Division of the Marked (The Marked Series)

by March McCarron

  Yarrow nodded and packed away his books and notes carefully while Arlow waited, fists in pockets, with obvious impatience. “I’ll meet you at the entrance in twenty minutes,” he said at last.

  He sprung to his feet and began to whistle a jaunty tune as he strolled to the exit.

  “And Yarrow?” he called over his shoulder from the doorway.

  “Yes?”

  “Wash the ink from your hands for once, will you?”

  Yarrow changed into a freshly pressed set of blue robes, scrubbed his hands white in the basin, and even took the measure of shaving the stubble from his face. He put on his best coat, exchanged his slippers for walking boots, and donned his top hat.

  He had halfway made it to the door before he patted his pockets and realized he had forgotten something. He crossed back to his bedside table, opened the drawer, and shifted through the items until his hand clasped the plain-hued handle of his father’s pocket knife, the thing he never left home without. Just beneath it was his mother’s handkerchief wrapped around a lock of copper hair. Three treasures from a previous life—or so it felt.

  His fingers lingered on the stack of envelopes within; a decade’s worth of correspondence with his family. Most of the letters were from his sister Ree, though even her messages had come less and less frequently as the years passed. Which was just fine. He did not need a note to know that they were well and safe.

  Yarrow pocketed the knife and strode from his room, boots slapping the marble floor so much louder than his usual footwear. He popped his head into the courtyard where Ko-Jin typically could be found.

  His Chaskuan friend sparred shirtless despite the cold. Yarrow often wondered if he did this to show off the impressive musculature of his chest to any passing female. Perhaps not, though. Despite being the object of much eye-lash batting, he generally acted aloof with the opposite sex.

  “What—not rooted to the library, Yarrow?” he asked, as he punched at Roldon, stopping his fist before it actually made contact. Ko-Jin looked half bored, while Roldon’s light brown braid flew left and right, his still-boyish face pouring sweat, in his ineffective attempts to dodge the other man’s attacks.

  “We are going into town to celebrate. Arlow’s been asked to advise the King,” Yarrow said.

  “Really?” Ko-Jin said as he swept his leg under Roldon, knocking him to the ground. In a heartbeat, Ko-Jin had pinned Roldon to the ground, holding his arm in such a way that the slightest amount of force would break it at the elbow.

  “I yield,” Roldon said as he tapped the ground with his other hand.

  Ko-Jin hopped up and dusted himself off. “Great. I’ll go change.”

  “Will you come as well?” Yarrow asked Roldon, who still lay on the ground, winded.

  “Not me, Yarrow. I’ve got a date.”

  “Really, with who?”

  “A local,” Roldon said, finally getting to his feet. “See you later—I’ve got to get cleaned up too.”

  “Best of luck,” Yarrow called after Roldon’s departing back.

  Yarrow strode through the familiar grounds, took a shortcut through the dining hall, and came out to the drive. Arlow stalked impatiently back and forth before a two-horse black gig, plain save for the Chisanta symbol emblazoned on its side.

  “There you are,” he called upon seeing Yarrow. “You took an age. Come now, let’s be off.”

  “We’ve got to wait for Ko-Jin,” Yarrow said.

  Arlow exhaled dramatically. “Must you always invite him? I thought it could be just the two of us, like old times. It’s my celebration after all.”

  Yarrow smiled mildly. Arlow loved to talk about when it had been ‘just the two of them,’ but Yarrow could not imagine when this was. In reality, Arlow preferred being the best-looking man at the bar. Ko-Jin thwarted this ambition.

  Yarrow shrugged. “Seemed rude not to.”

  “Well, he’d better be quick about it, or we’re leaving him.”

  “What time do you leave tomorrow?” Yarrow changed the subject smoothly.

  “Early—after breakfast. By the way, we should really stop by that Dalish hatter in town.”

  “You can’t possibly need a new hat,” Yarrow said, laughing. Arlow had more hats, canes, coats, and robes than could fit comfortably in his closet.

  “No, my friend, but you do.” He swiped Yarrow’s hat off his head. “This thing is atrocious.”

  “It’s perfectly serviceable,” Yarrow said, trying to snatch it back. Arlow moved his hand out of reach.

