The Complete Marked Series Box Set

by March McCarron

  Bray sat back down. “It had to have been him…”

  “I suppose we shall never know now, will we? How many have you killed?” Adearre asked.

  Eight. The others had been turned over to the law, and most had been convicted and hung. She did not feel remorse for a one of them—they were child abductors, murderers, and rapists. They deserved far worse than the clean deaths she’d given them. It was not her problem if Adearre was too great an idealist for the office they performed.

  A soft knock on the door broke off their glowers.

  “Come in,” Peer said.

  A small boy in a Telegraph Office uniform entered. “Sirs, miss, begging your pardon, but this was sent urgent from the Chisanta Temple.”

  Peer took the small roll of paper and the boy bowed out of the room. Bray came close as he unrolled the telegram and they read together:

  Marked girl dead. Report to Temple, ASAP. -Dolla

  “You heard how many?” a woman’s voice whispered from behind the nearest bookshelf.

  “Only fifteen, I heard,” a man responded.

  “How many years before there are none at all?”

  “And I suppose you’ve heard about the girl in Greystone?” the man asked.

  “Of course, what a tragedy. Too horrible…”

  Yarrow turned a page and stared at the text, endeavoring to ignore the whispering couple. But he, like many at the Cape, found it difficult to focus. Each year, on Da Un Marcu, the news grew more and more grave. Yarrow had heard the number ‘fifteen’ whispered so often the word seemed to now possess an ominous connotation.

  The girl in Greystone was just the egg atop the rice. That news had come like a swift kick in the gut to a man already knocked down in a fight. There would have been sixteen—there should have been sixteen. But a fire had killed the girl and her entire family on the eve of Da Un Marcu. She, their sister, had perished in the flames.

  These thoughts weighed heavily on Yarrow’s mind, and with the loss of Arlow the day before, life seemed a rather gloomy affair. Despite his torpor, Yarrow had pulled himself to the library, as usual, that morning. For the answer must be hidden in these pages somewhere. But, a small, negative voice in his mind asked, what good could it do? Would oblivion really be easier to stomach as a certainty than as a possibility?

  Yarrow read, barely taking in the words:

  South draws north while north draws south…The sacrifice is crueler than the gift is pleasant…On the eighth day of the Stag’s Year the last king shall die…Fire conceals truth in times of marked famine…We glimpse, in the night’s sky, the winking of matter long dead…The pistol’s powder eases distressed lungs…

  The chatting pair moved beyond his range of hearing. For this Yarrow was glad, but his own thoughts were as distracting as their voices had been. The words on the page made no impression on his mind. Eventually, he admitted defeat, deposited the book in his bag, and departed the library.

  It was a cool, overcast afternoon. The Temple stood quiet and still; a general feeling of mourning pervaded. Yarrow hesitated on the grounds for several moments before deciding on a destination. He hadn’t visited Dedrre since the recent news had spread.

  Yarrow strode, fists in pockets, past the dining hall and through the court. He hurried by the statue of Lim-Po, the inscription on which had become a personal mantra for Yarrow—‘In all of life’s battles, truth is my sword and knowledge my shield’—past the orchard, and up the sloping incline to Dedrre’s home. The older Cosanta lived in the nicest rooms, the youngest in the simplest. This was tradition. Yarrow’s own room was his third since he had come to live at the Temple, and he was pleased with its size and furnishings. Dedrre, being one of the eldest Cosanta, lived in something of a private villa. He had gardens, a study, and his own bathing room.

  Yarrow knocked and was beckoned to enter. He stepped inside and found his old friend, as usual, hunched over a drawing table.

  “What are you working on today?” Yarrow asked.

  “Oh, still fiddling with this design for an improved teapot. I don’t fancy the pitch of the whistle mine makes.” The old Adourran man pushed away from his work and gestured for Yarrow to sit.

