Read Oath Bound (Book 3) for Free Online Page B

darkness, and mist swirled around the single torch
that burned to show its position, collecting on Krakus’s white armor and in his
hair.
    His sabatons clacked on
the boardwalk leading up to the front door. When he opened it, the light in the
anteroom hit him in the face. “I’m here for Droshky,” he said, when the soldier
manning the desk had finished saluting.
    “Droshky?” The soldier’s
broad face scrunched in confusion. “Father, why would Doctor Droshky be here?”
    “Are you serious?” he
blurted.
    “I’m sorry, Father. He
wasn’t here when we did shift change at sundown. I didn’t know he was meant to
be here.”
    Krakus rubbed at his
tonsure with a gauntleted hand. “Let me onto the block.”
    “Yes, Father Krakus,
right away.” The soldier rose, pulling a jingling mass of keys on a chain out
from his belt, and came around the desk. Krakus followed him to the plain door
that led to the block of four cells, and stepped inside ahead of him.
    The place was swallowed
in night, until the soldier followed him in with a candle. The flame danced
over three empty cells, over the form of another soldier with a torn uniform
and dark blood on his stubbly face, curled in the straw. Krakus approached the
barred door.
    “That’s Nosek. He was
drunk,” the soldier said helpfully.
    And Krakus had thought
“seeing red” was just an expression. He shut his eyes, vibrating inside his
prison of enameled steel.
    “Father Krakus?”
    He whirled and stalked
out of the block, on, down the wooden walkway into the dark. When he reached
his apartments, he doffed his armor and hung it up with shaking hands. He could
hardly see anything at all now, let alone red. He sank to his knees and laid
his forehead against the door of the wardrobe, pleading wordlessly for grace.
His knees protested when he rose again, and he tottered to the office, gaining
flexibility and strength as he went, until he strode in straight and tall.
    Lech didn’t even look up
from his end of the desk. Krakus grabbed the back of his hard wooden armchair
and jerked it around to the side. Lech’s quill scudded down his parchment,
leaving a long, black slash at the end of whatever he’d been writing.
    “What can I do for you,
Krakus?” he said, seemingly even, though his face looked sour. Always looked
sour.
    Krakus bent, hands on the
arms of the chair, leaning into Lech’s space so far that the back of his head
struck wood, so far that he had to tilt his head up to hold the stare. “It’s
not enough that I’ve forsworn my vows a thousand times over?” Krakus asked, in
a flinty voice, nose to nose. “Now you have to make me forswear again?”
    “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.” But Lech’s larynx bobbed.
    “Don’t bullshit me, Lech. And don’t dare to stand between me and my duty again. Are we clear?”
    “I don’t—”
    “Are we clear? ”
    Lech curled his lip.
    Without thinking, Krakus
slapped him hard across the face. He stepped back to suck air through his
teeth, hands in fists. Control, he thought. Control yourself. “Don’t do it again,” he said, in the most reasonable tone he could muster.
Before Lech could respond, he left. His urge was to run out of the building and
turn the world upside down to shake Droshky out of his hole, but his reason
told him the doctor was long gone. He went to his bedroom to think.

Dad
    Seal Rock to Windish
    Dingus enjoyed Seal Rock.
It was a feast for the eyes after the long, unbroken expanse of scrubby plain. The
last few days of the journey from Knightsvalley had been filled with
increasingly stony ground and difficult passage, until on a cloudy afternoon
they reached a place that looked like a massive finger had reached into the
world and scooped some of it out, and the water had rushed in. A fjord, Vandis
had called it, or an inlet, and the water was Hadrok’s Sea. Dingus had never
seen anything like it. Wealaia was landlocked, but from studying maps he knew
he’d actually