  “It’s embarrassing,” Arlow said, twirling the hat around his finger, “you never spend your stipend on anything. You must have a small fortune by now. No reason that you can’t buy a decent hat.”

  “I might have a fortune,” he agreed, “if I didn’t keep lending you money.”

  Ko-Jin appeared through the entrance.

  “I hear congratulations are in order,” he said, extending Arlow a hand.

  Arlow greeted Ko-Jin as if sincerely glad to have him along. “Let’s be off then,” he said, and the three of them climbed into the gig.

  It was still a bit cold for an open carriage, but Yarrow didn’t mind. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the cool air whipping in his face.

  Four hours later, Yarrow, Arlow, and Ko-Jin were comfortably sipping soju, a rice liquor, in a traditional Chaskuan bar—Yarrow in possession of a new top hat. They sat cross-legged on a raised platform before a low table, covered with dozens of small plates, each containing a different dish: vegetables in a spicy red sauce, pickled quail eggs, leek pancakes, and steaming soybean soup, to name a few. The three of them picked happily with chopsticks, drinking their way through several bottles.

  “I’ve brought some cards,” Arlow said, extracting a pack from his pocket. “If you’d care for a round of poker?”

  Ko-Jin and Yarrow shook their heads simultaneously.

  “I’ve donated enough money to your pocketbook in the name of poker,” Yarrow said.

  Arlow shrugged and replaced the deck. “Pity, I was eyeing a new pair of gloves.”

  They ordered another round. Yarrow felt the eyes of the other patrons darting toward their table. He always had the distinct impression that he and his friends disappointed the locals by behaving like normal young men. The Cosanta generally presented themselves to the world as a stoic, distant, intellectual set. The truth was, they were just people like anyone else.

  “You’ll visit, won’t you?” Arlow asked, his cheeks growing rosy. “I can show you around Accord.”

  “Of course we will,” Ko-Jin said, pouring more drinks sloppily.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Yarrow slurred. He always got drunk faster than his friends. He theorized it had something to do with their fuzzy happiness in his mind amplifying his own.

  “You wouldn’t dream of visiting me?”

  “No, I wouldn’t dream of not visiting you,” Yarrow said, trying to articulate his words soberly and failing.

  “Yarrow, look who it is,” Ko-Jin said, elbowing his friend in the ribs. Yarrow followed his gaze and saw, to his horror, Su-Hyun—a very pretty Chaskuan woman who lived in town, whom Yarrow rather liked.

  “Damn, why did you let me get so drunk?” Yarrow said, sinking into his cushion and trying to disappear from view—a ridiculous endeavor considering his distinctive Cosanta garb and height.

  “Don’t worry, mate,” Arlow said. “She’ll never be able to tell.”

  This might have been a vote of confidence if both Arlow and Ko-Jin hadn’t broken into intense bouts of laughter. Arlow had tears streaking down his glowing face.

  It was their laughs that caught Su-Hyun’s attention. She spotted Yarrow, smiled, and made her way across the bar to him. The dark gleaming curtain of her hair hung loosely around her Chaskuan-style dress; a brightly colored silken garment tied in the front called a hanbok.

  “Hello,” she greeted them in Chaskuan. She didn’t know much Dalish, and Yarrow’s Chaskuan was still decidedly subpar, which was w
hy their conversations had not been the most illuminating.

  “Hello,” they all mumbled back in Chaskuan.

  “What’s the occasion?” Su-Hyun asked, gesturing to the collection of empty liquor bottles.

  It would have been simplest for Ko-Jin to answer, but he elbowed Yarrow in the ribs a second time.

  “We drinking for Arlow’s job rise,” Yarrow said, in nearly incomprehensible Chaskuan.

  Su-Hyun’s smooth brow creased and she looked at Ko-Jin for clarification. He elaborated, explaining Arlow’s new position in Accord. Yarrow felt his face grow warmer and warmer. Why was he so dreadfully inept with women? Why wasn’t it ever just easy? This was why he preferred the idea of bachelorhood. Besides, he could never give a woman the amount of time and attention she required; he was too focused on his research. Though, he had to admit, he liked the idea of having a wife and a slew of children, in theory. He missed being a part of a chaotic, loving family.

