Catling's Bane (The Rose Shield Book 1) Read online

  Catling’s Bane

  The Rose Shield: Book One

  Copyright © 2017 D. Wallace Peach

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ISBN-13: 978-1635352900

  Cover Art © Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design

  www.derangeddoctordesign.com

  To my husband

  for his endless support

  of my forays into the imagination.

  Acknowledgments

  There are many who helped this book on its journey from concept to completion. My thanks to the Beaverton Evening Writers Group for their careful critiques and years of friendship, encouragement, and advice. Many blessings to my dedicated beta readers and to readers everywhere who offer their encouragement and support along the way. A final thank you to my husband, Randy, who year after year supports my all-consuming passion for words. I owe you all my heartfelt gratitude.

  Table of Contents

  Catling's Bane

  Map

  Prolog

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Oathbreakers’ Guild

  About the Author

  Books by D. Wallace Peach

  Map

  Prolog

  Darkest Night.

  The ironwood pier below Mur-Vallis pointed like a sooty finger over the Blackwater’s gleaming luminescence, a river of light, bright enough to whittle by. Wraiths of fog pirouetted across the surface, trailing veils of white lace. Raker lounged against the piling where he’d tethered his boat, keeping an idle eye out for thieves. Not that anyone would bother his craft this night, not with finer prizes left unattended. Well-rigged riverboats and ferries floated at the wharf, thunking and clinking above the current’s hushed whispers.

  With a bone-handled knife, he carved splinters from a wood waterdragon no larger than his thumb. The solitude suited him, removed from the warrens’ chaos that crowded the dingy expanse below the city’s lowest tier. The welcome there was cold anyway, harsh enough to get a half-blood gutted. His slanted green eyes and three-fingered hands gave his mixed heritage away. Half-human, half-fenfolk was a rare breed.

  The three pylons supporting Mur-Vallis soared into the vast night sky. Their lighted tiers lay open like petals on an alien flower, soft-edged and overlapping, the upper layers diminishing in size while increasing in opulence.

  Or so he’d heard. No one he knew had climbed higher than the first tier, and then, only for a hanging.

  He returned to his whittling, scoring the supple wood around the waterdragon’s tail. In the darkness nearby, a baby cried; a woman chided harsh with impatience. He didn’t trouble to glance up, and they didn’t venture near. Most Ellegeans fled to the tiers or burrowed into the warrens on Darkest Night, the lot of them superstitious when the moons vanished from the sky.

  To riverfolk, rafters, and seafarers, the moonless night was far from dark. A boundless sky sparkled with stars so fat and round a man might mistake them for pearls. The rivers, swamps, and Cull Sea shone brighter, the waters rife with luminescence, creatures of light glittering like the dust of gems. A radiant current flowed and flowered around him, merging and bursting outward in shifting patterns.

  The child’s sobs droned in his head, invading the night’s peace. He set the waterdragon aside and breathed. None of his concern, he shut out the clamor.

  “She’s mine,” the mist exhaled in his ear, voice soft as rustling leaves.

  His head dropped back, and he closed his eyes, ignoring the touch of lips on his tapered ear, the ghostly caress of his chest. The fog played tricks, breathed secrets, and yet when he looked, no one was ever there.

  “Careful not to drown her, my sweet,” the voice whispered.

  He brushed the fog aside, leaned over the pier’s edge, and dipped his hand in the water. As it always did, the luminescence fled his fingers, then collapsed around his wrist and collected on his skin. He cinched his trap closed and pulled up the basket, eyes on the living light pouring through the woven reeds. Three finned eels squirmed in the dark interior, inky skin aglow. He grinned, sliced off their heads, and tossed the slick bodies into a bucket on his boat.

  The child screeched, loosing a wail flooded with pain. Raker’s eyes narrowed as he peered toward the shadowed warrens. Women’s shrill voices fueled the discord, more than two by the noise. The squabble grated on his ears no less than the child’s shrieking. He wished they’d all shut up or move their bickering to the slums where it belonged.

  With the bloodied blade wiped clean on his trousers, he carved striations on the waterdragon’s winged fin. He finished the delicate grooves on one side when his concentration ruptured. The women’s quarrel grew more distinct, the child’s screams piercing as the conflict spilled into the vacant riverside market. He sighed, rose to his feet, and leaned on the piling, pale face hidden beneath his black hair.

  “Lure her away,” the mist murmured.

  A fine-looking woman with dark hair and wide-set eyes marched into the brilliant glow of the water’s luminescence, a baby in her arms. She cursed over her shoulder at an age-worn matron who grabbed at the child’s leg. A third women heeled them, begging for calm, her words lost to shuttered ears. The child screamed, stiff-bodied, back arched, tiny hands in knots.

  The young mother struggled to hold the squirming tot, her face flushed with rage. “She’s my daughter, you old witch.”

