Jagur glanced over his shoulder. “We’re biding our time; keep your eyes open.” They walked a meandering loop around the market. Four cages secured men, guards Gannon recognized, a smattering of riverfolk, and a few tier dwellers with guild markings. The Cull Tarr proved indiscriminate in their justice. The fifth cage held women, and the last was jammed with twitchers, some curled against the slats, others lying on the floorboards like corpses, and a few screaming as if their skin were on fire.
“Filching piffs,” Gannon breathed.
Jagur yanked on his rope. “Give it more time. No reason to rush this.”
“I’m fine with that.” They stood back observing the men at the platform. Jagur purchased bread with a greasy fish spread that smelled as if it had spent two long days in the sun. Gannon ate it with his hands tied and wished for something to drink, something to calm his jitters, like a giant mugful of spike.
Then Vianne emerged from the shadows beneath the second tier, accompanied by two jacks with scarlet kerchiefs tied around their necks. Gannon swallowed, and Jagur inhaled beside him.
She glided, chin up, her long, cream jacket pristine, hair in a weave of braids and curls, interlaced with pearls. She didn’t appear to suffer under Cull Tarr rule. In fact, she looked just dandy. As far as he was concerned, the commander received his answer.
All commotion in the cages died. Vianne stood by the platform, stiff as a mast, her face chiseled in stone. The crowd nearest the platform slowed and calmed.
Sweat broke out on Gannon’s back as the jacks hauled out the first man, a city guard with a gap where his teeth used to be. The bidding started between the Cull Tarr spectators, Ellegeans keeping their distance. Without competition, the man sold for three whole silvers.
A jack hauled a young woman to the platform, her eyes swollen with tears and mouth open in bewilderment. Vianne remained serene, though the temper among the Ellegeans in the market increased. This time Ellegeans joined Cull Tarr bidders, the price climbing to eight silvers.
“I know who I’m going to kill if I get the chance. Gannon wiped sweat from his forehead.
“Unless they're trying to buy the women to protect them,” Jagur said. “That’s what I would do.”
Gannon scowled. He hadn’t thought of that or the possibility Vianne might be coaxing Ellegean bidders along.
“I need to talk to her,” Jagur said.
“No, you don’t.” Gannon watched another man led to market. “You’re not thinking straight. Let’s back out of here and reconsider.”
Jagur freed the binding on Gannon’s wrists and handed him the rope. “I need to know.”
“Even if it kills you.”
The commander eyed him, took out his new pipe, and filled it. After begging a light from a vendor with a brazier, he puffed the fragrant smoke and ambled closer to a pylon. The wisps of smoke blew toward the auction and dissipated in the breeze. Gannon followed at a distance, his attention riveted on Vianne.
The cement mortaring her eyes on the horizon cracked. Her focus shifted, chin turned mere fractions as she scanned the crowd for the source of the familiar scent. Jagur continued to smoke, and she found him.
At the moment of recognition, Gannon stiffened, his breath shallow, one foot poised for a run. She merely pivoted to observe the market crowd as slavers led two twitchers to the platform. Gannon exhaled a gust of anxiety and scratched the tension out of his scalp. The twitchers sold for four coppers each.
The process continued through the next bell, Jagur stepping closer to her. Vianne avoided him but found Gannon in the crowd. She squinted, and though her face remained as bored as a plank, she gave him a tweak of pleasure followed by an ominous ripple of pain. A warning?
Guards delivered another man to the auctioneer. The number of Cull Tarr buyers increased to a score. The dark haired seafarers and jacks mingled among the Ellegeans who watched with wary eyes and somber scowls. The hair on Gannon’s neck stood on end. Vianne glanced at him, an abrupt prickling of fear forcing him to step back. Her gaze shifted to Jagur. The commander’s brow furrowed, and he lowered his pipe. Behind him, two Cull Tarr jacks stepped in, kicked his feet out from under him, and landed him on his back. Gannon spun. Shipmaster Emer Tilkon grinned in his face and plowed a fist into his forehead.
