Kari's Reckoning (The Rose Shield Book 4)

by D. Wallace Peach

  “We seek a treaty,” Ardal said with a shrug as if the answer were obvious. “An end to war, a beginning to peace, a share in the rule, Ellegean prosperity. You’re our token of good will.”

  “We’re losing anyway,” Moira said, fear seeping from her pores. “The Cull Tarr desire you, Catling, and they’ve gone to great lengths to capture you. Dalcoran intended to surrender you to them until you murdered him. We need to save Ellegeance. Save ourselves.”

  “They expect me to control you,” Catling snapped. “That’s why they want me, nothing more. Do you truly believe they plan to share their power with influencers?”

  “We have an agreement,” Moira said.

  Kadan stared at her. “An agreement that included undermining our guardians? Sacrificing Ellegean warriors so we’d lose this war?”

  “We wouldn’t do that,” Vincen said. “That’s treasonous.”

  A wounded guardian pushed himself to his knees, bent over, and rested on his knuckles. “You did.”

  “We wouldn’t,” Vincen insisted. “You’re mistaken.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ardal said. “The Cull Tarr offered us peace, our guild restored to its old grandeur, our positions in the provinces. We’d be fools to pass it up.”

  “Please leave,” Catling begged. “Before the Cull Tarr arrive. Any of you who disagree with this, please leave now. Take our injured with you.”

  Sanson helped up a guardian, and the two shuffled out, no one stopping him. Tora-Mur hurried out the door behind them.

  “Brenna, Neven?” Catling asked. “Please go.”

  “We aren’t surrendering yet,” Neven said, kneeling by Brenna.

  “No, you don’t understand.” Catling searched the room. “Vincen, are you part of this?” He looked at his feet. “No one else?”

  “We’re united.” Ardal frowned at the strident commotion outside, the sounds of laughter and howling as the Cull Tarr neared.

  “Let Kadan go,” Catling pleaded. “I’ll surrender.”

  “No one trusts you, Catling. Those who do, end up dead.” Ardal’s scowl dared her to say otherwise. Both front and rear doors slid open. Cull Tarr jacks sauntered in, brandishing knives and spears, faces flushed with victory.

  Moira blanched, and the other influencers shuffled back. Ardal blew out a breath and pointed with his knife. “This is Catling, the rose shield, the one the Shiplord bargained for.”

  The Cull Tarr began stabbing wounded guardians, and Moira screamed.

  “Do it,” Kadan begged.

  Catling shook her head, not with him in the room. A Cull Tarr jack grabbed her arm, dragging her toward the door. Moira screamed as the carnage continued.

  “Do it.”

  “I won’t,” she cried, wrenching her arm from the Cull Tarr grip.

  “You’ll do whatever the Shiplord wants you to,” the jack snarled and yanked her back.

  Catling covered her eye. Emotions swirled, fear prevailing among the influencers, pain and fury flaring from the guardians. The Cull Tarr blazed with spikes of green and red, joyous triumph and pleasure in death.

  Ardal swirled in a kaleidoscope of hues, every color with the exception of blue, the color of love. He pressed the blade into Kadan’s throat. Blood trickled from the thin crimson line.

  “Do it,” Kadan shouted, shutting his eyes. “Catling, now!”

  Her heart roared. The sight of blood scalded her eyes. The sounds of death bruised her ears. She knew what her eye would do. She flipped her shield to protect Kadan and blasted the colors from the room.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The Cull Sea heaved and bulged along the craggy shore. The ferry’s captain had balked at taking his dainty River Mistress into the briny deeps to begin with, and the strange weather spooked the crew.

  Overhead, the late-day sky wore a ruby blush and puffy clouds scurried east like a fluffle of pink rabbits. The problem lay straight ahead where a woolen fog shrouded the entire delta. Gannon peered at the immensity of murk, searching for something recognizable—like a city. Elan-Sia had vanished into a wall of gray gloom. He massaged his head, dark curls a tangle of salt and wind.

  “When this is over,” Tiler grumbled, “you can pour me a barrel of tipple. Don’t even need a mug. I’ll lay this old tramp spanker on a table, and you can open the spigot.”

  “I’ll join you,” Gannon said as someone walked up behind him.

  “We’re heading back,” the captain said.

