Saga of Menyoral: The Service Read Online Free PDF Page B

in for it, but he hooks Vandis with his stick and knocks him down right in front of us.”
    “Come on, Santo,” Vandis said, but his heart wasn’t in it. He sounded tired.
    “‘This is Vandis,’ he says,” Santo went on, “and then he says, ‘Act right, dumbfuck.’ Well Vandis, he goes, ‘Fuck you,’ and the old man laughs and walks away. And I says to Vandis, ‘Hi.’ I mean, what else was I supposed to say? And he looks at me, and I’m thinking of all the alley cats I ever seen, and then he picks himself up and says, ‘Well that was bullshit, I didn’t even do nothing.’ And he gets this look in his eye and he grins —and then he says, ‘Yet. Listen, I got this idea, you guys up for it?’”
    Vandis shook his head and drank again, deeply. “Still don’t know how I convinced you guys to go along with that.”
    “Nor do I,” Evan said, “but Lady fair! It was funny. Hieronymus went ’round the rest of the Moot looking surprised on account of us burning his eyebrows off! Though you could’ve let us help you later on, you know.”
    “I t was my idea. It wasn’t right for you to get punished.”
    “We did it, too. You ought to have let us help you build all those bonfires.”
    “Everyone was a little cold that year,” Jack said, snickering. Vandis half smiled, staring at nothing and running his thumb around the lip of the clay bottle.
    “What about Reed, though?” Dingus asked. He was dying to know, and also to change the subject, because the talk about Old Man Dingus—and wasn’t that a fucked-up coincidence—seemed to depress his Master. “Why’s he hate you so much?”
    “I kicked his ass. Twice,” Vandis told him. “Once when I was sixteen, and once when I first got my leaf, right after the old man disappeared over the horizon. He’d hit me if I fought—but Reed. That was the only time he ever beat me in public.”
    “That was bad,” Jack said.
    “It was, but I gave Reed the business.” The fleeting smile sneaked onto Vandis’s face, and then off again. “I don’t know. He didn’t take after me like that very often. He’d mostly just give me a smack or two, which I deserved, but if I pissed him off enough he’d beat me pretty badly. It wasn’t like what happened to you.” Vandis looked up, right into Dingus’s eyes. “More often than not he’d teach me with the back of his hand, but I’d work hard and he’d say to me, ‘Same again tomorrow, Vandis,’ at night. I liked the work.”
    “So do I,” Dingus said, and Vandis laughed.
    “I know you do. You’re better by a long mile than I was, too. You’re nothing like me at your age.” His wish that he was like Vandis must’ve shown on his face, because Vandis laughed again, louder. “Trust me. It’s a good thing.”
    “He really was a five-pound sack of assholes,” Jack said.
    Evan laughed, too. “I never met such a mouthy little prick as Vandis. On and on he’d go, and never stop cracking wise. You were essentially a giant mouth on two short legs—so nothing’s actually changed!”
    Vandis sat back on his stool and made a muscle. “Is that so?”
    “Oh, it’s so.”
    “Hey, I’ve got dirt on you, too, Grady. Most of the dumb shit I did , all three of you were right there doing it with me.”
    “Yeah, but it was all your idea,” Santo said. “It got so people’d just yell ‘Vandis Vail, front and center!’ every time something went wrong.”
    “Damn, we had fun, though. Remember the itching powder in every piece of Reed’s clothing? He danced divinely,” Vandis said, sweeping an arm out in a courtly gesture.
    “What about the firecrackers under the charcoal in the incense burner?”
    “I particularly enjoyed the one when we gathered all those bushels of frogs and let them go during the opening feast,” Evan said. “Pearly helped with that one.”
    “Dingus, you’re not drinking your drink,” Santo pointed out. “Pearly helped with most of ’em, following Vandis everywhere how she