  “Thought you might have forgotten where to find me, lad. I’ve been expecting you.” Dedrre rose and bustled into the kitchen. “Tea?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Yarrow said. He sank deeper into the chintz armchair. Some of the tension eased from his shoulders as his eyes scanned the familiar clutter of half-completed inventions, the walls plastered with blueprints and schematics. The room smelt of tobacco and persimmons. If Yarrow closed his eyes and breathed in, that smell could transport him back to a thousand other times he’d sat in that very chair.

  “You’re looking thin, lad,” Dedrre said. “Eat these.” He handed Yarrow a plate of biscuits. Yarrow bit into a biscuit obediently. Dedrre opened and closed cabinets as he called over his shoulder to Yarrow, “Received a telegram from my granddaughter yesterday.”

  Yarrow swallowed, choking slightly on the crumbs. “How is Vendra?”

  “Quite good. That tip you gave her from the Fifth is revolutionizing her study of sedatives. Or so she says.” Dedrre returned with the tea things.

  He settled himself back into his own chair and fixed Yarrow with an intelligent gaze. In appearance, Dedrre had not changed an iota since Yarrow first saw him. His mustache was still full and white, his dark skin deeply grooved, and his eyebrows a wild tangle above sharp, dark eyes.

  “Why the long face, lad?”

  “You can’t be serious, Dedrre? You must have heard the news.”

  “Aye,” Dedrre nodded. “I hear just fine.”

  “Only fifteen…” Yarrow said, shaking his head.

  Dedrre sipped his tea.

  “And that girl in Greystone,” Yarrow pressed on.

  “Yes,” Dedrre agreed. “It’s awful news. All of it. So why aren’t you in the library with your nose in a book, as usual?”

  Yarrow quirked a brow. “First, you’re put out I haven’t visited. And now I should be back in the library?”

  Dedrre let out his rough bark of a laugh. “Let an old man contradict himself if he likes, lad—it’s one of the privileges of age.”

  “I’ve been reading for years and I’ve never found any reference to this,” Yarrow said. “Besides, why am I the only one looking for answers? Why should it all be upon my shoulders?”

  Dedrre snorted. “You sound as petulant as a fresh-marked boy. Why should it be you? Because most people read those transcripts and can’t make a thing out of them. You’ve discovered more in those texts in the past decade than the combined efforts of scholars for the past two hundred years. You read something that no one could make heads or tails of, know that it has to do with chemistry, send it on to Vendra, and now the world has new sedatives. You understand those Fifths. You’ve got a gift for it.”

  “That isn’t my gift.”

  “What, you think you’ve only got the one?” Dedrre asked, his eyes blazing. “We have more to offer than just what we gain from the Aeght a Seve. You’ve got plenty of gifts, lad. Who else is going to find that answer? Who else alive has years of experience reading and interpreting those texts?”

  Yarrow listened to the ball of emotion that was Dedrre in the back of his mind—heard the patter of earnestness, the thrum of pride, the hum of affection. It nearly brought tears to his eyes.

  Yarrow sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Aye, I know I’m right, lad.”

  “I just fear I may read until my eyes bleed and find nothing. I’ve not read a thing about this dwindling of our kind… not in tens of thousands of pages.”

  Dedrre sighed, causing the hairs in his mustache to flutter. “Is it possible that isn’t what’s happening here? That you’re looking for the wrong thing?”

  Yarrow’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Dedrre said, “all we know for certain is that we can’t find fifty. We don’
t know for a fact that they don’t exist.”

  Yarrow shook his head. He’d had this conversation so many times. “How could these kids go missing before they are even located? Disappear without a whisper or a clue? It can’t be possible.”

  “Perhaps not,” Dedrre said, “but it is a poor researcher who searches for a pre-formed hypothesis instead of looking only at the facts.”

  “What facts do I have to…” Yarrow trailed off mid-sentence as a fragment of something he’d read earlier that day prodded him in the brain. His heart leapt in realization.

  “Great Spirits!” Yarrow said, pulling the transcripts from his bag and flipping through the pages so quickly he risked damaging them. He found the sought-for passage and his eyes zoomed from line to line, searching.

  “Here,” he said. “‘Fire conceals truth in times of marked famine.’”

  Yarrow looked up triumphantly and was surprised to see Dedrre’s face look so utterly nonplussed.

