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

  The aspirants watching the spectacle paled and several retched. Her own gorge rose to the back of her throat, and she swallowed it down. She stood there, a pillar, the doyen unified in discipline. Would Kadan assume she wielded the harshest influence against him? It wouldn’t surprise her in the least.

  His body shook in a death throe. He collapsed, hands sliding from the crossbar’s loops as he dropped to the thick straw that reeked of vomit and urine. Tunvise rose slowly and hobbled over to the crumpled body, laid a hand on Kadan’s head, and assured Dalcoran that he lived.

  “You are dismissed,” Dalcoran announced, and the assembly of aspirants filed out from the hall in crypt-like silence. He motioned to two guards. “Take him to his room and secure his door.”

  “I shall accompany them,” Tunvise said, straightening his stiff back. “I’ve had my fill for one day.”

  Dalcoran shook his head. “We must discuss Vianne’s further defiance, doyen. You must stay.”

  The old man eyed the whip, and with a nod, shuffled to his stool. The guards slung Kadan’s body between them and shambled out. Two servants scurried in, raked back the soiled straw, and scattered a new layer beneath the crossbar before fleeing.

  “Do you wish to have a witness?” Dalcoran asked her.

  A witness would ensure the punishment remained within bounds of the penalty. Vianne glanced at Tunvise. “No. Tunvise is sufficient.”

  The implication that she didn’t trust Dalcoran hit the mark. The muscles in his cheek twitched as if she’d slapped him. He gestured to the remaining guards. “You’re dismissed.” The men strode out, leaving the four of them.

  Dalcoran inhaled and closed his eyes as his breath eased from his chest. “You helped the girl escape in defiance of our decision.”

  “Not mine,” Vianne said, “but yours.”

  “You don’t deny a part?”

  “Would it make a difference?” she asked. “My primary oath is to Ellegeance; I acted in accordance with my vow. You bear the blame that she isn’t here under our watch.”

  “Claiming your every decision is in the realm’s name doesn’t relieve you of responsibility or waive a need for consensus,” Dalcoran barked at her, his face singed with fury. “Catling is dangerous! By your own admission, her shield is flawed. Consider the havoc she’s wrought. The Bankers’ Guild is furious. Kadan, Qeyon, their suffering is on your head. If Talis-Lim had drowned, you’d be facing your death!”

  “Qeyon followed my orders.” She steeled her jaw.

  “And should have known better. Now he’s dead.” Dalcoran paused and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  The words stung more than she dared allow herself to feel. She cleared her throat of rising emotion. “My fate?”

  He dropped his hand. “I propose third blood.”

  She stiffened, aware she hadn’t known what to expect. Second blood would have shocked her with its mercy, and in contrast to death, third blood seemed lenient. Her mouth stayed shut.

  “I agree to the penalty,” Tunvise said.

  “I also.” Piergren picked up the whip. “It’s decided then.” The braided leather uncoiled and licked the floor. He winked at her with a glint in his eye that revealed nothing. He could whip her thrice and be done with it, or stretch it out, refusing to rupture her skin.

  If he made her beg, she’d kill him.

  Her hands shaking, Vianne removed her white jacket, folded it, and draped it across a chair. She walked forward to the gibbet and its leather holsters, determined not to wobble. The stench of torture wafted into her nose. Bile bubbled in the back of her throat. Her back to the three men, she unbuttoned the top of her underdress, refusing to let them shred it. The delicate fabric and hand-tatted lace sank to her waist, her body revealed to them.

  The lash would scar the intricate woads of color that spiraled and curled, leafed and bloomed across her back. She willed them to see her beauty before they laid it to ruin. She reached up for the loops and gripped them. Kadan’s sweat still dampened the stiff leather.

  The whip snapped. Fire blazed across her back, eliciting a scream. She wasn’t ready. Panic swept her and it cracked again. Her legs gave out, and she hung from the tethers as she fought for control, feet flailing for purchase. She gasped for breath, her scream inhuman, deranged. The whip flayed her again, silencing her voice. Her head fell back, body arched, skin flaring. Influence shot out of her, rage and desperation flung into the air. Yet she couldn’t see her tormentors, couldn’t touch them. “No,” she cried.

