Page 2 of Dark Bringer (Lord of Everfell #1)

Cathrynne

TWENTY YEARS LATER

T he old man drew on his cigarette and squinted through the haze.

“Strange noises,” he said, tobacco-stained fingers gesturing to the house across the street. “Over there.”

Cathrynne Rowan gave an encouraging nod. “That’s what you said in the call, sir. Can you be more specific?”

He shrugged. “Sure, yes. Like thump. Very strange noises. All time of day and night.” His Sundland accent was thick as butter. Verra string nozzes.

Her partner, Mercy Blackthorn, shot Cathrynne a skeptical look and mouthed the words “ feuding cats .”

Mercy was a strapping woman with a frizzy ginger mane and a dozen visible scars. Cathrynne was shorter and slightly built, with fair, chin-length hair and pale, creamy skin that gave her a fragile look. Men, in particular, tended to underestimate her.

Not that Cathrynne thought Josua Micarran was wasting their time on purpose.

He seemed like a kind gentleman and had dressed up for them in a checkered suit that was probably the height of fashion forty years ago.

A crumpled pack of Scholars poked out of the breast pocket. He had no shoes on, just black socks.

“Who lives over there?” Mercy asked.

Micarran exhaled twin plumes of smoke through his nose. “Mother, father. One boy. Six years.”

“Surname?”

“Nilsson.”

“Have you seen them recently?”

“Not for three days.” He looked the cyphers up and down, taking in the whips coiled at their belts, the ravens tattooed on their hands. “You help them. You are witches, yes?”

“Hmmm, more or less,” Mercy replied. “Thank you for reporting it, sir. We’ll go have a look.”

Lark Hill was a mellow neighborhood near Faraday College, mostly young families and student lodgers. Lately, it had seen an influx of migrants from Sundland. Cathrynne and Mercy seldom came out this way. Trouble was far more likely to arise in the rowdy student bars of Arioch’s Old Quarter.

They crossed the street and paused at the curb to study the house. It was a mirror image of Micarran’s. Yellow and white trim, well kept. The grass was shaggy and still damp from the morning rain.

“If anyone hurt that child,” Cathrynne said in a low voice, “they might run into a wall or two before I manage to arrest them.”

Mercy shot her a sidelong glance. “You don’t need another complaint. They already take up a whole drawer.”

Cathrynne snorted. “Felony won’t care.”

The head of the cyphers, Felicity Birch, tended to look the other way if someone deserved rough treatment. Cathrynne called her Sister Felony, though never to her face.

“One day you’ll go too far,” Mercy remarked placidly.

“I meant by accident . If they trip over a rug or something.”

Her partner’s eyes gleamed. “Yeah, that’d be a shame.”

It was no secret how Cathrynne Rowan felt about men who hit their wives and parents who beat their children.

About a third of the calls involved some variety of those crimes.

The rest were drunks and thieves, occasionally murderers.

Cathrynne didn’t like them either, but they didn’t get under her skin in the same way.

“Maybe the family went on a trip,” Mercy said as they headed up the flagstone walk.

All the curtains were drawn tight. No movement. No string nozzes . Yet Cathrynne felt a twist of unease.

“Maybe,” she said, her gaze catching on a carved wooden angel lying in the grass. Its wings were painted sky blue that shone with flecks of silver in the fading afternoon light. She picked it up.

“I’ve seen ones like this in the window of that fancy toy shop on Carlyle Street,” she said. The paint had been rubbed away around the middle, right where a small fist might have clutched it. “The boy treasured it. So why was it left out in the rain?”

Mercy’s face turned grim. She banged on the front door with the side of her fist. “Cyphers! Open up and let’s talk!”

No one did.

Cathrynne circled around to the backyard.

Wet grass dampened her boots as she backed up for a better view.

There was a light burning on the second floor.

A faint glow through the curtains. She returned to Mercy.

“Looks like someone’s at home,” she said.

“Since a minor child is involved, I say we have enough to go in.”

Mercy nodded. “You take the front.”

The door was locked, but it felt flimsy when Cathrynne jiggled the knob. No need to waste a projective gemstone. One solid kick and the door crashed inward just as Mercy battered down the back.

Cathrynne stepped into a mud room with winter coats on pegs and a line of boots and shoes. Most were large, a few boy-sized. She moved into the living area as Mercy’s heavy footsteps clomped down a darkened hall. They met in the middle and looked around.

