He inhaled, pulling his attention back to the matter at hand. “I’ve come on the commander’s behalf. He requests that you accompany me to Bes-Strea.”
“Orders me would be a more accurate account of his instructions.” She picked up a letter from the small table at her elbow. “I’m certain his letter to me was hardly less cantankerous than the one to you.”
“His reasoning isn’t in error,” Whitt said. “Your guild will intensify the conflict, and many more lives will be lost because the doyen refuse to rein in your influencers. In my opinion, if he or I are to lose our lives for it, you might at least watch.”
Vianne stared at him. He could see the cogs clicking and spinning behind her eyes as she weighed not only his words but his attitude. “You’ve clearly spent far too much time in the commander’s presence. His crustiness has rubbed off on you.”
“He taught me to speak honestly.”
“You realize my presence in Bes-Strea will change nothing. The doyen decided not to interfere.”
“A decision you agree with?” He studied her as he plotted his next words. “You have interfered before, Vianne.”
She narrowed her eyes. “And they whipped me for it.”
“Yet, you just told me, you’d do it again.”
On her feet, she retreated to the sideboard and filled a goblet with water. “I agree to accompany you. Give me a day to prepare and inform the council.”
His dismissal moments away, Whitt rose from his seat. “You must give me your word that you won’t influence me. We are allies and will be in danger. I need to trust you.”
She paused, mulling over his words. That she hesitated at all, tightened the muscles in his jaw. If she wouldn’t swear it… he didn’t know what he’d do.
“I swear it. Unless you request my assistance.”
“Agreed.” He bowed and headed for the door. “We’ll depart in two days. I would recommend you wear something other than white. You’ll make a far too enticing target.”
***
Raker’s black hair hung over his eyepatch, damp after a night of drizzling rain. He squatted atop a hummock, his spear across his thighs, attention on the channel. Jafe sat cross-legged beside him, picking cold meat off the spitted carcass of last night’s catch, a ring-tailed duck that would have fed four if not for the rafter’s appetite.
The morning sun fired the moist ground, and thick fog clung to the giant caliph trees as if trapped by the arching net of roots and branches. The goddess thrust her fingers into Raker’s skin, the sensation startling and annoying, altogether too intimate for the young morning. He ignored her, and she nuzzled his neck.
Gray wraiths wandered through the trees as he watched a flat-bottomed boat float up the channel. An Ellegean had stacked metal chests on the craft’s floor, the sort wrought by the tiers for transporting riches. The young man looked familiar, of unremarkable stature and breadth, his brown hair cropped short. He dressed like a warrior, though his movements conveyed an amiable acquaintance with the swamp. “What’s he after?”
A bone pitched over his shoulder, Jafe wiped his three-fingered hands on his trousers and squinted. “Our treasure.”
Raker rubbed a hand over his jaw. The fenfolk had treasure, but nothing capable of stuffing an iron-strapped box. Their wealth lay in the uncomplicated life of the wilds. “It’s Whitt, except grown up.”
Jafe’s head snapped to attention. He jumped to his feet, and in a crouch, crept down the hummock’s slope. Five paces from the muddy bank, he howled like a Fangwold wolf, broke into a long-limbed run, and leapt. The Ellegean glanced up as Jafe’s foot touched down on the gunwale. The rafter slammed into him and propelled the two of them over the side with a noisy splash.
The goddess clapped with delight and drifted down to the water. Raker followed, his spear deceptively easy on his shoulder. Two heads burst from the surface, gulping breaths before Jafe barked a laugh and leapt on Whitt, pushing him under.
“He wears steel,” the goddess noted, stretching across the luminescent surface.
“It’s not over their heads.” Raker waded in to his knees and poked at the grappling men with the butt end of the spear.
Whitt reared up and grabbed the shaft to gain his balance. When Jafe surfaced for another attack, Whitt swung his forearm, his vambrace smacking the pale rafter in the forehead and sending him backward into the channel with a grunt. Whitt looked up at Raker with a smile and slogged to the bank, still holding the spear’s end. Raker pulled him up.
