Lamentation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 3)

by March McCarron

  “Master Elver, how are the new recruits progressing?”

  Zarra, whose milky, unseeing eyes were directed towards the ceiling, bobbed her shoulders. “Some are learning quickly—all are much improved in this past month. But there is only so much that can be done in such a brief stint. I can take away some of their stupidity, but I cannot make them into proficients, let alone masters, in so many weeks.”

  “I understand. We are grateful for your efforts,” Chae-Na swept her gaze around the table. “Very good. I am pleased with the preparations we have effected in so short an interval,” she said. “Once Quade”—breathe, breathe—“and his armies are at our doors, we will split our focus in three directions.” Chae-Na braced her hands on the table’s surface and pulled her shoulders back, hoping to exude queenly confidence. “First, the defense of the walls. With our newly constructed walkways, we shall be able to keep ready patrols. I need not remind you, I’m sure, that a breach in our defenses will be the end—the instant Asher’s influence has contaminated the city, all will be lost.

  “To that effect, patrols within the city will be our second focus. Quade’s ability to teleport means that we are not entirely safe, even if the walls are maintained. Which is why our patrols will soon be armed with Mr. Alvez’s singular new weapon. Do you believe ongoing marksmanship training will be necessary?”

  The old Cosanta’s mustache twitched. “Training up aim is never a bad idea, but the accuracy on these pistols is far superior to previous models, and reloading is straightforward. For the most part, it’s as simple as pointing and pulling a trigger.” He did not sound terribly pleased by this fact. Chae-Na could understand why—it had been bullets fired from one of his guns that had killed those two young women now buried in the royal cemetery.

  “The Pauper’s people have joined us in this undertaking. Peer, I trust that you and Ms. Bearnall can work together to coordinate your efforts.”

  “Mrs. Bowlerham,” Arlow interjected. His wife elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Our third focus will of course be the termination of Mr. Asher. The Chisanta have already begun organizing a new assassination effort. However, should anyone have a shot, do not hesitate to take it.”

  Ko-Jin did not wholly agree with this declaration, she knew. She heard him shift behind her. For her part, though, she regretted not plunging a blade into the man’s heart when she’d had the opportunity. Any problems that survived him could be dealt with in time.

  “Does anyone have any relevant information or questions at this juncture?” she asked.

  Ko-Jin’s friend Yarrow cleared his throat. “If the city should fall,” he asked. “What should be our course of action?”

  “If it becomes apparent that Accord is lost…” Chae-Na swallowed. “Plug your ears and flee. To decide upon a rendezvous location would be unwise, as any of us could betray that information to Quade.” Breathe, breathe. “Better to hope the Spirits are on our side, and that some resistance might be able to regroup.”

  The room sat in an uneasy silence. Chae-Na tried to smile. “It is a poor plan, which is precisely why we cannot let it come to that. The capital must be preserved. We all have our tasks. If no one else has anything to contribute, I suggest we see to them.”

  As the group rose and dispersed, Chae-Na stood. “Mr. Bowlerham.”

  Arlow, who had been whispering in his wife’s ear, looked around, and the smile slipped from his face. His dark eyes danced in a moment of uncertainty, or perhaps guilt, before he approached and bowed.

  “Your Highness?” he said, darting a kiss on her hand. “How might I be of service this fine day?”

  She shook her head at his absurd gallantry. “Your wife, I assume, will need to meet with Mr. Gelson now. I wondered if I might claim a little of your time?”

  He squinted at her, as if hoping to read her intentions from her countenance, then inclined his head. “Certainly. One minute, please.”

  Chae-Na took her seat once more and watched as Arlow spoke briefly with his wife. People filtered out of the room in twos and threes.

  Ko-Jin leaned close to her ear and whispered, “You did well.”

  His breath raised the small hairs on the back of her neck. “Thank you,” she said, but the words came out curtly, which was not how she had meant them. Ko-Jin took a decided step back, and Chae-Na pinched the bridge of her nose.

