Catling's Bane (The Rose Shield Book 1)

by D. Wallace Peach

  Lelaine rose from her seat, her chin jutting, shoulder’s rigid. “I scarcely know what to think, Vianne, except that I’ve made a foolish mistake. I’m disappointed, infuriated by your threats. You’ve wasted my time with this nonsense while manipulating me behind my back. Your ambitions border on treason, and if I were queen, I’d see you flogged and exiled. My father’s health fails, and I should be at his side begging forgiveness, not making naive bargains with...” Lelaine blinked, her brow furrowed in question.

  Vianne gasped, the tightness in her chest gone, the terrible sense of dread that she’d destroyed her power and obliterated her life evaporated. “We’re shielded,” she breathed, turning to Lelaine. “It’s Catling. She’s here.”

  Dalcoran frowned, the fury in his face turned on Piergren. “You influenced Vianne?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Vianne laughed, her body relaxing as if she suddenly soaked in a warm bath.

  Catling stood at the servants’ door, a bedraggled young woman in rafter’s attire. The tier guard, Sevan, stood beside her, a grimace worrying his forehead. “She said I needed to escort her here. It made sense since you’ve been searching for her.”

  “Thank you, well done, Sevan.” Vianne faced Lelaine. “Her presence demonstrates that I made no mistake, Heiress. I didn’t lead you wrong. My words weren’t my own; my goal has always been your successful reign. You must see that now.”

  “Come here,” Lelaine beckoned to Catling, turning from the influencers.

  Catling approached the heiress and bowed. “My respects, Heiress.”

  “I see you’ve borne a needless share of difficulties.” She cupped Catling’s chin in her fingers and studied her eyes. “Nothing would delight me more than to assure you those days are behind you. Yet, we both know it’s fanciful thinking. There are harder challenges ahead.”

  “You have my vow.”

  Vianne heard Dalcoran’s resigned sigh.

  The heiress’s jaw tightened as her chin lifted, and she looked down her nose at Dalcoran. “I shall forget what occurred here, for the moment. Catling and Vianne are under my protection. If anything happens to either of them, life for influencers in Ellegeance will become quite perilous in the days ahead. If you are not trustworthy from this day forward, you are more dangerous to me than you are of use. Am I understood?”

  “Of course, Heiress,” he replied.

  “I wish Catling trained in influence immediately and want her delivered to Elan-Sia the moment she's initiated into your guild.”

  “Heiress…” Vianne’s head reeled at the unexpected order. Training the girl in influence had never been her plan. “Your Highness, we can’t predict the impact of influence on—”

  “I’ll risk it,” Lelaine said, leaving no room for debate. “For your own wellbeing, Catling's talent is to be kept a secret to the extent possible. I hold every doyen in this room responsible for her safety. I’ll have no unfortunate mishaps.”

  Dalcoran bowed. “It will be as you command.”

  “Then we are done here.” Lelaine smiled. “I shall depart within the hour.” The heiress paused while everyone in the room bent in fealty. Then she turned on her heel, beckoned to her guards, and strode through the door.

  No one left in the salon stirred, all feet rooted to the floor. The silence encased them like a shroud, preventing the guild’s cadaver from disintegrating into gray dust. Long ago, Vianne had surrendered the life she desired, the life of her youth, to Ellegean duty. These men had held her implicit trust, and she theirs. That confidence had vanished, and she doubted they would reclaim it.

  She couldn’t deny her complicity. Or that she bore the guilt of her own accusations. Her choices had triggered chaos. As she met Dalcoran’s eyes, the fissure in her certainty widened. Perhaps if she’d known then what turmoil she’d cause, she would have simply killed the girl. A question juddered into her consciousness—was it too late?

  Turning to Catling, she smiled. The girl appeared half-drowned, exhausted, and yet the fire in her eyes forged something unbreakable. “Return to my quarters, Catling. You may wish to bathe and please eat if you’re hungry. Sevan, would you ensure she’s undisturbed.”

  The two of them bowed and retreated. The door shut and the shroud sealed.