Chapter Fourteen
Catling adjusted the strip of cloth encircling her head and concealing her eye. She wore rafter trousers full of pockets and a loose jerkin, her bare arms and face smeared with mud. A plain-woven camgras scarf wrapped her neck, hiding the colorful woads climbing her spine.
Jafe and Raker paddled across the Slipsilver in the morning fog. Ava-Grea speared a woolen cloud so dense she lacked a view higher than the sixth tier. They transported hastily loaded bottles of luminescence for sale on the docks. Leena had ordered Jafe to trade her snakeskins for camgras oil and pika beans.
The city had changed for them all, especially for the rafters, their presence viewed with Cull Tarr suspicion, preachers proclaiming all natives as purveyors of evil. Two women had returned to the swamp that morning with Kadan’s message and a litany of complaints from harassing remarks to higher costs and mere coppers for their eels and herbs.
Kadan’s message had requested a meeting, nothing more. He’d wait two days on the dock’s southbound side.
The raft exited the labyrinth of caliph roots upriver of the city and rode the current with the fog to the long piers stretching into the swamp like green fingers. The roundabout route made crossing the Slipsilver more efficient and avoided the majority of Cull Tarr ships anchored to the north.
Raker lashed the mooring line to a piling and gave her a warning glance. “Stay on the raft with Jafe.” He stepped up to the pier without waiting for a reply and strode down to the girding dock.
“I will never understand your kind.” Jafe lifted crates and wooden boxes of gleaming bottles to the pier. “Always worrying and fighting, planning and marching here and there. You hunt each other like crajeks and don’t even eat the meat.” He roared at his joke.
A smile skittered across Catling’s face, but she didn’t find it particularly amusing. Eating each other’s flesh was about the only thing they didn’t do.
Raker walked back alone, picked up a full crate of bottles, and stepped down to the raft. He began emptying the container of its luminescent cargo. Jafe sat on the pier’s edge and watched without questioning the man’s actions. Catling enjoyed no such patience and propped her hands on her hips. “Well, did you find him? Where is he? What are you doing? Did she tell you something?”
“You ask too many questions.” Raker set the last four bottles on the pier. “Hide inside the crate.”
Her gaze fell to the tight space. Though short in stature, she resented the assumption that she could fit. “Why?”
He narrowed his eye. “You’re traveling to Guardian.”
“Why?” She didn’t understand. “What happened? Where is Kadan?”
“You ask too many questions.”
And she wasn’t getting answers. She glanced at Jafe, and when the rafter shrugged, she scrunched down into the crate with room to spare. Raker threw a piece of tarp over the top. “Jafe.”
Catling inhaled as Jafe lifted the crate, afraid he’d spill her out. She shut her eyes and surrendered to the rafter’s easy gait, hoping her time folded in thirds wouldn’t be long.
“You can put those in there.” Kadan’s voice. A door opened, and after some jostling, Catling’s crate landed on the deck with a thump. Her forehead hit the slats and stars flared in her eyes. She pushed out of the cramped space, rising to her knees. The cloth covering her eye had slipped off, and she rubbed the bump on her head. They were squashed into a tiny cabin with two built-in chairs, a small table and single berth.
Raker squatted down beside her, removed his eyepatch, and handed it to her. “She said you will need this for your trip north.”
“You said I headed south to Guardian.” Catling shook her head to clear it.
&nbs
p; “You do.” His pocked eye glimmered with a trace of light. “One day I will travel with you north to Elan-Sia.” He rose and let himself out, Jafe lumbering on his heels.
Kadan edged into the tiny quarters and offered a hand up. “We’re leaving for Guardian.”
“Raker told me.” She stepped out of the crate and stretched.
Her friend canted his head and grabbed a seat. “I didn’t tell him that’s where we headed.”
Catling sighed. “It doesn’t matter, Kadan. He knows things. Why? What’s happened? Why Guardian?”
“The Cull Tarr know about you. One of the doyen told them.”
“I know. Jagur told me.” She sank to the berth and almost sighed with relief. “Vianne sent him a note before she disappeared.”
“The Shiplord is hunting you.”
“I know that too. They’ve been in the swamps.” She pressed her lips between her teeth, searching his eyes. Something more troubled him. “What else? Something about Rose? Or Whitt?”
