Marked

by S. Andrew Swann

  “The assessment is nearly complete—”

  “Complete it, then, and get her out of here. The sooner these foreigners are out of my lab, the better.”

  “Dr. Durand . . .” I started to give him a piece of my mind, but he had stormed out without ever acknowledging my presence. “. . .you are an arrogant prick,” I finished lamely, facing the door to the exam room.

  “I apologize for Dr. Durand, my Lady.”

  I turned around and saw Dr. Lefevre holding a tray of implements. I was glad I didn’t suffer from any real medical phobias. Otherwise, the tray of gleaming antique examination equipment might have given me the shakes. He set the tray down by the examination table.

  “Can we continue?” he asked.

  “If you talk about the prisoner.”

  He sighed, but he nodded.

  TWENTY-NINE

  THE DOCTOR HAD never seen the prisoner himself. He had seen images of his Mark, and he confirmed the man’s relationship to me and to the Shadows. I don’t know if I found the confirmation of my initial suspicion reassuring or disturbing now that I had to fit the Shadows into that equation.

  Not that I didn’t have to fit the Shadows in somewhere. They had come from somewhere, and the fact they showed up on the heels of John Doe strained coincidence. The cop in me knew that they were related. I just didn’t want it to be so literal.

  Like Ivan, he couldn’t give me a name. Unlike Ivan, he could give me at least some reason why he had been a prisoner of the Empire in the first place. Uncle John Doe had walked through the Empire’s extended domain, and there were members of the Emperor’s White Guard who felt the foreign movement and converged to challenge him.

  Such things were routine. Chaos moves, and often new people are brought to the Empire’s shores. All that is required of them is an acknowledgment of the Emperor’s authority in his domain and a pledge to abide by the laws of the Empire; those laws require that a Walker of any power that crosses his domain be documented by the Emperor’s scholars and appear before the court or the court’s representatives.

  Uncle John objected to that, violently.

  They’d subdued him and brought him back to a holding cell in DC, bound by Métal Stationnaire. Apparently, some of the Emperor’s scholars on the scene had made the mistake of assuming his bonds made him safe. During his exam, he killed the doctor, overcame a guard, and, freshly armed, he managed to carve his way out of the building and make his way into the wilderness. He was ten miles away by the time he had managed to remove his restraints and escape through Chaos.

  I didn’t want to side with the Empire—it was authoritarian, autocratic, and subtly racist—but I couldn’t quite fault their reaction. Monitoring the border, whatever its nature, was a basic government function, like maintaining the roads. And I doubt even the most utopian democratic republic wouldn’t hunt down my John Doe after a similar incident.

  It also dawned on me, the way Dr. Lefevre spoke, that there was an additional wrinkle to John Doe’s brush with the Empire. The nature of the society here implied a lot about a Mark, and those who bore it. A Grande Marque such as mine, or John Doe’s, implied some form of aristocracy—the old school kind where the King was the State. Ivan called them Princes because their presence stabilized Chaos, creating their own demesne simply by existing.

  That meant that anyone with a Grande Marque had the potential of being another head of state of some yet unknown empire, and that made John Doe’s reaction more puzzling on a number of levels. Especially when Dr. Lefevre’s story opened up a question that I hadn’t even known was a question—

  Where had he been before he crossed the Empire’s boundary?

  The old man who had died in front of me had borne the signs of an extended captivity: the pale skin, wild hair, scars from being bound, the rags and the filth. . . .

  But according to Dr. Lefevre, John Doe had been in the Empire’s captivity for less than 72 hours. He had already been escaping from something before he had ever come here.

  And whatever he had escaped involved the Shadows.

  Cheery thought that.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER Dr. Lefevre was finished giving me the once-over, Ivan escorted me back to my cabin. We walked back in silence. I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts. Finding out about the Shadows and their origins were important; they were an obvious threat, and if I didn’t find some way to address them, I suspected they’d keep turning up until I did. But what’d kept me pushing down this road trip from hell was the thought that I might be able to find out who I was, where I came from.

  I might find my family.

  Now I was looking at the possibility that the two things were the same question, and I really wouldn’t like the answers.

  I wondered about Ivan’s family. Unlike me, I suspected he knew who his people were and how they fit into the universe. Given his Mark, and the way society seemed to work in the Empire, he could probably trace his lineage back to Catherine the Great.

  Back in my cabin, Greta was waiting for me. I had to stop in the doorway because the cabin looked as if a fetish lingerie shop had exploded. I saw corsets, stockings, and all manner of things that required boning and an excess of laces, the kind of things that could have been in a dominatrix’s closet, if it wasn’t for all the frilly lace. Greta stood in the middle of the whirlwind of Victorian undergarments with a smile that seemed almost predatory.

  “What’s all this?” I asked.

  “My lady, you must prepare for dinner with the Emperor.”

  “Prepare . . . I’m supposed to wear all this?”

  Greta chuckled and shook her head. “Not all of it, my Lady. I gathered a selection for you to choose from.”

  I felt a little relief. I looked around and pointed at the least uncomfortable-looking frilly thing draped across the settee. “How about that?”

