Of Bone and Thunder (19 page)

“Weather fucking predictions, crop fucking prices, market fucking futures . . . High Druid give me strength,” he said, doubting it would be enough. He started counting down from ten, realizing he was working himself into a “condition,” as his wife called it. Ah, Mirina, that sweet old cow. Couldn't cook, couldn't sew, couldn't sing, but damn, the woman could thrust her hips and squeeze her nethers until he thought he'd pass out.

Thinking about Mirina brought with it a sudden attack of guilt. Not for the little slyt whore he'd taken as a “maid,” but for all his swearing. Mirs was no fool. She hadn't asked him to stay true or partake not of wines and liquor. No, she'd grabbed him by the balls, looked up at him, and said that if he didn't promise to stop swearing, she'd squeeze until they turned to jelly.

He kicked a clod of dirt, which tumbled down the slope, breaking apart until nothing but a shower of tiny particles splashed into the dosha swamp below. Dosha. Tasted like snot and looked like mulched lice. It wasn't just the dosha though. Jomkier was a veritable farmer's market producing more fu—
bloody
fruits than he'd ever seen in his life on top of tea, cashews, and tons upon tons of dosha. That was bad enough, but this being Jomkier, there was always more, and it was always worse. Slyt fisherman plied the Hols hauling netfuls of perch, carp, yellowfin, whipray, anchovy, sharkminnow, and eel out of the muddy river. They needed open areas to dry their catches and were complaining regularly that the flight paths of the rags were covering the catches in dirt and sulfur. And then sending him a bill! Hand to the High Forest,
a fucking bill
! He wasn't commanding flocks of rags anymore; he was running a damn market!

Modelar snorted and paced along the edge of a massive crater a half mile across, surrounded on three sides by a thin horseshoe of land no more than two hundred feet at its widest point—all that remained of the original plateau. The heart of the plateau had been progressively hollowed out over centuries of quarrying. The southern end, closest to the Hols, had been collapsed, allowing the huge stone blocks to be carted to the river, where even now barges carried them twenty miles south to the capital, Gremthyn.

“Fuck!” Modelar shouted. A little quarry in the middle of a damn
swamp in a faraway country so backward it thought yesterday was next week shouldn't be this vexing.

He blamed the Qreet brothers: Narth, Frol, and Wrol. Modelar had never met them, and never would either, as they'd been murdered along with their families, servants, and even the servants' families over four months ago. Butchered like so many pigs by slyts infiltrating from Western Luitox. Modelar had one of the leaflets left pinned to a body translated. The Forest Collective was avenging all slyts everywhere by attacking predatory landowners and those who supported them.

The bodies had been disposed of after lying out in the sun for two weeks, but Modelar was convinced he could still smell them, especially in the afternoon heat. If only their stench was all that remained, but just his luck, more unpleasantness lingered. Over two hundred and seventy Luitoxese, including children, had been slaughtered, which, while tragic, nonetheless gave him the perfect space for a roost for the flocks. He would have requisitioned the Qreet quarry even if it hadn't been abandoned. It really was ideal.

Then the distant relatives of the Qreets began arriving from all over Luitox, laying claim to the quarry and demanding payment for the Kingdom's use of it. Dozens and dozens of stripey-faced little natives jawing and wailing and making his life miserable.

He fought back another expletive and was feeling proud of himself for that when he caught motion a mile away to the east. A six-rag formation was angling toward the roost at five hundred feet. Modelar squinted up at the sun, then looked down at his shadow. Bit early for Vorly to be bringing Obsidian Flock back. He knew the flock commander wasn't thrilled with the RATs and their new devices, but too bad—this was the latest kit coming out of the RAT and he wanted it. A legion flock commander didn't make army flock commander by playing things safe, not in wartime.

The rags weren't flying the standard V or single-line echelon. He'd give Vorly a hard time about it when he landed. It was good to fire up the troops now and then, keep things tight. He saw smoke coming off of one of the rags and added that to the list. One of the drivers had obviously flown his
rag too hard. Didn't look too bad, but clearly Obsidian Flock needed a good tune-up. It would let him get some of this Jomkier frustration out of his system.