  “Keep your voice down, Keela,” the tagging woman warned, her waves of fiery hair shining in the tier’s light. “You’ll get the enforcers on us.”

  “You stay out of this, Farrow,” the mother, Keela, snapped. “Why are you even here? It’s none of your matter.”

  “It is when you’re acting the fool with that baby.” The redhead glanced back at the warrens. “Just keep it quiet, or we’re all in the pits.”

  “G
ive her to me,” the old woman demanded. She clutched the child’s arm and stroked the wispy hair. “You’re no mother to bloody your girl like this.”

  “What do you know of mothering?” Keela sneered. Her elbow shot up, striking the gray-haired crone on the chin.

  The woman stumbled backward, a hand to her jaw. “You were always a selfish, hateful beast. From the day you ripped out of me, I knew it. I should have smothered you in your cradle.”

  Keela threw her head back and laughed. “See what I grew up with? Such kindness. You think I should give her my daughter? I’d rather see Catling dead!”

  “I never took a rasp to your face.” The older woman pulled on the child’s arm. Keela twisted away, the screaming girl caught between them.

  “Let me hold her,” the redhead pleaded. “Then you two can kill each other, for Founders’ sake.”

  With a feral growl, Keela wrenched the tot away from both women. “I didn’t cut her, but I can’t have that revolting mark on her face.” She marched toward the pier, the little girl writhing in her arms.

  Raker stood still, waiting the fight out, unnoticed despite the river’s glow. Closer up, the young mother’s comely face was hard and rough as fresh-milled oak. The child appeared older than he’d first judged, not an infant, but a year or two. Her small fist struck the woman’s cheek.

  Gritting her teeth, Keela stopped and shook the girl. “Stop it! Stop it, or I’ll drop you.” She spun to the crone who advanced on her, and Raker got a glimpse of the child’s face. Around her right eye was a patch of darkness, a raw wound, blood smearing the delicate skin.

  The fog tickled his ear. “Obey me.”

  “I have plans,” Keela shouted at the old woman. “You think I’m living in this dung heap for the rest of my years. I’m going to scrape that mark off her face, and one day she’ll thank me. Because we’re moving up there.” She jerked her chin toward the towering tiers.

  “It doesn’t scrape off,” the redhead said. “You’ll scar her; you’ll make it worse.”

  “Stay out of this, Farrow.” Struggling with the crying child, Keela turned on the old woman. “You think I’m going to give her a life on her back like you gave me? I got my looks, and I got names in the tiers. I’ll indenture in a rich house and bond well. But I can’t do it with an ugly child dragging me down. I’m grinding that stain out of her face if I have to peel her to the bone.”

  The old woman slapped Keela’s face. She grabbed the child’s arm and yanked. “Go whore yourself to the tiers. No ward’s going to want you for more than a laundress he gets to stump. All those fancy dreams of yours is rubbish, just like mine.”

  “You filthy piff!” Keela jerked the child away and dropped her at the pier’s edge. She flew at her mother, fingers crooked like claws. The crone met the attack with a fist to her daughter’s chin. Keela seized a handful of gray hair and pulled. They both tumbled, shrieking, to the riverbank. Farrow lunged after them, adding her voice to the chaos as she attempted to tear mother and daughter apart.

  “Now, Raker,” the fog urged, fondling his neck.

  The child climbed to her feet at the pier’s edge and sniffled, staring at him. He squatted by the piling and held out the waterdragon. When the girl stepped closer, he swam the carving through the air and proffered it again, beckoning her nearer with his other hand. Beyond the child’s shoulder, the women screamed and punched. Hulking enforcers strode from the warrens.

  “Now,” the fog breathed.

  He turned his green eyes back to the child. When she closed her fingers around the waterdragon, he grabbed her. His hand clamped over her mouth and nose, and he swept her body from the pier into the river. Kneeling over the edge, he held her head underwater. She squirmed against his strength, gripped his wrist, and kicked. Her amber eyes peered up at him, wide with wonder and aglow in the pooling light.

  A grip in his jet hair wrenched him backward. His hand on the child’s face lost its hold. Pearly stars shot overhead as he landed on his back and bit his tongue.

  “Filching half-blood.” A boot cracked into the side of his skull. He rolled, vaguely aware of women screaming and the guttural threats of men bent on murder. Something hard slammed into his ribs as he found his feet, knocking him back to the rough planks. He staggered up and swung, connecting with solid flesh before a flash of steel swiped across his face. Pain erupted in his left eye. He stumbled, blinded. His heel struck a mooring ring, and he fell flailing into the Blackwater.

  The luminescence retracted and then engulfed him, filling his sightless eye with dazzling light before the current swept his body away.

  Chapter One

  Hanging Day.

  Catling clutched the back of Keela’s wool skirt as her mother picked a path through the market crowd. Head down, she kept her eyes on the bare heels slapping the pavers ahead of her, afraid of a swat if she let go.

