Yarrow gazed intently into her eyes. “I don’t like it. How will you follow? It doesn’t look as if the ferries are running.”
“They aren’t. I’ll figure something out, though.”
He shook his head. “No. Remain here. I’ll come back after I’ve delivered your message, and we’ll proceed together. And I will continue to monitor your feelings in the meantime.”
“I thought you didn’t like having me in your head?”
He shrugged. “It’s better than worrying.”
Once again, he glanced down at her gown. His ears turned red. Being dressed this way in town had made her feel mortifyingly exposed, but it was a little less embarrassing with only him to see. “Are you ogling me, Yarrow Lamhart?”
“What? No!” She smirked at his reaction, and he grinned in response, abashed at his own lack of subtlety. “Well, it is a little distracting. I had not realized that dresses—” he stopped himself. His face was rather adorably flushed. “But I should go.”
“Yes, you should.” She pulled him into a tight embrace, pressing her face to his coat. “Be careful. And if you make any more sacrifices, know that I will kill you.”
He stiffened. “What makes you believe that I would?”
“Nothing. Just…the trend of past behavior. Why?” She frowned up at him, wondering at his reaction.
His answering laugh sounded forced. “Nothing, nothing. Have no fear on that account. I’m fond of my sanity.”
“Good,” she said. “And be sure to tell Ko-Jin of the warships as well.”
“I will.”
He released her and stepped back. He was still gazing into her eyes as he disappeared.
“I love you,” she murmured to the empty hillside. “Stay safe.”
Chapter Fifteen
Yarrow materialized within the main entry of the palace, his hand pressed to the briefcase at his hip. The difference in temperature made itself felt instantly, and he rubbed his hands along his forearms for warmth. He regarded his surroundings. The space was broad, open, and clean; even the walls glinted richly. He glanced up at the ceiling, at the intricate paintings between the marble pillars.
He had been here once before, but his time had been mostly relegated to the dungeon. In a certain way, though, he felt as if he were returning to the place of his birth. His first memories had transpired somewhere below his feet.
“Excuse me, sir.” Yarrow turned to face a hesitant-looking valet. “You haven’t just teleported from outside the city, have you?” He surveyed Yarrow’s dusty clothes. “Because the quarantine must be strictly enforced, even for Chisanta.”
Yarrow did not understand this. He said, “I need to see Ko-Jin.”
The man’s mouth turned down, and the minute mustache on his upper lip frowned in kind. “And who might I tell him is calling?”
“Yarrow Lamhart.”
The valet bowed and hurried to a nearby guard, plainly instructing the man to keep an eye on Yarrow, before trotting up the curving stair and out of sight. Yarrow waited, hands clasped behind his back, drinking in the majesty of the palace. The floor had such a polish that he could see the shape of his own reflection. It was all so much grander than he could have imagined, and he, filthy from travel, looked most out of place. He hoped his name would mean something to this Ko-Jin, and that he would not be tossed out like the vagabond he appeared.
He did not have long to consider this possibility. The valet returned with a deeper bow. “Right this way, Master Lamhart. The general will see you.”
General?
Yarrow followed, craning his head left and right to take in the art on the walls. The grounds beyond the windows were, here and there, still encrusted in old snow. The day was overcast and sunless.
They turned several corners before the valet opened a door and gestured for him to proceed. Yarrow entered the room with the uncomfortable knowledge that he would soon disappoint yet another former friend. Would he ever have met them all, and be done with it?
“Yarrow!”
A Chaskuan man jumped from the wide meeting table. Yarrow caught quick sight of an almost unreasonably good-looking face, before being slammed by a forceful hug. “Spirits, it’s good to see you. But you don’t know me, right? So weird, that.” He extended a hand and Yarrow shook, an unfeigned smile coming to his lips. “Sung Ko-Jin. I’ve been your best mate since we were marked.”
Yarrow inclined his head. “Then it’s good to meet you.”
“One of your best mates,” came a familiar, drawling voice from the far end of the table. “As I’ve said, though, you always preferred me.”
