Oath Bound (Book 3) (19 page)

Inside it, a perfunctory
boxing match went on, or didn’t. The crowd was growing bored, restive and
catcalling. Wynn herself clung one-handed to the outside of the cage, shouting
to the fighters. “Come on, lads!” she urged. “Five sovereigns to the one who
gets first blood on his knuckles!”

Vandis sucked it all in
with hungry eyes while he undid his cloak and gave it over to the cloak-check
girl, and then while he slid his knife’s sheath off his belt and handed the
weapon to big Eamon Baird, who took it in hairy hands. Vandis had seen him
shirtless in the ring a time or two, and he nearly had a black pelt.

“Been a while, Sir
Vandis,” Baird said, grinning so his gold front tooth flashed.

“How’re things?”

“A little of this and a
touch of that. The money’s in the till, mate, and that makes the Boss happy as
diamonds for Longnight.”

“She doesn’t look
displeased.” Vandis grinned and gestured with his chin as the crowd, and Wynn,
broke into ecstatic cheering.

“She hasn’t the right to
be displeased. She just mopped the floor with Eirik Bjarkissen. Boss!” he
bellowed. “Someone to see you!”

When Wynn swung around to
face the check stand, Vandis saw she had a beauty of a shiner growing over one
eye, and she held a stained handkerchief to her mouth, but their eyes met and
she beamed, dropping the hanky. Even under the split, swelling lip, it was a
gorgeous smile, and Vandis returned it with one of his own. He felt better by
the minute. She pointed to the bar and leapt from the dais to land lightly on a
nearby table, and then stepped down without knocking over a single drink.

He made it to the bar
just in time to meet her there. She vaulted gracefully over the marred top and
glanced over her shoulder to say, “It’s been
ages
,” before she turned to
study the wall of bottles. Her long body stretched as she reached up to take
down Vandis’s favorite whiskey. “Your usual?”

“Yeah, please.” He
settled himself on a stool.

She brought over the
whiskey and two small stoneware tumblers. With a thumb, she popped the cork
from the bottle and poured two precise jiggers into each.

“The last one scored on
you.” He gestured at his face. “Losing your touch?”

“He wishes.” One of the
cups slid across the bar and stopped exactly in front of Vandis’s right hand.
“Or he will when he wakes up. What about you, then?”

“Ugh,” he said, and
raised his cup to her before draining it. “Could I get another?”

“That’s a sipping
whiskey, I’ll have you know,” she said, but poured him another. When she sipped
at her own, she grimaced, licking at the split lip while he downed his second.
“All right, perhaps you’ve the right idea. Another for you already?”

“Keep them coming.”

“And you’ve hardly said
more than hello. The God, but you’re in a brown study tonight! What’s going on
that you can’t even muster a little cheer for me?”

“What isn’t?” He scowled
at his hands as she topped him off; the cut he’d made on the left had formed a
sticky scab. “Since I’ve been in town, I’ve had my authority challenged by my
own people. Three times now the Aurelians have taken a crack at me, and that
last time they almost got what they wanted. I’ve had audiences with Prince
Emmerick, the King, Friedhelm, and Disa, and a couple of very weird experiences
besides. I’m worried sick about my Junior
and
my Squire, and to top it
off, one of the Knights decided to tell me about the fall of Shirith.”

She poured another for
herself. “That’s a sad story.”

“Tell me about it,” he
muttered. “I have earned every drop of whiskey in this joint.”

Wynn laughed. “Now that
would make for a heroic tragedy! I could take your mind off it more
efficiently, if you’d let me.”

He snorted and took a sip
of this one, letting it slide down his throat and spread warmth in his chest,
rather than rain fire on his belly. “If you thought for even a heartbeat I’d
say yes, you’d stop propositioning me.”

“If I thought for even a
heartbeat you’d say yes,” she said, leaning over the bar so she could drop her
voice, “I’d drag you into a supply closet and shag you brainless, Vandis Vail,
so don’t tell me what I’d do.”

His face burned. “You
would not.”

“I
would.
I’d lick
you head to toe,” she said, and
She
said,
Well! I never! So crude!

“But I won’t,” Wynn went
on, “because there’s no chance of your actually saying yes.”

“So why keep asking?”