Every stick of furniture had been pushed against the walls.

A green velvet settee lay tipped on its side.

Chairs were stacked haphazardly. Lamps had been shoved under an end table, along with an assortment of toys.

The carpet was rolled up, revealing four black scorch marks on the wood floor, each about six inches long.

Mercy sank to her heels and examined the floor as Cathrynne wandered to the rolled-up carpet, poking it with her cudgel. A faint charred smell hung in the air, like someone had burned supper. Her gaze flicked to the stairs. No irate homeowners appeared to investigate the intrusion.

“Let’s take a look,” she said.

They climbed the stairs. The upper story had two bedrooms, one big, one small.

Beds unmade but no sign of a struggle. A lamp in the boy’s room was left burning—the glow Cathrynne had seen from the yard.

He had a cute sleigh bed with angel-print sheets.

The kid had a thing for angels. There was also a dresser and a toy box and a miniature table and chairs.

A stuffed bear sat in one of them, its black button eyes shining in the pool of lamplight.

They found nothing unusual in the bathroom or den. The rugs and furniture all seemed to be in their proper places. Downstairs, the kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes. Some were old and crusty. Others looked more recently used.

Cathrynne and Mercy returned to the living room and pondered this mystery.

“They could be getting ready to move,” Mercy said. “Or they’re staying somewhere else while they get the floor refinished.” She sounded relieved. “That would make sense.”

“Yeah. But then why didn’t Micarran see the tradesmen coming in and out?” Cathrynne wondered.

“It’s odd, I’ll admit. But this was done deliberately.

” Mercy chewed her lip. “Separation, maybe? They have a fight. One of them takes the son—probably the mother. He drops the angel on the way out and they’re in a hurry so she won’t let him go back for it.

” She glanced at the front door. “Meanwhile, the father’s at a bar drowning his sorrows with a bottle of cheap and nasty. ”

Without warning, the hair on Cathrynne’s arms bristled. A prickling, crawly sensation tightened her scalp. Three symbols appeared, hovering over Mercy’s head: a golden key, a sailing ship, and a coffin.

Her foretellings came rarely. Not even Mercy, her best friend for twenty years and partner for ten, had a clue that Cathrynne was a seer. It was her deepest, most terrifying secret. A power that would end with her bricked up in the kloster for the rest of her days if anyone discovered it.

But when the visions did come, she’d learned to pay attention.

Cathrynne blinked, reading the symbols before they faded.

The Key meant a door. The Ship meant travel.

The Coffin meant death. Those were the broad meanings.

But together, in that particular order, they meant something else, the way words formed a sentence.

Her gaze swept across the bare floor, the heaped-up furniture. It wasn’t a domestic spat or a family packing to move house. Nothing was organized, just shoved out of the way to clear the space . . .

If not for the vision, she wouldn’t have fit the pieces together—not fast enough. But she did now. Her mouth went dry.

This room was being used to force.

There was a field behind the chapter house for the same purpose, but it was much larger, fenced off, and guarded day and night so no one would accidentally wander inside.

Forcing was how the strongest witches traveled, bending natural law to vanish from one place and reappear in another.

But they needed a designated area—always open ground—or they risked materializing inside solid objects.

And if a person happened to be standing there when the witches arrived . . .

The air thickened. Cathrynne felt it in her teeth, a rising vibration.

“What’s up?” Mercy’s hand dropped to her cudgel.

She didn’t know. Why would she? Neither of them had ever forced, it wasn’t a power taught to lowly cyphers.

They weren’t even supposed to go near the field at the chapter house.

But Cathrynne had snuck over there a few times when she was younger, just to see what the magic looked like, and she had the same feeling now, her ears popping as the pressure changed.

A box was forming in the middle of the Nilssons’ living room.

It resembled a giant shimmering bubble but square instead of round.

There was no time for words. Cathrynne took four quick strides to the center of the room, to the scorch marks left by previous forcings.

She grabbed her partner and dragged them both backwards.

An instant later, a clap of silent thunder shook the house. Cathrynne felt it through the soles of her boots. Two figures appeared where Mercy had just been standing—a man and a woman, both with the silver eyes of witches.

For a heartbeat, everyone froze. Mercy was staring at her cudgel. It must have been at the edge of the forcing zone because the stout wood was severed in half, the end cauterized.

“Stay right where you are,” Cathrynne warned. “Do not move!”