  “Oh, dear. That’s a nightgown.”

  “Oh,” I suddenly felt a little overwhelmed. I was about to say I’d go as I was, but “as I was” included a set of clothes that were business casual at best, and now held the aroma of a few days’ continuous wear. They’d be ripe even if I hadn’t been exerting myself and walking through overgrown farmland. I ran my hand through my hair, and it felt greasy and knotted. I sighed. “I must look like hell.”

  Greta gestured past all the underwear. “I’ve drawn you a bath, my Lady.”

  * * *

  —

  IT had been ages since I had actually taken a bath. I had a shower and a tub in my master bath at home, but I think I might have used the tub once since I’d moved in. After all the running around, the idea of a long soak was enticing to the point of eroticism.

  I stepped into the little washroom off the sitting room, found a brass washtub that was all Greco-Roman bas-reliefs and clawed feet, and stared at the steaming water filling it. Just being that close, feeling the humidity on my skin, made me realize how much I itched.

  When was the last shower I’d taken?

  The light came from a window, not as large as the one in the sitting room, but large enough that—with the right angle—the tub looked as if it was floating above the clouds.

  I wasted no time stripping off my clothes. The idea of clean was suddenly foremost in my thoughts. Things had been so chaotic—or Chaotic—lately that, deep down, I half expected I might not get another chance.

  Greta was certainly right about my need to change clothes. Not only was my outfit wrinkled and spattered with mud, when I reached my underclothes, I felt a fresh flush of embarrassment. I had peeled these off for Dr. Lefevre, so he had seen the faint gray streaks of dirt on my skin outlining where they had been. That now felt worse than being nearly naked in front of him. My blush made me itch worse.

  I stood at the edge of the steaming tub anticipating a long soak so badly that my muscles ached. I stared into the wate
r, placed my hand on the edge of the tub, and almost jumped out of my skin when I felt someone touch my hand.

  I spun and saw Greta standing there, lifting my hand to help steady my entry into the tub. Seeing her there felt like a punch in the gut. In retrospect, I don’t think it should have hit me that badly, my modesty had already taken a beating today. But earlier had the pretense of being a medical exam; this was different. I had stripped myself without expecting anyone there to see me. Just like the unknowing version of my dad finding me in the shower.

  I squeezed her hand in shock. It must have hurt, but she didn’t react. I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came. That was a good thing, because I don’t think the first things that might have come to mind would have been particularly helpful.

  They gave me a maidservant, it was her job.

  I released my death grip on her hand and said, “I’m sorry, you startled me.”

  “Apologies, my Lady.” When she looked at me, I was uncomfortably aware of every inch of exposed skin, especially the Mark. I could feel her gaze on it. Though she hid her expression well, my experience as a cop gave me a good eye for people’s faces when they were trying to hide a reaction to something. Her brows barely moved when her eyes shifted toward my back, but the very slight intake of breath I saw her take told me that the Mark made an impression on her.

  When her eyes shifted back to my own, I could tell that she had a similar history reading the expressions of aristocrats, and I could see it dawn on her that I had noticed her reaction. We froze in that tableau for the space of several heartbeats, neither of us sure how to acknowledge the discomfort, or even if we should.

  It became obvious that I was the one here who had to react, or not. She was waiting for a reprimand. I just sighed and used her offered hand to help steady myself as I stepped over the tall edge of the tub.

  Having a servant help me bathe was the most decadent thing I’d ever experienced. I wasn’t in a state of mind to enjoy it. Aside from my backlog of existential questions and the open question of if this was a friendly environment or not, I just felt too vulnerable and exposed. Even if I suppressed that discomfort, having Greta scrub my back made me feel as if I was in the midst of some elaborate act of sexual role-play.

  I didn’t know if my refusal to dismiss her and take care of things myself was an act of courage on my part, or an act of cowardice. I would have felt more at ease dealing with an armed gangbanger hopped up on meth. At least there I knew what the options were.

  I did notice that when she touched the Mark, I felt none of the sensations I’d felt when Ivan had touched mine, or I his. That was a relief. The bath was awkward enough.

  When Greta declared me clean, the sky out the window glowed red with a sun just starting to set, the clouds flaming golds and oranges below us. I stood up, flushed from scrubbing and the still warm water, and she helped me out. Then, before I could hunt up a towel for myself, she was rubbing me down with something white and fluffy. It took an act of will not to jump.

  She dried my skin and my hair and spritzed me with something that I supposed must have smelled pretty. I was too uncomfortable to bother making an assessment.

  When we got to the clothing, it became apparent that for the aristocracy—the women at least—a maidservant wasn’t just a luxury, it was a necessity. With the exception of the panties, garters, and the stockings, it appeared that all the clothing from the corset on up required two people to assemble.

  I saw where that was going early enough in the process to request a bathroom break while I was still able to accomplish the task unaided. Greta paused just long enough before retreating to let me realize that at least some of the ladies she had served had not requested that kind of privacy.

  It was hard for me to get my head around that.