  Gannon eyed Tiler, the announcement unsurprising. The two of them turned around. The captain’s hands ground into his hips, feet bolted to the deck. Two seafarers with biceps rivaling a Farlander’s flanked him. None of them looked enthusiastic with the present course, and the rest of the crew grimaced, clearly of a like mind.

  “I suppose a promise of more gold won’t make a difference.” Gannon pinched the bridge of his nose, and the captain shook his head. “Loyalty and duty to Ellegeance?”

  “I’ll give you the dinghy,” the captain said. “Best I can do. Whatever magic is stirring in there, I don’t like it, and neither does my boat or my crew. If fog is all you find and the breeze holds, you’ll reach the city before nightfall.”

  Gannon glanced at the single-masted tub. He still hadn’t learned to swim despite an old commitment to remedy the oversight. “We’ll take it.”

  Before he could change his mind, the dinghy slapped the water, the crew tossed in a pair of oars, and they were on their way. The waterdragons wheeled around, and the ferry headed back the way it came.

  After years on the catboat with Lelaine, Gannon knew how to rig a sail and exploit an indolent wind. Luminescence churned, and the sea seemed confused about its rhythms, the swells sloshing against each other with the randomness of water in a bucket. The bank of fog loomed like a mob of angry ghosts.

  For no fathomable reason, the sea started sucking them toward the gloom, and the wind died. “Tiler, grab me an oar.” Tiler handed one over, and side by side, they pulled on the oars. The wall of gray enveloped them. He’d sailed in fog before, though never quite this soupy, and the rising roar of rushing water made him bare his teeth.

  “Sounds like a waterfall.” Tiler’s face drained of color.

  “There aren’t any waterfalls in the delta.”

  “Just saying it sounds like a waterfall.”

  “It might be something else.”

  “Something else that sounds like a waterfall.”

  The sea picked up speed, racing through the murk, a swift river rushing in the wrong direction. The luminescence mixed with mud. The fog blinded. Tiler pitched his oar and held on. “Holy clod-storm.”

  Gannon’s mouth opened, his body rigid with fear. He swallowed his scream as the sea vanished and the dinghy flew into a wet cloud. For a breath, he floated, suspended in the eerie white world. Then the dinghy slammed bow first into more water, flinging him forward like a slingshot. He skidded across the luminescent surface and sank, hit something with his feet and kicked up. Tiler grabbed his sleeve, and he breathed in a lungful of water. Coughing and rasping, he hung on to Tiler’s arm.

  The roar of a gods-damned waterfall drowned out all other sound. He coughed and gasped, seizing a moment to figure out where and how they were. Tiler’s other meaty hand, the one that wasn’t preventing Gannon’s death by drowning, gripped a long piece of line hanging from a gigantic ship, The Sea God.

  He groaned and coughed, right where he intended to be, despite how much he wasn’t looking forward to dying.

  The rope dangled from the wrong side of the ship to be an anchor line, but that’s what it looked like, and who knew what had happened to stir the delta into liquid chaos. Tiler held on as the river, what remained of it, attempted to suck them back into the giant watery thrasher.

  “I say we invite ourselves up,” Gannon shouted above the tumult.

  “Good thinking.” Tiler heaved him to the rope. Gannon grabbed on, rested for a couple heartbeats, and shimmied upward. Once free of the current, the c
limb improved, until halfway up when crossbows took aim from above. A discouraging development except they didn’t shoot and that suited him fine. Tiler grunted behind him, the man jostling his bulk up the line.

  The Cull Tarr yanked them over the rail and divested them of their knives. Gannon hauled in a breath. “Tell Tilkon that Gannon desires an audience.”

  A wiry jack whacked him in the skull with the hilt of his own knife.

  ***

  Someone kicked Gannon’s boot, and he opened a blurry eye. Through his headache, he glimpsed Tiler snoozing beside him, and Whitt and probably Raker further down the line. A sorry reunion by the looks of it.

  The Cull Tarr had trussed them up like pigs ready for the spit. He sat propped against the ship’s rail, hands tied behind him and feet bound and knotted. A noose around his neck and a short tether attached him to a heavy chunk of iron, likely seized from one of four idle catapults

  “Nap’s over.”