  “You are done, Vianne.” Tunvise touched her arm. “Piergren took pity on you.”

  The words made no sense to her. Was it over? The old man pried her fingers from one of the loops, and her arm fell heavily to his shoulder, her legs unable to hold her.

  Dalcoran appeared at her other side, willing to assist. “Stay back,” she snapped. If he touched her, she’d… He stepped back, his brow lined with hurt that only increased her fury. She forced her legs under her and let go of the second strap. The old man lifted her underdress to her shoulders in an attempt at modesty. Every fiber of her skin burned.

  “I’m ready to go home,” she said, refusing to cry.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The swamp’s velvet air dripped. Succulent moss and silver-fringed lichen draped dead trees, mottled by the filtered light. Over Gannon’s head, wispy creepers hung from branches like old men’s beards while fire-winged birds flitted between the caliphs’ jade limbs. If he weren’t so itchy and cranky, he might have called it beautiful.

  He idled on the raft, catching up on his afternoon nap and wondering how he could escape the latest of his trials. Even if he’d learned to swim, the prospect of braving the swamps on his own prickled his spine. In addition to crajeks, the place crawled with spiders.

  They drifted through the winding channels, Raker and Jafe using long poles to propel the raft forward, the pace agonizingly slow. The skiff trailed at the end of a towline. Her face drawn, Catling fished, catching more weeds, sticks, and razorgills than anything he considered edible.

  As evening neared, the rafters tied their craft to a sodden log. Catling hiked after the two men to the top of a hummock to roast the snake, fully intending to eat it. Gannon remained on the raft, staring at the skiff and chewing on a lip. He’d gotten her out of Ava-Grea; he’d saved her life. As far as he was concerned, he’d done his part and they were square. The rafters’ poles leaned against a tree at the water’s edge. He could lift one, wend his way back to the swamp’s main course, and ride the Slipsilver down either canal or straight to Elan-Sia and the sea.

  A bug the size of a split copper landed on his arm. He swatted it and flicked it into the water where a phantom fish snapped it up before vanishing in the murk below. From behind the skiff, two river rats swam toward him, their scaly heads leaving parallel wakes in the smooth luminescence. “Gah!” With a head to heel cringe, he looked for something to make them reconsider boarding.

  The first rat reached the raft’s lip, crawled up, and bared long yellow teeth. Gannon bolted to his feet, grabbed a coil of rope, and attempted to shoo it away. The rat caught the rope in its curled claws and began climbing toward his hand. He shook the rope. “Eeyeh. Scram. Go.”

  Birds squawked and flitted overhead. The hairless creature hung on and hissed while the second rat, larger than the first, scrambled up and gnawed at the planking. Gannon kicked, his boot sending the invader tumbling into the river. Its head popped to the surface with a ferocious hiss.

  Where was a crajek when he needed one?

  In a panic, he dropped the rope. The rat scurried toward the rafters’ gear. He grabbed the upturned crate Raker used as a seat and slammed it over the beast, trapping it. The second rat scuttled back onto the raft. Gannon emptied the wooden box holding Catling’s fish and flipped it over the ugly monster.

  Dead viper was suddenly more agreeable than live rats. He leapt to the squishy hummock and ambled up the slope, his stomach begging him to relax his standard
s.

  A lively fire flickered in the gathering fog, the snake draped over the coals between two forked sticks. Jafe grinned and handed him a broad leaf, piled with steaming meat and a thousand tiny bones.

  While he picked at his food, the pale rafter tended the flames and told tales of encounters with crajeks that kept Gannon glancing over his shoulder. Raker sat outside the circle on a fallen tree trunk, eating the snake with his fingers and chatting with the air. In Gannon’s opinion, Catling’s complete trust in an untamed rafter and delusional madman bordered on naive. Relying on the duo seemed a foolproof path to a muddy grave.

  “Why are you here?” Raker glanced up from his food.

  Gannon picked a bone from his mouth and wiped it on a fern. He pointed at Catling. “We’re escaping the influencers.”

  The tall rafter looked over his shoulder at Raker. “Your kind use magic like crajeks use their teeth.”

  “They’re not my kind,” Raker said and resumed eating.