  “Don’t you see?” Yarrow jumped to his feet. “The fire—the girl in Greystone. And ‘times of marked famine,’ that must mean what’s been happening—‘famine,’ as in shortage—we have a shortage of marked children.”

  Dedrre laughed. “If you say so lad, I never can make anything out of that stuff.”

  “I’ll have to cross-reference…look for other mentions of ‘marked famine’ in the texts…” Yarrow said, thrusting the book back into his bag.

  “No, lad. That’s not what you need to do.”

  Yarrow stopped. “What do you mean? This could be a breakthrough!”

  “If you’re right,” Dedrre said. “And I’m sure that you are, what you need to do is go to Greystone. You need to see what truth that fire was meant to conceal.”

  Yarrow collapsed back into the chair and took a sip of his tea with shaking hands. “Field work?”

  Dedrre nodded solemnly. “You heard that a party of Chiona are going to investigate the incident. You should accompany them.”

  Yarrow choked and sputtered. “Accompany a party of Chiona? Surely not…”

  “It is tradition that matters of concern to the Chisanta as a whole be handled by a mixed party.”

  Yarrow clutched at his bag. “It might be traditional, but it hasn’t happened in decades. Certainly not since tensions have reached such a peak. They’re liable to slit my throat in my sleep.”

  The Adourran snorted. “Don’t be hyperbolic, lad.”

  Yarrow offered him a level look.

  Dedrre rubbed his chin and nodded. “Maybe ask your friend Ko-Jin to go with you, just to be safe. Who would be foolish enough to pester him?”

  Chapter Twelve

  The carriage pulled up to the Chisanta Temple as the sinking sun set fire to the horizon. Bray peered out the window. She had visited many times, but upon arriving she could never help but recall the first time, so many years ago. The Temple was unchanged; its many domed buildings, beautiful gardens, and breathtaking view of the sea were stunning as ever.

  Bray and Peer helped Adearre out of the carriage and the three of them made their way through the entrance, across the marbled foyer, through the gardens, and into the Chiona sector.

  Dolla Adder waited for them, a solitary figure perched at a massive round meeting table.

  “You’ve made good time, sister,” she said, her voice familiar and comforting to Bray’s ear.

  Bray crossed the room and kissed the woman on the cheek.

  “Not shot again, are you, Adearre?” Dolla asked, eyeing his bandaged shoulder.

  “I am afraid so,” Adearre said, as he lowered himself gingerly into a chair. “My own fault. Must mind where I stand.”

  Dolla nodded and took up her seat. She had a sharp, intelligent face. The bristle of hair atop her head was snowy white, and her fair skin heavily lined.

  “You wired us that a marked girl was murdered?” Peer prompted as he took a seat across from Bray.

  “She is dead for certain,” Dolla said. “The murder remains to be proven.”

  “How was she killed?” Bray asked.

  “Her house caught fire. The whole family perished.”

  “That does not sound like murder,” Adearre said, wincing as he adjusted his position.

  “It may not be,” Dolla said. “But the girl was marked. With our numbers shrinking, I am inclined to think the worst.”

  “So the fire happened before the carriage could pick her up?” Bray asked.

  “The fire happened on the eve of Da Un Marcu,” Dolla said. “We only know that the girl was marked because her uncle had stayed late that night and seen the symbol on her neck. The fire occurred shortly after he left.”

  “Where?” Bray asked.

  “Greystone.”

  “We’ll leave at first light.”

  “No, you will not, I’m afraid.” Dolla extracted a small roll of paper and passed it across the table. Bray unrolled it and read:

  Cosanta reps departing to join GrySt team. ETA 4 days.

  Bray read the words twice. “This must be a joke!”

  She passed the telegram to Peer. He made a sound half way between a gasp and a cough.

  “It is not,” Dolla said, frowning. “This is a Chisanta matter, as the girl was marked, and the Cosanta are within their rights to demand a representative in the investigation.”

  “And has any Cosanta studied criminology?” Bray asked. She had spent the last ten years learning all that she could—examining crime scenes, following Dolla from one end of the kingdoms to the other, and reading every book available on the topic.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Dolla said grimly.