“Well, there’s the
obvious.” She looked him up and down, giving him the impression she saw
straight through his clothes, and her swollen mouth twitched with a smirk. “You
haven’t let yourself slip an inch since I first laid eyes on you.”

He flushed, if that were
possible, even more brightly.

“Besides, as I’ve come to
know you… I like your mind, Vandis, and I like your humor. I like your general
intolerance for stupidity, and that, whatever your thoughts on the matter,
you’re a passionate man. The question isn’t why I keep asking, but rather, why
you would wonder at all that I want you.”

Vandis looked down into
the depths of his drink, the darkness inside the earthenware. The top of his
head, he was sure, would pop off at any moment. “If there were anyone…”

“Well, that does make me
feel a bit better,” she said, patting his cheek, and then stepped back and
snagged a passing barmaid. “Priscilla, the pork special for Sir Vandis, and a
slab of apple pie. Don’t stint on the cream.” Priscilla hurried away, and Wynn
rubbed her hands together. “Now! I want to know about this Junior of yours, the
one with the unfortunate name. Dingle, is it?”

“Dingus,” he said.

“Poor young sod!”

“Heh.” Vandis grinned and
emptied his glass. “It is pretty unfortunate, but I guess I just don’t notice
anymore. Not until somebody else says it. Works for him, though—that kid has
the worst luck, I swear.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“What have you heard?” he
asked sharply.

“I’ve heard he’s a tall,
skinny, redheaded half-blood bearing more than a passing resemblance to His
Grace of Friedhelm. I’ve also been told that you were in Wealaia, which tells
me he’s the get of Angus the Red on some silly little
tulua.
”

He shook his head. “How
do you hear these things?”

“Knights like my bar.”
She poured, yet again, and he was grateful he didn’t need to keep ordering.
“Everyone likes my bar. I overhear. But come, you know as well as I do that
those sorts of details don’t make a person. What is he
like?
”

“Gifted. Amazingly
gifted.” Vandis’s mouth watered when the plate slid under his nose: slices of
roast pork with mashed potato and pickled cabbage—and on a separate plate, the
promised slab of apple pie, looking so tasty he almost ate it first. “And…
damaged. I never thought I’d take a Squire, and if I had, I wouldn’t have
thought of someone like Dingus. But…” He looked up, into her dark eyes. “He
needs me. I didn’t know how compelling that’d be, or how much he’d give me in
return. Kessa—that was his fault—but that’s like night and day. I worry for
her. I do, but she’s not quite as desperate. She doesn’t
burn
like he
does.” He took out his eating knife and spoon and cut into a slice of pork.

“But you love her no
less.”

“It’s just different.
She’s got her problems, which I have no more idea how to unwind than I do his,
but she’s stronger. Dingus is—” He popped a piece of meat into his mouth,
chewing thoughtfully. “Damn, that’s good. If you want the flat truth of it,
he’s fucked the hell up. You can only get stomped on so many times before it
starts to tell, and he’s been stomped flat too many times to count.”

“He has you.”

“For what it’s worth. I
don’t know how to help him.”

“You want to. Don’t
underestimate it.” She patted his hand. “We’ve gotten busy. I’m going to pitch
in for a bit, but I’ll be back.”

He nodded and turned his
full attention to the food, which was more than worth his while. People packed
the bar, and since he’d taken a stool with space on either side, the spaces had
filled; he’d gotten sandwiched between a heavy drinker (already tipsy) and a
bravo watching the current fight with interest. Oddly enough, he felt safer
here than he had anywhere else in the city. Maybe that was down to Wynn’s iron
fist and Eamon Baird’s legendary drunk-toss. Maybe it was that in his ordinary
clothes, he blended easily even with the wild variety of dress here. He didn’t
really know, but he liked people-watching in Wynn’s place, the warmth of so
many active bodies, even the cheerful violence that hung in the air. For all
the blood that spilled here every night, it felt friendly inside.

When he’d finished, the
barmaid Priscilla came by to take his plates. She wore her blond hair in a
braided crown, and a surprisingly modest dress. “Can I get you something else,
Sir Vandis?”

“What about another
whiskey?”

She dimpled at him,
rather like Kessa might have, and fetched the bottle. “Is this the right one?”

“That’s it.”

She didn’t pour as
quickly as Wynn, and one end of her tongue poked out between her lips while she
concentrated on measuring the liquor.