  * * *

  —

  THE clothing overwhelmed me with choices, and after the first few questions from Greta I just told her to dress me in something that fit and went together.

  I’ve never been the frilly dress-up type. I don’t know how much of that was my nature, and how much of it was the fact that since my dad died I’d avoided interacting with people much. It meant I never really dressed for anyone but myself, so everything I’d worn had been picked with the idea of comfort, efficiency, and hiding the Mark.

  None of those adjectives described how Greta prepared me for dinner with the Emperor.

  First was my hair, which rarely got any attention beyond being pulled into a ponytail. Occasionally, I’d let it down, but it almost always pissed me off by flying in my face. Greta combed it out, spritzed some more sweet-smelling stuff on it, and braided it. Then she took the braid and spiraled it on top of my head, locking it in place with a clip adorned with a gold filigree dragonfly with emerald eyes and mother-of-pearl wings with a span as broad as my palm.

  The dress itself went on me like a minor construction project. When it was over with, I had a sweeping floor-length skirt of silver, cream, and white that matched the dragonfly wings, accented by gold embroidery with green highlights that glinted in the evening sunlight. The bodice pushed me up, so I now had more boob than I’d ever thought possible, and I was a little grateful that the neckline was only cut low enough to give a hint at my enhanced bust. Of course, there was another brooch with more gold, mother-of-pearl, and emerald, a flower this time, placed to draw attention to the small slice of cleavage the neckline did reveal.

  More unnerving than that was the fact that the dress was shoulderless and dipped down the back about an inch farther than it did on my bust. Between that, and having my hair up, my Mark felt more on display than it had when I was naked. The black lines of it now not only stood out on my pale skin, but they practically screamed for attention contrasting against the cream and silver of the gown itself.

  I looked like the lead singer in an over-produced music video.

  I looked at myself in a gilded mirror, the oval frame alive with cherubs and twisting vines. It wasn’t me looking back. I don’t know who it was, but it was someone who was definitely not from the same time and place I called home. I reached over my left shoulder and traced the top of the black swirling pattern with my fingertips.

  “Is there something to cover my shoulders?”

  “My Lady?”

  “I’m not comfortable with all this showing.”

  “You’re dining with the Emperor. You wish to hide the mark of your status?”

  “I think he knows about it.”

  Greta appeared puzzled but acquiesced and produced an embroidered wrap that could fit over my shoulders, hiding most of my Mark from view. As she adjusted the material, she said, “It is remarkable.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve served the Emperor’s guests for fifteen years and I’ve never seen a Marque as large and finely detailed as yours.”

  I knew it was a compliment, but it only made me feel more uncomfortable. I hugged the new wrap around myself and looked in the mirror. It didn’t hide the Mark completely, but it did enough so I looked less the punk chick and more the Disney Princess.

  “Does the Emperor receive a lot of guests?”

  “Like you? Not many. Two or three a year. Cousins mostly. An occasional envoy.”

  I turned to face her, interested. “Envoys? From where?” I was starting to wonder how many “Empires” there might be out there. Unlike the kind of empires I was used to thinking about, these had no constraints around physical borders, and the potential territory was—it seemed to me—infinite.

  “Many places, most far away even for one who Walks through worlds. Not many women, and aside from the Emperor’s family, not many from any civilized race.”

  I didn’t respond to that one because I didn’t want to go into a long explanation of what exactly was the problem with that statement. But it let me know that there was a broader world out there. For all I knew right n
ow, the Empire here amounted to a remote backwater. It made me wonder again about where it was “my” people came from. As much as I’d discovered, the only thing I knew for certain about that was that they were not from around here.

  I started to ask Greta another question, but I was interrupted by a knocking at the door to my cabin. Ivan had come to escort me to dinner.

  THIRTY

  IVAN WAS CONSIDERABLY more flamboyant now than the last time I had seen him. He wore a white jacket that showed more gold braid than a bellhop convention. The cuffs and collar were stiff, wide, and scarlet, sporting brass buttons the size of golf balls, bearing the double-headed eagle of the Imperial arms.

  He held out his hand for me, but I wasn’t about to touch him again. He stood there, hand extended for a long moment.

  “Where’s Jacob?” I asked him.

  I honestly wasn’t trying to poke him. After all, I didn’t know him nearly well enough to be interacting with him on that level, no matter how much he annoyed me. That didn’t explain exactly why I found it gratifying that he barely hid a hurt expression when his hand dropped.

  “He will be at dinner.”

  “And it’s your job to escort me?”

  “Yes, my Lady.” He was subtle about it; only his eyes moved, but to me the way he sized me up was blatant. His gaze flicked up and down, taking in most of the details of Greta’s makeover.

  “Lead on, then.” I’ve never been haughty or aristocratic. That isn’t me. But when you work as a cop, one thing you do learn is how to project an air of command. So I did know how to boss people around, even if I wasn’t the one in uniform.

  Immediately after I spoke, I got the feeling again that I was needling him. However, the social rank my Mark gave me worked in my favor and Ivan only frowned ever so slightly, turning to face down the corridor. “If you would please accompany me?”