Oathbreakers' Guild (The Rose Shield Book 2) Read online

  His face dark with fury, Algar stood as if chiseled of stone. He turned to Kadan who could do nothing but meet his eyes, his influence ineffective. The High Ward’s gaze returned to the queen and then rose to Catling. His loathing spilled into the air, undisguised, murderous. The pieces fit together perfectly as she expected they would. He guessed her secret, knew she had disrupted the influence in Mur-Vallis long ago and foiled him now.

  Oaron-Elan cleared his throat. “If there’s nothing more…”

  “There is nothing more, Your Grace.” Algar bowed to the queen. “We will depart in the morning for Mur-Vallis.”

  Lelaine drained her wine. “Your loyalty and concern for the realm did not go unnoticed, Algar-Mur. Safe travels on your return to your home.”

  ***

  Rattled by her encounter with Algar, Catling hurried through the dark. Clio waxed full, a gold medallion suspended among the stars. Blue Misanda and pink Sogul were crescents tiptoeing across the waves. The Harvest night swooned, and despite the lingering heat, she shivered as the sea breeze caressed her cheek.

  She hadn’t talked to Kadan, and the thought of seeking him and by chance encountering Algar set her nerves on edge. Fear prevented her from venturing home until Lelaine shooed her from the royal quarters. “Stab him with your influence and be done with it,” Lelaine had suggested with a tipsy laugh.

  The recommendation was all well and good unless Algar cut her throat first. Would he? She shuddered and raced down the spiraling stairs to the eighteenth tier. In the corner of her eye, a shadow shifted and she shrieked.

  “It’s me,” Kadan whispered. He stepped into the moonlight, a finger to his lips. He grabbed her hand and pulled her from the bottom step into the upper tier’s shadow.

  “You frightened me, Kadan-Mur.” Her heart pounded as she patted her chest.

  “My apologies.” He kissed her. “Where are your rooms?”

  She blinked at him, the kiss unexpected but not unwelcome. “This way.” They ducked into the lanes, staying clear of the visitors’ quarters. Catling tapped the panel outside her door and yanked him into her salon the moment it slid open. She blew out a breath when it whispered closed behind them.

  Alone, they faced each other, the awkwardness drawing her smile. Kadan reached in a pocket of his jacket and withdrew a flask. “Spike. In honor of our innocence and our nights at the Bottled Sage.”

  Per Lelaine’s order, Catling had agreed not to drink, but she hadn’t sworn a vow that she remembered. She produced two goblets and poured while Kadan dragged two chairs up to a small table. They sat knee to knee across from each other, chimed their glasses together, and tipped their heads, draining the fiery liquid with a laugh.

  She refilled the goblets, and before they drank, she touched his hand “I’m so sorry, Kadan. I apologize for influencing you, for shielding, for angering your uncle, for how hard your life must be. But I’m thrilled to see you, happy that you’ll be high ward one day.”

  The disquiet in his eyes belied his smile. “That day is many years from now.”

  “Because of what happened today?”

  “Yes and no. I had no illusion regarding the outcome. My uncle is blind to his ambitions and incapable of perceiving a reality beyond his walls. I’m his influencer, among others. I carry out his… version of justice.”

  “The hangings?” she asked, hoping it wasn’t so.

  “To better days ahead.” He raised his glass.

  She clinked her rim to his, and they swallowed the drinks down. “My first order from the heiress was to kill the king,” she said, desperate to share her trials with someone who would understand. “Our lives are not our own, Kadan.”

  “Tonight they are.” He poured another round, turned the flask upside down, and shook out the last drips.

  “To… our own lives.” Catling tipped up her glass and watched Kadan do the same. She smiled, her body relaxed and head floating. They knew each other, understood what they each endured. Vianne said influencers couldn’t trust enough to share a life, couldn’t resist the urge to sway another to their will. Catling mistrusted Vianne, wary of the doyen’s hidden designs, but she was realistic. Life had taught her that nothing of value lasts for long.

  She leaned forward, a hand sliding to the back of his neck, eyes closed and lips parted. “What shall we do now?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gannon slapped a handful of copper on the table, motioning for Mostin to finish up. The way Gannon’s skin slithered over his bones, he would have sworn it was Darkest Night. Yet the Winterchill moons glided among the stars, mid-season long weeks away.