  Breathe in…

  She heard the chair legs scrape as Arlow seated himself on her left, and she straightened.

  He laced his fingers together and sat with his black brows raised expectantly.

  “I was impressed with that bill you composed, Arlow.”

  He cocked his head to the side, his lips twisting sardonically. “A secret passion for fishery legislation, have you?”

  “No.” She smiled tightly. “I was referring to the quality of the document itself, the clear and precise wording. I take it you have studied legislation?”

  “A bit.”

  “More than a bit,” Ko-Jin added.

  “I should like to ask for your help in drafting a proposal. If you would be willing.”

  “My willingness will depend on the proposal.” He flashed a smile.

  “It is something that my brother wished for dearly.” His dying wish. “Something which I did not agree with, personally. But I find myself…changed.” Chae-Na regarded the ceiling, in search of resolve. “I see no need to speak vaguely, as you were there and you know already. Quade Asher intended to use kidnap and rape to gain power. If he were another man, there could even now be a risk of pregnancy.”

  Shock crossed Arlow’s features, making her wonder if he had not actually apprehended this for himself. Or perhaps it was her blunt words that surprised him.

  “And what political proposal do you imagine would…” he trailed off. His mouth twitched in sympathy, which she did not like.

  “Jo-Kwan believed that the people of Trinitas deserved more from its leadership. I did not agree with him, then. But it seems to me that a system in which sexual violence is an effective means of transitioning power, is not a very good system. The people, myself included, should have something more sound.”

  “Something like…?” Arlow asked.

  Chae-Na prompted Ko-Jin with a look, and he delved within his robes. He placed Jo-Kwan’s leather notebook onto her palm. She clenched the diary in her hands for a second, loving the man who had poured his heart onto its pages.

  “The ability, should it be deemed necessary,” she slid the journal to Arlow, “to call for an election.”

  Beyond the dorm room window, the setting sun bled the sky red. Yarrow, seated on a thin mattress, arranged the various notebooks and volumes before him in a semicircle. He rolled his shoulders and frowned down at the mass of paperwork—notes and books retrieved from his former room at the Cape, written in a hand that was apparently his own. There were also stacks of new, unread transcripts from the most recent Fifth. Seeing it all laid out before him, he realized he had no notion where to begin.

  He cracked open the notebook with the earliest date. Scrawled in the center of the first page, like an epigraph, was an unfamiliar quotation:

  In all of life’s battles, truth is my sword and knowledge my shield.

  Lim Po

  Yarrow bit down on his lower lip. That such a quote would have struck his younger self, a student of truth-sayers, made a lot of sense. It appealed to him even now. Was he not still compelled by the search for understanding?

  From the corner of their small room came the steady sound of a blade scraping a whetstone. Yarrow peeked up at Bray. She was focused intently on the throwing knife in her hand, her brows drawn low in concentration. She sat on the desk chair with her feet pulled up to the seat, as if crouching. Her copper hair was tied in a tail at the base of her neck, but one too-short lock fell forward. She blew at it, and grimaced when the curl fluttered back into the same place.

  Yarrow’s mouth tugged into a slow, unconscious smile. A warm sensation spread thr
ough his chest. In a life plagued with uncertainty, the dogged pull he felt towards this woman was his one, his only, simple truth.

  “You said you wanted to read,” Bray said, a kind of joking accusation in her tone. “And yet you sit there, eyes not even on your books.”

  Yarrow stifled a grin. “Your presence is surprisingly distracting.”

  She set her knife and sharpener aside, placed her feet back on the floor and bent forward. “Me? I’m just sitting here, perfectly innocent. Maybe you’re tired.” She gave a loud, false yawn, her nose wrinkling like a cat. “It is rather late. We might as well call it a day and go to bed.” There was a wicked glint in her eye. He very much wanted to push his mountain of papers aside and pull her to him.

