“We’ll pull up the ropes once you’re down. So give it a tug when you hit the ground,” a soldier said.
Arlow peered over the edge of the wall. The rope disappeared into a swirl of mist and darkness. It seemed like a long descent.
“Here ya go,” said Bensell, as he jammed Arlow’s arms through a rucksack full of explosives. “You’ll have three minutes to clear out. Fuse’s water-resistant, so shouldn’t be a problem. And, uh, don’t fall, aye?”
“What happens if I fall?” Arlow asked.
“Boom.”
“Fabulous,” Arlow said, as he peeked over the ledge once again.
Had this truly been his idea? He really should learn to keep his idiot plans to himself.
Mae grabbed his wrist and wheeled him around to face her. She ducked her head into the cowl of his hood and kissed him hotly on the lips. “Don’t die,” she whispered.
“I’ll do my best.” He pressed his hand to her abdomen. “You two get out of this rain,” he said. “You look like a drowned rat.”
She smirked and spun away from him. “Pauper’s Men!”
The six people who had been hastily chosen for this mission responded, “Yes, Queen!”
She threw back her hood so that they could see her face. “This is for Linton.”
It was clearly all that needed to be said. The six men bowed, their expressions flashing with grief and the desire for revenge.
“See you at the bottom,” Foy said to Arlow. He hopped up over the ledge, gripping the line, and then descended into the fog.
Arlow shared one last look with Mae. He smiled unconcernedly at her. “Be back in a few.”
Then he leaned his weight against the rope and leapt over the side of the rampart, praying his boots would find traction on the wall.
He lowered himself, the bag of explosives strapped to his back tugging him downward.
Come on, Luck, he thought. Don’t desert me now.
Chae-Na glided through the doorway to the roof gardens. She turned to the east, towards Quade’s encampment. Between the rain and the dark, she could discern little. She reached to the hood of her cloak and held it open wider, so her vantage might be less obscured. Cold rain pattered on the back of her hands.
Beside her, Ko-Jin bent forward, resting his forearms on the parapet. He had not bothered with a hood, and seemed not to notice the rain.
“Any second now…” he murmured.
Chae-Na did not want to blink. She did not want to miss it. The seconds passed slowly, coldly. And then—her lips quavered to an almost-smile—it happened.
The blast was too far off to hear over the drumming deluge, but the flash of fire beyond the wall was clear enough. In close succession, four more explosions dotted the distance.
Ko-Jin let out a held breath. As no one was with them, Chae-Na reached out and slipped her hand in his. He squeezed her fingers.
Down in the city, cheers went up. They began at the perimeter itself, but spread rapidly. People—soldiers, citizens, and Chisanta—hooted, howled, and clapped. Bells rang out.
Ko-Jin looked to her with glittering eyes. It was a small victory, maybe. But any triumph over that man—breathe, breathe—was worthy of celebration. She hoped he had been taken totally unawares. She hoped he, standing out there at this moment, felt his failure keenly. It had been meant as a slap in the face. And oh, how she hoped it would sting.
Her smile shifted into something darker, more determined.
Across the city, the cheers went on. She was glad of it—they would need to rally soon enough, the people of Accord.
This was only the start. Only the first volley.
“How do you think he will respond?” she asked.
Ko-Jin’s face was in shadow; she could not read his mood. He clasped her hand tighter. “Cruelly, no doubt. He’ll want to answer this humiliation in kind.”
“And will we be ready, do you think?”
“We should be, now. We have Yarrow to warn us of future threats.”
The heartache in Ko-Jin’s voice was unmistakable. Chae-Na pressed close to his side, and he wrapped his arm around her waist. She leaned her head into his chest. And they stood there, in the rain, watching the siege weapons beyond the perimeter smolder.
Chae-Na swallowed and drew a deep breath.
This is just the beginning…
The people of Accord continued to ring their bells, and somewhere out in that darkness, Quade was hearing them.
Epilogue
Yarrow wept bitter tears as he took his final leap—as he unmade himself.
His fingers found purchase on the sheer stony step, and he dangled there, one-handed. He looked over his shoulder, down at the precipitous cliffs beneath him. Far below, a single tree danced in the breeze.
I could still let go…
He swung his right hand up to join his left, and braced the soles of his boots against the vertical rise. He glanced up at the brilliant blue sky above him and wondered what could be beyond this. What would he see when he stood upon this last precipice? Or would he cease to exist the instant he had achieved his goal?
His shoulders protested his weight, and his fingers began to cramp. He pressed his forehead against cold stone.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want this…
He snorted humorlessly, as he considered that these thoughts were only aiding his demise.
When the thing you must lose is too great to bear…
He took a mighty breath, a gulp of life, and allowed Bray’s emotions to pop into his mind. As uncomfortable as it was to have someone else inside his own head, he did not want to do this alone—he wanted her with him, at the last.
She was annoyed in that moment, and his lip trembled. Doubtless she was irritated that he had sent her on a false errand. She would resent him for that lie, later.
I could still let go, he thought again. But at once he knew this to be untrue. There was no turning back.
“Okay,” he said aloud. “Now, it is.”