“Foul, that’s cold,” Whitt said, as Jafe surfaced near the boat and dragged it to shore.
“Getting soft, Ellegean.” Jafe scrambled up the bank and thumped Whitt’s back. “You should return to the swamp—fight crajeks, eat, drink, tell stories, and find a lover who will sing in the night.” In the way of the fenfolk, he dug in the channel’s mud and smeared it on his face, bare chest, and hair.
“I should have expected your welcome.” Whitt sat on the bank, poured water from his boots, and peeled off his wet layers.
Raker leaned on his spear. “A guardian now?”
“Since the last time I saw you,” Whitt replied. “Five years. I owe you both for the turn in my life.”
The goddess swirled up from the water and curled into Raker’s side. “His debt will be repaid with my reckoning.”
“There is no debt,” Raker said to her, the wraith’s plans tiring.
“Nevertheless, it’s good to see you both,” Whitt replied.
A smile lifted the corner of Raker’s lip at Whitt’s assumption that the comment was meant for him. “We’ll build a fire to dry your clothes, and you can tell us why you’re here.”
Whitt hung his garments from branches, setting the leather aside to dry away from the heat. Mud coated his exposed skin to discourage stingers and gnats, and he rotated by the fire to warm his backside.
“I don’t remember anything ever drying here.” Whitt raised an eyebrow. “And I’ve come for river rats.”
“Warriors developed a taste for them?” Raker asked.
“Not quite.” Whitt laughed. “If I can fit twenty in each box, I’ll take two hundred. I need them by the end of tomorrow. I’m hoping you might lend me a hand.”
“Will cost you gold, Ellegean.” Jafe sat on a rock, flipping his knife in the air.
Raker grunted at the rafter’s statement. Jafe made a willing accomplice in any nonsensical plan, and he would spend a piece of gold on a gilled fish or a handful of crajek teeth.
“I brought spike,” Whitt said, “to pass the time.”
Jafe’s eyebrows bobbed over his slit green eyes. “Leena will help us hunt.”
While Whitt tied the Ellegean boat to a knobby root, Raker lashed two rafts together. They piled the chests at the center, and Jafe fetched Leena, the tall woman who had formed their reckless threesome during Whitt’s time in the swamp. Leena was pregnant now, and Raker wondered if Jafe knew his wild ways were staggering to an end.
The rafts drifted down a wide channel, the phantoms of fog wandering over the hummocks as the day warmed. Crajeks blinked from the ferns at the muddy banks, and birds chattered in the caliph and witchwood. Raker sat on an overturned crate, the goddess coiled around him like a second skin.
Four rats paddled toward the raft’s edge, pointed noses breaching the surface and scaled heads leaving quiet wakes. He sat motionless as the first one scrabbled onto the planking, quelling his urge to smash it with the butt of his spear and skin it for supper. The other three hairless rodents clawed their way up. Fire-winged blackbirds called warnings and flitted between the canopy’s branches.
Raker hadn’t yet taken four at once. In each hand, he held a line to a forked stick propping up one side of a flipped crate. Whitt had designed the traps, and for the most part, they each manned two. The bait was a thick smear of oakum on the inside of the boxes. Whitt had caught the first thirty or so by baiting the metal boxes and simply shutting the lids when he lured in three of four takers. He consolidated
and kept working that strategy.
Two river rats scurried straight to the larger trap, a third to the other. The last decided to dig into the oakum sealing the raft. Raker reached out with a foot, dropped the toe of his boot on the beast’s tail while he tugged the sticks. The traps thunked closed. He grinned and grabbed the pink tail of the one sinking its pointy teeth into his boot.
Getting them into an overcrowded metal box proved the harder part of the process. Whitt had brought a fat supply of oakum and for good reason. He looked behind him where Leena worked a similar operation on the other raft. Jafe stood at the rear, poling them slowly through the channels and minding the spike.
“We’re going to need two full days,” Whitt said, indicating Jafe with a jerk of his chin.
“I’m keeping count, Ellegean.”
“How many so far?” Whitt asked.
The rafter laughed and patted the bottle. “Still on my first one.”
