Catling's Bane (The Rose Shield Book 1)

by D. Wallace Peach

  Thus far, no one had asked. The men they’d passed stepped aside while sharing a greeting or nod with Gannon, and the women fluttered by him like fair-winged butterflies. If Catling merited a curious glance at all, it amounted to a blink at her rose-petaled eye.

  “Can we stay and look at the paintings?” she asked.

  “Another time.” He beckoned her to follow. “This way.”

  Catling dragged her eyes away and trotted on Gannon’s heels. He rounded a corner and straight ahead at the end of the hall loomed the sleek face of a giant pylon. A muscled bull of a man with tufted hair sat on a chair before a closed door, blocking their way.

  “Yo, Gan.” The man’s eyebrows bobbed up as he rose to his feet. “You found her.”

  “Tiler,” Gannon said. “This is Catling, Farrow’s charge.”

  “Oh, right.” Tiler looked down at her and scratched his ear.

  Catling bowed, “My respects.”

  “Ha!” The big man barked. “She thinks I’m a coddling sack-spanker.”

  “Catling, you can call this one anything you wish,” Gannon said with a wink. “He’s a master of foulness.”

  “Mouth full of butt nuggets, heart of gold.” Tiler grinned. “You going up?”

  “Showing her the sights,” Gannon replied. “Anyone up there?”

  “Not of ours,” Tiler said as he opened the door. “Can’t speak for the other bosses.”

  “If we’re not down by the next bell, let my father know.”

  “Can do.”

  When Catling hesitated, Gannon entered first and pulled her in by the hand. She gasped at the strange world hidden within the tier’s leg. Some twenty paces across, the colossal pylon was hollow. She stood on a flat lip with a waist-high rail that coiled along the inside wall like a spring, both below and above her. Through the column’s center ran a forest of gray pipes and clear tubes streaming with luminescence. The liquid light traveled upward in swirls of glittering color and downward in the duller hues that wove through the warrens.

  “It’s a loop,” Gannon said. “The luminescence is drawn from underground aquafers. It circulates first through the top tier, then down through the next and the next, until it reaches the warrens and returns to the supply.”

  Catling didn’t understand most of the man’s explanation, but she captured his words well enough. “It’s so deep,” she said, peering cautiously over the rail, the height sweeping her with a wave of dizziness. “It’s warm.”

  “Geothermals,” Gannon said. “The Founders tapped the planet’s heat. It warms the tiers during Winterchill and cools them during Summertide.”

  “How far down does it go?”

  “Too far for me to find out. We call it Founders’ Hell. Probably crawling with spiders.” He lifted his gaze. “I know how far it goes up, though. Let’s go.”

  A hand gripping the rail, Catling started up the spiral, eyes on the walkway a step ahead of her feet. As her confidence grew, she stared at the tubes of streaming light stretching from the pylon’s depth to its lofty top. When they reached another door, she paused.

  “That leads to the first tier,” Gannon said. “Each tier has an access door for the Trade-Crafters’ Guild. We happen to have negotiated several sets of keys.” He jangled a ring of shiny metal before her eyes. “Excellent for thieving and enjoying other activities requiring discretion.”

  “Does every pylon have doors?”

  “Here they do. I can’t say for other cities.”

  “Are we going out there?” A swell of anxious excitement fluttered in her chest.

  “A bit higher,” he said with a smile. “Fourth tier. Higher than that, we’re likely to face a challenge.”

  Catling resumed her climb, beads of sweat dampening her forehead. At the fourth tier, she halted. Gannon slipped by her and unlocked the door. Gently he cracked it open, revealing a shadowed alcove. Motionless, he listened, and then with a cant of his head, he stepped out. She held her breath and followed.

  “This way.” He pointed down a lane lined with stacked homes. “I want to show you something.”

  Her eyes darted like sparrows as she attempted to absorb the details of a place as foreign to her as the Cull Sea. Unlike the warrens’ walls of stone and wood, the fourth tier’s structures were Founder-made, built of the same material as the tier itself—pale gray, clean, and almost seamless to the eye. The buildings stood two stories high, snugged between the towering pylons and capped by the floor of the tier above.