He began to haul himself up, teeth gritted, until he could throw his elbows over the ledge. He pulled his knee up over the lip and rolled flat onto his back. As he did so, the connection he felt with his body, still performing the Ada Chae in Accord, snapped—a severance both jarring and complete. He was no longer a part of that world. He breathed heavily and blinked up at the blue.
In a rush, a surge of memories flooded his mind, overpowering him with their number and magnitude. His memories, his life. His family, all of his abundance of brothers and sisters. His youth. Bray as a girl, and his early years as a Cosanta. Quade. Arella.
He lay for a long time, mentally sifting through it all, like a man paging through a collection of long-forgotten, once-favored books. And he could not say what emotion dominated, in all that muddle of feeling swimming through his spirit.
At length, however, curiosity won out over nostalgia. He pushed to his feet. He glanced down into the crater that was the Aeght a Seve. The Confluence looked miniature from this vantage, far removed.
He turned his back on the Place of Five, and found that the stone beneath him gave way to a sandy shore. He gazed out across clear waters. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. In the distance he spied an island, verdant against the blue of the sea. A glass spire—a structure no man could make—towered above the trees.
With trembling hands, Yarrow bent to unlace and remove his boots. He wiggled his toes into the soft white sand, and trod down to the water. A wave lapped up over his feet, wetting his pant legs, and he relished the cool sensation.
Glancing up, he found that a small boat had set out from the distant shore, cruising in his direction with unnatural speed. It was propelled by a single man with an oar.
“Yarrow!” the man called, waving to him.
“Adearre?” Yarrow shouted back, with a puckered brow. If Adearre were here with him, perhaps he had truly died.
The canoe, aided by the tide, cut through the sea with all haste. Yarrow waded into t
he waves to help pull the vessel ashore, but Adearre vaulted into the sea and embraced him with force. Unlike when he had seen him at the Confluence, Adearre now seemed as solid as Yarrow himself, a fact which lent weight to his ‘I-must-be-dead’ theory.
“It’s good to see you, love,” Adearre said, pulling back. “Here, get in.”
With the aid of his deceased friend, Yarrow scrambled into the wooden boat, sodden and confused. As Adearre climbed in, the boat swayed dramatically from side to side. Yarrow gripped the gunwale. He could feel the splintery grain beneath his fingertips so precisely, it seemed that it—and he—must be real.
“Adearre, where exactly are we?”
His friend did not answer immediately; he was busy lapping his oar into the water, pushing against the current.
“Have you ever read the ancient Adourran legends about the afterworld?”
Yarrow nodded. “Death shepherds departed spirits across the Spectral Sea.” He cocked his head to the side. “Does that make you Death, then?”
Adearre laughed, flashing his bright white teeth. He appeared almost otherworldly, standing above him, awash in sunlight. “Not Death, merely dead.”
“And, am I…?”
Adearre looked down, his amber eyes full of understanding. “No, Yarrow. You are not dead. Your body and your spirit both live, though separately.”
Yarrow let go of a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“It is for this reason that we have been awaiting you. You have been long expected.”
“We?”
The coastline of the island grew nearer. Yarrow could make out the ridge of a dune and the start of the tree line. The glass spire that rose from the forest seemed impossibly large.
“The Company of Spirits.” Adearre darted his oar from one side of the vessel to the other with a slight splash, propelling them further away from the Aeght a Seve. From home. From Bray. “There is a Counsel underway to determine the future of the Chisanta. And your perspective is greatly desired.”
Yarrow leaned back in the boat with a frown. “Why should that be?”
“Because,” Adearre said, as if it were obvious, “you alone can speak for the living. And it is to decide the fate of the living that we meet.”
Yarrow had no ready response to this. Everything had turned strange. He felt a kind of dream-logic dragging him forward, and was half certain that he would wake at any moment.
He searched his mind for Bray—for the point that contained her living self—but she was beyond his reach. He had only his own uncertain feelings to ground him.
Bray… he called out into the void of his mind. Bray? he thought again, but softer, without hope.
She could not answer. He had taken himself too far from her.
The glass spire loomed above them as the keel hit sand. Sunlight refracted into its infinite facets, painting a constellation of rainbows.
Yarrow gazed up at it with his mouth agape.
Adearre hopped out onto the beach and held out a hand. Yarrow stared at it, unmoving.
“Come. You will want to see this.”
Yarrow paused for only a heartbeat, then took the offered hand and leapt into shallow waters.
Chin up, he reminded himself. Feet flat.
Resolution of the Marked
Book Four of the Marked Series
Chapter One
There is a monster trapped inside me. Except when it slips free. (Except when I unleash it.) And then I am the monster, and it’s the boy who is trapped.
Quade Asher fixed upon these few lines. Merely ink on paper, and yet so much more. Beyond his tent the military camp hummed with activity, but Quade had slipped into the troubling landscape of memory. These words, written at the age of twelve, rekindled an old, dull pain. Sympathy for the boy he’d been.
How hard he’d worked then, to strike a balance between his two selves: the part of him that hungered for blood, and the part that yearned for approval.
Quade grazed the page with tender fingertips, his musings bittersweet. He’d forgotten how torn he once felt. His gift would later eliminate this contradiction—this internal tug-of-war.
