“A friend?” Bray said, as if the concept of friendship were a foreign thing.
“It must be whoever sent the telegram,” Adearre said.
“Can you tell anything else?” Yarrow asked, excited for the first time in over two weeks. “You know, about the handwriting or something?”
Adearre leveled him an exasperated look. “No,” he said, his eyes flicking up to the sphere in disgust.
“Oh right, of course not,” Yarrow said.
“Be patient for what?” Peer asked.
“Perhaps they mean to help us escape,” Yarrow said.
“Or it’s just mind games,” Bray said in a flat voice. “Quade loves mind games.”
“I do not know…Quade did not send the telegram. You said yourself he thought we would go to Che Mire. Someone here sent us that tip,” Adearre said, capping his statement with a long yawn.
Peer snorted. “And a bang-up job we did with that information.”
“I swear, if my mind were not full of fog I could think a way out of this,” Adearre said, rubbing his eyes.
“Or if that blasted sphere weren’t here,” Peer added. “I thought they’d be taking it away sometimes for that ceremony we saw the first day.”
“Not with Bray down here,” Adearre said.
Yarrow’s mind, running in circles as ever, tried to imagine every possible scenario for escape. He couldn’t see any way of avoiding the drugs. A woman came with a needle and administered it every evening. Though, he thought, the best time to escape would be just before they were drugged anew. The poison would be in their systems still, but less so than at any other time in the day.
As for the sphere, all they needed was a half a minute, and Bray at least could escape.
“Has anyone noticed the hallway outside the cell?” Yarrow asked, an idea beginning to form in his addled mind.
“What ’bout it?” Peer asked.
“Are we at the end of the hall, the beginning, or the middle?” Yarrow asked.
“The end,” Bray said with confidence.
Adearre offered her a quizzical look.
“I walked all around this place while we were gathering information, and I started to come to before they got me in the cell. I know the layout.” She held out her arm, perpendicular to the ground. Her chains jangled as she moved. “We’re here,” she pointed to the tip of her fingers, “and the stairway is here.” She pointed to the crook of her elbow.
“So it would be a straight shot down the hall? No turns?” Yarrow asked.
“Yes. Why, do you have an idea?” Bray asked, hope leaking into her voice. Yarrow could see a new glint in her green eyes.
“The beginnings of one,” Yarrow said.
Then, much to his surprise, his gut rejected its dinner. Yarrow leaned to the side, his stomach muscles contracting and spasming. The vomit hit the stone with a splat. That should help the smell, he thought as he wiped his mouth.
Bray picked idly at the scabs on her fingertips. The weight of the manacles around her thin wrists and ankles pulled at her. She felt like a bug stuck to the anchor of a boat, sinking deeper and deeper, getting every second further away from the sun, from air, from life.
It was the drugs. She knew this, but didn’t know it at the same time. Her mind was no longer her own. It was full of water; cool, blue, swirling.
“Bray, are you with us?” Yarrow asked kindly across the void.
“Yes,” she heard herself murmur, her voice soft and girlish.
“You understand your part in this?” Yarrow asked.
“Yes,” Bray said again. Part in what? No matter. It couldn’t be important. Nothing was important anymore. Life was just a cold plunge towards nothingness. Bray felt her eyes droop. She made herself sit up straighter on the cool stone floor. Her greatest battle was to stay awake, because when she slept she dreamt terrible things. Things that had happened to her long ago, mixed up with things that had never happened but felt like truth. She was trapped between haze and terrors.
“We’ve been planning for well nigh a week, Yarrow,” Peer said. “And we’ve been down here almost a month. How much longer is it going to take?”
“You know full well what we’re waiting for. The opportunity will come, and we need to be ready for it.”
Yarrow’s voice felt like a caress on Bray’s ear. She wished she could reach him. She remembered well how his touch made her burn. How his fingers traced the contours of her body, how his lips…
But he was so very far away. Not in fact—in fact he was just across the room. But in truth they were leagues apart—worlds. She could not touch him. Her mind slipped deeper into the darkness. No, she wanted to call. She tried to kick, to swim, to thrash. But the anchor pulled her, by wrist and ankle, down into the depths.