  The Se-Vien warrens proved scarcely safer than those of Mur-Vallis. The tipple houses rested beneath the underlords’ thumbs, and the chain of command snaked its way up the tiers. None of the tier cities he’d infiltrated hung their citizens with the frequency of Mur-Vallis, but they did a fine job preventing the folk from treading up their polished stairs.

  “Why in such a hurry?” Mostin swigged a thimble-sized cup of spike that made his eyes water. The man looked out of place: slender, convincingly aristocratic in bearing, and deft with an assortment of throwing blades.

  “A feeling.” Gannon itched to move. An eerie sense of ill-being kept him peering over his shoulder, and he’d learned the hard way to trust his instincts. When he didn’t, someone usually ended up dead.

  “Time for a fresh view?” Mostin asked. “Where to? Ava-Grea? Rho-Dania? I recommend somewhere without snow.”

  “Ava-Grea doesn’t have warrens, and I’m not going back there. Ever.” His imprisonment and escape were nothing he wished to repeat. The only good that had come of it was learning to read, a pastime he missed with all the recent gallivanting through Ellegeance.

  The barkeep glanced his way for the twentieth time, and three muscled hulks at a table by the wall couldn’t hide their interest if they wanted to. He assumed they were enforcers, and if so, their presence didn’t bode well.

  He flashed three fingers in Mostin’s direction, eyes flickering over the man’s shoulder. The warning delivered, Gannon pushed back his chair and walked out, Mostin two steps behind him. As soon as they hit the alley, they broke into a run. Neither of them knew the Se-Vien warrens well, but as long as they avoided a dead end, Gannon didn’t waste his energy worrying about where his feet led him.

  “Ready?” He careened around a corner and flattened against the wall. The ornate dagger he’d commandeered from Vianne shook in his sweaty fist. Mostin jogged a few paces farther and turned, throwing knives twinkling in his hands.

  The enforcers stampeded around the corner. Mostin’s blades flashed, stabbing the first man in his throat, the second in the shoulder, an unfortunate miss slowing the charge all of a heartbeat. The blade in the throat had struck true. Blood gouted over the enforcer’s fingers and glommed from his mouth with gurgling breaths. The gore brought the third man up short, convincing him to turn and run.

  Gannon leapt from the wall, aiming a swipe at the man with the bleeding shoulder. His attack missed when the brute’s forearm smashed down on his wrist and a ham-sized fist slammed into his cheek. He did what he always did when things weren’t going his way: crumpled to a knee and gave up. As expected, the enforcer stepped forward, intending to pound his lights out. Gannon lunged and the dagger bit, scraping up under the ribs for the heart.

  The man staggered, wide-eyed shock dropping his jaw. His body wilted and slumped, dead weight knocking Gannon to his rump and soaking him in blood. He shoved the corpse off and got his feet under him, swallowing his gorge.

  “Are you hurt?” Mostin asked.

  “Not enough to matter.” The inside of his mouth bled, but otherwise, he was intact. He spat and glanced at his companion, the polished man unblemished by blood, his brown waves perfectly tousled. “We need to warn the others.”

  Gannon stripped off his jacket, wiped the blood from his face and hands with his shirt, and tossed the rag onto the dead man. He and Mostin loped to the warrens’
outer rim and into the Winterchill night. A coverlet of downy snow draped the market, hiding the day’s layer of trampled slush. They followed the city’s circumference to get their bearings and crept beneath the tier into friendly territory if such still existed.

  The crew lurched to their feet when Gannon entered the stuffy room, Mostin edging in behind him. Nathran’s back hit the wall. “It’s true then.” The young man shut the door and bolted them in.

  “What’s true?” Gannon went straight for a pitcher of water and filled a basin. The rented room stank of unwashed bodies, spilled tipple, and a smoky lantern.

  “Contract on your head.” Kamas sank to his seat on a straw mat. The old man boasted an enforcer’s build with scars on both cheeks, one from a scrap in Bes-Strea and the other added for symmetry. His face took some getting used to. “The tier wards and underlords don’t like your meddling.”

