The Complete Marked Series Box Set

by March McCarron

  Peer bit into a roll and spoke through a mouthful, “How do you know it wasn’t a dog?”

  “Because Bray rubbed her nose seven times while he was in the room,” Adearre said, “and she is not allergic to dogs.”

  “Fascinating,” Bray said, her tone droll. “Any chance the cat is the arsonist?”

  Yarrow ceased listening to the banter. He was thinking that, once his Chiona companions had retired, he would see the crime scene for himself. If there was no wine cellar then he was wrong, plain and simple. Perhaps he could just go home. He found himself hoping there was nothing at all to find.

  Bray, still fully dressed save for her boots, sat in the windowsill of her room. She could hear, faintly, Peer and Adearre speaking through the wall, but the noise did not intrude upon her thoughts. She was troubled. The fact that this was arson appeared, at this point, undeniable. And that it should be a coincidence a marked girl perished in the fire seemed unlikely. If the arsonist knew about this girl, it stood to reason that he or she could know about others. Could Yarrow Lamhart’s insane theory actually be…correct?

  The front door opened and closed beneath her and she saw the shadow of a man stride down the drive and turn onto the street, his form briefly illuminated by the nearest street lamp. A man with a long braid. Bray sat up straight. He had turned in the direction of the crime scene.

  Bray leapt from the sill and pulled on her boots hastily. She thought of bringing the others with her but rejected the idea. She could handle this herself—and she would prefer there be no audience.

  She jumped down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and hurried out through the main door. She turned to follow the Cosanta—it could be either of them, but she knew it was Yarrow. She hoped it was Yarrow.

  The night air was chill, the moon a blurry spotlight in the charcoal sky. She trotted quickly and silently up the dark alley until she spotted his form ahead of her. Then she kept back, hugged the shadows, following.

  He stopped by a lamplight, held up a slip of parchment to read. The light hit the planes of his face; his straight nose, angular jaw. She wished he’d grown out of his good looks.

  She watched as he compared the parchment to the street sign and turned down the alley towards the Parron home, or what was left of it. He approached the remains and lit a hand lantern, creating a small pool of light. Bray crouched low, waiting to see what he would do. He did not climb into the ruins of the building at first, but circled around the perimeter, examining where the foundations met the ground. He took his time, pausing occasionally to set down his light and feel the structure. When he had at last made a complete circuit, his shoulders slumped visibly. She wondered what it was he had hoped to find.

  Whatever he sought, he was not prepared to give up. He climbed into the wreckage and began sifting through the debris, prodding at the floor boards of the first floor, which had remained mostly intact. A sharp breeze raised goosebumps on Bray’s arms and made her wish for a hood to cover her bare head. It shifted the ash, blowing it in her face. She felt it tickle her nostrils and, before she could even think to fight it, she sneezed.

  Yarrow stood up sharply, his eyes scanning the darkness where she crouched. He held up his light, but was too far away to diminish the shadows that surrounded her. “Who’s there?”

  Bray stepped forward, wishing for a more impressive entrance than a sneeze. Blight her nose!

  “Bray? What are you—”

  “What am I doing?” she cut in. “What are you doing? I expressly forbade you from coming here.”

  She climbed up into the wreckage to confront him on equal ground.

  He did not look remotely fazed by her proclamation. “I am doing what I came here to do.”

  Suspicion rushed through her. “And what exactly is that? What are the Cosanta trying to hide?”

  He laughed without humor. “Spirits, Bray Marron! What great conspiracy do you imagine us behind? You think the Cosanta have been killing children? Our own brothers and sisters? Or is it not just the Cosanta, but me personally, you suspect?”

  When said aloud it did sound fairly ludicrous, but she would not concede as much to him. Her ire rose. “If the Cosanta are truly uninvolved, then why insist on representation? And why did they choose you? If your people thought I would be lax merely because we were once close…” She trailed off at the dumbfounded look on his face.