  Dalcoran sighed and closed his eyes. “This is exactly what I feared, Vianne. A shift in the balance of power that served us for centuries.”

  “I never expected… I have no idea how influence will impact Catling’s ability.”

  “Or how her ability will impact the influence,” Piergren said. He’d barely twitched since she’d entered the room. “You’ve created a monster.”

  Vianne stifled an urge to snap back at him. “Or negated her shield.”

  “Either way,” Dalcoran said, “we are at greater risk. You had the girl swear a formal oath while we were in Elan-Sia, didn’t you? Her primary oath is not to Ellegeance or the guild.”

  Nothing Vianne said would alter that fact. She had handed Lelaine a weapon. “Will you whip me for it?”

  “I vote in favor,” Piergren replied.

  “No.” Dalcoran shook his head. “I choose against it. You’re skin still heals, and though you deserve a flaying, what’s done is done.”

  “I’m grateful.” She bowed her head and returned to the sideboard to fill her glass and empty her breath.

  Dalcoran sank into a chair and pressed his fingers to his temples. “I assume she’s not your niece.”

  “No,” Vianne conceded. “She’s from Mur-Vallis. Algar suspected she was unique, but I can’t imagine he knows the nature of her ability. When I acquired her, he murdered her family out of spite. ”

  Dalcoran leaned forward in his seat. “Arrange for the girl to begin her training as the heiress wishes. We need to understand what we face.”

  “You might as well start calling her Catling.” Vianne retook her seat. “Influencers are not flawless, and Catling has an honest heart. I’ve seen far worse among us. The tier lords hold a great deal of sway over the influencers serving them, and what is in the best interest of Ellegeance is always a matter of debate.”

  “We always discussed it, Vianne.” Dalcoran turned his gaze to her. “We decided in unity. You betrayed our trust.”

  “I had no choice. You would never have agreed. You didn’t agree. We must trust our rulers. They must have the freedom to act without outside agendas swaying their decisions. The four of us can’t sit at the royal table and call conferences every quarter bell.”

  “I pray you are right,” he said.

  Vianne sipped her lissom, her secrets revealed. No more ghosts trailed in her shadow, and the burden weighing her shoulders had lifted, but for one. “You were not wrong about my betrayal, however. For that, I have paid a price.”

  Tunvise’s lips worked in preparation for a word. The man appeared to age two days for every one that passed. “Are we united in supporting this heiress?”

  “She’s the only one we have,” Vianne said.

  “There are contingencies.” Piergren raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps we’re in a stronger position if she’s allowed to fail.”

  Vianne balked, marveling at the man’s callousness. “If you are suggesting—”

  “We stay above the fray,” Dalcoran interrupted. “The heiress… queen will rule with her own heart and mind. She’ll own the consequences.”

  “Nothing prohibits us from providing counsel.” Vianne huffed at the constricted thinking. They behaved as though influence was their only means of… influencing. “We have a great deal of control when it comes to keeping peace in the provinces. If the high wards are discontent, we have the means to sway them for the realm’s well-being.”

  “You are right, of course.” Dalcoran massaged his stiff fingers.

  “I am not your enemy.” She met his eyes, her words of truce offered. Emotion welled in her face, and she looked away. “I should be tending to Catling.” She began to rise.

  “One duty more,” Dalcoran said, hal
ting her. “We must decide our punishment for the oathbreaker.”

  Vianne blinked in confusion until she followed his gaze to Piergren.

  Sorrow creased Dalcoran’s brow. “We swear a sacred oath to use no influence against our initiated. That oath has been broken. By a doyen against a doyen.”

  His body rigid, Piergren returned the stare. “You’re going to execute me?”

  “I have no choice,” Dalcoran said. “Tunvise?”

  The man pursed his lips. “A grave deed. The gateway to ruin for our guild.”

  “Vianne did far worse, old man.” Piergren erupted, his composure breaking as his face filled with rage. “Her actions threaten to bring down the guild with far greater certainty. She brought an aberration into our very midst.” He slammed a fist into the wall.

  Vianne drew back in her chair, his wrath stealing her breath.