  “Raker is native in his past,” Jafe explained with a laugh. He raised his three-fingered hand and pointed to his own tapered ear, traits the dark-haired man shared. “He’s angry because he is as small as a woman.” He winked at Catling. “Our women.”

  “Why are you here?” Raker asked Catling. “She wants to know.”

  “Who is… she?” Catling murmured.

  The man peered down the hummock into the swamp. “The river wants to know.”

  Gannon shrugged when Catling stared at him, questions wrinkling her forehead. Her fingertips drifted to the rose mark circling her eye. “My eye—”

  “The tiers,” Gannon broke in. “The tiers despise change.” He spat a snake bone to the dirt. “They’re symbols of power, those on top mattering more than those at the bottom. Some of us don’t relish our place in the hierarchy.” He nodded at Catling and settled back, the familiar speech invigorating his soul like an old friend. “The high wards keep us in poverty while getting rich on our backs. They treat us like animals, and thanks to the influencers, we act the part.”

  “You should stay in the swamps,” Jafe suggested with an enthusiastic sweep of his arm. “No influencers, no masters, no tiers. We are rich!”

  Gannon frowned. “You can’t be serious. You have no wealth, no power at all.”

  The rafter laughed. “It’s a good joke.”

  What the man considered a joke wasn’t readily apparent. Gannon raised an eyebrow at Catling. She returned the gesture, equally baffled.

  Raker chuckled, the first sign of mirth Gannon had witnessed from the strange man. “The fenfolk are without guile,” Raker said, “accepting of life on the water. They’re indifferent to your ways, Ellegean, unimpressed by your haggling for wealth and power, and unsympathetic regarding your wars and strife.”

  “You don’t include yourself in the description,” Gannon remarked.

  “I’m from Mur-Vallis. One of the riverfolk until this.” He pointed to his eyepatch.

  “Don’t you want anything better than… mud?” The thought of being satisfied with giant bugs, rats, crajeks, and interminable dampness made Gannon’s skin crawl.

  The man’s eye narrowed. “I wouldn’t mind being left alone.”

  “Yet, you’re helping us,” Catling said. “You’ve helped me before.”

  Raker nodded. “She told me to.”

  ***

  When the sun melted into the trees, the luminescence wore a plate of gold. Gannon followed Catling and the rafters down to the channel. They leapt to the planking, and Raker untied the line.

  “What happened to my fish?” Catling hovered over her spilled catch, several pecked by birds.

  From Gannon’s perspective, the scattered pile indicated that something had dragged half the bounty back into the water. “I needed the box to trap a rat.”

  Raker’s slit eye snapped to him. “You what?”

  “I… um.” Gannon inched backward. “I trapped a pair of rats… to keep them out of your gear.”

  Jafe’s fist popped out and smacked him between the eyes. Stars sparkling in his head, Gannon tottered backward to the raft’s edge. Catling yelped and grabbed his jacket to keep him from falling.

  With a shout, Jafe flipped over the wooden box. Before he could catch it, the rat dove through the plate-sized hole it had chewed in the planking.

  Raker kicked over his crate to find the same damage, the rat gone. “Any more surprises?”

  His hand to his stinging nose, Gannon shook his head and slumped to the deck. “Founders’ stones, that hurt.”

  “They’ll chew a hole through a raft or boat in the time it takes to bury your shit.” Raker stared at the hole. “They have a taste for the sap sealing the planks.”

  “Wouldn’t they have done the same anyway?” Catling propped her hands on her hips. “We stayed on the hummock for hours.”

  “The birds,” Raker tipped his head toward the fire-winged birds. “They keep the rafts free of rats and bugs when we aren’t aboard.”

  “You might have warned us.” Catling knelt and inspected Gannon’s bleeding nose.

  Jafe squatted down beside her. “It’s nothing. A sting.”

  “A sting?” Gannon scowled. “You punched me.”

  “I was angry.” Jafe straightened and jumped back to the hummock’s bank.

  “Obviously.” Gannon blinked, the pain morphing into a steady throb.

  When Jafe returned, he smeared a palmful of clay on Gannon’s swelling face. “The life in the clay will ease your hurt.”