  “That is what you think?” He laughed, and this time there was humor in the sound.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Yarrow Lamhart,” she said, clenching her hands into fists.

  “Please, just listen,” he said, his soft gray eyes imploring. He extended his hand to her, as if to rest it on her shoulder. She swung her forearm to swat the hand away, not wanting to be touched. He saw her movement, and twisted out of its path, causing her to stumble.

  Her skin positively prickled with anger. She punched, hoping to hit him square in the nose. That’ll show him. But he danced back, bumping into a hunk of wood and tripping backwards.

  “Bray, please…”

  She did not listen. She leapt, aiming to land atop him and drive her knee into his gut. He rolled, and she crashed atop the rubble. A long splinter thrust through her pants and into her thigh. It stung, but she hardly noticed.

  Yarrow, back on his feet, assumed a stance and expression so completely Cosanta in nature: poised, serene. If she had found anger in his mien, hers may well have abated, but that blighted impassivity infuriated her.

  She lunged at him, and he side-stepped. They were, by that time, positively covered in soot. She could taste the ash on her lips, it burned her eyes. She stood, panting, her eyes blazing.

  “Do you never hit back?” she growled at him. She understood why Peer had lost control several days before. To fight a man who refused to strike back was maddening.

  His foot caught in the wreckage and sunk down through the floorboards. She hit him with several quick, sharp punches in the stomach, then leaned back and struck him hard and true in the mouth. His lip split, blood pouring down his chin.

  He ripped his foot free from its trap. “What do you want from me?” he asked, dodging several more blows, and spinning like a dancer out of her range.

  “I want,” she said, as she punched him hard in his injured side—he grunted in pain—“your respect.”

  She was surprised to hear herself say this—it flew from her lips without passing through her mind. But it was true; she did want his respect.

  “I do respect you,” he wheezed, trying to dodge but again, getting tangled in debris and falling. He hissed in pain and when he stood a large splinter protruded from his upper arm.

  “No,” Bray said. “If you did, you would hit back.”

  His brows raised in confusion. The expression irked her further. What had the Cosanta done to her Yarrow? To the boy who had broken a highwayman’s nose with one swift punch? It was like an impostor, an enemy impostor at that, had taken up residence in the body of a person she had once cared for dearly.

  “You want me,” he grunted as she elbowed him in the stomach, “to hit you?”

  “Yes.”

  His mouth tightened. She punched, and this time, rather than evading, he caught hold of her shoulder and pushed her, with the help of her own momentum, down so that her face struck his knee. The pain was deliciously sharp, the metallic taste of blood met her tongue.

  She looked up at him as she sprung to her feet, and finally saw anger in his eyes—real anger. The expression looked odd upon his face. She liked it. It was honest, unlike the false coolness usually stamped across his features.

  “There is something seriously,” he swiped at her feet but she jumped out of the way, “wrong with you, woman.”

  “Don’t,” her knee narrowly missed connecting with his groin, “call me woman.”

  He smiled at her—his blood-stained teeth stark against his soot darkened face. “Why?” She punched him in the jaw and he reeled, but stayed upright. “Did the Chiona steal your
gender as well as your likability?”

  That stung, in part because she feared it was true. “I am perfectly likable.” She aimed to elbow him, but he caught her by the armpit and thrust her to the ground, the rubble rasping her clothes and skin.

  “No. You were likable. Very much so. Now you are unrecognizable, so angry and cold.”

  She growled, a deep animal sound ripping from her throat. “I’m cold?”

  Her anger boiled over. Spirits, how she hated this man!

  She ran at him with all of her speed and force, and thrust him back, her flying along with him, until he thudded hard against the south-facing wall.

  He slumped, winded. She looked up in time to see the fragment of wall, already unstable, begin to sway ominously—forwards, backwards, and then forwards again—casting its shadow on them as it collapsed, aiming to bury them in charred brick.

  Bray acted on instinct. She threw herself on top of Yarrow, pressed a hand to his cheek, and phased them both into nothingness. The wall fell, passing right through them. In that moment she looked into Yarrow’s eyes, saw them widen in awe. A surge of pleasure rushed through her at his reaction.