  Gannon splashed the smears of dried blood from his face and hands. He’d been traveling the northern cities, organizing the warrens against tier wards and underlords alike, both parties enriched by maintaining a hierarchy of fear, wealth, and control. He’d enjoyed some luck building alliances and assembling a core of believers. In most tier cities, he’d left behind a spark of enthusiasm, the poor advocating for themselves. He’d also left many of them to their deaths.

  “Sounds like it’s time to run,” Caelly said. She stood beside Devlan, his arm draped over her shoulders. He kissed her cheek and she giggled. “Dev and I will hire us a boat.”

  “Where to next?” Devlan asked. “We’re running out of cities.”

  “We’re splitting up.” Gannon scrubbed his dark curls dry with a rag and tossed it to a corner.

  Kamas grunted from his mat and Nathran’s face twisted. “Now, Gan—”

  “I’m going alone.” Gannon faced them, hands on his hips.

  “And what do we do. Just sit?” Devlan leaned against a wall, dragging Caelly with him.

  “You’re returning to your cities.” Gannon wrestled on a clean shirt. “We need to keep up the pressure, bring more people to our side. Every time we disappear, our progress backslides. You all have homes with plenty of connections, where you know and trust the players. Change isn’t going to happen overnight.”

  “Where are you going?” Caelly asked with a pout.

  “Home. Mur-Vallis.”

  ***

  The barge thumped the pier in Mur-Vallis, and the rivermaster released the waterdragons. They’d hauled the craft up the ice-encrusted Blackwater, a harrowing ride if a man had never learned to swim. Gannon climbed to the warped planking, delighted to set foot on something that didn’t rock.

  Kamas strode on his heels. The scarred man made deplorable conversation, and though his permanent snarl left new recruits reconsidering their commitment, he made an adequate bodyguard. Devlan and Caelly hoisted their gear to the pier. Gannon hadn’t invited any of them along but hadn’t complained when they ambled up the Se-Vien docks.

  They’d arrived on Balance. Come nightfall, sun-shadows would carve all three moons into perfect quarters. Any excuse for a hanging in Mur-Vallis. The warrens market between the Blackwater and the tiers bustled, its stalls, tables, and carts basking in the rare Winterchill sun. Riverfolk mingled with the grimy masses from the warrens. Traders and craftsmen hawked their wares between begging twitchers. Guards idled by the ramp to the first tier, and Cull Tarr preachers promised salvation.

  Gannon avoided the guards and wandered the market. He purchased meat pies for his companions, glad for the break from the barge’s unpalatable versions of fish.

  The hangings had begun some time earlier. Six bodies stripped of coin and clothes swayed at the ends of their ropes, bent necks stretched, and faces bloated. On the tier above, High Ward Algar towered near the rim, legs parted and arms crossed, garbed in his customary black, no different than Gannon remembered him.

  Two influencers stood to his right, one a middle-life woman in blue, and the other a tall young man with hair in a neat tail, angular features honing his face. He wore black like Algar, and if Gannon disregarded the light cast to his hair, the man could pass for the high ward’s son.

  A smile broke on Gannon’s face, the pleasure of the sunny market and the familiarity of life in Mur-Vallis tickling his chest. Algar was a brute and yet worthy of respect. The personification of willpower, he was an architect of Ellegean might, openly dedicated and tenacious in achieving his ambitions, a man to be admired and feared.

  Gannon chuckled as two guards led a man and woman from the Far Wolds to the ledge. They reminded him of the rafters in Ava-Grea’s swamps, of Jafe—characteristically towheaded and long-limbed with slanted green eyes. Only the runic scars carving the tall man’s face set them apart, a fearsome practice unique to the land south of the mountains.

  An old sense of disorientation gripped him. He shook his head and blinked, groping for a shard of logic or wisdom. Years ago, he had trained himself to question his emotions. The timeworn habit kicked in, and a brawl brewed between his head and heart.

  This was wrong, dishonest, the sheer brutality driving home the purpose of his return. “This way,” he ordered, waving his companions to the tiers’ shadow, free of the influencers’ sight. Grins faded from their faces as the pleasure bubbling in Gannon’s chest ebbed. He suppressed an urge to vomit.

  Though untouched by the influencers’ sway, he retained a view of the accused. Guards fit nooses around the pale necks and cinched them tight. At Algar’s command, they tied meager sacks of copper coins to the victims’ wrists, treats for the waiting crowd below. The couple’s placid smiles graced the eager throng, and their flaxen locks danced in the wind.