  “Stop tugging on my dress and tramping on my heels,” Keela said without a look back. She wrenched her skirt free. “And keep up.”

  Catling flinched and scurried along. At six, she was a scrawny thing and easily buffeted by the larger bodies that failed to see her. The market was all shoving and yelling heads off on hanging day, and she wouldn’t have minded if Keela weren’t in such a hurry.

  She spotted a split copper and darted from safety to pinch it from the crack between two pavers. A pair of scampering boys dodged around her as she ducked back behind her mother with an excited grin. She slid the coin into her pocket beside her carved waterdragon and considered where she might hide it. All over the warrens, she kept secret stashes of split and clipped coppers stowed into crevasses and holes and buried under stones. She was rich, and someday she’d collect them in a sack and ride a ferry to the sea.

  “Always big crowds Summertide hanging day,” Keela said over her shoulder. “The weather’s kind enough and food’s plenty. Maybe we’ll share a meat tart and catch a couple neck-stretchers.”

  The mere thought of a tart set Catling’s stomach rumbling. During Summertide, the market circled almost all the way around the warrens. Tables, carts, stalls, crates, and planks balancing on rickety chairs were set up haphazard like river rocks that people flowed around. Servants from the tiers sauntered down with their guards and pockets of clipped silver to spend however they pleased.

  Riverfolk sold fish and eels by the pier. Glassy-eyed twitchers lolled against the stone wall, begging for anything they could sell for a taste. Smelters and smiths hawked knives and tools. She passed other guilds peddling rag-cloth and rope, trinkets and baubles, lye soap and tallow candles, and about everything else she could imagine. Cull Tarr preachers swapped promises for prayers, and tradesmen from far off Lim-Mistral decorated tables with smooth glass bottles for nighttime luminescence. She caught her reflection in a standing mirror and winced at the sight, the ugly red halo on her face like a permanent bruised eye.

  Keela barked, and Catling scampered to catch up. She followed her mother past wagons from outlying farms where crofters peddled wooden cups and bowls, pigs and squawking chickens, and mountains of vegetables. Farm women sold swollen berries, sticky sweets, and loaves of bread. Butchers tended smoky braziers of greasy meat and filled baskets with crisp tarts. Keela kept walking, and Catling didn’t dare tug on her skirt.

  High Ward Algar’s hangings took place at the far side opposite from the Blackwater, no room on the riverside for the crowds. Keela veered toward a table selling honeyed lucky cakes and fussed over the selections at one corner. Catling squirmed through the crowd to the table’s other end. When her mother leaned toward the baker and cooed in his ear, Catling nabbed a cake. Keela stroked the man’s cheek and waltzed into the stream of people. She took a dozen steps and halted, waiting for Catling to catch up.

  “Good girl.” Keela accepted the cake. She broke it in two and offered the smaller half to Catling, paused, and handed her the larger one. “Our last day, you know,” she said with a crooked smile and then continued through the crowd.

 
Her mother had mentioned “last day” for the five days up to Brightest Night, and Catling figured something important was bound to happen one of these last days. Whether it would prove a good thing or a bad one, she couldn’t guess. Since she kept all her words locked in her head, she never asked.

  Catling’s hands trembled as they cupped the lucky cake, a sweet treat tastier than a meat pie. She trailed Keela, stuffing the cake into her mouth until her cheeks puffed out like a river rat’s. The hangings had already begun by the time she climbed on the stone wall and licked her fingers.

  “You stay put,” Keela warned before sauntering off. “I got arrangements to make and a few dainties to buy for my new start.”

  Catling wiped her mouth on her sleeve, throat dirt-dry in the midday heat. From where she dawdled, she caught a fine view of the crowded market and first tier where they stretched the necks. The warrens were surely empty with the people laughing, eating, and carrying on across the pavers. A smile tickled her lips for no reason at all except the general happiness filling the air. The influencers made everyone forget their worries for hanging day.

  The bodies of two Farlanders already swayed from the tier, their heads at odd angles, bloated faces plum purple, and eyes bulging like bottom-suckers. Their swollen tongues hung from yawning mouths, and they’d messed themselves, but nobody cared. The crowd by the corpses had already picked their pockets clean of the coppers High Ward Algar planted there. Catling had once found a whole copper stuck between a pair of pavers and buried in dirt three days past hanging day. That one she’d buried behind the wall on which she loafed. No one would find it there, ever, a thought that bubbled with joy.

  The start of another hanging stirred the crowd. High above the market, two influencers stood at the tier’s edge, a man and woman wearing knee-length blue jackets and wide belts. Catling’s hand covered her good eye, and she focused on the pair. A thin coverlet of influence wavered into her vision, veiling the market and touching all within the couple’s view. She imagined it as blue and green, or a blend of hues interwoven… if it had colors at all. The blanket of influence embraced her as soft and comforting as newly carded wool.