  He sighed. “Tempting,” he said, and meant it. “But I really did promise Ko-Jin…”

  It was possible that somewhere within the transcripts of the Fifths there might be an answer, a way of beating Quade and protecting the city. With his forces a mere day from the gates, they must grasp at any and all possible avenues for salvation.

  “An hour,” Bray said, sinking back into a languorous position. “That’s all you get.”

  “Generous of you,” he said. He picked up a notebook from the stack of new transcriptions. He glanced one last time at Bray’s face, now that her attention had returned to her knives. She was acting as if all were well, putting on a brave face. But he could sense the ragged feelings lying just beneath that veneer. The death of that young woman, Su-Hwan, and what had happened to Chae-Na, were both weighing heavily on her mind.

  Yarrow settled himself into a more comfortable position, the box spring squealing beneath him.

  He looked down at the collection of transcripts in his hand. The volume had fallen open at the middle point, and he made to flip back to the beginning, but paused.

  His heart thudded louder as his eyes scanned—the Fifth, this most recent Fifth who had evidently died only months ago—seemed to have incanted the same bit of truth over and over again. His eyes darted down the page. He flipped hastily to the next, and found that the repetition continued. He skipped ahead. It would seem the scribe had grown weary of jotting down the same words again and again, as on the fourth page he or she had switched to ditto marks.

  Yarrow let the book fall to his lap, his eyes reading hungrily:

  Brother in truth stops the bleeding. Brother in truth stops the fire.

  Brother in truth stops the bleeding. Brother in truth stops the fire.

  Brother in truth stops the bleeding. Brother in truth stops the fire.

  A hard something lodged in his throat and he tried to swallow it back. Stops the bleeding…

  Yarrow leaves slowed bleeding, and he, Yarrow, was a healer. Who would a Fifth refer to as a “brother in truth” save for another Fifth, a male. Him. He had already seen that future, a vision gifted to him by the Spirits themselves.

  And he had failed to avert it, in failing to kill Quade. The only question was what fire this prophecy referred to—was it a literal fire, or perhaps a metaphor for Quade himself? The man did spread and destroy like a blaze in a dry field.

  “Yarrow, is something wrong?”

  Yarrow drew a deep breath. He looked up to meet Bray’s concerned gaze and tried to appear calm. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Certainly.”

  “The first two sacrifices,” he swallowed, glancing down at the text, “why did I make them?”

  He was fairly certain he had reasoned out his motives for the third, but the former two were a mystery to him. Who would willingly sacrifice the ability to touch?

  Bray leaned deeper into her seat, a crease forming between her russet brows. “Well, the first one was so that we—you, me, and Ko-Jin—could escape from Quade, and warn the Chisanta of what he had done. Up until then, everyone believed that the marked were naturally dwindling. We had no idea that they were being abducted.”

  “Why was I the one to make that choice; not you, not Ko-Jin?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t speak for Ko-Jin, but as for me—doing something like that, it simply wouldn’t have occurred to me. I’m so used to confronting problems head-on…”

  Yarrow accepted this with a nod. “And the second sacrifice?”

  “I was shot when we freed Peer. You gave up your ability to touch to save me.”

  Yarrow entwined his fingers, his expression thoughtful. This circumstance he could understand—he could see himself making that same choice again. “Peer is your oldest friend. He loves you too. And yet it was I, not he, who made the sacrifice. Why do you imagine that is?”

  “Peer is like me. Straightforward. You—you seem to be more tapped into the mystical side of things, the old ways. More so than any Chisanta I’ve ever known. And you put others before yourself, always. Even your first gift…”

  “You’ve told me that I grew up as a part of a large family. That I helped my father and took care of my younger siblings. Perhaps that is why I became so selfless?”

  He was hoping this was true, because he could no longer remember those people, or that childhood. If it were that alone, then his inclination to suffer for others might be a trait he had successfully shed.

  “Maybe…but I doubt it. I’ve met your other siblings, and none of them seem to have developed that trait. I think it’s just who you are, a part of your makeup.”