  A justice walked to the tier’s edge and motioned for silence. When the spectators quieted, she began to read. “Tatam of the Far Wolds, age unknown, stands accused of trespass and poaching in the province. He has admitted his guilt and accepted the punishment of death.” The giant southman nodded as the guards inched him toward the tier’s edge. The crowd clapped with delight.

  Kamas growled near Gannon’s ear. The justice raised a hand for attention and read the details of the crime.

  “Not right,” Caelly muttered, “and the preachers don’t help matters either.”

  A Cull Tarr preacher stood on a low stone wall at the market’s edge. Richly dressed, he wore black trousers and the telltale scarlet shirt beneath his long jacket. He’d shaved his black hair from the sides of his head, the rest braided into a ridge that hung down his back.

  “The Farlanders are not of the Founders,” he called over the voice of the justice, the coins on his belt glinting. “The Founders delivered us to this planet to claim it as our own, to conquer its heathens and dominate its beasts, to plunder its riches, reap its harvests, and populate its expanse. We are the descendants of the coupling gods, and in our humility, we follow our forebears’ Protocols or face the consequences of our folly.”

  “Humility,” Gannon huffed. For all the Cull Tarr talk of humility, he’d never met a humble one.

  The body fell, rope springing taut, startling him. The crowd nearest the Farlander’s body surged forward, grappling for the sacks of coins while the spectators in the market cheered.

  “Filching foul,” Devlan murmured, hugging Caelly to his side.

  The justice droned her recitation for the next victim, and the preacher ranted onward, “The three-fingered heretics of the Far Wolds call upon the world’s dark magic to bend it to their alien wills. They master the planet at your loss. Here you stand powerless over your own lives. Who denies you the comforts of the tiers? Who denies you a voice? Why are you without a vote over your own futures? You are not beasts or heathens; you are not criminals; you are no different from they who lord over you.”

  Gannon nodded at the last part of that one, and he knew what came next—confusion.

  The preacher raised his arms in supplication to the stark sun and the Founders wherever they resided. “Bow down in humility. Vote for what is yours and
let the Founders’ blessings sate you, for the rewards of the afterlife are gold to Ellegean iron. Take no arms against the tiers when you are struck down, but trust in the gods who provide you with the daily blessings of life.”

  “So”—Devlan frowned beside him—“are we supposed to rise up or sit tight?”

  “I’m never sure.” Gannon glanced up at the ill-fated woman. Her body dropped and her neck snapped. He canted his head toward the darkness beneath the tier. “I’ve seen enough, and there are some friends I haven’t laid eyes on in a long time.”

  No one complained. He led his party into the warrens, pausing briefly to let his eyes adjust to the dim light. Other than a new wall or two, it looked the same. His life in Mur-Vallis had ended eight years ago with betrayal. Without a doubt, Algar had sold him to the influencers, but he couldn’t say with certainty if anyone else played a part, including Maddox, one of the underlords and his own father. Until he got the answer to that question, he intended to avoid the man altogether.

  The Ship’s Fate lay halfway to the warrens’ core and the underlord’s den. The tipple house had been Gannon’s favorite haunt, known to all by the Cull Tarr figurehead of the coupling gods. How the wreck’s talisman landed in Mur-Vallis lay beyond his imagining, but there it stood, a landmark.

  He stuck his head into the cramped space and scanned the faces, receiving a few raised eyebrows and nods in return. Beyond the wood statue, he caught sight of the man he sought. Tiler creased a seat with his broad back to the door, tufted hair sporting a trace of gray and beefy arms tossing back a tall mug of tipple, three more lined up like obedient children. When he heard the voice, there was no mistaking the man.

  “Captain takes the spanking cockthistles and tosses them off the dock, squealing like piglings.” The two men and one woman sharing his table roared with laughter, and Tiler slapped the surface, rattling their drinks. “Pecking assjackers.”

  Gannon gestured for his companions to wait by the door. He crept toward the table, a finger to his lips as Tiler’s company noticed his approach. With a last lunge, he hooked an arm around Tiler’s neck and squeezed, adding his entire body weight to the pressure.