“She’s getting worse,” Peer murmured.
“I know,” Yarrow’s concerned voice broke through the water. Distantly, Bray wondered who the ‘she’ they spoke of was. “It needs to be soon.”
Sometime later—or perhaps moments—the door opened. Bray jerked up on the floor. She looked at the entrance, expecting to see some youth with a tray of food. But the man who entered had no tray.
“Arlow!” Yarrow’s voice thundered and snapped like ice cracking.
Arlow brought his hand up to his nose. “Great Spirits!” He looked around at the lot of them, horror in his eyes. “Yarrow, I swear I had no idea it was this bad, or I would have come sooner.”
“I don’t understand you.” Yarrow’s voice was tight and measured.
“You are Chisanta, for Spirits’ sake! This is appalling. I wouldn’t treat a dog thus. That Quade is going to get a piece of my mind. I’ll fix this, my old friend, I promise.”
“I still don’t understand you,” Yarrow said. The hardness in his voice made Bray want to weep. He sounded so unlike himself—angry, distrusting. Was he in the icy water as well? Could she swim to him? No, of course not. She was chained.
“I know you must be angry with me. If you recall, I did urge you to go home. I didn’t want this. But you must understand, Yarrow, Quade might have done some atrocious things, but what he is trying to do is for the good of all. You must look at the big picture. If the Chisanta were to rule Trinitas, so many problems could be solved.” Arlow’s tone was pleading—pleading for them, or perhaps just for Yarrow, to understand. To forgive.
Bray floundered. She wanted to see, but she was having trouble remembering where she kept her eyes. Surely they were in her head? What was her head connected to? She should know this…
“He has killed hundreds of people!” Yarrow bellowed loudly. Bray forgot people could be so loud.
“Yes, and I had no part in that, I swear,” Arlow said. “You don’t understand. You haven’t seen the world as I have. The poverty and the illness—it’s all from inadequate management. The Chisanta are so far better qualified to lead. Think of how many lives would be saved, Yarrow, in the long run. We are marked for a reason—we are elevated, we are superior.”
“You’re full of horse-shit,” Ko-Jin said, his voice rough from neglect.
Arlow’s boots sounded as he crossed the room. “Ko-Jin…” he said in a miserable voice.
Bray found her eye lids and pulled them open. Arlow was crouched close to…Ko-Jin?
Bray had forgotten how he had once looked. He was so small, so crumpled and ill-formed. This, too, made her want to weep. It was all wrong. This was not the Ko-Jin of now, it was the Ko-Jin of long ago. The little boy who sat in a tree with her, who smiled sheepishly and was embarrassed to play games.
“Arlow,” Ko-Jin said frostily. “Nice of you to drop in. You’ll forgive me for not standing.”
“I will talk to Quade,” Arlow said, his voice rising desperately. “This isn’t necessary. Sphere or no sphere, you aren’t strong enough to break through chains. I’ll talk to him…”
“If you’re going to be talking to Quade ’bout ill treatment,” Peer’s voice rung out, “why don’t you mention to him that he�
��s likely killing Bray.”
“What do you mean?” Arlow asked.
He crossed the room and crouched down over Bray, his form blocked the blue light. He leaned in close. He smelt wonderful, like soap and fresh air.
“I know your face,” Bray said blearily.
“What’s wrong with her?” Arlow asked. She felt his warm hand press firmly against her forehead.
“It’s the drugs,” Peer said. “We think they’re giving us all the same dosage, but she’s so much smaller, and getting smaller by the day.”
Arlow’s earnest brown eyes bored into hers. She felt like she knew this person, but she couldn’t place him.
“I will help you,” he said—a promise.
Arlow…Bray searched her mind. Where was there an Arlow? And then the memory clicked into place. A carriage and a sunny afternoon.
“Arlow Bowlerham,” Bray murmured, “a proud boy with a big book.”
Arlow moved away. She wished he hadn’t. It felt nice to have someone near.
“I’m going to speak to Quade. I will fix this,” he said yet again. The door opened and closed.