  “These homes and shops are modest in size,” Gannon explained. “This is the lowest of the merchant’s tiers. It’s dominated by the Artisan and Academian Guilds. Below Trade-Crafters and Tier Guards. Above you’ll find Merchant, Banking, and Justice Guilds, and the high ward.”

  Catling peeked down the tidy alleyways. Colorful signs hung over lintels, and the craftwork flanking the doorways boasted of the talents therein.

  “Up here, the tiers mingle,” Gannon said, pointing to the wide spiraling staircases that wound to neighboring levels above and below. Only we of the warrens don’t move freely. The tier guards see to that.”

  Catling’s gaze rose up the coiling steps. Attempting to ascend any of the four wide ramps to the first tier had never occurred to her. She’d never wondered about the armed sentries standing stiff as pillars along the railings and what they might do if she tried. “The people come down to our markets,” she said.

  “And they go back up.” He glanced at her. “But not us—not without an invitation and a purpose that serves them.”

  The lane ended at a wide promenade that traveled the tier’s outer rim. Catling swayed, giddy at the height. A nervous laugh shook her as she joined him for a stroll of the circular terrace, keeping a healthy distance from the edge. They skirted eateries and shops with glass windows, statuary chiseled of white stone, window boxes lurid with cascading blooms, and giant ceramic pots bearing fruit trees.

  Their walk ended at a chest-high rail at the tier’s southern end. Gannon rested his forearms on the top crosspiece, face level with hers. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

  Catling inched toward him and clutched the rail. A breeze caressed her brow with a cooling kiss, and her gaze roamed the landscape, gathering an altered view of her city. From the fourth tier, she spied the Blackwater’s curving course, burnished bronze in the late-day sun. With the warrens hidden beneath her, the world appeared free of filth and corruption, the markets strewn across the pavers vibrant with life. Copses of terran oak and maple dappled the nearer view. Fields and pastures rolled to the edge of tall timberland. Above the trees’ serrated tops, she beheld the Fangwold Mountains, their snow-cowled peaks pink with the parting glory of the crimson sun.

  When she smiled at Gannon, a laugh erupted from his chest. “Someday, Catling, you will see it from the top.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Hand down,” Gannon barked from the tier’s shadow.

  With a huff, Catling lowered her hand from her unmarked eye. The threads of influence faded from her vision, and she squinted in an effort to refocus. The shield around her held but barely.

  “Stop squinting.”

  “Stop yelling.” The aggravation in his voice rattled her concentration.

  “If your trips to the farm make you forget everything we’ve worked on, maybe you shouldn’t go.”

  “Wenna will cut off your ears,” she muttered.

  “I liked you better when you didn’t talk as much.” He scraped a hand through his black curls.

  Farrow was sisterly sweet, and for the most part, Gannon rolled along good-naturedly, yet she missed the stead. Her visits left her pining for her family all the more. She longed for the simplicity and fellowship, snuggling with Whitt and Mouser in the loft and gobbling down food with her fingers. Even daily chores, so onerous a season ago, filled her with fondness.

  Her shield failed and she giggled.

  Despite the Winterchill frost biting her cheeks, the sweetness of hanging day trickled over
her like a warm rain. Every face in the festive market grinned with good will, and laughter rang beside the raucous chorus of haggling peddlers and playing children. High Ward Algar loomed at the tier’s edge, the blond boy rigid at his side. Not far from them, a prisoner in squalid rags danced and bowed to the crowd, a noose cinched around his neck.

  “Catling!”

  Teeth gritted, she furrowed her brow and concentrated, attempting to bring the vision back. She knotted a hand into a fist, denying the urge to cover her eye. Gannon said nothing about scrunching her face, and she stifled a desire to laugh. Her gaze rose to the two influencers on the tier, and despite the ripples of joy tickling her skin, logic whispered warnings of wrongness in her ears. The threads of influence materialized before her, and she broke them, shielding herself.

  “I did it,” she said.

  “How do you feel?” Gannon asked, the intensity of his voice helping her focus.

  Before the justice even voiced his pronouncement of death, the ragged man skipped off the ledge. Catling winced as the rope snapped taut. The eager spectators at the dead man’s feet scrambled over each other, grappling for copper coins.

