Read Saga of Menyoral: The Service Online
Authors: M.A. Ray
“Wallace MacNair,” she read cheerfully. “Oh, good, Wally, we can run off some of this weight.” She pinched Wallace’s rather husky middle.
“And I suppose you’d ken about reducing,” Wallace snipped, since Betty herself was a bit round. It went on that way. Some were funnier than others; some got downright nasty. Some liked each other: Betty and Wallace. Some didn’t, like pair number twelve, Gregory and Kirsten’s Lukas, and then it could be both personal and mean. There had to be a place to express that kind of animosity, though, and this was the place and the time.
“Number thirteen,
” Vandis called as Adeon came to choose a name.
“Hmm.” Adeon smiled faintly. “Dingus Xavier.” While Vandis thought,
Yes!
, and Dingus stepped out of line, he shook out the sheet of silvery hair he was so famous for. “I don’t believe I’ve ever before had the pleasure of matching wits with a boy named for his own member.”
“I never heard that before,” Dingus said, rolling his eyes. He stooped and picked something up off th
e ground. As he drew his hands apart, Vandis saw it was a long platinum hair, stretched between them.
Mouth flicking up at the corners, Dingus let out a soft flow of musical
hituleti
, so quickly and quietly Vandis couldn’t follow. Adeon stared, then laughed. “What’d he say?” four Knights yelled at once. “Adeon, what’d he say?”
S
miling, Adeon turned to the Masters. “Young Dingus informs me that I drop hair.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Adeon hitched up his belt, hawked, and spat. “Well listen here, Bumblebee,” he drawled. “You shed like a sheepdog in the springtime. If you wanna lose me tomorrow, you gotta quit pasting your grammaw’s hair on your own head!”
“That’s what I sa
id.” Dingus grinned and walked across the shelf to take a place under the yew with the other Squires whose names had already been drawn. As Vandis picked up pouch number fourteen and Evan came to take a name, he distinctly heard Tariq demanding of Dingus how he’d seen a single hair fall to the rock. Evan drew Ryan’s Arkady while Dingus made a dismissive gesture and said something quietly enough that Vandis didn’t hear.
“Good grief, Arkady,” Evan said. “What’s happened to your face? Did you open your mouth again?”
Arkady flushed. “At least I’m not short,” he blurted, drew himself up, and strutted over to stand under the yew.
It went on for some time after that, but Vandis had to admit he didn’t pay as much attention as he had before Adeon drew Dingus’s name. Adeon couldn’t slip his bo
y, he was as sure of it as he was of the Lady’s lilt in his mind. He was terribly excited about it, too, but once the lines broke up, he started to think Dingus wasn’t. While he spoke to Santo about what he should set for Tony, and to Adeon about what Dingus could do, from time to time he felt his Squire’s eyes on him. They hadn’t really spoken since dinnertime. When he’d finished he waited for Dingus to catch his eye and then raised a hand, curling all four fingers to call the boy over.
Dingus
abandoned his spot leaning on a rock near the yew—surrounded by three pretty girls—with every appearance of relief. “I gotta go see what Vandis wants,” he said, and before any of the girls could protest he pushed through.
“You nervous?” Vandis asked him quietly, and he
shook his head.
Behind his back, Tania’s Isobel snickered and stage-whispered, “But he’s so skinny!” Dingus blushed violently.
Vandis tried to act as if it hadn’t happened. “Don’t worry. Adeon’s pretty hot shit, but you try your best and you’ll be fine.”
“Oh—” Dingus grinned around his spectacular contusions. “It’s not Adeon. I been watching him. He does drop that hair everywhere, especially when he messes with it.”
“So what’s the problem? I know you’ve got a few friends. Go talk to them for a while.”
“Can’t I just hang out by you?” His eyes flicked back toward the rock he’d been propped against.
Ah,
Vandis thought,
teenage girls. I would not be his age again if I got paid for it.
“Not a chance.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve had less than a week to figure out how much fun it is to be a Squire around other Squires. Go put your mind to the problem before you’re not a Squire anymore.”
“Yes, Vandis.” Dingus slouched away, or started to, until Santo came by and gave him a bump in the arm.
“Hey, where you going?”
“Vandis said to—”
“Nah, don’t listen to that old fart. Stick around. I’m about to bet against you.”
