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

  Whitt waited on the stoop of an unfamiliar farm for a future he couldn’t fathom.

  Close to midday, Abbett’s toothy, beanpole mate hitched up their wagon. Whitt sat stiffly in the bed with Mouser and Daisy, riding home for words at the gravesides. The stead looked the same as any day, except for the faces. The women who emerged from the doorway to greet them carried pink rags and buckets of bloody water. One of Abbett’s grown daughters approached him, a swaddled bundle in her arms.

  “Gussy?” He pressed his lips together as tears welled in his eyes.

  “Found her bawling in her cradle,” the woman said, jostling the infant. “Most likely spared because she’s too young to tell what happened here.”

  Whitt held his sister while the men brushed dirt from their trousers and washed by the well.

  At the field’s edge behind the sheds, six new graves lay in a perfect row. At nine summers old, Whitt felt ancient, weighted down with responsibility he couldn’t bear. His life ripped loose of the world, and guilt pricked his skin like a steel needle. He should have killed the fat influencer, hidden weapons in the stead, distracted the guards while his family escaped. He should have known they’d return.

  Helplessness overwhelmed him. He drifted, forsaken, unable to protect himself or anyone he loved, or rely on the shelter of others. Nothing felt secure; nothing lasted, no one was safe. Scuff was gone. Wenna was gone, his mother, older brothers, and the twins… and Catling.

  After Abbett finished with words, they returned to the summer hearth for a meal of simple food that had come with the wagon. Abbett sat on Wenna’s upturned log, calloused hands clasped and gray hair curling behind his ears. “Whitt, you’re the man of your stead now, and there’s decisions to be made. I’m willing to offer my advice if you’ll have it.”

  Whitt nodded, struggling to hold his body still.

  “We don’t know why this happened, and if I speak the truth, I’d rather you kept your own counsel. Scuff was a kind man, and I don’t like thinking he got on the wrong side of justice or the high ward.”

  Abbett paused to rub his jaw, and when Whitt failed to speak, the man glanced at the young woman holding Gussy. “We’re thinking the little one could stay with Dirva and be raised as hers. No one will know the difference if there’s one more in her brood.”

  “I would take you all,” Dirva said, her eyes fluttering to Whitt’s face before settling on the stones at her feet. “It’s just the guards may be searching for the rest of you.”

  “I have family in Se-Vien could take the three of you.” Abbett pointed a thick finger at Whitt and his sisters. Mouser and Daisy ate on a blanket under the apple tree with two neighbors, the women chatting and distracting Daisy with sweets.

  “Mouser and Daisy can go there,” Whitt said. “You can have the piglings and cow and sell them if you like. And the mule.” His gaze swept the stead, the barn, and sheds. “You can take whatever’s useful.”

  “That’s the offer of a man with dire plans.” The frown on Abbett’s lips reminded Whitt of Scuff when he conjured up words to calm Wenna’s scolding. “It sounds to me as if you got something else in mind for yourself. Can I ask what it might be?”

  Whitt squared his shoulders against the lingering ache. “I’m traveling to Ava-Grea to find my… other sister.”

  “Another one?” Abbett asked.

  “The one with the marked eye,” Dirva reminded him.

  “Ah, that one.” The farmer nodded. “I can’t say I think highly of your notion, Whitt, but I’m agreeable to overseeing your holding for the price of your spring piglings. Until you return, that is. Whenever that day comes.”

  ***

  At dawn the next morning, Whitt kissed his sleeping sisters and left Abbett’s farm, returning to the stead. The quiet home looked orderly, the blood mopped up but the wooden floor forever stained. The few baubles of jewelry Wenna and Zadie had received from Scuff were gone, as was any stash of coins.

  He shuffled to the barn and drew open the wide doors, disturbing a trice of pigeons that roosted in the rafters. For a bleak moment, he considered lighting the straw afire and burning the whole stead to ashes. The finality of the gesture appealed to him, severing his last connection to his home and a host of memories he’d rather forget. Yet, he’d promised its bounty to Abbett, and the farmer would see his sisters safe.