  “Ill and angry,” she whispered, the cold air fingering through her jacket.

  “Now,” he urged. “Tuck those feelings somewhere safe and start severing. Free as many as you’re able. Sever them all, Catling.”

  She ignored the impossibility of his final instruction. He demanded more than she could manage. If this day ended like any other hanging day, Farrow would cozy her into bed with a raging headache.

  Above her, a pair of guards guided a boy to the tier’s rim, a child younger than she and so willow thin that the men at his side towered like terran oak trees. She gasped, sick and furious, her true feelings scrawled between her ears. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the child and dropped her shield protecting her heart.

  As a salve of peace permeated her skin, she cut the influence securing the boy. He screeched, face paling with fear. A terrible wail rose from his frail body. Those on the tier spun toward the cry in shock. The high ward’s stern features contorted into a scowl as the boy beside him backed away beyond Catling’s vision. The guards stammered at the high ward as the influencers exchanged frightened glances and fixed their efforts on the crowd. The thin child sobbed.

  Catling focused, refusing all thought and feeling as she scanned the market. She sought the faces of children and parents, and one by one, she ripped the ties of influence binding them. Children cried as mothers gasped with horror and fathers shouted oaths. She scoured the stalls and wagons, the vendors and shoppers, snapping cords, freeing a mutinous torrent of outrage.

  Confusion arrested those on the tier. The doomed child keened on his knees between the guards who waited for orders, their eyes wide with panic. The high ward raged at the flinching influencers as they plied their craft on the market crowd. Arms raised, the justice begged for calm in a voice lost to the mob’s rising roar.

  All around Catling, the crowd lost control. Her head spun as she slashed the threads, as many as she could manage. Some of those freed of influence fled, while others, fueled by the surge of genuine emotion, raised fists against those who still laughed at the day’s hilarity. Tables and carts flipped, smashing to the pavers, goods clattering and scooped up by greedy hands. Twitchers snatched at unguarded pockets. Screams rose as pain merged with the artificial pull of joy. In a matter of minutes, the hanging day market descended into a deadly riot.

  Despite the pounding in her head, Catling smiled as two men tumbled to her feet, one punching the bloodied face of the other. Gannon’s arm wrapped her waist, and he swept her up as she laughed. He hauled her into the tier’s shadow, where the hold of influence broke. Bile singed the back of her throat. Shushing her cries, he ran with her deeper into the warrens, and when he finally put her down, she vomited against a wall before her vision turned black.

  Chapter Ten

  The door to Algar’s study stood ajar. Kadan straightened his shoulders and steadied his breath. Since his arrival at the highest tier five winters previous, he’d learned to navigate the household’s treacherous waters. Fear hid so deeply in the shadowy corners of his heart that at times he forgot it was there.

  A man of potent emotions, his uncle despised weakness as much as he loathed strength. The only quality Algar seemed to appreciate more than obedience was usefulness, and he enjoyed having a protégé onto whom he could impart his wisdom. Kadan played the part well; he played all his roles well.

  At his knock, Algar glanced up from his desk. His hair, combed from his face in dark waves, had lost its tidy precision as he worked, but the ice-gray eyes never surrendered their steely edge. “Kadan, come in. Look at this.”

  As Kadan entered, Algar rose and stepped to a tall counter with a stone surface. Open canisters of pale powder, shards of raw and forged metals, and bottles of luminescence lined the back edge. A burner, operated with gas routed from the pylon, perched at one end in its metal stand. “Hand me a piece of that.”

  Kadan picked up a plate-size wafer of gray material, the same substance from which the Founders had constructed the entire city. The hard smoothness resembled metal but without the expected weight. “How did you acquire a piece of it? It’s indestructible.”

  “Ah,” Algar smiled. “Heat.”

  “But it’s impervious to heat,” Kadan said. The occasional fire in the tiers incinerated everything brought in by man, but the tier itself, anything Founder-made, remained unmarred by the flames.