As the formation got closer, he could make out the drivers and their RATs. Standing on the rim of the plateau put Modelar at the same height as the rags as they came in. He'd caught more than one driver not wearing his full harness and several other infractions.

Modelar counted the crews this time. He blinked and started his count again. A cold chill radiated out from the pit of his stomach. He stared blankly as Centaurea drew near and descended toward the quarry floor, the wind from his wings buffeting Modelar as he flew past. The smell of the smoke reached his nostrils a moment later.

“. . . fuck . . .”

THE FIRST SENSATION
that registered was the feeling of the anvil sitting on Jawn's head. He forced open one eye, grimacing as several crud-crusted eyelashes ripped out.

There was no anvil. Just the gallons of alcohol he'd consumed since the night the slyts set themselves on fire.
What was that, three days ago?
Five?
He groaned. He was in a simple bamboo hut lying on the floor. It was daytime, but beyond that he really didn't know or care. He closed his eye. No one should be in this much pain and still be alive.

Images of burning bodies flickered behind his eyelids. With them came the charred-flesh smell that still lingered in his nostrils. It was as if the memories were renewing, finding fresh parts of his brain to stain with their horror.

“I'm standing here trying to decide if the reports of your demise are exaggerated,” Rickets said, flinging open the linen door of the hut and looking down at Jawn. “Honestly, it's hard to tell. Assuming you are in fact alive, I brought you something to put a little sap back in your leaves,” he said, holding out a steaming mug.

Jawn glared up at Rickets from the floor. “You did this to me.”

Rickets didn't even have the decency to look mildly remorseful. His crown uniform was freshly laundered and his chubby face was unabashedly
aglow. He'd shaved what hair had remained after the fire, and though Jawn wouldn't say it out loud, he actually looked better.

“Oh, it's true, and I feel terrible about it,” Rickets said, his demeanor suddenly solemn and repentant. “Pointing that crossbow at your head and making you drink. Ordering you to cavort with those whores. Wantonly, I might add. Aye, I'm a scourge to the chaste and learned, I am.”

“You could have stopped me,” Jawn said, closing his eyes and laying his head down on the floor. “You should have stopped me.”

The rattan floor creaked as Rickets entered the hut. “You needed that bender. I did, too,” Rickets said, his voice drifting. “After what we saw, no man has a right to deny another his oblivion. I've been to more shitholes for the Kingdom and never encountered anything like that. I mean, I've done—I've seen things,” Rickets said, quickly correcting himself, “and always for the greater fucking good, but nothing like that.”

Jawn desperately wanted him to stop talking, but his fascination kept his mouth shut. He carefully opened both eyes.

“The Kingdom asks a lot of a man,” Rickets continued, looking into a distance only he could see. “It fills you with ideals and purpose and a sense of duty. It makes you bigger, stronger. Then, with no warning, you're forced to take all those beliefs and run a knife across their throats when diplomacy or merchant interests or whatever else the high and mighty deem important trumps everything we were ever told to believe.”

Though his vision was blurry, Jawn was certain Rickets's eyes were misting up. Rickets blinked and a tear rolled down his face. Jawn couldn't handle that right now.

“I'm lucky to be conscious at the moment,” Jawn said, trying to lighten the mood. “About the only thing I believe is I will never partake of spirits again.”

Rickets turned and looked at Jawn. “Spoken like a survivor.” He sat down on the floor, holding out the mug. Jawn pulled himself up to lean against the palm-frond wall. He took the mug with two hands.

Jawn looked down at the mug. “What is this?”

“Tea,” Rickets said. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“You want to feel better, or do you want to keep asking questions you don't want the answers to?”

Jawn looked down at the mug again. Tea wasn't normally dark red. He raised the mug up to his face and drew in a sniff. His nostrils blew wide open, clearing a path straight to his brain.

“Fire and lightning!” he exclaimed, his eyes watering.

“Probably some of that in there, too,” Rickets said.

Jawn closed his eyes and drank. For several moments, he wasn't sitting in a hut in the Lux with a hangover. Where exactly he was, however, he wasn't sure. When he opened his eyes again, he felt close to human. Still tired and with a slight pounding at his temples, but the worst of the hangover was gone.

