Division of the Marked (The Marked Series) (21 page)

“I suppose you must be,” Bray said, “if you already have the energy to flirt with straight men.”

“How am I meant to
know
they are straight, if I do not flirt?”

Peer plopped down in a chair beside the bed. “Don’t understand how you can’t tell. That’s your thing.”

“Believe it or not, gay men, unlike Chisanta, are not marked.”

Bray forced a laugh, then sighed. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” Adearre asked.
 

“For getting you shot, of course. I was an idiot,” she said.

He shook his head and smiled. “You? I am the one who stood behind The Amazing Intangible Woman. Remind me not to repeat that error, will you love?”

“I’ll do my best.”
 

“Because for those of you who are counting,” Adearre went on in his deep, musical voice. “I have now been shot twice. Two times.” He held up two fingers

“Oh, that other time hardly counts,” Peer said. “It was just a graze.”

Bray hit Peer on the shoulder. “How many times have you been shot?”

“Zero. I know where to stand,” he said. Despite his levity, his face was still pale, concerned eyes darting toward Adearre at intervals.

“I should be more aware of what’s behind me,” Bray said, turning serious again. “You remember how that bloke in Bentall lamed my horse with an arrow?”

“Oh, and what are you going to do?” Peer challenged. “Not phase and take the wound? Don’t be daft.”

“No,” Bray said, frustrated. Why wouldn’t they just let her take a share of the blame if she wanted it? “But I can position myself better.”

“I will recover,” Adearre said through a yawn. “And you took the man into custody. Is he in a holding cell?”

Bray’s heart dropped. She exchanged a look with Peer. “No…”

Adearre’s head shot up. “He escaped?”

“No. He’s been taken care of.”

Bray braced herself. She wished this conversation could have waited until morning.
 

Adearre grew very still, his honey eyes slitted like a suspicious cat. “Taken care of?”
 

“I know, it is not ideal. I hoped to interrogate—”
 

“He deserved a trial!” Adearre bellowed. He made to sit up straighter but winced and slumped back on the pillows.

“He
shot
you,” Bray said, her voice rising defensively. “You needed medical care. There was no time.”

“
Bellretha
,” Adearre swore in Adourran. His accent always grew thicker when he was upset. “You are perfectly capable of rendering a man unconscious. This is not justice, it is your own personal vendetta.”

Peer shrank deeper into his chair and remained mute. Bray knew not to hope for his help. He always insisted on staying neutral when she and Adearre disagreed.
 

Bray jumped up from the bed, her blood pumping and her face red. “My personal vendetta? And what of you, Adearre? Your obsession with coddling these murderous bastards? That isn’t personal for you?”

Adearre’s jaw set and a pained look—one that had nothing to do with his shoulder—crossed his face. Bray’s anger deflated slightly.

“You go too far, Bray,” Peer’s cool voice said from the corner.

She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. “He confessed. You heard him.”

“Excellent. Bray Marron: judge, jury, and executioner. Only one problem, love. He was lying.”

She froze. “What do you mean?”

“As he confessed, he looked up at the sky, as if he were trying to remember, or invent, his supposed crimes. His face was freshly shaven, his clothes clean, his shoes polished, and he smelt of soap. That man had been in civilization, not residing in the forest.”

“He had locks of hair in a bag around his neck,” Bray insisted, trying to convince herself as well as him. She turned to Peer. “There’s a fifth victim.”

Now it was Peer’s turn to swear, which he did loudly and crudely. He rubbed his face and said wearily, “I’ll stop by the Dalyson orphanage tomorrow. See if anyone’s missing.”

It was either a sinister syndicate of kidnappers, or a string of copy-cats, but all of the guilty had been found with locks of hair. And all of the victims were boys and girls ranging from twelve to sixteen. None of their bodies had been found. Most were orphans or in foster homes—children who would not be missed, children who lacked a champion. Except for Peer Gelson, of course.
 

