Oathbreakers' Guild (The Rose Shield Book 2) Page 17

  “Leaving your girl’s never easy.” Tavor sat on a crate, cleaning dirt from his fingernails with the tip of his knife.

  “She’s not my girl.” Whitt glanced at him before swiveling back to the receding delta. Once, maybe, when they were children snuggling in the hayloft, but their paths had strayed to the opposite ends of Ellegeance, their oaths cleaving them in two. She was an influencer and shield, bound to the queen. He was a guardian, proud of the place he’d carved for himself in the south.

  He settled beside Tavor on the crate. “I wish we’d learned more about the influencer who attacked her.”

  “Their guild will handle it. And a dead woman’s no threat to her unless they’ve figured out how to heal death.”

  “Catling died,” Whitt reminded him.

  “Not dead enough, I reckon.” Tabor wiped his blade on his trousers and switched hands. “When you get to be my age, Whitt, you learn there’s a whole lot you can’t do nothing about and not every misery means you failed. You weigh your choices when you get them, decide what your human soul can live with, and don’t cross the line.”

  “How old are you anyway?” Whitt asked.

  “Thirty or so,” Tavor replied. “I lost count.”

  If Tavor was thirty, Whitt was a toddler. “When did you lose your hair?”

  “The year I turned ten.” The hawk-nosed man elbowed him. “You’re only as old as your prod says you are and mine says I’m thirty.”

  Whitt chuckled before a whiff of pipe smoke wrinkled his nose.

  “Whitt.” Jagur’s voice.

  “Commander.” Whitt stood and bowed.

  “Tavor, you too.” Jagur gestured toward his table where the ever-serious Cale stood at attention, brown curls cropped above her ears. A merchant’s daughter, Cale had joined Guardian ten years ago as an alternative to hanging for theft in Nor-Bis. The Merchant Guild had flayed the inked cross from the back of her hand and ordered her never to return. Cale hadn’t once admitted guilt, and she’d proved a skillful warrior if somewhat full of herself.

  The commander appropriated the only chair, and Whitt settled on one of three crates serving as seats for everyone else. Pipe smoke blew directly up his nose, and he coughed.

  Jagur raised a bushy eyebrow and ignored Whitt’s commentary. “The queen isn’t wrong to be concerned about this business in the tiers, and we’d be wise to get a firsthand view before we decide it takes second place to the trouble in the Far Wolds. We can’t handle a war up here while we’re down there with our thumbs up our asses. And I don’t need a flouncy pipsqueak wagging her finger in my face and pointing it out.”

  Whitt developed a sudden itch in his eye that wanted scratching, and Cale stared at the deck, her face twitching. Tavor snorted, and Whitt couldn’t hold his laugh. Cale cracked a rare grin.

  The commander puffed on his pipe, looking pleased with himself. “You three are going to do a little reconnaissance. I figure we’ll drop you at the West Canal and you’ll see your way to Bes-Strea. Work your way east to Lim-Mistral, and visit our friend Algar before backtracking your way home. Cale and Tavor can work the tier guards, representing Guardian. You”—he pointed his pipe at Whitt—“are our eyes and ears in the warrens.”

  “When you want us back south, Commander?” Cale asked in her Nor-Bis drawl.

  Jagur let a stream of smoke blow from the side of his mouth. Whitt didn’t usually mind the fragrance of pipe smoke, but the Ellegean weed filling the commander’s bowl smelled like a blend of pine and piss. It stung his eyes and he coughed.

  “Ever think to move out of the way?” Jagur asked him.

  “Yes, Sir,” Whitt replied and stayed in his seat.

  “Send a report by the end of Harvest,” Jagur answered the question. “Not a lot of leeway with travel, but if we need to send warriors to keep the peace, we’ll get them in motion before the ice sets in. If the tiers are planning some treachery, they might wait until Guardian is neck deep in snow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Whitt strolled Bes-Strea’s first tier market, keeping an eye out for Cale and Tavor. The tier city jutted from the ground at the convergence of the West Canal and the Fargrove River that coursed from the snow-capped Fangwold through Dar-Callin. The wildcat river grew fat and lazy with the flow from the canal and swept down to Nor-Bis where it emptied into the Cull Sea.