  Dust motes floated across the slanted shafts of morning sun as he climbed to the loft. He dug in the hay at the rear corner, unearthing Catling’s precious sack of coppers, recalling his promise to keep her treasure safe. The coins spilled into his hand along with a wooden waterdragon. For a few quiet heartbeats, he studied the intricate carving and then gently placed it back in the sack under the hay. With far less reverence he counted the coins—the split, chipped, half and whole coppers. Using the sharp corner of a split coin, he scraped his tally into a post. As he tied the sack to the belt of his trousers, he broke his promise. He needed them for fare to Ava-Grea.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Catling sat on a crate at the ferry’s bow, her gaze on the river ahead. She refused to glance back at the forests and distant mountains that formed the jagged backdrop to her home. Luminescence swirled at the prow and purled along the hull, iridescent colors capturing the sunlight in ribbons of ruby, topaz, and sapphire.

  In the tiers of Se-Vien, Vianne had given her a meticulous scrubbing in a hot bath, turning the water to a murky human soup. In her new clothes with her shining hair braided and pinned, she scarcely recognized herself.

  Her body felt weighted, voice lost again to an abyss of silence as she retreated inside. She should smile, exhilarated by the journey, her first on the Blackwater, but any trace of merriment eluded her. The ferry swept northward with the brisk current, the polers and rudderman vigilant for submerged boulders and shallow shoals. Now and then, the boat rocked as an unexpected boulder scraped along the planks, prompting a string of curses from the captain and excuses from the crew.

  Vianne approached her with an offering of food wrapped in an oiled paper, a skin of fresh water hanging by a strap from her elbow. She wore a light cowl woven of camgras to protect her fair complexion from the sun. “May I join you?”

  When Catling failed to respond, the woman sat and offered the wrapped food. Catling accepted it and left it in her lap, unopened.

  “I understand your misery,” Vianne said softly. “You’re not alone, Catling. Some of those you’ll encounter in Ava-Grea were denied choices, others chose influencing out of duty, or because they thought they might wield the power for a better world. Some of us had no inkling of the sacrifices we’d endure even though the choice was our own.”

  The river rolled by and Catling pouted. If Vianne mused about duty and sacrifice as a way to comfort her and ease her worries, the strategy failed.

  Vianne opened her own wrapped meal, sniffed it, and tried a small bite. “I never particularly cared for fish, and I still don’t. Do you?”

  Catling shrugged, usually satisfied with food of any variety. Life in the warrens hadn’t afforded her the luxury of a picky palate. She unfolded the paper and peered at the greasy meal.

  “I’ve grown somewhat cynical in my years,” Vianne continued. “It’s been both a curse and blessing. A curse because I tend toward wariness and trust very few even within my own guild. A blessing, because I’m so often correct in my disappointment and, therefore, make few mistakes.”

  While she ate, Catling watched a riverboat traveling south against the current. The fenfolk rivermasters stood at the bow, and two towlines stretched from the vessel to a pair of harnessed waterdragons. They swam just beneath the surface, scaled heads rising for air with blasts of sparkling spray. One glanced her way, and she shared a hidden smile, wishing she too had winged fins and a flippered tail. She’d swim away from her troubles and live at the bottom of the sea.

  Vianne wrapped the remains of her meal. “Gannon told me what happened.”

  “Gannon?” Catling’s daydream fled as she f
aced the woman.

  “He told me how to find you. He worried that what happened to him might befall you.”

  “Is he… alive?”

  “Of course, Catling.” Vianne smiled. “He told me about the warrens and the hangings. You are a brave child to defy the high ward.”

  Catling’s gaze returned to the river. Foolish was a more fitting word. Only a fool would have believed in Gannon’s vision. She’d made life worse for the warrens and endangered her family.

  “He told me about Keela,” Vianne said.

  “The high ward hung her.” Catling’s fingers rose to the hole in her earlobe, the copper earring lost the day her mother died. She had nothing left of Keela but memories, and they were so blurred by wishes, she questioned whether they were real.