  “I’ll be singing tonight,” Su-Hyun said, her eyes moving back to Yarrow. “Will you stay and listen?”

  Yarrow and his friends assured her that they would and she looked pleased, then excused herself to get ready for the performance.

  “She does have a bonny face,” Arlow said. “And she keeps talking to you, even though you make an ass of yourself every time. I don’t know why you don’t do something about it.”

  Yarrow shrugged uncomfortably. Among the Chisanta both men and women were utterly independent. It completely changed the nature of love—there were no parents to consult, no dowries, no rank. A man and a woman could spend time together, romantically, without technically ‘courting.’ They could marry or not as they pleased. But the rest of the world did not operate this way. To pursue a woman, and especially a Chaskuan woman, would be courting. It would mean that he intended to marry her. And if he did not intend such a thing, he would be viewed as a scoundrel. It didn’t matter how lovely Su-Hyun’s face was, or how sweetly she sang, he was not in any position to be a good husband to her. Besides, her family would likely not appreciate their daughter marrying a Dalish man. No matter how amicably the three nations coexisted, there was still plenty of social discouragement of marriage to foreigners.

  “Might be for the best. I hear her father is as mean as a Chiona,” Ko-Jin said.

  “Oh come now,” Arlow said. “He can’t be that bad.”

  Yarrow took another deep swill of soju. He leaned backwards, used to his chairs having a back, but as he was sitting on a cushion he fell flat on the floor. Ko-Jin and Arlow burst into laughter, as Yarrow, now an alarming shade of red, hoisted himself back into a sitting position.

  When the server came around, Yarrow asked for water.

  It was nearly midnight when the three of them, clinging to each other for balance, exited the bar and made their way clumsily to their gig. The stable hand harnessed the horses and Arlow lifted himself awkwardly into the front seat.

  “Are you sure you can drive?” Yarrow asked, attempting to climb into the gig but falling back onto the pavement.

  “Of course. I’ve never had a clearer mind in my life,” Arlow said, his speech slurring lazily. “Besides, the horses know the way.”

  It appeared that this was true, as once they had all successfully climbed into the vehicle and Arlow twitched the leads, the horses trotted off in the direction of the Temple.

  The City of Cosanta was an interesting cultural blend. It had sprung up around the Temple, and as such catered to Dalish, Adourran, and Chaskuan customers alike. There were bars, restaurants, clothiers, and tea shops in all three styles. The architecture of the buildings that streamed past was also mixed—some had the curved roofs of a Chaskuan town, others the stark brick of Daland, and a few the bright-colored, simply cut design of Adourra.

  A bell struck midnight, signifying the moment of marking. It was now Da Un Marcu. Across the three kingdoms children, sleeping peacefully in their beds, were being branded Chisanta. How would they feel when they woke? Yarrow remembered well how panicked he had been that morning.

  “How many will there be, do you think?” Ko-Jin asked. The tone sobered.

  The year of their marking, one child had not been found. The next year, three went missing. The year after that, there were four less. Last year, only twenty-six children made it to the Temple—their number nearly halved. It was an unheard-of phenomenon, and utterly inexplicable. Some theorized that the Chisanta were being phased out of existence. That there was no longer a need for them in this new age of peace, and so fewer were marked. It was for this reason that Yarrow spent so many hours poring over the transcripts of the Fifth—he knew that the answer must be buried somewhere within that vat of information. How could an event so monumental as the dwindling of their kind not have been prophesied?

  “I suppose we shall find out soon enough,” Arlow said, bleakness dripping from each word.

  They rode on in silence. Despite the sense of foreboding, Yarrow was too sleepy and abuzz with alcohol to muster his usual level of concern. Mostly he felt tired and longed to reach the warmth and softness of his bed. He slouched deep into his seat.

  Yarrow jolted, throwing himself upright. His blood pulsed with extreme terror—with fear and dread. It was so strong an emotion that he called out.

  Ko-Jin jerked in his seat. “What’s wrong?”

  But it was not Yarrow’s own fear that coursed through his veins. It belonged to someone else. To a girl he had known long ago for a few brief weeks, but who had, ever since, shared a small part of his mind. Somewhere out in the world, at that very moment, Bray Marron was terribly afraid.