“That’s odd,” Ko-Jin said to Arlow with twinkling eyes. “I remember it differently.”
Yarrow crossed the room to shake hands with Arlow, genuinely glad to see him. His friend appeared to be in better spirits than when they parted.
“How’s Mae?”
“As well as can be, given the circumstances.”
Yarrow turned to take in the collection of other people sitting around the great, glossy table. He wondered how many of them he was meant to know. There were seven others, though he thought he recognized the Adourran Chiona woman from the wedding.
A burly blond stood next to shake his hand, but rather than introduce himself he asked, “Where’s Bray?”
Yarrow recognized the man’s face from his vision. “You must be her Peer. She’s in Adourra, outside Che Mire. I’ve promised to go back and meet her there once I’ve given Ko-Jin her message.” He checked in on Bray’s mood and found her nothing worse than bored. “She’s well.”
“No need for that,” Ko-Jin said. His voice had taken on the authority of a man in charge. “Trevva and Tae-Young, can you go and pick her up now?” Ko-Jin asked. “We’ll need her.”
Yarrow frowned, uncomprehending. The tall Adourran woman and the youth beside her stood, held hands, and, without discussion, disappeared with a ringing pop. Yarrow’s confusion cleared; he had not even considered that there might be other teleporters apart from himself. He and Bray might’ve returned weeks ago, it seemed.
“Please, sit,” Ko-Jin said.
Yarrow perched upon a leather armchair. He scanned the faces still unknown to him and found them all noticeably younger than himself. He nodded to the impassive-looking Chaskuan girl beside him, and she returned the brief greeting.
“What message?” Peer asked. Yarrow regarded the man for a moment; he had intense blue eyes that were a little unnerving.
“She asked me to deliver this,” Yarrow said, pulling the briefcase from his shoulder and sliding it across the table. “The contents of Quade’s desk at his camp in Adourra, where an army has been marshaled. But she can no doubt explain better than I.”
Ko-Jin accepted the briefcase with a laugh. “Just walked right in and helped herself, I’m guessing?”
“You have been to Adourra?” the doll-faced girl to his right asked. She regarded Yarrow with unreadable black eyes. “He has not been through quarantine.”
Ko-Jin pressed his fist to his lips, then shook his head. “We don’t have five days to spare. And Yarrow can heal. If anyone’s injured, we’ll want him along.”
The girl looked less than satisfied. “What is your opinion of Quade Asher?” she asked.
Yarrow, feeling more than a little out of his depth, shrugged. “I believe he is using his abilities for evil and must be stopped.”
Ko-Jin rose from his chair and brought his face close to Yarrow’s, his dark eyes slitted in scrutiny. Yarrow swallowed, uncomfortable.
“Quade has killed many people,” he said.
“Ah, yes. That is my understanding,” Yarrow answered.
Ko-Jin pulled back with a shrug. “I don’t see any Quade in there. Just Yarrow. It’ll have to be good enough for now.”
“None of that unsettling ‘history forgives’ nonsense,” Arlow said. “He’s probably clean. And I would feel better having him with us.”
“Pardon me,” Yarrow said, hoping to sound polite
rather than irritated. “But you want me along for…what, exactly?”
Ko-Jin opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak a pop sounded, and three people appeared.
“Bray,” Peer shouted. He leapt from his chair and wrapped her in an embrace. Yarrow watched them with a slight ache—their two cheeks were touching, and he envied the man that skin-to-skin contact. Bray clutched the back of her friend’s shirt, returning his hug with equal enthusiasm. “Spirits, I’ve missed you.”
“You too,” she said into his chest.
They pulled apart, but she kept a hand on his arm. His gaze roamed down from her face to her dress, and he began to laugh. “What’re you wearin’?”
Bray flushed and pulled her cloak shut. She met Yarrow’s gaze with a smile in her eyes. “A costume.”