Bray sat back down. “It had to have been him…”
 

“I suppose we shall never know now, will we? How many have you killed?” Adearre asked.

Eight.
The others had been turned over to the law, and most had been convicted and hung. She did not feel remorse for a one of them—they were child abductors, murderers, and rapists. They deserved far worse than the clean deaths she’d given them. It was not her problem if Adearre was too great an idealist for the office they performed.

A soft knock on the door broke off their glowers.

“Come in,” Peer said.

A small boy in a Telegraph Office uniform entered. “Sirs, miss, begging your pardon, but this was sent urgent from the Chisanta Temple.”
 

Peer took the small roll of paper and the boy bowed out of the room. Bray came close as he unrolled the telegram and they read together:

‘Marked girl dead. Report to Temple, ASAP. -Dolla’

“You heard how many?” a woman’s voice whispered from behind the nearest bookshelf.

“Only fifteen, I heard,” a man responded.

“How many years before there are none at all?”

“And I suppose you’ve heard about the girl in Greystone?” the man asked.

“Of course, what a tragedy. Too horrible…”

Yarrow turned a page and stared at the text, endeavoring to ignore the whispering couple. But he, like many at the Cape, found it difficult to focus. Each year, on Da Un Marcu, the news grew more and more grave. Yarrow had heard the number ‘fifteen’ whispered so often the word seemed to now possess an ominous connotation.
 

The girl in Greystone was just the egg atop the rice. That news had come like a swift kick in the gut to a man already knocked down in a fight. There would have been sixteen—there
should
have been sixteen. But a fire had killed the girl and her entire family on the eve of Da Un Marcu. She, their sister, had perished in the flames.
 

These thoughts weighed heavily on Yarrow’s mind, and with the loss of Arlow the day before, life seemed a rather gloomy affair. Despite his torpor, Yarrow had pulled himself to the library, as usual, that morning. For the answer
must
be hidden in these pages somewhere.
But
, a small, negative voice in his mind asked,
what good could it do? Would oblivion really be easier to stomach as a certainty than as a possibility?

Yarrow read, barely taking in the words:

‘South draws north while north draws south…The sacrifice is crueler than the gift is pleasant…On the eighth day of the Stag’s Year the last king shall die…Fire conceals truth in times of marked famine…We glimpse, in the night’s sky, the winking of matter long dead…The pistol’s powder eases distressed lungs...’

The chatting pair moved beyond his range of hearing. For this Yarrow was glad, but his own thoughts were as distracting as their voices had been. The words on the page made no impression on his mind. Eventually, he admitted defeat, deposited the book in his bag, and departed the library.

It was a cool, overcast afternoon. The Temple stood quiet and still; a general feeling of mourning pervaded. Yarrow hesitated on the grounds for several moments before deciding on a destination. He hadn’t visited Dedrre since the recent news had spread.
 

Yarrow strode, fists in pockets, past the dining hall and through the court. He hurried by the statue of Lim-Po, the inscription on which had become a personal mantra for Yarrow—‘In all of life’s battles, truth is my sword and knowledge my shield’—past the orchard, and up the sloping incline to Dedrre’s home. The older Cosanta lived in the nicest rooms, the youngest in the simplest. This was tradition. Yarrow’s own room was his third since he had come to live at the Temple, and he was pleased with its size and furnishings. Dedrre, being one of the eldest Cosanta, lived in something of a private villa. He had gardens, a study, and his own bathing room.

Yarrow knocked and was beckoned to enter. He stepped inside and found his old friend, as usual, hunched over a drawing table.

“What are you working on today?” Yarrow asked.

“Oh, still fiddling with this design for an improved teapot. I don’t fancy the pitch of the whistle mine makes.” The old Adourran man pushed away from his work and gestured for Yarrow to sit.

“Thought you might have forgotten where to find me, lad. I’ve been expecting you.” Dedrre rose and bustled into the kitchen. “Tea?”