  “It was nothing; a shadow,” Yarrow said.

  But his heart continued to thud in his chest, beating with a panic that was not his own.

  Bray’s heart pounded like a ceremonial drum in her chest.

  “Adearre? Are you still with me?” she asked, failing to keep the fear from her voice.

  “Bray?” His golden eyes searched for her, finally locking onto her face with an effort.

  “Yes, it’s me. Peer went to town for the doctor. You’re going to be alright.”

  Adearre’s long form lay stretched on the forest floor, a gunshot wound in his upper chest seeping blood into the earth liberally. Several feet away sprawled the dead body of a middle-aged Dalish man, with straw-colored hair and unseeing blue eyes. The man’s pistol lay a few spans away from his outstretched hand, forgotten.

  Bray knelt beside Adearre and applied pressure to the wound, but his blood kept flowing, thick and red, up over her fingers and hands. Even with only moonlight overhead, she could see the deep brown skin of his face had lost much of its warmth, his complexion graying before her eyes. He was bleeding to death, and Peer, no matter how fast he flew on horseback, would not be back with the doctor for some time.

  Bray’s chest contracted; she couldn’t pull in air properly. Adearre could not die. He simply couldn’t.

  There had to be something she could do. She searched her mind for some medical tidbit. She had learned to tie a tourniquet years ago, but that would be no use with a chest wound. All she could remember was to apply pressure—but the bleeding would not slow. Her hands were slick and red. Tears of panic and desperation ran down the length of her nose.

  And then she remembered it, like seeing a snapshot from someone else’s life. A gray-eyed boy in a Dalish wood holding out a plant—a cluster of small white flowers surrounded by long, feather shaped leaves.

  “It’s the leaves you want if you’re bleeding,” his ghost whispered in her ear.

  Yarrow leaves.

  “I won’t be gone a moment,” she told Adearre’s now inert form.

  She leapt to her feet and raced to the tree line, hunted the undergrowth for any speck of white. She assaulted the greenery, shifted through the plants carelessly with her bare, red hands. It did not take long. A speck of white, not far from the clearing where Adearre lay, snagged at her vision. She grabbed it, tugged the entire plant up by the roots, then da
shed back to the clearing.

  Bray reached for her water canteen and hastily cleaned the dirt from the leaves, ripped them away from the stem. She thrust the whole handful on Adearre’s oozing wound, ripped the remaining sleeve from her shirt, used it to hold the leaves in place, and continued to apply pressure.

  The moments passed with agonizing slowness. Adearre did not stir again. The mournful hooting of an owl broke the otherwise absolute silence.

  At long last, the thunder of hooves sounded. Peer, hunkered low over the neck of a black steed, broke through the brush, his face white and determined. He swung his massive form from the saddle and ran to Adearre, sliding onto his knees.

  “Doctor and the constable are minutes behind,” he said, breathing heavily. “How is he?”

  Bray pressed her ear to Adearre’s chest and heard the sluggish thrusting of his heart. “Alive.”

  Peer closed his eyes, his lips forming a silent prayer.

  Several painful minutes later, a plain black carriage appeared between the trees. Two shapes emerged. A handsome dark-haired man with a medical bag hurried to Adearre, pushing Bray and Peer aside. A second man, thin and with hair as orange as a Chaskuan persimmon, stepped out more slowly and gave his attention to the dead man. Both looked as though they had dressed hastily after being shaken from their beds.

  The doctor lifted Adearre’s shoulder from the ground. “An exit wound—that is a blessing. No bullet to extract,” he muttered to himself.

  He pulled away Bray’s blood-soaked shirt sleeve to look closer at the wound.

  “Yarrow leaves.” He glanced at Bray. “Clever girl.”

  They watched as the doctor cleaned the wound and wrapped it in snowy white bandages.

  “We’d better take him back to the inn to sew him up—best to do such things in a clean space,” the doctor said. He then gestured for Peer to take Adearre’s legs as he gently lifted the torso.

  “Will he be alright?” Bray asked, voice cracking.

  “I expect so, but I need to get him back quickly.”

  There was room in the carriage for the doctor, Peer, and Adearre only. Peer’s eyes fixed so intently on Adearre that he did not even glance her way.