“I believe Rose is with Whitt and they’re safe in the Far Wolds.” He met her eyes. “But the Shiplord knows about her too.”
“About her influence?” Catling’s heart leapt. “How would they know? Who told them?”
“They suspect,” he clarified. “But it’s not her influence that interests them.”
“They seek her as a means to reach me.” Catling couldn’t bear it. Then another possibility invaded her thoughts. “Do they think she might be able to shield?”
“They’re curious.” He rubbed his face. “They’re going to try to find her. I sent a bird to Jagur in Guardian. I don’t know how to reach Whitt.”
She pressed a hand to her throat. “Jagur’s in Elan-Sia attempting to play the hero and rescue Vianne. Gannon traveled with him, out for revenge. I have to go after Rose.”
“The ferry’s ready. I’m going with you.”
“No.” She moved to the seat across the table from him and reached for his fingers. “I can manage. I’ll take the ferry if you’ll allow it. I need you here in case they find her. If I fail and Whitt fails, you must help her, Kadan. Save her and take her to Mur-Vallis to Nessa… or to Raker.”
“They’ll follow me, Catling. They’ll keep searching.”
She steeled her jaw. “Then I’ll have no choice but to kill them all.”
Chapter Fifteen
Vianne held onto the ferry’s rail. Waterdragons hauled the boat through the frothing water at the convergence of the Blackwater and South Rivers. The harnessed creatures fanned their fins, and the flukes of their serpentine tails undulated in the purling current. Every so often, they surfaced to breathe, spraying luminescence to the air. Sunlight glittered off the droplets, transforming them into colorful tears.
Somehow, rivermasters and waterdragons understood each other in their cooperative dance. So accustomed to the sight, she’d never considered how it occurred. Waterways had provided the realm’s transportation for hundreds of years, since the Founders first planted the tiers and dug the canals. Ellegeans had employed rivermasters for as long as she could remember, and the waterdragons were the means for upriver travel. Why? How? When had that unique cooperation begun? She’d never given in to curiosity, never asked. So much of her life she’d taken for granted.
Not her first trip to Guardian, but the last was years, decades ago. Jagur was Guardian born and bred. A reckless soul who stole her heart, he epitomized a man ruled by love. Her first trip so far south had been at his behest. Flushed with youth, he’d asked her to stay and bond, to forsake her world of influence for one of honor. She should have delved into his opinion of her guild at the time, but she’d been equally spellbound by the wild Fangwold romance.
She’d dispatched a bird to Ava-Grea announcing her decision, and the reply was fraught with warning. Bonds outside the guild rarely survived. The disproportion of power unavoidably bred suspicion. She’d assumed they possessed the minds and hearts to overcome the challenges, but like master gardeners, they’d planted seeds of mistrust that couldn’t help but sprout. Flustered and impulsive, she’d fled Guardian, abandoning the world of love for one of duty. For years, she’d questioned the wisdom of her decision but only recently accepted that she made the wrong choice.
Spray doused her, and she retreated from the rail. The ferry continued its sluggish climb toward the lakeside waystation. For the balance of the journey, she hid from the ambassador and his six jacks, her Cull Tarr escort or, more accurately, her master and jailors.
How Linc expected her to wheedle them through the fortress gates without getting them all killed was a mystery to her. Guardian had failed the men and women it sent to Elan-Sia, lost them to slavery or death. From all she gathered, the battle for Ava-Grea had gone no better, though it was possible a few lucky ones had found a way home. Either way, if the Cull Tarr expected a gracious welcome, they were delusional.
After two weeks on the river, the ferry delivered them to the crystal tarn and its silver falls. She stood on the twilit shore, watching the waterdragons glide into the sluice for the return journey north. Perhaps that’s why they toiled upriver—for the joy of riding the current to the sea. She experienced no such freedom in her travels. Each season her control slipped, and she lacked any choice but to ride the rivers wherever they carried her.
“You are lost in thought, Vianne-Ava.”
She acknowledged Linc with a glance. “Guardian will be most unhappy with your presence.”
“I have confidence you will convince them of our need to reach Tor.”