  The wall fragment hit the floor so hard that it splintered straight through the wood, tearing a ragged hole that went deep down into the earth.

  They remained still for several long moments, breathing heavily.

  “How?” Yarrow finally asked.

  Bray became conscious that she was still on top of him, hands to his face—she could feel the heat of his body against her, the rhythm of his heart beating in tandem with her own. She jumped back and tried to appear nonchalant. “It’s my gift.”

  She left him where he sprawled, still stunned, and went to inspect the hole in the foundation. It was too dark to see anything, so she stepped to where Yarrow had left his hand light and retrieved it, multiple cuts and bruises protesting as she moved.

  By the time she had returned with the light, Yarrow peered into the opening as well. Bray, with great caution, approached the damage, not confident in the sturdiness of the floor that remained.

  She lowered the light down until its glow glinted from shelf after shelf of dusty bottles. A wine cellar.

  “How did you know?” she asked him.

  He peered down at the cellar with an unreadable expression. “I’m the ‘he’…” he whispered to himself.

  “What?”

  He extracted a slender notebook from his pocket, flipped through the pages, and handed it to her. She leaned into the light and read the Fifth’s dictation, scrawled in Yarrow’s spidery hand.

  “Unknown vinous offerings beneath the ground…”

  “Vinous is from the Adourran for wine,” he explained. He stood and shifted slowly towards the edge of the opening. “I’m going down.” And without waiting for a response he jumped and landed gracefully below.

  Bray wasn’t about to let him explore without her. She followed. The rubble from the fallen wall had knocked over a shelf. The air smelt tart and spirituous. Dark red liquid seeped between brick and shards of glass like blood.

  “Very old vintage,” Yarrow said, more to himself than to her. “Most of these are probably just vinegar by now.”

  “How can someone have a wine cellar and not know it?” Bray mused as she walked along the aisles of dusty bottles, “Unless the house was built on top unknowingly…”

  “That would be my guess,” Yarrow said. She shot him an annoyed look, not needing him to approve her theories, but he was too absorbed to notice.

  “So what is the significance of the wine?” she asked.

  “Nothing really—it’s just a sign. It marks this fire as being related to our losses—our famine.”

  As if to prove that the wine was indeed insignificant, he selected a bottle and, with a swift decisive motion, broke off the neck. He then sat, groaning as he did so, and took a swig. He extended the bottle to her. She laughed—a loud, delighted sound. It sent pain up and down her battered body, but she could not stop. Tears formed in her eyes.

  Yarrow’s brows drew up. “What’s so funny?”

  “Life,” she said, taking a seat beside him on the cold stone and accepting the bottle. The wine—a port—danced on her tongue, wonderfully complex in flavor. “Never in an eon could I have imagined myself sharing a bottle of wine with Yarrow Lamhart under the stars…again.”

  He snorted. “And after sneaking out of an inn, no less.”

  “You were the one who snuck.” She took the bottle back and sipped, careful not to cut herself on the jagged glass.

  “On the contrary,” he said. “I strode. You snuck.”

  She laughed through her nose. For some reason, her anger and distrust were, for the moment, gone. Likely she’d grown too exhausted to keep them up.

  “I’ve been thinking about when we were in Gallan,” he said, his tone turning serious.

  “What about it?”

  “There had been a fire, remember? The whole family died. And we were there just days after Da Un Marcu.”

  Bray tried to recall. Her memory of that night was fuzzy. “I don’t see how that could be related,” she said slowly. “I mean, that was ten years ago.”

  “Yes.” He rolled the bottle between his hands. “And it was ten years ago that our numbers began to shrink.”

  It seemed pretty thin to her, but she supposed it was possible. “We can look into it.”

  “Am I a part of that ‘we?’” he asked.

  She had in fact been thinking of herself, Adearre, and Peer, but when she turned to look at his battered face, and saw the softness in his eyes, she could not bring herself to say so. “You must understand,” she said. “It would be stupid of me, in my position, to blindly trust you.”