  “Not impervious,” Algar said. “I’ll show you.” He ignored the gas burner and lit a primitive oil lantern like those used in the warrens. Once he’d adjusted the flame, he set it against the wall and crossed his arms, a gleam in his eye.

  Kadan knew better than to speak. His uncle demanded rapt attention, an audience for his every word and deed. The section of the wall by the flame began to sag. Algar grabbed a wooden pestle and pressed on the surface, dimpling it. He removed the flame, and as the wall cooled, it molded to its original form. Kadan had observed the phenomena countless times before.

  “Now.” Algar returned the flame to the wall, and while it heated, he filled a metal basin on the counter with luminescence. From his desk, he retrieved a short dagger and a charred rag that he tossed to Kadan. “Wrap my hand.”

  His uncle held the dagger as Kadan coiled the rag around his fist. The wall once again sagged in the heat. Algar knelt, thrust his hand into the flame, and swiftly sawed a diamond shape from the wall. It dropped to the floor in a thick glob. He peeled off the rag and drew away the lantern. Kadan gasped as the wall began to close around the hole.

  Algar laughed and slapped him on the back. “Now, bring the piece over here.” Kadan picked up the clump of melted wall, surprised at its coolness. His uncle placed it in the basin of luminescence. The light in the water brightened as the matter spread open, returning to its diamond shape.

  “How did you discover that?” Kadan asked, his awe genuine.

  “Experimentation.” Algar strode to his desk, the moment over. “I want to know how these tiers were built, how these structures work. If I can unlock the Founders’ chemistry, Mur-Vallis could expand; perhaps achieve a distinction on par with Elan-Sia.”

  “You’ve made astonishing progress, Uncle.” Kadan ran his fingers across the mended wall, choosing his words wisely. Algar was as sensitive to fawning as he was to sarcasm.

  “Have a seat.” Algar poured two crystal goblets of Cull Tarr wine. Kadan sat in a chair facing the desk. Algar placed Kadan’s goblet on the polished surface and took his seat. “The guards report that you continue to badger your peers.”

  “I only—”

  “You’re responsible for your actions. No excuses.” Algar sipped his wine. “Strength is only effective if we exercise it. Your antics in the tiers, your pranks and foolery, scuffling and tormenting is child’s play. Your peers are weak, Kadan; demonstrate your strength. What is the advantage of power if we don
’t wield it?”

  Kadan stifled the explanation hanging on his lips, the baffling admonishment unexpected. His uncle spoke the truth about his mischief, and at times, when his blood was up, he went too far. Yet, he meant in all in jest. He never intended to hurt anyone. Not seriously. “You are right, Uncle, of course. My regrets.”

  “You’re twelve winters now, no longer a child. It’s time we discussed your future.”

  “I’m grateful for your guidance.”

  “This isn’t guidance, Kadan. This is my decision.”

  “Of course, Uncle.” Kadan swallowed and met the man’s eyes.

  “My sons’ futures are assured. Gereld will find his feet in time and one day become High Ward of Mur-Vallis. If I have my way, Marcer will rise to become king over all of Ellegeance.”

  Kadan sipped his wine, lost for words. His cousins were both older than he. The younger of the two, Gereld, had proved an unreliable drunkard, and Marcer had fled his father’s leaden thumb, escaping to the other end of the realm to build ships. The idea of Marcer embroiled in politics made Kadan blink. If his uncle possessed any delusions, they pertained to his sons.

  “I have considered for some time,” Algar continued, “how I might shape your future. Though you lack a claim to power, you are my brother’s son. You may still be useful and share in the family’s good fortune.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been exceedingly generous.”

  Algar poured more wine. “Since your father’s death, you’ve grown in my care. Your mother will always have a home here, and when your sisters come of age, I will arrange bonds above their stations.”

  “And my role?”

  “In light of the turmoil in the tiers, I have decided to ship you to Ava-Grea to train as an influencer. When you complete your study, I’ll take your oath and decide how you’ll serve.”

  Kadan’s breath stuck in his chest, shock preventing him from uttering a word. He’d understood at the moment of his father’s death that his life was no longer his. At a whim, forces beyond his control could change his path. It had happened before despite all his childish wishes, and now it was happening again. Never would he choose such a path.