“You must realize it isn’t entirely up to me. The Cull Tarr have killed and enslaved brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers. I shall soothe, but I can’t be everywhere at once. Your men must practice restraint.”
“I shall guarantee it.”
“Even in the face of violence?”
He met her eyes, her warning received.
***
Sure-footed terran horses climbed the steep track between walls of rock that hoarded winter’s cold. Around a bend, the citadel’s tower winked into view and then ducked behind lofty eldergreen. An arrow flashed by and pounded into a tree.
Vianne gasped and halted with a glance at Linc, waiting for the next one to find its mark. Her heart galloped ahead of her.
“I see a lot of scarlet,” a man’s voice yelled somewhere ahead.
“I am Vianne-Ava of the Influencers’ Guild.” She stood in her stirrups, casting her authority over anyone within view. “We merely seek passage through Guardian.”
“And we merely seek justice,” a woman shouted from somewhere to Vianne’s left, making it clear they were surrounded.
An arrow skidded on the stones by Linc’s dapple, and the animal shied.
“I bring word of Commander Jagur,” Vianne called, her statement eliciting a brief silence.
“Where is he?”
“Elan-Sia, alive.” She sat primly in her saddle. “Is Captain Nordin here? I would speak with him.”
Another silence. “Wait here while we see if he’s interested.”
Relief blew from her chest. Nordin was alive and in Guardian, two facts she hadn’t know for certain.
The wait stretched interminably, the affront likely on purpose. Her hands and feet turned to ice, and other than wiggling her toes in her boots, she refused to fidget. She missed her tatting, her lace and silk spools lost the day Emer Tilkon stole her from Ava-Grea.
“One of you, collect all your weapons,” the voice returned. “Leave them on the flat rock with the cairn.”
The rock lay at the side of the trail, ten paces ahead.
“Will you return them as we depart?” Linc asked, and the guardians chuckled. Without receiving a reply, he gave the order, and a jack carried out the task.
A score of guardians in their armor and greens emerged from behind trees and boulders. Shadows crossed the track as more appeared atop the ragged rock walls. Six of them descended on the cache, snapped spears in two, and smashed the c
rossbows on the rocks. Linc stared straight ahead, and his men didn’t peep. Even though he would replace the weapons once they reached Tor, Vianne relished the gesture.
She rode to the citadel enclosed with her enemies in a ring of armed guardians. Her captors lined the Cull Tarr up against the citadel wall, and for a moment, she expected to see them peppered with arrows.
“Vianne-Ava.” A woman beckoned her to the door. If Linc expected to join her, he was disappointed. Inside the fortress, she climbed the stairs behind her escort, fingers brushing the stone wall. She’d lived for so long within Founder-made tiers that she’d forgotten about the aura of stone and the texture of hewn timber, the smell of wood fire.
The woman let her into Jagur’s office. Nordin rose from behind the large desk, his face drawn and hard, eyes humorless. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you all.”
She bowed, expecting no such courtesy in return, and dosed him with a light brush of comfort. The room smelled of Jagur’s favorite smoke, and she resisted the urge to explore, to immerse herself in the intimacy of his books and papers, his cup and quill, the dust on his shelves, and fingerprints on his lantern. Instead, she remained standing and faced the lanky captain.
“I’m here to save Jagur’s life.”
“Where is he?”
“Elan-Sia. The Cull Tarr captured him along with Gannon. Captain, they abducted me moments after I sent Jagur the message about the Cull Tarr invasion. I serve the Shiplord because I have no choice, but also to save Ellegean lives. I’m in a position to do so. I’m to escort this Cull Tarr party through Guardian and back again. If I’m successful, the Shiplord has promised to spare both men.”
“Spare them for what purpose?”
She gazed down at the desk and ran a finger across the unpolished edge.
“A life of slavery?” he guessed.
“A life nonetheless.” She took a seat uninvited, and he sank to Jagur’s chair, a scarred hand wringing the anger from his face. She sighed, his resignation the response she’d aimed for. “It’s a start, Captain. If I keep him alive, there’s a chance. As long as he’s alive, we aren’t finished.”
Kari's Reckoning (The Rose Shield Book 4) Page 9