  Yarrow winced. That was precisely what he didn’t want to hear, because it was what he had already begun to suspect for himself. He felt the burden of those who had died, blamed himself for not finding some way to save them. He had thrown himself into danger to rescue Ko-Jin, despite the fact that he barely knew the man.

  Bray stood and came to the edge of the bed. “You’re just a good man, Yarrow Lamhart. You are and you were. Too good, probably, for your own happiness.”

  Yarrow snapped the notebook in his hand shut. He already knew what was to come—his role in the days that would follow. He began stacking the books and journals.

  “I thought you meant to read for another hour?”

  Yarrow could not meet her eye. He swung from the cot and piled his research on the desk. “I’m suddenly very tired. Perhaps in the morning…”

  “Excellent. I’m exhausted. Didn’t sleep at all in quarantine.”

  Yarrow noticed her shiver from the corner of his eye, and he hid a smile. His Bray did not like to be cooped up.

  He double-checked that his gloves were tucked into the cuffs of his shirtsleeves, and pulled a cowl on to better cover his neck and jaw. Behind him, Bray yanked off her boots.

  “There’s only one pillow,” Yarrow said.

  “No matter.” Bray tugged his arm, and he fell down onto the bed.

  “Need the light?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She reached over and puffed a breath, extinguishing their lantern. She settled so that her head rested on his chest, her legs snaked around one of his own. He gazed up at the dark ceiling for a while, listening to the wind howl.

  Bray’s breathing eventually evened. She twitched a few times as sleep took her.

  Yarrow’s mind would not stop working. He stared and he stared overhead, as the wall clock chanted the passing hours.

  He could not decide if the future placed so inevitably before him was fated, or if he had steered himself towards it. He had been drawn to the Fifths since he was a youth, and he had ever been putting others before himself. So was he a pawn, or in control of his own life? Had he been guided to this place or arrived by his own design?

  He had no answer, and as his mind grew fuzzy with fatigue, he began to think the distinction insignificant.

  Bray murmured into his shirt, her eyes moving beneath their lids. He ran a lock of her hair through his fingers.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Peer rubbed his hands together, the callouses on his palms rasping. He took a swill of coffee, though his limbs were already buzzing. He stood, looked at the clock, the
n sat again.

  Beyond the library window, he watched the wind tug at the branches of a yew tree. He could see no one approaching the library—the sun-dappled brick paths were, in fact, oddly vacant for such an hour.

  He frowned to himself. Late.

  He pounded his fists rhythmically against the desk. This hyperactivity had been with him since Su-Hwan. He suspected it was some new variety of grief—a jittery energy to do, to try. To not be still.

  Peer huffed, then jammed his arms into his coat sleeves. He would go find the lad himself, as punctuality seemed not to be—

  He jumped at a loud pop just to his right. He slapped a hand to his drumming heart. “Blight it, Tae-Young.”

  The lad jerked his coat straight. “Sorry, did I scare ya?”

  “Startled,” Peer grumbled. “You’re late. Ready to be off?”

  The kid swiped his fingers through his overgrown black hair, a timid smile coming to his lips. “Suppose I am. Ah, what’s the plan if we’re spotted?”

  “Flee.”

  Tae-Young released a held breath. “Good. Fighting Quade was pretty mythic and all, but also kind of…”

  “Trouser-pissingly terrifying? Yeah, I’m with you. Let’s be making this quick and risk-free then, aye?”

  Peer held out his hand. With a short laugh and a steeled breath Tae-Young took hold.

  Peer screwed his eyes shut as the library floor vanished from beneath his boots, and he spun into nothingness. When the world exploded around his senses, it was loud with bird song. He opened his eyes.

  Tae-Young had teleported them to a copse half a league from Quade’s forces, which were now camped at the outer perimeter of the city. Peer cautiously stepped around a tree and peeked across the marshy slope. The sight of the tents—the seemingly infinite number of them ringing this side of the capital—set his pulse thrumming. He licked a lip.