The blond man wolf-whistled, and she punched him in the shoulder, before turning to the others in the room. Yarrow watched her, a fond smile on his lips. She exchanged friendly greetings with Ko-Jin and the Chaskuan girl beside Yarrow, whom she called Su-Hwan. She then offered Arlow a glower, and the others polite introductions. A nervous-looking Adourran girl whispered that her name was Mearra, and beside her a far less reserved young woman introduced herself as Elda. Bray shook their hands and was soon recounting, with great animation, her adventure into Quade’s camp.
“You look a little lost,” Su-Hwan whispered to Yarrow, as if this were a mere observation.
Yarrow smiled, rueful. “I feel a little lost, socially speaking.” He could not relax amidst such a crowd, and the easy conversation between his companions seemed to emphasize his estrangement.
The girl nodded gravely. “I am often lost, socially speaking.”
“Glad that I’m not alone, then.”
“No. You are far from alone.” She said this with emphasis, and he looked around at this gathering of friends with more grateful eyes.
Bray settled into the seat across from Yarrow. She recounted their trip to Nerra briefly, and then in more detail explained the vision she had seen at the Confluence. Peer listened with a hard, thoughtful expression. At one point he murmured the word “bevolder” aloud, as if testing it on his tongue.
“But enough about us,” Bray said, leaning her elbows onto the table. “What’s happened here? I heard in Adourra that Jo-Kwan…”
The room sobered in an instant. Ko-Jin’s shoulders lowered. “Yes, he was murdered. And last night Quade came and abducted Queen Chae-Na from her bed.” He glanced at Yarrow with a blazing expression. “That is what I would ask your help with. We need to get her back. And if we can, rid this world of Quade Asher while we’re at it.”
“What’s the plan? When?” Bray asked. Her determination resounded in the back of Yarrow’s mind, like a drum urging him on.
Ko-Jin smiled gratefully at her. “We’ll need to rework it, now that you’re on board. But it will be tonight, for sure.” His eyes flitted to Yarrow. “Can we count on you as well, mate?”
Yarrow hid his hands in his lap. He feared Quade, and if he was being honest he felt no loyalty to a queen whose name he had only just learned.
But most of all, he dreaded the future he had witnessed in the Confluence. And it seemed to him that his becoming a Fifth must be directly related to whatever monstrous deeds Quade Asher had planned. What else could prompt him to make such a devastating sacrifice?
But if they could put an end to Quade this very evening, then perhaps he might change his fate and live on.
“Yes.” Yarrow swallowed. “You can.”
“Excellent,” Ko-Jin said. “Then let’s talk strategy.”
Chae-Na crammed her fingers in her ears and screwed her eyes closed. Beneath the canvas of the tent, she could feel cool sand. She struggled to keep her mind sharp, to focus. She thought of Jo-Kwan and her parents, or tried to. Her face was taut with dried tears.
Weariness had steadily turned her resolve to soup. Even her grief had grown too heavy to hold. She feared sleep, but the longer she struggled, the more inevitable failure became. A shiver ran up her spine, despite the sultry Adourran air.
She sensed the presence of someone standing over her, but she kept her senses closed off. She perceived movement, and there came, suddenly, a wonderful smell. Some variety of beef, she suspected, spiced in the style of the south. Her empty stomach groaned.
A quick peek, she decided. If Quade were within the tent, she would not eat. But she did not think he was near; she could not sense the pull of him. And surely she would stand a stronger chance of escape if she wasn’t light-headed with hunger.
She raised her head up from her knees and let her eyelids drift open, admitting just a sliver of the dark interior. The person with her was clearly not Quade, so she allowed her eyes to fully open.
The young man sitting before her had sandy hair and warm brown eyes. He seemed fairly harmless. He appeared to be sketching a picture, with a drawing pad pressed to his knee. He said something and gestured to a bowl at her feet. She could not hear his words, but the invitation was clear enough.
She gazed down at the meal and swallowed the rush of saliva in her mouth. Slow-cooked, shredded meat and hunks of potato in a wine-based gravy. For a moment, she imagined keeping her ears plugged with her fingers and jamming her face directly into the bowl. It would certainly be safer, but she simply could not bring herself to eat like a pig from a trough. She was queen of all Trinitas, for Spirits’ sake.