  “Her deception is undeniable.” Dalcoran rose to his feet. A physically frail man, he was no match for Piergren. “Yet, she broke no vow.” He faced Tunvise, expecting an answer.

  “I’m afraid I concur.” Tunvise nodded. “Execution.”

  The three of them turned to her, waiting. Her word would decide the man’s life or death. She’d toiled beside him for fifteen years, and all that time he’d been a groping monster. His methods with the aspirants were needlessly cruel. He had enjoyed sentencing her, whipped her three times, drawing blood. She could be done with him, finally. Their codes called for death.

  His face worked with fury, jaw muscles bulging, body on the verge of exploding. He was dangerous as a crajek, large as a crag bear, and his eyes flooded with fear.

  An oathbreaker.

  He’d whipped her three times… only three.

  She met his eyes. “Whip him, sixth blood. I’ll agree to nothing more.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Catling ran a hand over her bald scalp, her brown locks shaved away. This morning began her new life as an aspirant to the Influencers’ Guild. In a dreamlike trance, she donned the plain robe of a novice over her naked skin and pulled up the cowl. The act felt sacred, a cocooning in preparation for a metamorphosis. Who she was would cease to exist. If not for her rose eye, the woman in the mirror seemed a stranger.

  The circumstances of her life had never been within her control, and yet an aura of power vibrated at her fingertips. Her future slithered like a sidewinder, twisting as it traveled across the Mur-Vallis Summertide sand. Only by observing its course over a stretch of time was the direction clear. This was where the undulating journey delivered her. Today marked a turning point.

  Vianne had miscalculated. Qeyon was dead. Lelaine took fearless risks, and Gannon couldn’t decide if he wore the mantle of hero or coward. Among the rafters, Raker argued with ghosts. No one was the person they seemed; no one possessed the mystical powers to see beyond their experience.

  Whitt? She swallowed the rush of emotion blurring her vision. A warrior of Guardian, Whitt had simply moved on.

  A knock on the door announced Vianne’s arrival. “Are you prepared?”

  “Yes.” Catling turned from the mirror, leaving her reflection behind. She followed Vianne into the morning sunshine that blanketed the twelfth tier. Summertide ebbed, making way for Harvest. Potted trees were laden with fruits of the Founders, and the flowers surrendered their seeds. Across the garden stood the formidable den of the Poisoner, a place of little import… until now.

  “Under ordinary circumstances,” Vianne explained, “the colors are applied in small doses, one element of the pattern at a time, power added as aspirants grow in skill.” She paused as if seeking kinder words. “We space out the pain.”

  Catling had seen the Poisoner’s intricate designs flower on Minessa’s skin, an experience her friend refused to discuss. “I thought influence might be employed to ease pain and aid in healing.”

  “No, the process must be free of influence.” Vianne brushed flyaway hair from her eyes and tugged on the lace at her wrists. “We have chosen to bring you to the level of aspirants your age.”

  The decision didn’t surprise her. That meant two years of needlework squeezed into a shorter duration. “How many weeks?”

  “Today.”

  Catling halted. “Vianne, no one receives six influences in one day. No one receives so much in a year.”

  The woman faced her. “It was not my choice, Catling. The heiress said immediately and… we shall follow her command.”

  “Dalcoran and Piergren?”

  Vianne swallowed and glanced away. “The doyen make decisions in unity.”

  The world shifted around Catling’s feet, Vianne’s power compromised more than she’d suspected. “Will it kill me?”

  “No,” Vianne murmured. “I don’t believe so… I don’t know.”

  Catling felt her face flush, anger curling her fists. “I suppose once again, I’m without a choice.”

  “The needlers won’t touch you without your consent,” Vianne informed her.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You took a vow.”

  “If I refuse this haste?”

  “I don’t know, Catling. I don’t know.” Vianne glanced at the doyen’s quarters. “Only… for your own safety, harness all the power you can as quickly as you’re able.”

  Catling studied her mentor, the warning a familiar one. “They would defy the heiress?”

  “Not overtly.”

  A sigh gusted from Catling’s chest as she faced their destination. “I’m overdue.”