How strange, how oddly affecting, to relive his earliest fears. He bent over his childhood diary and read on:
Mother can’t see it. Father chooses not to. But Ellora...
Ellora sees only the beast, never the boy. This morning at breakfast, she wouldn’t look up, not even when I spoke to her. I grabbed her wrist, and she cringed at my touch. I held on, tight enough to hurt her, and she finally looked at me (which was all I really wanted) but her eyes made me feel so…small. And the monster inside me roared.
I swear, I could rip the heart from my body. Slap it, bloody and beating, into her hand. And my sister would still think me born heartless.
Quade clicked his teeth together. Ellora. The mere thought of her stung. His sister had always regarded him as something nasty, a bug skittering across the wall of her life. How he’d longed to wipe that disdain from her face. It was the desperate cry of his boyhood spirit: love me, kiss me, fear me, hate me, hold me. Look at me. See me.
He’d gotten his wish, eventually. He had compelled her to do and say all the things he’d ever wanted, and then—when it still did not satisfy, and that lack of satisfaction festered inside him—he’d stolen the one thing she did love. Her art.
Quade didn’t care to recall that episode with Ellora, or how empty it had been. Regret was not a flavor his palate recognized, but perhaps… Perhaps…
He rubbed his face and slumped back in his chair. This project taxed his spirit. It was like an acrid scent he couldn’t stop sniffing, returning for more even as his eyes watered. He scanned his work: on one side his original journals, on the other his revisions. An improved history, worthy of the mythos he was crafting around himself.
A legacy demands careful cultivation.
This page, however, was too full of ugly truth. It didn’t belong in his legend. He ripped it clean from the book, held it over the flame of his lantern, and watched the paper burn in his hand. The smoldering remnants fluttered into the waste bin, where it joined the ashes of other such unsavory memories.
He stood.
Enough personal history for one day; his mood was already sour. So, he locked up his work and strode out of his tent, out into the war he’d created.
The evening was warm, smoky, and weighted as a held breath. A contingent of soldiers parted before Quade, scuttling from his path like roaches fleeing the light.
“Carry on, gentlemen,” Quade said. The words were spoken with scorn, but his gift transformed them. His voice sounded pleasant, and he knew his sneer would look like a kindly smile to these little men.
“Yes, sir!” they replied in unison. As he passed by, chests inflated and backs straightened. He could bolster and inspire even while dispensing insults. If only he could improve his own spirits so readily…
Quade marched on, hand resting on the pommel of Treeblade at his hip. The camp had doubled in size since their initial debarkation, now sprawling all the way to the marshes. It might appear an unwieldy beast, this multitude of men, most of whom were common and uneducated. But it was not unwieldy.
Surveying these hills crowded with tents and cook fires, he thought his soldiers more akin to ants than roaches. Upon arrival, every man fell into step, merging seamlessly as discrete units joined into a complex whole. Even Quade himself was surprised by the extent and exactness of his own compulsion.
Accord towered before him, its grey stones washed white with sunlight. Quade squinted up at the shadows of men upon those ramparts. He clamped his jaw.
It was unacceptable that he was yet standing on this side of the wall—after two hundred and fifteen days, no less. Every time he thought about it, his rage burned hot enough to brand him. He would love nothing more than to whip the scimitar from his back, to hack viciously at any living spirit in his vicinity. Hack until he was awash in fresh blood and licking it from his lips.
A young Dalishman sprinted to his side and pushed dark brown curls from his eyes. “General Paeva sent me, sir.” His hesitancy was message enough.
“The news is bad, I take it,” Quade said through a tight jaw.
“The scheme was unsuccessful, yes. They were waiting for us before we arrived.”
“And the explosives?”
“Taken, I’m afraid, sir. They flew right up over the wall.”
Quade snarled. His enemies would never cease humiliating him. Spirits, how he would make them suffer for it. Clea, one of his Elevated, whom he’d purposefully crafted into a telekinetic, now snatched his weapons with a flick of her wrist. They were laughing at him, across that wall. They thought him a fool. He had never in his life known such mortification.
But it was not Clea who was the true problem. He could not lay these months of failure at her feet. No, the thorn in his side bore the name of Yarrow Lamhart, the Fifth who predicted his every move.
Thoughts of that man always set Quade’s pulse thrumming. He couldn’t help himself. Desire had consumed him, in dreams and waking moments alike. Quade had always felt drawn to Lamhart. The man had an old spirit, with a mind both bright and artful. To have such a tool at his disposal would have been most pleasing.
But now that Lamhart was a Fifth, a sacred vessel of truth, want had evolved into need. When it came to that man, his feelings were such a spectacular muddle: bitter anger and pragmatic interest; arousal and vicious intent; and above all else want, want, want.
And Quade deserved to have the things he wanted.
The messenger cleared his throat, tearing Quade from his introspection. He looked the lad up and down. His hair was similar to Lamhart’s, and his shoulders were about the same breadth, though he lacked both sufficient height and intelligence of expression. Quade bit down on his lower lip. He will do.
The Complete Marked Series Box Set Page 114