“Do you think he really can help?” Adearre asked.
“He already has.” Ko-Jin held up a gleaming silver pocket knife and tossed it to Yarrow.
“You picked his pocket?” Yarrow said with an appreciative laugh.
“My hands still work just fine,” Ko-Jin said with a flash of a smile—a smile that was so much like his usual self.
The men talked in hushed voices about how to proceed. But Bray did not hear—she had slipped deeper into the waters. And now she was back in her uncle’s pantry, locked in, unable to stretch her legs out or extend her neck straight in the limited space. Just a little girl, with nothing but mice and darkness and a stinging pain between her thighs for company.
Yarrow’s hands shook violently. He could feel the eyes of his companions on him, their gazes pleading with him to succeed.
He took a deep breath, attempted to steady himself. But his hands still trembled, all of his muscles twitched uncontrollably. The injections had begun to have a long list of side effects. His eyes felt deep and dead in his face, his mind was a hive of bees, buzzing endlessly without meaning.
Breathe, he counseled himself. He took, in one unsteady hand, Arlow’s pocketknife, feeling the etching of his friend’s initials against his palm, and in his other hand he held steady the manacle that bound his ankles. Carefully, he inserted the sharp end of the knife into the key hole and searched for the release.
His mind kept zooming in and out of focus. It leapt forward and backwards in time. If he lost focus he would slip right out of the present, out of the prison and into some other life. He’d find himself sweeping his father’s shop, practicing the Ada Chae at the Cape, teaching his little sister how to write, or having tea with Dedrre. Sometimes his mind would flick forward into an invented future. He and Bray in a house of their own with redheaded children running in the backyard. His mind clung to Bray more than all the rest—the removing of sodden clothes, passion-glazed emerald eyes, a gasp of ecstasy.
Yarrow breathed in sharply. He’d cut himself again. The knife nicked his ankle. He watched, mesmerized, as blood pooled at the base of the cut then ran, like raindrops down a pane, over the top of his foot and down to the floor. It hurt, but the pain was a distant thing.
“Are you sure you do not want someone else to try?” Adearre asked. He sounded concerned, but his voice was also slurred. They were all getting worse. The Chiona could barely stay alert—Bray had not formed a cogent sentence in days—and his and Ko-Jin’s twitches had been upgraded to spasms. They needed to escape now, or soon they would be physically unable to.
“No, no. I can do it. If my hands would just stay steady.” And my mind.
He understood how the mechanism worked. This was Dedrre’s expertise—mechanics. Dedrre would have been unbound the instant he had the knife in his hands, Yarrow was sure. He remembered, many years ago, Dedrre had invented a new kind of handcuff, more difficult to spring open without a key.
“You see,” the old Adourran had held up an old-fashioned manacle, one just like those that currently chained Yarrow to the cold hard floor, “these are so easily picked open.” And then he had done just that, with a pin, in a mere second. He had drawings on the wall, drawings in his own neat hand, showing how the insides worked. Yarrow had stared at them while he sipped his tea, hot and sweet down his throat. It smelt like cinnamon then; the manacle project had aligned with Dedrre’s desire to learn the Dalish art of baked cinnamon buns. He made them over and over, but never quite managed it.
Yarrow wondered if it had been an issue of climate. His mother’s buns had been perfection, light as a cloud. She used to make them in the morning, when most of the children, as well as her husband, were still sleeping. But Yarrow would hear her and wake. She would always let him help. She’d hold him up so he could look into the hearth and watch the buns rise. She’d give him a spoon and let him lick the glaze off, lick until the stickiness was gone and his tongue lapped against the wood of the utensil alone. Her dress would be covered in flour, her cheeks rosy from the effort and the heat of the oven. His father would come down and say, “My nose woke me up,” and she would say, “Are you sure it wasn’t your belly?”
The lock, Yarrow reminded himself. He turned the knife in the hole and felt it catch on something—could feel the shifting of metal within. That’s it. He licked his rough, chapped lips. Just there. He moved the knife’s tip, and in his mind’s eye, saw it press against the release. He felt a slight give and then heard a glorious sound: a soft click. The manacle sprung open.