  A laugh squeezed through Catling’s lips, and she looked away.

  Gannon glared at her, yet he couldn’t deny the man was right.

  ***

  A gathering storm whispered across the moons. Wraiths of mist ghosted through the trees and rose from the luminescence in gauzy clouds. Gannon waited, feigning sleep and staring at the boughs. Frogs chirped in chorus and beasts splashed and slithered. He was a creature apart, a stranger in the primal landscape. Ellegeans weren’t from this world to begin with and clearly had no place in these swamps; no wonder they left the fenfolk in peace. Who would want to live with such constant danger and… filth?

  He swatted a bug from his neck and shivered. The air itself squished, moist with mist or drizzle and the branches dripped. Catling slept, wrapped in her jacket, her hair tangled. For a moment, he was tempted to wake her, to beg her to leave with him. Yet, he knew her answer; she would stay, wait for her mysterious summons, walk to her salvation or doom because of an oath. That wasn’t how the world worked. Oaths meant nothing, not in a world where loyalty was purchased with shiny metal or dispensed with on a knife’s keen edge. He couldn’t risk capture by Vianne or her kind. They would kill him.

  Without a sound, he rolled to his side, shifted to his knees, and pushed back into a squat. When none of his companions stirred, he rose to a crouch. His heart stampeded in his ears as he eased up a bag of meager supplies. Forcing himself to unbearable slowness, he grabbed the towline and drew the skiff near. With a thief’s stealth, he climbed in, unleashed the rope from the bow, and let it slide into the water.

  The boat began to drift down the channel, the gap between captivity and freedom increasing with each heartbeat. He scanned the bank as it glided by. Eventually, he’d need to find something to use as a pole. For now, he would drift, the natural current carrying him north toward the sea. He looked back at the raft, wishing Catling a silent farewell. Raker stood in the glowing fog, his features etched in darkness, watching him go.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Raker poled the raft through the narrow channels, wandering his way toward the floating village deeper in the swamp. Morning mists hovered as a forbidding sky scudded eastward, promising sheets of rain. The goddess caressed him, twirled in languid circles, veils of dew flowing from her arms like wings.

  She stroked his back with a fingertip. “Your indifference is as disputable as your madness.”

  “Am I mad?”

  “No more than you’re ind
ifferent.” She laughed and spiraled behind him, arms encircling his chest.

  “I care nothing for Ellegeans, for their tiers, or their power.”

  “Yet you care for her,” the goddess whispered. “Your destinies are entwined.”

  Raker didn’t reply. Catling sat cross-legged at the raft’s lip. Her fishing line trailed in the glowing wake. Scraps of her previous catch baited her hook, luring in yellow-scaled pippets and the blue suckers that trawled the bottom. Jafe mended the holes in the planking and named the fish as she pulled them in, teaching her which to keep and which to toss.

  The goddess interrupted his deepening silence, “The man’s departure stung, not his reasoning, which she understands, but his failure to bid her farewell. Another rent in a tattered life. Don’t you see? Those private tears blurring her vision are for more than this one man. He’s unearthed old bones, marked another passing, another etching on her burial stone of betrayals. Her allies are strangers, her masters concerned only with employing her skill.”

  “What’s her skill?” He put his back into poling them toward the channel’s center. Jafe glanced up at him with a quizzical grin. The rafters believed him mad, and he never felt a need to explain.

  “She will tell you her secrets if you ask.” The woman’s lips touched his earlobe, striking a flint to his desire.

  Something tugged on the girl’s line, and she tugged back, hooking it. With a yelp, she flew off the raft into the channel. Her head disappeared. Then she broke the surface, sputtering and splashing, the luminescence marbled by stirred up mud.

  Raker’s pole dropped to the raft. Three steps and he leapt into the channel beside her. His feet pushed into the ooze, and he stood, water licking his throat.

  Still in her hand, the line strained. A snouted head reared from the water, blowing a breath of spray into the humid air. “A crajek!” she cried.

  “Waterdragon,” Jafe shouted over the excitement. An opalescent fin sliced through the air. “A yearling.”

  “Don’t release it.” Raker caught the back of her underdress as the creature pulled her farther from the raft. He grabbed the line that slid through her fingers.