Cautiously, she lowered her fingers. She could hear, suddenly, the distant rush of the ocean, and nearer at hand, the voices of men. A great many of them. She snatched up the bowl and set about eating as quickly as possible. However, she was so accustomed to eating with decorum that she found it difficult to chew such large mouthfuls, let alone swallow.
“No need for that,” the young man said in a pleasant voice. “No one’s going to take it from you. Oh, and he sent a bottle of wine as well.”
Chae-Na continued to chew and swallow with an unusual amount of difficulty, while the blond-haired man uncorked a red and poured two glasses. He extended one to her as he took a sip from his own. Not poison, then.
“No, thank you,” she said. “Is there water?”
“None that I’d recommend drinking. I’ll just set it here for you.”
Chae-Na finished her dinner and found that her mouth was dry. She reached for the wine and took a single mouthful to moisten her tongue, then set the glass aside. She would not dull her wits with alcohol if she could help it.
“Weather’s nice, don’t you think?” he said, as he dropped to a wooden folding chair and took up his pencil and paper. “I was freezing my nethers off up in Accord.”
“When were you last in the capital?”
He thought for a moment. “Not much more than a day, I think…I’m not certain. Anyways, it’s good to be back. Hadn’t realized how much I missed Quade. He just makes you feel good, doesn’t he?”
Chae-Na nearly jammed her fingertips into her ears again, but she paused. “What is your name, might I ask?”
“Whythe.”
“Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Whythe.” She reached for the wine glass to appear at ease, though she did not intend to drink. “You know you’re not in your right mind. He is manipulating you.”
The young man smiled pityingly. “You can’t understand it just now, but you will. It feels right, to be Quade’s. You’ll see.”
“Do you have friends in Accord, still, Whythe?”
For the first time, the smile on his sunny face faltered. “Yes.”
“Will you kill them, if Quade demands it of you?”
“He wouldn’t—”
“Would he not? You say you’ve been in Accord recently. Can you not remember the bodies, brutally slain and indifferently numbered?”
His brow furrowed, but then he shook himself. “History forgives,” he replied in a deadpan voice.
“History might,” she said. “But think of those people, think of their faces. Could you forgive yourself?”
He appeared troubled. A tremor in his hand caused the wine to shiver within its glass. Encouraged, Chae-Na stood and crossed the small space. If Quade’s disease could be passed more strongly through skin-to-skin contact, perhaps the opposite might be true as well.
She knelt before him and took his hand. He stiffened but did not pull away.
“Think,” she said, her tone earnest and pleading. “Really think. Remember who you are. Remember who he is.”
“He is a beautiful man with a vision.”
Chae-Na realized her mistake too late. She tried to yank her hand away, but he stiffened his grip. “Don’t you see?” he said, and now he was the one who was pleading. He had a pleasant face. “If you submit, there will be peace. Those people won’t need to die. He would be king—a peaceful transition.”
“In Accord, they would not merely yield, they—”
“Who? Your general? He won’t stay within those walls with you gone. He’ll come here, and be Quade’s too, soon enough. We all will be, in the end. He can’t be stopped, because he shouldn’t be stopped. The Spirits gave us Quade because we need him.”
A crease bloomed between her brows, and her struggle to pull free lessened. “The Spirits?”
“Sure,” Whythe said. “He was marked, he was given this ability. Look into the man’s eyes and you will understand it too.”
Behind her, the tent flap rustled. When she looked over her shoulder to find Quade staring down at her, she did not know how to feel. She half-heartedly attempted to tug away from Whythe so she might plug her ears once more, but when he did not release his grip she wasn’t disappointed.
He killed Jo-Kwan, she reminded herself. But the thought seemed barely true. It lacked impact. She tried to summon his face, to shield her heart with the grief of losing him, but she could not. His features were indistinct.
“Thank you for keeping the queen company, Whythe. I am so pleased that I can rely on you once again. I don’t know how I survived without you.”
Lamentation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 3) Page 25