  “Fantastic.” Bray ran a hand over her face. “Now I’ll have some dancing ninny tagging along, mucking up my investigation. Why can’t they just keep their noses out of it?”

  Heat crept up her neck. The Cosanta were unbearable. They believed themselves so superior, she could read that clearly enough in their cold, passionless faces.

  “Truth be told,” Dolla said. “I find their desire to be involved highly suspicious. I fear they may have an ulterior motive.”

  Bray thought this over and nodded. The Cosanta had, quite wisely, kept an increased amount of distance between themselves and the Chiona of late. It was no mystery why. First, there was the murder of Ambrone Chassel. Each year since that time, fewer marked children were found. And when those who were found went through testing, far more of them were Cosanta than Chiona. The Chiona’s numbers were shrinking far faster. It was all seriously suspect, especially given the Divisionary Prophecy.

  “I would advise,” Dolla said, her tone dark, “that you keep a sharp eye on them. Do not give the Cosanta an opportunity to obstruct your investigation.”

  “I will watch them closely,” Adearre said.

  “Don’t worry, Dolla.” Bray cracked her knuckles. “I won’t let them near the crime scene.”

  Yarrow stumbled out of the carriage gracelessly, his legs still not accustomed to solid land after several days aboard a ship.

  He, like all Chisanta, had been free to travel as he liked since reaching the age of eighteen. Both Ko-Jin and Arlow had taken full advantage of this fact—Arlow had visited Accord several times and Ko-Jin had traveled to several weapons masters across the kingdoms. But Yarrow had not. His interests were not to be found outside a Chisanta library, so he had little cause to leave. As a result, he had not set foot on his native soil since departing ten years ago. The sight of the Chisanta Temple was like slipping back in time. He could remember so exactly what it had been like then, to taste the sea air for the first time. Bray Marron had held his hand as he crossed this drive…

  “Are you alright, Yarrow?” Ko-Jin asked.

  “It’s just strange to be home,” Yarrow said.

  Ko-Jin laughed and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “You really must get out more.”

  They crossed the multi-colored drive and passed through the entrance. A woman sat at the front desk. For a moment, Yarrow thought her the same wo
man who had led him to his testing as a boy—but, no, that woman would be older now.

  She bowed her head to them. “How may I help you?”

  “We are here to meet the Chiona party investigating the crime in Greystone,” Yarrow said.

  “I believe everyone is in the arena for testing,” the woman said.

  Of course. It was a week after Da Un Marcu and midday—there would be testing. Yarrow would rather not witness that again, but he nodded and headed towards the arena. It would, at least, be a neutral place to meet these Chiona. He sincerely hoped he would not have to enter the Chiona sector.

  Ko-Jin and Yarrow followed the not-forgotten cobbled path through the gardens to the amphitheater. It was all so eerily exactly as it had been—the beautiful flowers, the tittering birds, and, above all, the gut-wrenching spectacle of the testing itself. It was a Chiona, still, conducting the test, but not the same woman as before. This one was Chaskuan and quite young. The plebes still wore black uniforms. The only noticeable difference was the number of them. Surely, by this time ten years ago, there had been thirty or more. Now there were only eight. Those coming from the far east of Daland and Adourra would still be on their way, of course, but still, the scantness was chilling.

  Not wanting to disturb the proceedings, Yarrow and Ko-Jin took seats at the far back, behind the plebes.

  “Next?” The Chiona woman taunted. “I believe it is your turn, young lady.”

  A diminutive Dalish girl with light hair and pale skin stepped forward, trembling. Yarrow felt sick to watch her. Surely they had not been as small as this lot? They were positively children—they should be playing games, going to school, and receiving good-night kisses from their mothers, not entering a fighting arena.

  The girl, big-eyed and with trembling lips, turned to face the Chiona woman. The Chaskuan struck a flashing blow. The dull, sickening sound of fist meeting face reached Yarrow even at his elevated seat. The girl crumpled, bloody-mouthed, on the dirt.