lined wit
h grubby little tables, a grubby little boy studied a strange machine. Several other grubby little boys surrounded him, all alike in their burlap smocks dyed cheaply black, and four tonsured men, two older, wearing habits very similar to the smocks, two middle-aged, with gold medallions hanging down their black sleeves. One of the men in the cheaply-dyed habits had a cheap sword hanging in a scabbard from his rope belt; one of the men with the medallions had a better sword hanging from a black leather belt.
The boy in the middle, the littlest one, had the last turn, and he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to take it. He was supposed to put his hand on the silvery wire that stretched between two metal posts. It slotted into a tiny groove along the top of each post, under a small gold ring, and continued down to an axle on each side. The boy thought the wire had to touch the wheels that rode on each axle. When some of the boys touched the wire, the wheels turned slowly on their axles. Stanislaus—Stas, for short—had mentally calculated that seventeen percent of the boys could make the wheels move at all, and only one of those caused the wheels to turn at more than one revolution per second. What he couldn’t tell was how it worked, what it was measuring—he was sure it measured something—and why the visitors, the ASPs, smiled so wide when the wheels did turn.
He didn’t want to touch the wire. If an ASP wanted anyone to do something, it wouldn’t be anything good. Stas wasn’t sure how he knew that, but the gold plaques hanging down the visitors’ sleeves made him feel itchy.
“Come on, Stas,” whispered Boris, his best friend in all the world. The wheels hadn’t budged for Boris. “It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t do anything.” Stas shook his head violently, like he’d done every time someone had tried to get him to touch that wire. He couldn’t even explain his objection, couldn’t even complain. He knew he’d have to do it; otherwise they’d start taking away his food again. He bit his lip and looked at Boris, who nodded his blond head and smiled at him encouragingly. He gulped down his sense of impending doom.
He reached one tiny, trembling hand out to the wire. He could feel…something, like the wire and the wheels and whatever lived inside that machine yearned toward him; suddenly he wanted to touch it even less than he had before, but he’d reached for it and now he was committed. When his dirty fingertips got within an inch of the wire, it twanged like he’d plucked it. The noise made Stas jump, but he was hungry, and the thought of going without supper the next three days spurred his hand forward. He touched the wire. A song burst through his frame, a great big song, and the wheels began to whir so fast he couldn’t count the revolutions.
It measures the song? he wondered, but couldn’t ask, staring, as fascinated now as he’d been horrified a moment before. Unconsciously he wrapped the wire in his fist. The wheels picked up speed and began to buzz on their axles. “That’s enough now, Stas,” said Brother Bozidor, but Stas, watching the gold rings begin to glow, hardly heard him. The wire felt warm.
After a few more heartbeats it started to hurt. He tried to take his hand away but found his fingers wouldn’t uncurl. “Muh, muh, muh,” he said, trying to tell them, “My hand’s on fire!” Like always, his tongue seemed to knot itself in his mouth.
“Help, he says help!” Boris yelled, and grabbed Stas around the chest from behind. When Boris tried to pull him away, the wire bent in his hand, a hot streak in his palm. “You have to let go!”
“Keh—keh—” I can’t! I’m trying and I can’t! Tears started in his eyes, more from frustration than from the pain. Boris dragged him back, back, until his locked-up hand pulled the machine right off the table. The crash must have disturbed something; the wheels whirred slowly to a stop. As soon as Stas could open his hand, he did, uttering a wordless cry. This time it was the pain of an ugly burn, skin charred where the metal had touched, that brought sound from his lips.
“—anything like it!” one of the ASPs, the swordless one, was saying, writing furiously on his stack of parchments while Stas stared at his palm in horrified wonder. Brother Bozidor kept glancing at him, then looking away fast, and Brother Marek stared at him steadily, barely blinking. He could feel the eyes, and at last he lifted his burnt hand up for the Custodians to look at.
Now Brother Marek looked away. “Ah,” Brother Bozidor said hesitantly, “does it hurt?” Stas gazed into the Custodian’s eyes; of course it hurt. Brother Bozidor couldn’t meet his look for long.
“Treat that!” snapped the ASP with the sword. “He could be of more value to Muscoda than a hundred of you.”
“Yes, Father Barna.” Brother Bozidor turned to Boris. “Go and fetch bandages and the burn salve, and the firewater bottle.” Boris ran off, shooting a backward glance at Stas. The Custodian didn’t touch him while Boris was gone, didn’t look at the hand. “Are you going to take him?”
The ASP who’d been writing said, “My name is Father Yuri. What’s yours, little boy?” as if Brother Bozidor hadn’t asked him anything.
“St—St—Stuh—” It was humiliating, with Brother Bozidor and Brother Marek, Father Yuri and Father Barna, and all the other boys looking expectantly at him.