  He squinted up at the sturdy woman, her eyes narrowed into slits and upper lip puckered beneath the hatchet nose. Her hands rested on her curvy hips. Since he’s last seen her, she’d added gold and sable to her slinky and nearly transparent black attire. Unchanged were the bone-handled knives and black boots with which she kicked him again.

  “You’ve changed, Emer,” Gannon said.

  She squatted down by his feet and twiddled a knife in her fingers. “That’s Shiplord, to you.”

  “Shiplord, how rude of me to forget. This war has worked out well for you.”

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “And you found me.” He smiled. “In fact, I came seeking you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I realize most of this isn’t your doing.” He used his chin to encompass the massive wall of water, the impenetrable fog, and clearly stranded ship. “I’ve come to negotiate terms for your surrender.”

  The Cull Tarr jacks listening to his interrogation snickered, and the corner of Tilkon’s scarred lip twitched into something between a smile and sneer. “You owe me four hundred whole gold coins.”

  “That many?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You can’t tell me Notic and Devel didn’t save a hundred or so.”

  “Let’s call it four hundred. For my trouble. I rescued your queen, remember?”

  “You ransomed a hostage.”

  “We voted,” she snapped. “It was agreed. The vote stands.”

  Sighing, Gannon regarded the crew’s faces. “You’re right, Shiplord. The vote is sacred. Bless the Founders for their wisdom.”

  “The first good decision you’ve made, Gannon. I see you learned something during your year with us.

  He tilted his head. “You realize, however, that the Cull Tarr caused a considerable amount of destruction: crops, cities burned, ships sunk, families destroyed, casualties… a dead queen.” The feigned civility on his face cracked.

  “She jumped,” Tilkon informed him.

  “She wouldn’t do that,” he growled at her.

  “Believe whatever you wish. It doesn’t change your debt to me.”

  “I’ll tell you what.” He cocked his head. “How’s the battle going in Elan-Sia?”

  She couldn’t answer, and he knew it.

  “They’re losing,” Whitt said. “Before the fog rolled over us, we saw the burning ships.” A jack popped him across the head with the butt of his spear.

  Gannon’s gaze shifted back to the Shiplord. “We just arrived from Nor-Bis. You did a fine job there. Where are the women and children?”

  “On those ships.” She cracked her knuckles. “Some of them.”

  He stared at her. If he’d reserved a teeny smidgeon of respect for Emer Tilkon, it vanished. “You, Shiplord, are a fine example of humanity.”

  “This is war, Gannon. The Founders made provisions in the Book of Protocols for war.”

  “And you always obey the law.”

  “Our faith is what makes us who we are.”

  “In that case…” Gannon looked up and raised his voice, “I call a vote!”

  The shock on Tilkon’s face morphed into rage, and for a heartbeat, the knife in her hand longed to find a home between his ribs. His heart raced, and he shouted, “I call a vote by the holy Book of Protocols.”

  Tilkon leapt to her feet and stormed across the deck. She spun, her beady eyes blazing like a forge’s fire. “State your case!”

  “You’re losing this war,” Gannon shouted with a touch of hopeful overconfidence. “You saw your ships in flames, and I’m certain the wreckage around your hull hasn’t escaped your notice. We’ll not only spare Cull Tarr lives, but Ellegeance offers peace and new trade negotiations conducted according to the Book of Protocols.”

  “I offer conquest,” Tilkon yelled, unable to wait her turn. “Expansion of Cull Tarr dominion as ordained by the blessed Founders. Land, cities, fields, slaves. And gold.”

  He shook his head. “How many of you know the Book of Protocols? Where do the blessed words command you to conquer, to kill and enslave, to rob and destroy homes?” He didn’t pause for an answer. “The Founders’ sacred book preaches peace and respect for law, a system for solving disputes without bloodshed, that each person matters and has a voice. If you follow this path and lose your ships and lives what happens to your settlements, your families?”

  Tilkon laughed. “This is a fraction of our fleet. Ellegeance thinks we are fallible, frightened fools. We outnumber them. Why should we lie on our backs and negotiate for another decade when we can take what we desire now. The Founders meant us to rule, to lay our faith across the land, to grow in grandeur and prosperity by their word. In a hundred years this planet will belong to the Cull Tarr.”

  “You won’t own the planet,” Raker said.