  The hub of western commerce, Bes-Strea bustled. Whitt glanced over the rail, scanning the crowd below for Tavor’s bald pate. The rambling warrens’ market bordered the waterway where a long quay fringed with stubby docks coped with the churning river traffic. Farther south, the arable land boasted a patchwork of farms. Crofters wheeled mule-drawn carts to the market’s sprawl, delivering Harvest’s ripe produce and fattened livestock for shipment to the waterlogged cities of Ava-Grea and Elan-Sia.

  He walked along the promenade until he spied his two companions at an outdoor table, heads bent in conversation over three cups of spike. They’d stashed their armor and Guardian greens, passing as a pair of tradecrafters enjoying the spoils of their labor. Cale had loosened up considerably, a result of too much time in Tavor’s company. She’d donned a calf-length jacket over soft leather boots, and Tavor wore a sweaty shirt, his jacket draped over a chair despite the chill in the air.

  Whitt wiped his hands on the riverman’s cuffed trousers he’d acquired on the trip down the canal. He spun a chair from a vacant table and straddled it with his forearms resting on the back. For three days, they’d been infiltrating the tier city and the time had arrived to decide whether they should stay another night or move on to Lim-Mistral.

  The bald guardian slid a cup his way. “The queen’s got her hands full here.”

  Cale leaned in, keeping her voice down, “Rumor tells she’s drowning in a troubled sea. They’re saying she can’t keep a firm hand on the realm. The tier guards are shy when it comes to plans, but they heard the Farlanders are crying mutiny, and the Cull Tarr are cozying on Elan-Sia.”

  “A bit of truth there,” Whitt said. “At least regarding the Wolds.”

  Tavor tipped back a cup and shivered as the spike burned his throat. “We think High Wardess Sianna has her eye on western Ellegeance.”

  Cale quirked her lips. “I paid for a taste of gossip from the tradecrafters. Ask a metalsmith if you ever want the early word on a high ward’s ambitions. They got iron coming down from Mur-Vallis for weapons. We think Sianna’s itching for Nor-Bis.”

  “Nor-Bis?” Whitt frowned. “Are you certain? She’s ambitious.”

  “Put a pitcher of tipple in a tier guard’s belly and his mouth unhinges.” Cale tapped her fingertips on her cup. “Heard tier guards talk about Nor-Bis as if they plan to loot the place. Dar-Callin’s next if you want my thinking.”

  Tavor cracked his knuckles. “Sianna’s planning to fragment the kingdom. Most likely with Lim-Mistral ruling the east and Mur-Vallis claiming the south. They’re in it together, Whitt. They’ll make Guardian choose a battlefield or divide us up and sap our strength. Then they’ll join forces against the queen.”

  The information fitted with what he’d observed in the warrens, though no one he’d befriended seemed aware of any grander scheme. “Sianna’s placating the warrens. This time last year, they were pounding on her door, slamming the tiers with demands, and threatening to close the markets and docks. She went straight to the underlords with trunks full of copper. I’d be surprised to find an able-bodied man who isn’t jingling her coins in his pocket.”

  Tavor sat back. “She solved her problem and built herself an army at the same time.”

  “Not an army—a mob.” His spike untasted, Whitt swung out of his seat. “Time to send a dove and leave for Lim-Mistral.”

  ***

  Darkest Night had come and gone on the East Canal. Whitt stood on the docks of Lim-Mistral, leaning on his staff and gazing up at the tiers. Like Bes-Strea, the city thrived on canal traffic. The sprawling warrens market abutted the Wiseling River and stretched all the way to
the tier’s ramp, its pavers strewn with stalls and wagons. Braziers steamed with ciders and greasy meats, and pens of bleating livestock added to the noise and miasma of smells.

  A narrow, deep twister of luminescence, the Wiseling couldn’t support commerce upstream of the waterways’ convergence. In Lim-Mistral, it swelled with the canal’s flow and streamed north past Rho-Dania before draining into the Cull Sea. The city’s modest height reminded Whitt of Mur-Vallis though far less shabby.

  “So this is Lim-Mistral,” Cale said. She and Tavor climbed from the barge to stand beside him, both in their greens and leather armor.

  “The captain said no one enters the tiers without a guild inking,” Whitt informed them. “As guardians, you’ll draw notice. What’s your reason for being here?”

  Cale narrowed her eyes. “We’re scouting for Guardian. Heard Cull Tarr preachers are spying for the Shiplord in the east.”