“Well done,” Peer said. Yarrow smiled. He stretched his legs out, as he had been longing to do for weeks, and felt his muscles pull and stretch beneath the skin. It was a feeling of freedom, wonderful yet painful.
But he had to release his hands as well. He set to it. This task proved more difficult, as the lock was hard to reach. He had to twist his wrist at a strange angle, the metal pressed against his chafed, bleeding flesh. But he had gotten the knack of the thing. The knife found, with much more ease, the release it sought. With a second satisfying, just audible click, Yarrow was freed.
He stood, his entire body grateful and yet protesting after crouching for so long.
“Should you try and free the rest of us?” Adearre asked.
“No.” He didn’t want to cut them, and was sure he would. “We will stick with the plan. It shouldn’t be long now.”
Yarrow crossed the cell and sat down next to Bray, took her in his arms. He felt her pulse. It was sluggish, but present.
“Bray?” he asked, placing his dirty fingers against her equally grimy cheek.
“Mmm?” she murmured dreamily.
“We’re getting out of here. But you need to be able to phase. Do you think you can?” he asked.
Her brow creased in confusion, her bleary eyes shifting in the direction of the sphere.
“Once the sphere is gone. You remember the plan? What you have to do?”
She nodded.
“Good.” He bent low and kissed her forehead. “This will all be over soon. I promise.”
“Ko-Jin?” Yarrow looked up at his friend.
“I know, mate, I know.”
Yarrow gave him a firm nod.
“Do you think you will have the energy to run—and, if need be, fight?” Yarrow asked Adearre and Peer.
“If it means getting out of here,” Peer said, “I’ll find the energy.”
Adearre nodded agreement, though even that movement seemed to be accomplished with difficulty.
“Then there is nothing for it but to wait for dinner,” Yarrow said. He moved back to his usual spot and tucked the manacles out of sight behind him. And he waited. His mind still hummed, but it was more focused than it had been in a long time. He was going to get out—and then he would sleep. He would sleep for days on end.
Something important is happening, Bray reminde
d herself. The cell was tense with anticipation. The plan would fail without her, but what was she meant to do? It was so difficult to remember.
“Ready?” Yarrow said.
Ready for what? Bray wanted to ask, but there was no time. She heard the familiar sound of the key turning in the lock. She would ask after dinner.
A boy with white-blond hair stepped into the room, cradling the usual tray of food and water.
“Now!” Yarrow bellowed.
Then many things happened at once.
Peer stuck out his feet, still chained, and tripped the boy. The tray, with its five bowls and five glasses, met the ground with a magnificent crescendo of crashes and clatters. Yarrow sprung to his feet, his unchained feet—when had that happened?—and grabbed the sphere from its perch. He hurled it with all of his might, like a pitcher in sapball, through the still-open door. Bray heard it land with a smack and continue to roll along the hallway.
With it went the blue swirling light, and the feeling of loss. Bray felt warm and whole—like a horrible weight had been lifted. She could breathe properly.
Yarrow scuffled with the boy on the ground. She heard the sounds of the fight, but she did not watch. Instead, she thought to herself, I’d rather not have these chains any longer. She made herself intangible and they clattered to the ground, still firmly closed but with nothing to hold onto.
“Bray,” Peer said, his blue eyes giving her the most blazing, determined look she had ever seen. “You need to help the rest of us out too.”
The words swam in her mind. Help them out with what?
She tried to stand, but found it too difficult; her legs were jelly. Rather, she crawled towards Peer.
Yarrow still struggled. He and the boy seemed to be deadlocked.
“Phase me through the chains,” Peer said. Bray’s mind tried to comprehend these words and failed, but her body seemed to understand. Her hand reached out and grabbed Peer’s arm. Then she, again, made herself phase into nothingness. His manacles clanked to the floor just as hers had.
“Great.” Peer helped Bray to her feet, though he was not terribly steady himself. “Now Adearre and Ko-Jin.”
The Complete Marked Series Box Set Page 32