  “Is that a dare?” Tilkon asked, her swagger reinstated. “Ellegeans think they own this world, as if they’re entitled to rule and the rest of us must obey their commands. Their arrogance is astonishing. The Founders are gods. They decide.” The crew cheered her, their pride ignited. “The Cull Tarr will rule the realm. Vote!” she yelled, pumping her fist in the air. The jacks started raising their arms.

  “I offer Nor-Bis,” Gannon shouted. Tiler and Whitt stared at him, and he swallowed. “What good is your Shiplord’s defiance of the Protocols if you are all dead? Your fleet destroyed? Your families bereft? As a commitment to a future of peace, we offer you the tier city, Nor-Bis.” The jacks dropped their arms, eyes turned to the Shiplord.

  “A burned-out hulk,” Tilkon sneered, “not even Ellegeance wants.”

  Gannon shook his head, adjusting his tactics. “The divine Founders built cities that cannot be destroyed. They awarded one to you. Do you doubt the righteousness of their choices? Shiplord Emer Tilkon is Founder-blessed, an exalted hero, victorious over Nor-Bis. The Founders chose you, the crew of The Sea God to serve the blessed Cull Tarr and show yourselves their loyal servants. Take what they give, free your slaves, and live in peace, or die here. That’s your choice.”

  “What about the sea?” a man asked.

  Gannon glanced at Whitt who shouted to the crew, “Vote for peace, and the blessed Founders will placate the sea, return the delta, and save your lives. You can take what’s left of your fleet and go home.”

  “I want four hundred pieces of gold,” Tilkon growled, the shiny coins stuck in her teeth.

  “Fine,” Gannon said. “All in favor of ending this war?” He thrust his fist to the sky. He watched as fists rose, first a few, then growing as confidence spread.

  “Sixty-eight,” a man shouted from the forecastle. Almost unanimous, the other count didn’t matter. “The Cull Tarr have voted. We end the war.”

  The crew didn’t move as Tilkon glowered at Gannon. He stared right back at her. “Ellegeance is adopting the Protocols as our rule of law, Shiplord, as written. It’s a fine book. In a way, we both won. What hurts is that we could have done it without death lending us a hand.”

  Tilkon stormed to the jackstaff and raise
d the flag signaling a retreat.

  Chapter Forty

  Kadan opened his eyes to the silence. He pushed Ardal’s blade from his neck and dabbed at the blood. Most of Ava-Grea’s influencers and Cull Tarr jacks stood motionless, staring into the dusky light spilling through shattered windows. A few roamed, their momentum yet to grind down to stillness. The wounded who hadn’t fallen to Cull Tarr blades, lay in peaceful repose as if equally dead.

  “Catling?”

  She stared through him, breathing, blinking, uncaring.

  “Catling? Oh, no, Catling.” He covered his mouth, emotion rising from his chest and blurring his eyes. She had killed herself to save him.

  Clutching her hand, he led her through the maze of bodies and out of the weaver’s shop where he ducked between the buildings. She followed docilely, compliant, unafraid, neither willing or unwilling, her eyes not vacant, but lacking interest as if in wiping out her emotional foundation, she’d erased her soul.

  The bombardment had stopped, but the fighting continued, voices shouting, glass and furniture shattering as it rained down the tiers. He aimed for the deeper shadows of the interior, seeking a safe place to heal her, all the while knowing the task would prove futile. The skill lay beyond his talents. Even with Vianne and Catling laboring at his side, he hadn’t been capable of healing the Cull Tarr in the fane. Not even close.

  Shouts rang out ahead. He changed directions, pulling her toward the promenade at the city’s south end and into a pylon’s alcove. “I need your key,” he whispered. Gently, he removed the cord from around her neck and unlocked the door. He tugged her in, and she shuffled downward, the mere slope of the coiling stairs drawing her feet.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, talking to her simply out of courtesy and habit. Her hand in his, he jostled to a position in front of her, afraid she might get too far ahead of him, ramble off the edge, and tumble down into Founders’ Hell.

  They spiraled down the ramp, wrapped in the planet’s cool air. Luminescence streamed through clear tubes, lighting the curved walls in a soft rainbow of dappled color. He glanced back at her, and she stared ahead, lips parted, everything that animated her face sagging and empty. “We’re almost there.”