He was still struggling with his mouth when Father Yuri looked at Brother Bozidor and asked, “What’s wrong with him?”
Brother Bozidor shrugged his scarecrow shoulders. “He can’t speak properly, never has. Hardly speaks at all, mostly grunts like you heard him do. If you ask me, he’s an idiot.”
“Stas,” said Stas angrily, surprising himself. Sometimes it happened that way, when he was really angry; a word or two would come out clear as the chapel bell. He wasn’t an idiot at all, he knew it, but Boris was the only one who knew it, too. He was trapped in his own mouth, behind his knotted-up tongue.
Father Yuri gave Brother Bozidor an annoyed look and turned back to Stas, his fat face smooth and sweetly smiling. “How old are you, then, little Stasya?”
He didn’t even bother trying to say it. He spread the burnt hand, and then raised another finger.
“Oh, six years old already? What a big boy.”
Stas only gazed at him. This was a blatant lie, probably to put him at ease, but he knew better. He was a tiny boy and this was perfectly apparent; he was only big on the inside.
The ASP cleared his throat. “Tell me, Stasya, do funny things sometimes happen around you? Do things, say, float up in the air or fly around? Anything that shouldn’t happen?”
Stas could think of a lot of things that shouldn’t happen and did, but he shook his head. The ASP probably didn’t mean not getting enough food even when they filled the potato wagons right past the top.
“Do you hear funny voices sometimes? Voices nobody else can hear?”
He shook his head again, thinking, Only my own. Father Yuri asked him more and more questions, sounding eager. It was almost like he wanted Stas to say weird things had been happening, but really they hadn’t. None of the answers were ‘yes,’ but Stas would’ve shaken his head even if they had been; to nod, he’d have to be as much of an idiot as Brother Bozidor thought. If he could float himself off the ground or set things on fire by thinking about it, he most definitely wouldn’t tell anyone about it. In the middle of the questions Boris came back with the bandages.
Father Yuri was frowning at his parchments, but when he knelt down in front of Stas he wore a serious, mushy expression. “You want what’s best for Muscoda, don’t you, Stasya? For your dear Fatherland?”
He nodded. He knew he’d better nod to that one.
“You’ll tell Brother Bozidor or Brother Marek, won’t you, if something like that happens, something strange? It is very important, Stasya, so very important that you do.”
When he nodded this time, he opened his eyes wide and did his best to look really sincere, but he knew he’d never let on if anything did happen. If Father Yuri wanted so badly to know about it, it had to be something awful.
“Good boy,” the ASP said, smiling his too-sweet smile. “That’s just exactly right.” He straightened, patting Stas’s cheek, and turned hard eyes on
Brother Bozidor. “Treat his burn,” he snapped. “Watch this one. Closely.”
“Aren’t you going to take him?” the Custodian asked desperately.
“Not yet.” Father Yuri started packing up his parchments, while Father Barna carefully put the broken machine into its wooden case. “There’s no reason to yet. When he manifests—and I believe he will, very soon—get word to us as quickly as possible.”
“But—” Father Yuri gave such a look that Brother Bozidor cut himself off. “Boris,” he said instead, and when Boris obeyed he started giving instructions about Stas’s hand.
You don’t even want to touch me, Stas thought, unable to keep from glaring at the old monk. Boris took his hand and he groaned between his teeth when his friend cleaned the burnt skin away from his palm. “I’m sorry, Stas, I’m so sorry,” Boris moaned, his eyes shiny and wet. Stas shook his head. What Brother Bozidor had done hurt more.
Then Boris opened the bottle of firewater and poured it over Stas’s hand. By now he was already crying, and when Stas screamed, he sobbed. “More,” said Brother Bozidor unfeelingly. Boris couldn’t do it, so Brother Bozidor grabbed the bottle and upended it over Stas’s hand. He didn’t want to scream again, but it burned so horribly he couldn’t help it.
Boris sobbed, but Stas screamed with dry eyes, and not because it hurt. He screamed his rage.
Elwin’s Ford
Wealaia
It was going to rain soon. Dingus leaned against a tree slightly off the road outside Elwin’s Ford, holding his ribs and breathing in shallow gasps. His head whirled and his filthy shirt clung to his skin.
“We’re almost there,” Vandis snapped. He stood nearby with his arms folded across his chest and his chin jutting. He looked like a rock, a short one: solid and immovable.
“Sorry,” Dingus panted. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m just—”
“I said, don’t worry about it!” Vandis’s nostrils flared. “It’s not your fault.”
Dingus tilted his head back against the tree and breathed for a minute, as best he could. Then he levered himself off and said, “Okay, I’m ready.”