  Vianne’s slender fingers rose to one of her own ears, and she removed a ruby stud. She knelt on the deck before Catling, holding it in her fingertips. “May I?”

  Catling stared at the bright gem, crimson as a drop of blood, as beautiful as anything she’d seen, and she nodded. Vianne leaned forward and gently inserted the earring through her lobe. She sat back on her heels, head at a tilt. “You are a lovely girl, Catling.”

  “My eye,” Catling said, fingers moving from the earring to her flaw, keenly aware of it in contrast to the ruby’s beauty.

  “Someday, you’ll see what they’ve done to my body, and you may not find your own mark so painful to bear.”

  ***

  The Blackwater converged with the Slipsilver that poured down from Kar-Aminia and Guardian, more than doubling the waterway in breadth and river traffic. The current ran swift, and after the first few unavoidable collisions, Vianne ceased panicking. They’d survive if every craft continued to hug the left bank regardless of direction, knowledge the ruddermen seemed to abide by.

  Near midday, she sat at the bow, facing the ferry’s rear, her back to the sun. She held a bobbin of silk thread and tatted a piece of lace, hands flying through a series of tiny knots. The task’s rhythm soothed her and helped her think.

  On the deck by the rail, Catling trailed a hand in the luminescent waters, rippled rainbows streaming from her fanned fingers. The child talked little; a cautiousness that would serve them both well as she learned the rubrics and nuanced boundaries of life within the guild.

  At the same time, Vianne needed to understand the shield and explore its limits, an undertaking that required earning Catling’s trust. She felt for the girl’s losses, but wishing her a different fortune wouldn’t make it so. She would exploit her shield for the realm’s sake because the alternative was the child’s death.

  “I wish to understand what you do,” Vianne said without glancing up from her work, the tone of her voice no more commanding than if she asked about a crane wading in the shallows. “Describe it for me.”

  With a sigh, Catling faced her. “I see the influence as threads, and I cut them.”

  “You see them?” Vianne’s fingers ceased their flurried movement.

  “I imagine I see them,” Catling said. “Through my rose eye.”

  “Ah.” Vianne assumed she meant the birth-marked eye, the one feature overpowering all the others. “How do you sever them?”

  “I snip them.”

  Vianne resumed her lacework. “At the sender or at the receiver?”

  After a thoughtful pause, Catling answered, “The receiver.”

  “One at a time or all at once?”

  “One at a time, but I’m quick.” Catling smiled. “Gannon made me practice.”

  “What else did you practice?”

  Her eyes closed, Catling tipped her head back in thought. “Logic. Separating what I know from what I feel.”

  The lace rested in Vianne’s lap as she considered the girl’s statement. “Why, when you can simply shield yourself?”

  Catling leaned over the ferry’s edge, once again trailing her fingers in the river. A school of sleek blackfins darted upstream to spawn. “I can’t shield myself and others at the same time.”

  The revelation silenced Vianne’s questions as her thoughts picked through the implications. The idea of a child blocking influence while under its spell prickled her skin, rife with untold dangers. She would have to consider her steps with greater care.

  She delicately brushed influence over the girl, swaying her emotions with a trace of contentment. Catling began to hum as her fingers played in the luminescence. Vianne let it fade while adding physical discomfort, a sensory impression of constriction and heat. Catling tugged at her clothing and fanned herself, unaware of its presence.

  Intrigued, Vianne kept her eyes on her tatting while intensifying the discomfort. Catling scrambled to her feet, grumbled about her clothing, and unbuttoned her jacket. Vianne ratcheted up the distress, wondering when the girl would notice. Catling wiped her forehead, then swung toward Vianne and stiffened. She buttoned up her jacket. In the corner of her eye, Vianne spied the narrow-eyed scowl, her influence apparently severed.

  Before Catling could speak, Vianne held up a finger and smiled. “One last experiment.”

  Catling frowned at her but nodded.

  “Someone aboard this ferry is about to experience a terrible headache. I want you to shield him.”