  “That might actually prove true.” Whitt scratched the growing scruff on his jaw. “Be careful. We’ll meet in two days on the docks. If you need me, find the Craftsman’s Cup. According to the crew, it’s a tipple house somewhere in the warrens where I should survive the night.”

  “Take care yourself, Whitt.” Cale punched his shoulder and grabbed her pack. Tavor gave him a nod, and the two of them headed into the market crowd. Whitt watched until they disappeared up the ramp to the first tier. He slung his gear over his shoulder and wandered into the warrens.

  Once his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he took stock. If Lim-Mistral’s underworld resembled the warrens of Mur-Vallis, the underlords would claim the core, and the back side nearest the trenches would house the most wretched of the poor. The shadows bordering the markets would be jammed with tipple houses and rooms for travelers unworthy of the tiers’ refinement.

  The Craftsman’s Cup lay in ruins, the damage recent if he counted the splinters of stained glass glinting in the dim light. Lim-Mistral was renowned for its glassworks and ceramics, and the pile of shards swept into a corner hadn’t come cheaply. He strode to the bar and raised two fingers to the barkeep who filled wooden cups with tipple. “I’m seeking a man named Jons.”

  “Dead,” the aproned man replied without glancing up.

  Whitt paused; so much for that lead. He tried again. “I don’t suppose you have any rooms.” He slid a half-silver onto the bar.

  The barkeep noticed. “Let me deliver these, and I’ll see what I can do.” The man unloaded the tray onto one of the tables and returned to his place behind the bar, wiping thick hands on his apron.

  Whitt slid the coin out of the man’s reach. “A room and information.”

  “The room I have. The information depends.”

  “What happened to Jons?”

  “That I can tell you,” the man replied. “Look around. Guards figured they had a right to bust the place up; killed Jons and three others. Dragged another four out, and we haven’t seen them since.”

  “Why?”

  He eyed the silver and leaned in. “Talk about the warrens rising up and demanding a voice. Not that I agree, mind you, talk is just talk.”

  “I thought High Ward Manus might be stirring things up.”

  The barkeep hesitated, and Whitt added a second split-silver to the first. The man lowered his voice, “Not in Lim-Mistral. Here, Manus is paying for compliance. That’s why any whiff of rebellion gets us ground to dust—ruining his investment. I’ll tell you where he wants the warrens riled up. Rho-Dania.”

  “Manus is funneling coin into Rho-Dania?”

  The barkeep filled a mug of tipple and slid it over. “He’s offering the warrens their future freedoms for allegiance to Lim-Mistral.”

  Whitt took a swig of the drink and mulled over the news. Manus employed a similar strategy to Sianna: quelling his own warrens while undermining his northern neighbor. Whitt didn’t want to witness the fallout when Manus let the warrens loose on Rho-Dania’s tiers.

  “The man who’s preaching against the tiers,” Whitt asked. “Is he Cull Tarr?”

  The barkeep barked a laugh. “Not if the sun rises. The fellow has no use for them. He’s pure Ellegean.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I’d tell you, but I’d rather not add my name to the list of dead.” The man eyed the coins. “Hand over that silver, and I’ll let him know you’re interested.”

  Whitt slid the coins across the bar. “Tell him Whitt is looking for him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Whitt ventured deeper into the warrens’ gloom than the tier guards would risk, and he stayed clear of the underlords’ dens. More copper circulated in the cool shadows of Lim-Mistral than he’d encountered in Bes-Strea, most of it seeming to amass in the pockets of a few. Anyone with a wad of muscle and a knife at his belt led a gang charged with keeping the peace. More often than not, they picked fights with their competitors, every one of them tippled to the eyebrows. Pummeled faces and shattered furniture littered their wakes.

  He avoided trouble, dropping coppers in search of Gannon, a man decidedly alive and a name disclosed more frequently than the barkeep implied. Eight years had passed since Gannon had whisked Catling to Mur-Vallis to rattle Algar, and that one reckless act branded him the catalyst for most of Whitt’s problems.

  Twice, he’d missed him, and it was time for some luck. The Spiked Barrel didn’t lie deep within the warrens but huddled near the trenches. The reek of sewage, rotting food, and sweaty flesh was spectacular, and Whitt’s eyes watered. He located a table in the corner and ordered a spike, watering it down to preserve his senses. He’d swapped his riverman’s attire for faded trousers, a frayed jacket, and scuffed boots. His hair had grown an inch, and he hoped the ratty whiskers on his chin would add toughness to his seventeen years. The sturdy staff leaning against the wall at his elbow enhanced his overall charm.