“Yes, thank you,” Yarrow said. He sank deeper into the chintz armchair. Some of the tension eased from his shoulders as his eyes scanned the familiar clutter of half-completed inventions, the walls plastered with blueprints and schematics. The room smelt of tobacco and persimmons. If Yarrow closed his eyes and breathed in, that smell could transport him back to a thousand other times he’d sat in that very chair.

“You’re looking thin, lad,” Dedrre said. “Eat these.” He handed Yarrow a plate of biscuits. Yarrow bit into a biscuit obediently. Dedrre opened and closed cabinets as he called over his shoulder to Yarrow, “Received a telegram from my granddaughter yesterday.”

Yarrow swallowed, choking slightly on the crumbs. “How is Vendra?”
 

“Quite good. That tip you gave her from the Fifth is revolutionizing her study of sedatives. Or so she says.” Dedrre returned with the tea things.

He settled himself back into his own chair and fixed Yarrow with an intelligent gaze. In appearance, Dedrre had not changed an iota since Yarrow first saw him. His mustache was still full and white, his dark skin deeply grooved, and his eyebrows a wild tangle above sharp, dark eyes.

“Why the long face, lad?”

“You can’t be serious, Dedrre? You must have heard the news.”

“Aye,” Dedrre nodded. “I hear just fine.”

“Only fifteen…” Yarrow said, shaking his head.

Dedrre sipped his tea.

“And that girl in Greystone,” Yarrow pressed on.

“Yes,” Dedrre agreed. “It’s awful news. All of it. So why aren’t you in the library with your nose in a book, as usual?”

Yarrow quirked a brow. “First, you’re put out I haven’t visited. And now I should be back in the library?”

Dedrre let out his rough bark of a laugh. “Let an old man contradict himself if he likes, lad—it’s one of the privileges of age.”

“I’ve been reading for years and I’ve never found any reference to this,” Yarrow said. “Besides, why am I the only one looking for answers? Why should it all be upon my shoulders?”
 

Dedrre snorted. “You sound as petulant as a fresh-marked boy. Why should it be you? Because most people read those transcripts and can’t make a thing out of them. You’ve discovered more in those texts in the past decade than the combined efforts of scholars for the past two hundred years. You read something that no one could make heads or tails of, know that it has to do with chemistry, send it on to Vendra, and now the world has new sedatives. You understand those Fifths. You’ve got a gift for it.”

“That isn’t my gift.”
 

“What, you think you’ve only got the one?” Dedrre asked, his eyes blazing. “We have more to offer than just what we gain from the
Aeght a Seve
. You’ve got plenty of gifts, lad. Who else is going to find that answer? Who else alive has years of experience reading and interpreting those texts?”

Yarrow listened to the ball of emotion that was Dedrre in the back of his mind—heard the patter of earnestness, the thrum of pride, the hum of affection. It nearly brought tears to his eyes.
 

Yarrow sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Aye, I know I’m right, lad.”
 

“I just fear I may read until my eyes bleed and find nothing. I’ve not read a thing about this dwindling of our kind… not in tens of thousands of pages.”

Dedrre sighed, causing the hairs in his mustache to flutter. “Is it possible that isn’t what’s happening here? That you’re looking for the wrong thing?”

Yarrow’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Dedrre said, “all we know for certain is that we can’t find fifty. We don’t know for a fact that they don’t exist.”

Yarrow shook his head. He’d had this conversation so many times. “How could these kids go missing before they are even located? Disappear without a whisper or a clue? It can’t be possible.”

“Perhaps not,” Dedrre said, “but it is a poor researcher who searches for a pre-formed hypothesis instead of looking only at the facts.”

“What facts do I have to…” Yarrow trailed off mid-sentence as a fragment of something he’d read earlier that day prodded him in the brain. His heart leapt in realization.

“Great Spirits!” Yarrow said, pulling the transcripts from his bag and flipping through the pages so quickly he risked damaging them. He found the sought-for passage and his eyes zoomed from line to line, searching.