“Are you new?”

“Pretty new! But I’ve been
here long enough to know the comp list.” She gave him a big, tip-me smile and
replaced the cork.

“You like it?”

“I love it here. I was so
worried when I came to the city that I wouldn’t find a safe place to work, but
here I get great tips and I don’t have to whore. This one girl, Jana, she was
doing it on the side, and the Boss fired her, just like that.” She snapped her
fingers and laughed. “If anyone gets fresh, out they go. It’s a great job, with
great people.”

“Good to hear. If you
ever have problems at home, come down to Temple Row and the Knights’ll help you
out.”

“I know, but let me tell
you something. I had this boyfriend when I came here, we were gonna get married
and all, and one night he hit me. And the Boss saw it next day. She walked me
home and Chip, that was his name, Chip was gone. He must not have really loved
me, she said. Guys, right?” She slapped the bar-top. “It was great meeting you,
Sir Vandis, but I better get back to work. Need anything else?” When he shook
his head, she dimpled at him again and whirled away.

He wished that were more
difficult to reconcile with what he suspected of Wynn. Whatever she really was,
she ruthlessly weeded undesirables out of her staff, and apparently, from her
workers’ lives. He figured the books were bleached clean, every clipped bit
accounted for, and every penny of the taxes paid. Lady only knew where they
found the time, but the place was swept and scrubbed; when it wasn’t busy,
sometimes the cats came out, licking rats’ blood from their chops. The kitchen,
he had no doubt, was a health inspector’s wet dream.

Like Wynn herself, things
at the Lucky Strike were just a little too perfect. People popped in to see
her, but the meetings almost always took place in her back-room office. Just
tonight he’d seen Baron Recht sidle into that back room, and he tried not to
think about it. He liked her. What employees she kept, she treated better than
most, and asking her stupid questions like, “Where does your money really come
from?” or, horrors, “Are you in organized crime?” would probably destroy one of
his more valuable friendships, whether she lied to him or told the truth. He
didn’t know which he’d rather, so he kept his mouth shut and didn’t bet on the
matches.

He had a couple more
drinks, watching the people and the fights: the serving maids weaving in and
out of the crowd in whorls and snaps of skirts, the bouncers stationed around
the room with their sharp eyes and thick muscles, Eamon Baird working the door,
the fighters more or less bruised and bloody. Whatever its real nature, he
wouldn’t be surprised if this
was
the safest place in Dreamport.

At last he sighed, slid
off the stool, and patted his full stomach. He felt tipsy, warm to his
fingertips, but he’d have to be getting back. When he stopped to collect his
knife and cloak, Wynn appeared as if he’d conjured her with the mere thought of
leaving.

“We’ve hardly had a
chance to talk,” she said. “Let me walk you home.”

“Okay,” Vandis said,
fingers clumsy on the frogs of his cloak. If he’d been sober, he never would’ve
accepted. “Don’t you want a jumper or anything? It’s chilly.”

She smiled, putting her
hands in the pockets of her loose cotton breeches. She’d changed her jerkin for
a leather doublet quilted in thread-of-gold swirls. “It won’t bother me. Let’s
go.”

When they stepped
outside, he had to pull up his hood against thin needles of sleet biting down
from the sky. It had to be four o’ the clock by now, and the air had grown
colder while Vandis ate and drank. “Go back in. I’ll be fine.”

“It’s well enough. I do
want to talk with you a bit more.”

“Who’s going to walk
you
back?”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Neither am I,” he said,
but when he went out onto the board walkway his legs wobbled.

She laughed and followed
him, drawing level quickly on her longer, steadier legs. “Liar.”

“It’s not safe for you to
walk alone at night.”

“Ever the Knight on the
white charger. You wouldn’t say that if you knew how many knives I’m carrying.”
Her teeth flashed in the low light from the streetlamp as they passed beneath
it. “Don’t worry about me. The
menyoral
has enough on his mind, I
imagine.”

“Why am I surprised you
know about that?”

“You ought not to be.
Consider my unique position. Very little happens in this city that I don’t,
eventually, hear about—and that was quite the topic of conversation in my bar
this evening. I’m not certain how much of the gossip to believe, but come,
Vandis, you
fly
. Your Lady lifts you in Her own hand. If you don’t
qualify as
menyoral,
no one does.”