Saga of Menyoral: The Service (22 page)

“You got it, huh?”
Arkady asked.

Dingus didn’t want to brag. It didn’t mean quite as much now that he saw Arkady this way: scraped
and broken and in pain. “Yeah.”

“How’d you do it?”

“What do you mean? I—”

“How’d you fix it with Adeon?”

“What?”

“Come on. He had to be in on it. Vandis, too?”

Dingus flushed. “What the fuck is your problem?”

Arkady
smirked, the expression ghoulish with his grayed face in the variegated shadow of the trees above, the dirty bandage over his nose, and the greening bruises over his eyes. If he wasn’t so messed up, Dingus would’ve messed him up all over again.

D
ingus snorted.
He ain’t shit. Who caught up, and who’s in the bottom of a ditch?

“I could—” Arkady began, but Dingus wasn’t about to deal with him anymore.

“Damn, you stink,” he said. “How long you been down here? Two, three days? You shit yourself, didn’t you?” He shook his head, laughing. “You know what? I could piss on you right now, and nobody’d know the difference.”

Arkady gaped
.

You actually think I would,
Dingus thought, vaguely insulted, but it had shut Arkady up, so he let it go. Mercifully, before too long he thought he heard running feet above; the mossy ground softened the noise, but they approached pretty quick. He straightened and went to the edge of the stream to make sure. After a moment, he said over his shoulder, “Don’t worry. They’re coming. We’ll get you out of here.” 

“Think if I suck Vandis off I’ll pass next year?” Arkady whispered, and heat flashed up Dingus’s spine. He turned to face Arkady, his fingers pulling into claws. His lips peeled back from his teeth; his eyes felt hot and dry, and a growl issued, involuntarily, from his throat.

No threat, not a threat, he’s half fucking dead,
he thought, squeezing his eyes shut. He willed his heart to slow down.

“Arkady!” Ryan shouted, and Dingus
twisted to see the mutton-chop face that peered over the brink. “I’m coming, buddy!” Ryan climbed down with two heavy sticks tied to his back, slipping and sliding, and splashed across the stream; Dingus stepped aside for him to crash to his knees in front of his Squire. “Come help me, Dingus.”

Dingus ended up tying the splint to Arkady’s le
g while Ryan held it down. Screams echoed off the walls of the ravine, and Dingus was hard put to suppress at least a little bit of a smile. After that, they wrapped him in a blanket and lashed him to a litter that Santo lowered to them. Arkady passed out somewhere in there, and he was silent while Ryan and Dingus carried the litter down the ravine to the south, where there was a gentler slope, or so said Tania, who’d taken Finbar one square over that way.
“Thanks for staying with him,” Ryan said about halfway there.

“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.

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 ag
e. 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 rubb
ed 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?”

Gregor
y 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 u
p 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.” T
he 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. A
fter 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.”