“You’re at least as old as I am,” Vandis said, grinning in spite of himself.
“Sure,” Santo said, “but I’m not about to act it. You’re falling down on the job, Gus, you gotta keep this guy young.”
Dingus made a face. “Gus?”
“Why not? You can’t tell me you wanna walk around with a handle like Dingus.”
“It’s an awful name,” Dingus admitted. “But it’s mine.”
“Dingus it is,” Santo said, and turned to Vandis. “I got ten says my boy’s in before yours.”
Vandis stuck out his hand. “You’re on.”
“Wait, wait,” Tony said, coming to block Santo from clasping wrists. “Sucker bet. Smart money’s on the other guy.”
Dingus blinked. “Huh?”
“I did not see that hair.”
Santo reached around and clasped wrists with Vandis anyway. “Tony, Tony, Tony, this ain’t about the smart money. It ain’t about smart at all. It’s about love.” And he seized Tony in a headlock, scrubbing his knuckles across scalp. “You still oiling this? Ugh, I told you
to quit that.” He gave Tony’s head a slap and released him. “Get outta here, the both of you.”
The two Squires walked away
, but Dingus looked back over his shoulder at Vandis as they went, and Vandis’s lips twitched into a smile. No, it wasn’t about the smart money—not even a little.
Fort Rule
Krakus lay on his back in bed with his hands folded on his shrinking stomach. He kept closing his eyes, but
they kept springing open again. No part of his bed seemed comfortable, though he rolled from back to side, side to back.
“Danny’s gone,” he heard
, in Sofia Zielski’s little-girl voice. Matter-of-fact. Flat. “Danny’s gone.” When, today, he’d gone back to Section One, there hadn’t been a trace of the young man, and Danny wasn’t exactly difficult to spot, either: scaly-skinned and spectacularly patterned in black, orange, and butter-gold. He bit, Krakus had been told, with his needle teeth, and spat poison; but with Krakus, Danny had been as sweet as the day was long, even if his lipless smile was much too wide and his long, thin tongue flickered in and out almost constantly.
He hadn’t spoken much, what with his mouth being so strange; he
’d tended to get attention by tapping a shoulder, and the touch of his smooth, scaly hands had become familiar over the last few months.
“Danny
’s gone.”
Krakus knew where, too. Even he couldn’t have failed to notice the dread with which the kids viewed Section Two (Medical), and
, having some idea what went on there, he didn’t blame them. He twisted and turned, and his mind wouldn’t stop showing him pictures of what might be happening to Danny this very moment, and he couldn’t bear it.
He swung his legs out of bed and snatched his white silk dressing gown, pulling it on while he crossed his bedchamber to the door. Light streamed
from under Lech’s door, but grinding snores issued from behind it. Krakus strode swiftly through the common room, tying his belt, and let himself out. There were benefits to being Krakus: people looked the other way when he did whatever he pleased, though he’d never before used the power he wielded for anything but grabbing whatever indulgence he could.
Be damned to it. He answered to not one man in the fort, not even Lech, and be damned to Lech’s silent, frozen disapproval, too.
Krakus went to Section Two. “What can I do for you, Father?” one of the guards asked politely, with no reference to the lateness of the hour, although he seemed to be making a valiant attempt not to stare at Krakus’s dressing gown.
“Let me in, please.”
The guard raised his eyebrows, but said, “Yes, Father.”
Krakus waited long minutes for the tall portal to swing open on one side. “Leave it open,” he said
. “I’ll be back.”
Neat blocks of buildings sat in Section Two, covered in darkness. Here and there, a light burned in one of the medics’ windows
, but that wasn’t what Krakus was after. He rounded the bends, tight around the higher walls of Section One, until he reached Droshky’s shed: a smaller square of stone, windowless, kept shut tight.
Light shot out
of the shed when he cracked the door. He squeezed in and shut it carefully behind him. Tables cluttered the interior, their tops covered with papers, thick-bound books, and specimen jars holding nameless things that floated in clear liquid. Droshky showed a chubby back to Krakus from the rear of the room, at the side of a reclining chair covered with straps.