Leena rolled her eyes at Raker. “Show Whitt what happens when Jafe drinks too much.”
“It wasn’t the drink, woman.” Jafe paused in his labor.
“You were face down and snoring in the ferns.” She swiveled to Raker. “Show him.”
Raker pulled up a leg of his trousers, and Whitt’s eyes widened at the ugly scar scoring his leg and puckering his calf. “A crajek?
“As big as you.” Jafe spread his arms. “Thought the half-blood would fill his belly for a season.”
“You were the one well-seasoned,” Leena said.
Raker canted his head toward Jafe. “The crajek planned to make a meal of him, and I got in the way. Dragged me into the channel to drown and started feasting before I was dead.”
“I woke from a dream,” Jafe said, acting out the story. “No time to think, I jumped into the water and filled the crajek with my knife. He wore Guardian armor and wanted revenge for his family.”
Leena grinned at Whitt. “He screamed like an Ellegean.”
“Ha!” Jafe bellowed. “My voice sharpened my knife and frightened the crajek away.”
“It tore me up.” Raker reset his traps. “The swamp slowed the bleeding, but I figured my hours had run out.”
“Time for his soul to grow wings,” Jafe said.
“Close to it.” Raker stole a glance at the goddess. She had ordered him to Ava-Grea, and he hadn’t aimed to go. No use for Ellegean cities and their influence, he would have been content to fly.
The goddess hushed his thoughts. “You needed to see it.”
“Jafe hauled me to Ava-Grea,” Raker said. “Catling smuggled us up to the twelfth tier.”
“Catling?” Whitt asked.
Raker nodded. “With two others. The influencers separate the luminescence by its colors. They slid me into a violet pool, and the water healed me. Did you know of this?”
“No.” Whitt shook his head. “Influencers don’t share their secrets, even Catling. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they broke their oaths to save you.”
“They revealed a powerful secret,” Raker said. “Then Kadan melted the tier’s walls, and we escaped before we were discovered.”
“Kadan?” Whitt’s brow tightened. “He melted the walls?”
“And a woman with native blood,” Raker said, yanking a string and snapping one of the traps.
“You witnessed the desecration,” the goddess whispered in his ear.
He looked at her and frowned. “You risked all of us.”
She flew through him, the pleasurable sensation catching his breath. “A minor sacrifice,” she said behind him, her arms snaking over his shoulders to caress his chest. “We were never meant to be distilled, my love. We are whole; we are one. Would you remove the air from the world? The water? Would you send all the plants and trees to live in one bowl and the animals in another? Would you survive if you dismembered your body? We will place your blood here, your bones there, your flesh apart from your skin.”
“You play too many games for my liking, Goddess.” He reset his traps and noticed the others regarding him with narrowed eyes, a madman conversing with the mist. His mouth shut, he brushed her aside.
“You beheld the source of our sorrows,” she said and curled in his lap. “Influence isn’t power; it’s an aberration. If we are not one, we will all die.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The last time Catling had set foot in Mur-Vallis, Algar hung her mother. Gannon had whisked her from the warrens and delivered her home to the stead, only to have Vianne steal her away to Ava-Grea. More than eight years had fled by, and all that time she’d yearned for home.
Except no home remained to welcome her.
The stead lay a half day's trek south into the foothills, and a melancholy piece of her longed to hire a horse and ride there. She wanted to see what remained, to stop by Abbett’s farm and sate her curiosity with a glimpse of Gussy, a girl of… nine. She wondered about Mouser and Daisy, and then decided she didn’t want to know after all on the chance they were dead.
Perhaps next time she’d brave a visit.
She walked up the pier, carrying her satchel. A light overnight snow had dusted the pavers and melted to gray slush. Compared to Elan-Sia and Ava-Grea, Mur-Vallis appeared shabby and unkempt, and though the early Springseed market possessed an air of normalcy, the rare smiles seemed to fray at the edges. It wasn’t hanging day, a realization that brought a sigh of relief. The fact that there were still people to hang seemed oddly amusing, and she cracked a smile.
“Pardons.” She stopped a woman with two thin children. “Does the high ward continue to hang us when Clio’s full?”