  She walked quietly with Vianne at her side, the woman’s elegant composure returned. At the Poisoner’s door, Catling knocked, and after some moments, the door skated open. A hunched man with a pitted nose and atrocious scowl stared at her, pale eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. With a grunt, he beckoned her in.

  As she stepped toward the portal, Vianne caught her arm and whispered in her ear, “Trust no one, Catling. We are all influenced. Don’t even trust me.”

  Catling nodded in acknowledgment though she had learned that lesson long ago.

  ***

  Left alone, Catling wandered the strange, windowless room. Little beyond the physical structure was Founder-made. All else was forged of silvery steel. Even riddled with the dents of long use, the furnishings and fixtures gleamed like polished mirrors. A sharp smell, unlike any she’d previously encountered, wrinkled her nose.

  Six steel pools, round as teacups, lined a long wall. She wandered closer, mounting the few steps to the platform in which they nestled. “Ah,” she whispered, the contents unexpected. Each pool contained a single hue of luminescence, thick, rich, and glowing like gemstones when held to the light. The liquid eddied with a pulse of its own.

  A portal slid open, and the old man who’d grimaced at the door entered. He beckoned with an impatient flick of his wrist, and she stepped from the platform.

  “Do you realize what those lunatics want me to do?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She bowed. “I’m Catling. My respects.

  “Markim-Ava, Master Poisoner.” With his hunched back, he stood scarcely taller than she. The glower inhabiting his face dragged down the skin beneath his eyes, and his sparse, white hair grew from his head like neglected weeds. “What happened to your eye?”

  “It’s a birthmark. I’ve had it all my life.”

  “Not like that, you haven’t. No one’s born with a woad.”

  “It’s not a woad,” she assured him. “It might look like a rose, but it’s simply a mark.”

  “A poor one at that.” He stepped closer, peering down his pitted nose, lips pinched. “Someday we’ll fill the holes and smooth the edges.”

  She retreated a step. “That’s not what I’m here for.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “They wish you to apply two years of needling in one day.”

  “And you consent?” His chin drew back into his neck.

  She paused, the question spinning before her like a top.

  “Before you
answer, let me show you what we mean by needling.” He grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her to a steel table punched with tiny perforations, a larger hole cut in one end. “You will be strapped to that, my eager influencer. We bind you so you can’t escape. The hole is for your face, so when you vomit, you don’t make a mess. These little holes are for your blood and piss.”

  Catling inhaled, shuddering at the description.

  “These are the instruments I’ll use to carve your skin.” He opened a drawer in a steel cabinet, drew out a shiny box, and dumped the contents on the table. Razor-edged knives clattered beside various scrapers. Mallets bristled with tiny needlelike spikes. He stood back, crossed his arms as if hugging himself, and pursed his lips.

  The instruments lay on the table, spotless and twinkling. Catling gaped at them, and her voice broke, “I haven’t a better choice.”

  Markim puffed up his cheeks and blew out a long sigh, his scowl softening into a frown. “I don’t want to know, so don’t tell me. We’ll take it at our own pace then. Doyen can go stump the Founders’ bungholes for all I care.”

  “I consent.” Catling steadied herself against the table. “Thank you, Markim-Ava.”

  “You can thank me now because long before we’re done, you’ll wish me dead.”

  ***

  The table felt cool to her stomach, the air chill. Shivers rippled across her skin. She lay with her face in the hole, its edges padded for comfort. Someone had placed a steel bucket below.

  Others in the room shuffled their feet and whispered about patterns and randomness, themes and designs. She would have lifted her face to peer at them, but Markim had strapped her head in place with a buckled belt. He’d done the same to her wrists and arms, ankles and thighs. She was immobile, helpless. She closed her eyes.

  “I’ve brought in extra needlers.” Markim laid a surprisingly warm hand on her back. “They will cut quickly. With luck, you will lose consciousness.” His hand withdrew. “One influence at a go. You’ll spend time in the pools between and heal enough to have you back on the table. Once we start, we won’t stop. If we did, there’d be no influencers in Ellegeance. Once again, do you grant your consent?”