Two bare, scaly legs were strapped into that chair, and strained against their bond
s, trying to bend; scaly toes flexed and extended, convulsively. Krakus hesitated, then took a step toward Droshky, toward the chair—toward Danny. Another step, and another, between the tables full of open books with anatomical illustrations showing on their pages. A long hiss, so faint Krakus could hardly make it out, came from that chair, and a black-and-orange hand clenched tight. He’d known … but his stomach churned at the sight of it.
His bare feet fell soft on
the packed earth of the floor. How could he have let this go on? Danny issued a sibilant squeal, and Krakus’s hands tightened into fists as he padded up behind Droshky. He saw Danny’s face change when it came into view over Droshky’s shoulder—Bright Lady, what did that sick son of a bitch think he was doing, with some horrible metal thing holding the poor kid’s mouth open so wide? Blood drained from the side of Danny’s mouth down his gullet, which worked as he swallowed repeatedly. His thin black tongue flickered under the restraint. When he saw Krakus, his jewel eyes shot wide.
Krakus gave a slight nod. Droshky must have noticed something different about his subject’s body language, because
he stopped whatever unspeakable thing he was doing inside Danny’s mouth and looked over his shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing?” Krakus asked. It came out much calmer than he’d anticipated.
Droshky scowled, and tried to conceal it. “Fancy seeing you here at this hour, Father K—” But he didn’t finish. Krakus hit him in the face. He swayed on his feet, but didn’t fall, not until Krakus hit him again, and harder, hard enough to feel something crack in his mouth.
“
You’re a monster,” Krakus said, his voice shaking now. He stooped and picked up the tubby little Droshky by the apron front. A butcher’s apron on a doctor.
“You’ve never objected before,” Droshky gasped, with blood running down his chin. The weasel eyes glittered in the light of many candles.
Krakus smashed his head into the tall instrument table next to the chair, scattering metal implements. “Monster!” he cried. How had it happened? Monsters all around him, Bright Lady, everywhere he looked, and in his own heart the most terrible beast of all, because he’d known and hadn’t stopped it. He could’ve stopped it. He thrashed Droshky the way he himself ought to be thrashed. His fist fell again and again, meaty thumps on the face, the body, in the fork. How long he did it, he had no idea, but when he dropped the doctor, Droshky didn’t even twitch.
A leather-gloved hand sprawled limply out from Droshky’s body. Krakus’s face worked. He stamped his bare heel down
on the hand with all the force he could summon, all his weight, wishing he’d thought to put on his boots. A bone gave, and another when he did it again. He couldn’t stop. There couldn’t be much left of the doctor’s hand inside the mangled glove, but he couldn’t stop.
Krakus wiped at his cheeks with a white sleeve spotted in red. He wi
ped his hands on his dressing-gown, leaving red streaks that would surely stain, and pulled the fairy-dust ring from his finger. “I’m sorry, Danny,” he said dully. “I’m sorry.” He put the ring in his mouth; it fluttered against his tongue.
Long minutes he spent, trying to figure out the straps on the damned thing holding Danny’s mouth open. Finally he took up a pair of shears that had fallen from the instrument tab
le, cut through the leather, and threw the contraption aside with such force and negligence that it shattered three specimen jars on a nearby table. The clear fluid inside ran onto the floor and thinned into a noisy dribble.
Danny moaned, low, and flexed his jaw. His tongue flickered in and out, frantically, as if tasting the air. Krakus attacked the stra
ps on the chair with the shears. There were four of them for each limb, one around the forehead, one in the lap, one on the chest; tough, too, so he had to work at them. As soon as he had one leg free, Danny curled it up.
The shears broke at the bolt when Krakus
tried to hack through the second ankle belt. He resorted to undoing the straps, even though he would’ve far preferred to destroy the whole hideous device. When he’d finished, he stood back, breathing hard through his nose.
Danny curled into a tight, quaking ball, making distressed sounds
that raked Krakus’s soul. When he reached down to lift the young man, Danny’s arms flashed out, quick as a snake’s strike, and clutched at him. Nailless fingers clenched in the back of his dressing gown, and Danny trembled with dry sobs.
Krakus gathered the light, powerful body into his arms
and carried Danny to Section Three, to his own bed. He didn’t speak a word, even when faced with the slack-jawed staring of the guards. Saliva pooled around the ring, flittering there on his tongue like it wanted to escape.
I’m sorry,
he thought.
I’m sorry,
and he thought it all night long, sitting in the chair next to the bed, sleepless.