“Now it's time to get you on your feet and moving. We have work to do.”

Jawn shook his head. “I still have time before I have to report.”

“About that,” Rickets said, pulling out a thin paper scroll from a sleeve and handing it over to Jawn. It was tied with a red string with the dark green wax seal of the Royal Academy of Thaumology.

Jawn popped off the wax seal with the fingernail of his thumb. Before he could ask, Rickets handed him a small knife, which Jawn took and used to cut through the red string. Only messages of high importance received both the seal and the string. In his life, Jawn had never received one.

Jawn unrolled the scroll and began reading. His mouth dropped open and he looked up. “This can't be right.”

“In fact, the RAT has exercised its right to you,” Rickets said. “You're about to embark on a new and rewarding career in service of His Royal Whoever.”

Jawn went back to reading. “Countryside vitality and productivity research, adjunct to Greater Luitox Agricultural Mission. Effects of battle on crops and livestock? But I'm assigned to the Seventh Phalanx,” Jawn said.

Rickets pointed at Jawn. “You're missing the nut and focusing on the bark. This is a promotion. With this, you get a ticket to travel the Lux.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Jawn asked. How many more bamboo huts were there to see?

“Chin up, Jawny-boy, your luck's still holding. If you keep reading, you'll see that the mission is tasked with studying the Seventh Phalanx. Well, at least the mess they make. Remember I told you they were sending the Seventh inland? They did. The army is pushing all the way west until
they hit the Ultalon River. Should encounter a whole lot of FnCs on the way. So buck up, all is well,” Rickets said.

“This doesn't make any sense.”

“Of course it doesn't, but therein lies the real truth. As of now you are
officially
part of the group tasked with studying dosha swamps, fig trees, and goat dung as trod on, dug up, eaten, and otherwise defiled by the glorious Seventh Phalanx.”

Horror-struck by the notion of studying goat pastures, Jawn almost missed Rickets's emphasis of one word.

“Officially?” Jawn asked. He held the scroll up to the light leaking through the fronds to see if a hidden message would be revealed.

“Officially,” Rickets replied, giving nothing away.

Jawn lowered the scroll and looked at Rickets. Hundreds of questions danced in his head, but he realized only one would unlock the rest. “Rickets . . . who are you?”

Rickets smiled and nodded. “Good, lad. Leo said once you pushed the pudding out of the way, there was a brain in that skull of yours.”

Senior Thaum Leotat Kirsingil had invited Jawn to his office for tea in Jawn's last semester at the academy just after Jawn had made it known he was volunteering for the army. Expecting to be harangued or even threatened if he went through with his plans to leave, Kirsingil had commended Jawn on his decision. What followed was a friendly if intense grilling from midmorning until dinner on Kingdom politics, religion, policy regarding foreign lands, and a myriad of other topics from the inane to the profound. When Jawn had finally been ushered out, exhausted and light-headed, he felt like he'd just sat an exam. What for, however, he'd had no idea.

Until now.

“Do . . . do you work for the Dark Rangers?” Rumors abounded about the Kingdom's spy service. Jawn had never met anyone in it . . . or maybe he had in the form of his previous instructor.

“Never heard of them, and even if I had, they don't exist,” Rickets said.

“You do, don't you,” Jawn said.

Rickets lifted his hands palms up. “I think you're confused. There is, of course, His Majesty's Forest Ranger Service, a noble and vital branch that sees
to the welfare of forests in the Kingdom and around the world. As for the Dark Rangers, they have never been officially acknowledged. But even if they were, I'm not one. And as of this moment, neither are you. Not that they exist.”

“At this moment, I'm not entirely sure
I
exist,” Jawn said.

Rickets winked at him. “Bravo. That's the kind of bewilderment that will fool even the keenest of enemy observers.”

“You mean the FnC?” Jawn asked, now developing the habit of ignoring Rickets's insults.

Rickets didn't answer at once. Jawn started to ask again when Rickets began speaking. “The definition of
enemy
encompasses significantly more than simply the disenchanted natives, but we'll leave that conversation for another day.”