  Standing at the bow, Catling turned for a view of the ferry’s length. Vianne picked two men, the captain and the rudderman. She hit the captain harder. He squinted and pressed his fingers to his temples, staggering a step to grab the rail. In a blink of her eye, his expression changed to one of bafflement, and he straightened. The rudderman rubbed his forehead and rolled his neck. Then he too resumed his duties without a sign of further distress.

  “You discovered them quickly,” Vianne said with a satisfied smile. “Interesting.”

  “Pain isn’t difficult to spot.”

  “True,” Vianne conceded. “Love and pleasure are expressed more inwardly.” She considered testing Catling’s assertion that she couldn’t shield herself and another simultaneously but decided against it. That would come with time.

  “Gannon never tricked me,” Catling said, her hands in fists.

  “Trickery wasn’t my intention.” Vianne met the girl’s amber eyes. “My regrets. I wished only to explore your skill, such as it is. I promise no further duplicity on my part. We shall test your skills and stretch them if possible, but we shall do it without deceit. Agreed?”

  Catling paused before answering, “Yes.”

  “I need your trust and loyalty,” Vianne said. “And you need mine if you wish to survive.”

  ***

  Blue Misanda shone a quarter full. Though a gibbous moon, pink Sogul dominated the night, hooked by Clio’s gold crescent. Vianne said they would arrive in Ava-Grea when Misanda waxed full, still days away.

  Catling sat alone at the bow, the cabin too cramped for all but sleeping. Glass lanterns trimmed the rail, glowing with luminescence, and the river glimmered brighter than the moons.

  A bowl in each hand, Qeyon walked gingerly across the deck. Catling had avoided him, blaming him for her betrayal. She looked up when he halted before her. Since leaving the waystation, his shaved head had acquired a tawny haze, the swirling blue runes carved into his scalp still visible but less so. He offered her a steaming bowl. “Fish?”

  “Thank you, Qeyon-Ava.” She bowed her head, practicing her manners per Vianne’s insistence. According to Vianne, Qeyon would train her in reading, script, geography, history, and politics—a daunting list that made her head swim with more dreams of flight.

  The bowl resting on her knees, she purposefully slurped the fishy stew from her spoon. Qeyon smiled and sat beside her without comment. “Have you any questions about what’s to come?”

  Catling contemplated the vast array of questions plugging up her thoughts. She knew nothing of Ava-Grea or the Influencers’ Guild, let alone where she would sleep and eat. Never had she lived on a tier, sat through a lesson, or played with children of status. She barely knew how to dress herself. “No.” />
  “I see.” Qeyon sipped a few spoonfuls of hot stew. He extracted a wedge of bread from a pocket, broke it, and offered her half. He seemed content to sit beside her in silence.

  Catling slurped evermore loudly, unable to stir his notice. “Can you do what Vianne does?” she asked when it became clear he would endure her poor manners.

  “To an extent,” he replied. “Influencers are human; our talents vary. Some have no desire to master all our skills. Others, despite their aspirations, never achieve higher levels of competency.” He paused for a quiet bite of stew. “The doyen train aspirants in all forms of influence, but we tend to specialize. The guild consensus is that each person possesses a degree of natural aptitude, but specialization is personal, based on temperament and interest.”

  “You chose to be an emotive?” Catling asked, chewing with her mouth open.

  “I did.” Qeyon smiled. “I’m interested in the way love shapes decisions.”

  “Not real love,” she argued.

  “Admittedly not.” He set his bowl aside. “But what if we could use influenced love to forestall a real war? Influenced compassion to further genuine negotiations?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Who says we don’t?” He chuckled. “No one likes their emotions manipulated. Even for a just cause.”

  “If you influence love, you also can make someone afraid.”

  “The feelings lie at the opposite ends of my spectrum,” he confessed. “Just as sensorists run the scale between ecstasy and agony, and mercys have power over health, illness, healing, and death. With effort, I can rouse terror, but I don’t enjoy it.”

  Catling studied the man, the shades of blue in his skin and clothing, the wistful reflection of luminescence in his blue eyes. She hadn’t expected the tangle of emotions from one who toyed with something so intimate as another’s heart. The details of influencing were more complex than she’d thought.