  The tavern filled as evening fell, whether more crowded than usual Whitt had no way to compare. Gannon stood near the bar, a foot propped on the seat of a chair, hands on his hips. Four men sat at a table to his right, three of them strangers. The fourth Whitt recognized—Tiler, the hefty enforcer from Mur-Vallis.

  Gannon continued regaling his listeners with a description of his year with the Cull Tarr. “It didn’t matter that I was Ellegean. Or that I was indentured or hadn’t a clue about the sea or how to sail; I had a vote. My word counted as much as any of the other bastards’ words on that bucket. My vote counted the same as the shipmaster’s. I could call a vote and say my piece, and per Cull Tarr Protocols, they needed to vote on it. And when I won, they honored it.”

  “You a Cull Tarr bugger?” someone shouted to a round of laughter.

  Gannon didn’t seem to think the comment worth more than a grin. “In Mur-Vallis, I tried forming an alliance with the Cull Tarr. They preached in the warrens’ markets and in the tiers, just as they do here. Why not? They had an audience; I had a message. The tier wards tolerate them, fond of their sermons of entitlement. I’m partial to their message of revolution.”

  He rubbed his jaw and scanned the room, his gaze pausing for a heartbeat on Whitt. “I arranged a meeting, much like this. The preachers never showed. Instead, influencers and tier guards paid us a visit. They killed six of us and hung nine the next morning. The Cull Tarr swore the Founders’ intervened against us. They claimed that the gods disapproved of our mission, that we failed to demonstrate a true belief in the Protocols and were unworthy of their protection. I am done with the Cull Tarr.”

  From the bar behind him, he grabbed his cup and tipped back a swallow. “They can keep their gods: I want their vote.”

  His gaze shifted again to Whitt before moving on. “Manus puts coins in your pockets and life feels fine, like things are changing in the warrens. Sianna does the same, bribing men and women for their compliance, paying us to stay where we are and not ask for more.”

  Gannon paused when six new faces ambled into the bar. Whitt had a good view, his back to the wall, the hair on his neck standing at attenti
on. Whether they were guards or enforcers, their presence by the door stirred a murmur of trepidation from the folks at the tables. Gannon glanced at Tiler and then raised his voice to the crowd. “When they’ve used us up for their ambitions, we’re back to the warrens, back to the same tragic tales for ourselves and our children. Manus and Sianna plan to pit us warrens against warrens for their political aims. We’re going to fight their battles for nothing and die for nothing when we should be fighting for ourselves and each other.”

  At his last word, the men supporting Gannon pounded their cups on the table and hooted their approval. The Spiked Barrel’s customers joined the chorus while Gannon spun and dodged behind the bar. Before Whitt could react, Tiler and his companions lurched to their feet. Their table flew toward the group at the door. The barkeep cursed and shouted threats, but too late to stop a chair from splintering against the bar. Tiler and his crew stampeded for the men at the door who met them halfway.

  Whitt grabbed his staff and rapped the head of a giant too eager to pull a knife. “Gannon!”

  Gannon glanced his way before Tiler grabbed him by the collar and thrust him out the door.

  Stuck in a corner, Whitt sighed. He hadn’t the clearance to fight effectively, but his stick was an adequate deterrent to anyone with thoughts in that direction. He thrust with the blunt end, thumping the chest of a bearded man who used a chair leg as a club. The staff swung low, and a wiry fellow landed flat on his back. Whitt edged along the bar, keeping clear of the chaos. He tossed a silver coin to the red-faced barkeep who snatched it from the air and knocked a man over the head with a bottle.

  Gannon’s companions had fled, and the fight swiftly dwindled to a dozen bruised and bloodied bodies landing punches. Whitt slipped into the alley and wrinkled his nose at a fresh whiff of the trenches. The shouts of a new battle decided his direction—toward the noise and stench, staff gripped for a fight. He dashed down the alley to the first intersection and slowed to peer around the corner. Gannon, Tiler, and one of their companions were still on their feet, but they faced four opponents, all armed with blades. Whitt sucked in a breath, prepared to even the score, and hooked the corner.