The mother nodded. “If he’s missed one I wouldn’t know.”
“Tomorrow then,” Catling murmured. She pressed three whole coppers into the woman’s hand. “For meat pies.”
“Founders bless you, Mistress.” The mother grinned and shooed her children toward the greasy wares.
Though Catling wore a plain sheath and leather shoes, she supposed she looked better fed and cleaner than the haggard faces swiveling her way. A wool cloak draped her shoulders and her hair hung in a loose braid, flyaway strands brushed back from a washed face. She’d sewn silver coins into the hem of her cloak and carried her finer clothes carefully folded within her bag.
She waded through the wet snow and ducked into the warrens. The alleyways felt closer, the ceilings lower, the walls of stone and wood on the brink of collapsing. The tang of human sweat and waste mingled with other scents: grease and smoke, food and animals. The place creaked and groaned, and so near the tier’s edge, the wind sang. Voices carried through thin walls and from the dim corridors ahead.
Clutching her bag, she wandered into the gloom, pale luminescence guiding her feet. The Ship’s Fate reeked of stale tipple, dingy and derelict, the chairs missing arms and slats. Someone had dragged the figurehead of the coupling gods from the floor’s center to a corner where it leaned against the wall. The female Founder’s arm was broken and shoved obscenely between the man’s legs.
“I’d like a room,” she said to the barkeep.
He glanced up from drying a cup, peered at her eye, and returned to his work. “You paying or working it off on your back?”
“Paying.” She placed a silver coin on the bar under her hand and offered him a glimpse.
The cup dry, he leaned on the bar and grinned. “My regrets for the assumption, Mistress.”
“You don’t look regretful.”
“A woman’s scorn makes a man regretful.” He winked and chuckled. “A woman with silver doubly so.”
“I’d like a room for one night, no company, no questions.” She pushed the coin toward him with a touch of influenced threat. “I’ll have hot water and a meal delivered before the next bell.”
The grin drooped, and he nodded. “As you wish. No harm meant. This way.”
The narrow room reminded Catling of the one she’d shared with Farrow as a girl—windowless with a wobbly table and single chair. Permanently gray linens and two wool b
lankets covered the bed, a luxury Keela had never provided. She waited until the meal and water arrived before wedging a chair against the door’s latch and unpacking her bag. She smoothed out a wine-red jacket, black underdress and leggings, and a belt beaded with onyx, a pair of garnets for her ears. The color she’d chosen with purpose—red, the color of death.
***
The morning cold frosted Catling’s breath. Shivering, she slit the hem of her cloak, spilling her silver to the bed. A key to Ava-Grea’s pylons clinked among the coins, a key she hoped would work in the Mur-Vallis pylons as well. She dressed in her fine clothes and pocketed the coins and key. Wrapped in the plain wool cloak, she would attempt to blend in until the finer clothes better served her purpose.
Night-ice coated twigs and brown grass, the landscape glittering as though blown of glass. A crisp sheet of frozen luminescence blanketed the Blackwater, and puddles crackled beneath her feet. Springseed seemed overdue even this far south. She abandoned her bag in the warrens and warmed her hands on a cup of mint tea at a baker’s table, her shield securely in place.
High Ward Algar, lean and handsome, towered at the tier’s edge, his face carved of granite. Two grim influencers stood with an old justice, her pinched rodent face peeking from a burrow of furs. The wan hanging day crowd wandered the market, scanter than she remembered. Were the influenced smiles and strange merriment the same as her younger days, or had a decade of cruelty unraveled the edges of control?
She intended to find out.
Four guards led the first victim to the tier’s rim as the justice jabbered the charges. The rickety man wore no shoes despite the cold, and his threadbare clothes hung from his shoulders like a sack. He smiled at the market’s lifted faces as guards stuffed his pockets with copper and cinched the noose around his neck.
Catling shifted her shield, blocking the influencers’ power over the condemned man and the crowd. Her own heart unshielded, joy swept her, pleasure and love warming her fingertips and toes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered before she flooded the man with influenced fear. He howled and sank to his knees, quivering and pleading, his hands raised for mercy.
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