  He nodded. “But would it be overly stupid to trust me with your eyes open? I swear to you, my intentions are the same as yours. I wasn’t sent. I volunteered to go. I had no idea that you would be the Chiona I was to meet.”

  She looked into his face and saw earnestness and honesty there. She wanted to believe him. She sighed. “I don’t know…maybe.”

  “I can live with maybe.”

  Bray took another gulp, wincing as the alcohol stung a gash inside her cheek.

  “I really don’t see any reason why we, Cosanta and Chiona, can’t get along.”

  She nearly choked and wiped her mouth. “You can’t be serious? We are far too different. I’ll never understand your kind.”

  “Perhaps if we learned about each other, we might find more commonalities beyond the obvious.”

  “The obvious?”

  “We are both marked.”

  “Perhaps…” she said, doubtful, as she began plucking splinters from her legs. “I confess that, at this moment, I do feel inclined to trust you. But it may well be a momentary lapse. Likely as not, I’ll hate you again by morning.”

  He laughed as if she had made a joke, and she did not have the energy or heart to correct him. She could not let her guard down. To do so would make her weak. Which made Yarrow Lamhart a dangerous person to be around.

  “We’d better go get cleaned up,” she said.

  They climbed back out of the hole, acquiring palms full of splinters in the process, and walked back to the inn silently.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Central Greystone Post Office was an impressive brick edifice on a bustling corner. The morning had dawned bright and clear, and the finer folk of Greystone strolled about, enjoying the weather and gossip.

  Bray trod purposefully, ignoring the stares and whispers her appearance engendered. Yarrow and Peer kept pace with her; the others had stayed at the inn. Bray thought five Chisanta would be rather overkill for such an errand. In fact, three was also overkill, but Peer would not be persuaded to remain behind. It only seemed fair that Yarrow should be included. It had been his idea, after all. And despite her threat the night before, she found she did not hate him again with the sunrise.

  She darted a glance his way and felt a pang of guilt. H
e appeared in bad shape, his bottom lip fat and split, one eye ringed in purple. His chest must be worse—she remembered dealing the majority of her blows there. Her own cheek had turned blue and swollen and she’d collected a myriad of small scratches and bruises, but her injuries were obviously far more trivial than his. It had been an awkward thing to explain to her friends in the morning.

  The main atrium of the post office gleamed, a wide, shining marble floor with smoothly lined pillars. Well-manicured clerks manned a long polished counter. Boys in matching navy coats scurried to and fro, bearing letters and brown paper-wrapped packages, their boots slapping the tiled floor.

  A distinguished man with steel-colored hair and a false smile greeted them. “Masters and Mistress of the Chisanta. Welcome. This way, if you please.”

  They followed the man across the atrium into a smaller passageway. He ushered them into the telegraph room, which was poorly lit and full of the tapping and buzzing of machinery. The men who sat about this room were not nearly as shiny as those in the exterior, but Bray could not but marvel at their proficiency with the technology. Telegraphy had existed all her life, and she had relied on it often, but she did not truly understand how it worked. Something to do with electricity and a code…

  “Excellent timing,” a man in a tweed coat with a friendly smile said. “I’ve got the constable of Gallan on the other end.”

  “Does he have the paperwork we requested?” Bray asked.

  “He does, ma’am,” the telegrapher said. “What would you like me to ask him?”

  “I want the names and exact ages of all those who died in the fire,” Bray said.

  The man turned back to his shining contraption, and tapped a rapid message.

  After a delay of several minutes, the beeping began.

  The man translated: “Samion Ollas aged forty-one, Melna Ollas aged thirty-nine, Hosper Ollas aged nineteen, Ellsie Ollas aged fourteen, Malcy Ollas aged two.”

  The tapping ceased. Bray and Yarrow exchanged a significant glance. The words ‘aged fourteen,’ seemed to reverberate in the air.