“Let me out.”
“That’s what I love about studying ancient things. We can learn so much about cause by examining effect. For example, this room.” He gestured down at the small chamber in which Bray was held captive. “It is the exact size to keep a person confined with the sphere. You see, in the antechamber you’re safe, as long as the sphere is kept in the center, and up here on the second floor you’re clear as well. But the inner chamber is perfectly designed to keep a person within proximity. An exact fit. Long ago, this room must have been used exactly as I am using it now, to keep a Chisanta stripped of their gifts. Why they did such a thing? I do not know—perhaps as a kind of punishment or ritual. Still, it’s nice, don’t you think? There is a sort of beauty in a thing fulfilling its purpose once again.”
“Quade, please,” Bray said, her voice shrill. She wanted to appear strong, but the panic that coursed through her body was so all-consuming, she could not even begin to feign strength.
“Of course, the same principle can be applied to many different objects—that effect reveals cause. Take yourself,” Quade went on, his dark eyes gleaming in the blue light. “Your first gift is rather a remarkable one. To become immaterial. It means you cannot be harmed and cannot be trapped. That, taken with the anxiety you are currently experiencing, are very illuminating pieces of information. What does it tell me?”
Bray didn’t answer.
“Well, it tells me several things. A person who has been hurt usually develops an ability to heal or a more offensive ability, like strength. But not you; you did not want to be touched, which, forgive me my dear, implies a history of sexual abuse.”
“Stop,” Bray said, desperately. His words were like honey, they sounded sweet but they filled her with a kind of unbearable anguish. She would not engage him in this conversation—she would not!
“But it doesn’t just extend to human touch—you can move through walls. Which suggests that, whoever this abuser was, they used to keep you locked up. Your current anxiety reinforces this theory. You have childhood trauma written on your features as clear as day. The only question is who. A father?”
“My father would never—” Bray burst out, despite her resolution to not speak.
“No, not father. An uncle then, perhaps? Yes. That’s it. An uncle.” Quade smiled kindly. “Yes, the uncle you couldn’t stand up to when you were a weak little girl. So you spend your days punishing other such people—bad men, especially bad men who hurt little girls. And you hate every single one of them, because, to you, they are all your uncle. And you’re punishing these men for that early sin, the one they didn’t commit. You punish them for locking you up and touching you in bad ways.”
Bray wanted to jam her fingers into her ears, wanted to block him out. Her fists clenched and she began to pace again, her entire body on fire with rage. She could not bear to listen, but neither could she stop.
“And you feel no remorse when you kill them. They deserve it, don’t they Bray? Those bad men? They deserve whatever you give them and more.”
“They do,” Bray agreed, her tone dark.
“You see, my dear Bray Marron, how much a person can surmise by examining effect? I figured all of this about you years ago. I was able to use it. You might have been a thorn in my side, but with this knowledge, I was able to divert you easily. Use you, even.”
“What do you mean?”
“You see, the fires looked like accidents. That was easy enough. The problem was, if a fourteen-year-old child was always missing, the Chisanta might have found me out before I had a large enough force.”
“So you replaced the bodies with other children…”
“Yes. Usually thirteen and fifteen-year-olds, to avoid suspicion. Those disappearances could not go unnoticed, or look like accidents.”
Quade’s words triggered in Bray’s mind a devastating understanding. All of those missing children she had investigated for the past ten years—they were, every one of them, victims of Quade’s insane agenda.
“Naturally I needed to keep you busy. I gave you many bad men, or seemingly bad men, to chase. And I avoided suspicion. It was all very neatly done, if I may sing my own praise.”
Bray nearly retched. How many innocent men were behind bars, how many were dead, because of her?
“But there were clues…they acted guilty. Some confessed!”
“Yes,” Quade agreed. “I have a knack for persuasion, you see. Especially if the target is weak-minded. Those men believed themselves guilty. You really can’t blame yourself, dear.”
“You’re a monster,” Bray said, looking up at him, horrified.
“No.” Quade took a slender black case from his pocket. “I am a visionary. The two are often confused.”
“And Ambrone Chassel?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Ah, yes. My old friend. I imagine you are curious about that. It was you, was it not, who found his body?”
Bray unclenched her fists with an effort. Her fingers felt stiff. “Yes.”
“We had a disagreement—”
Bray laughed, a high hysterical sound even in her own ears. “He didn’t fancy starting a child army or murdering whole families?”
“Quite,” Quade agreed with a smile. He turned the black object over in his hands. “I had just had a tremendous stroke of luck. I arrived in Gallan on Da Un Marcu, just after midnight, and I looked up at a window. And there she was—my pale little angel, with the Chisanta mark upon her neck.”
“So you kidnapped her and murdered her family?”
A memory flashed in Bray’s mind, clear and unbidden: a young woman sobbing, her mother comforting her. Her love had died—had been taken from her, by this man.
“Very good. Yes, that is what I did. But, not two days later, my old friend Ambrone caught up with me. Hit me in the head while I slept, the unsporting rascal. Took the sphere and my sweet girl, and went to the Temple to inform others. Fortunately, I caught up with him as soon as he arrived, before he had time to raise the alarm. I confess, I didn’t expect his body to be found. That was a mite vexing.”
Bray scowled at him, but the warmth in his eyes began to leach away her anger.
“Here, dear, catch,” he said, and tossed down the case.
Bray caught the object instinctively. It was black leather, and when she popped it open she found a needle and small vial of a clear liquid.
“A sedative,” Quade said pleasantly, “go ahead and take it.”
Bray laughed, wild eyed. “You’re insane. Why would I willingly drug myself?”
“Because I need to move you to the prison, and it will be rather easier if you’re unconscious. If you don’t do it willingly I’ll have to come down there and well, it would just be a lot neater this way.”
Bray could hear the charm in his voice. It was seductive. Part of her wanted to please him, to do as he said. But she would not be so easily manipulated. She dropped the case to her feet.
“I’m afraid I’m not inclined to make it neat.”
Quade sighed, as if disappointed. “Very well.”
And he jumped from his ledge, his coat billowed up behind him, and landed on his feet.
Bray recoiled. This Quade that joined her was an entirely different creature than the one who had sat above. His face, though in features identical, no longer appeared handsome. His demeanor was no longer pleasant.
“You see how the sphere affects me?” he said with a cruel smirk. There was nothing charming or seductive in his voice now; it was chillingly cold. Illuminated only by the blue glow of the sphere, he was a corpse.
He came forward, his face set in hard, vicious lines. Bray grounded herself, as Yarrow had taught her, and drew her blade. He produced his own; it slipped from its sheath like a sigh.
“You know, without your gift, you cannot win this fight,” Quade said. Bray suspected this to be true—her fighting style was entirely built upon her ability to phase. But that did not mean she would go quietly.
&nbs
p; Bray lunged, the narrow gleam of her blade flashed. Quade parried with ease. He tested her to the left, and she met him with the clink of blade kissing blade.
They danced in this way for several minutes—tentative attacks and speedy evasions. Grunts, clanks, and the shuffling of feet. Bray’s breath came evenly, her pulse ticked rhythmically. The fight had returned her to herself. She was not a scared little girl, nor a cornered rat. She was Chisanta.
Her recent training with Ko-Jin had improved her speed. If she came out of this, she would thank him. But her strength was still only a fraction of Quade’s. Her sword arm quickly began to ache from the force of countering his blows. Sweat ran into her eyes, burning them and blurring her vision. She blinked furiously.
He struck with such force that her sword was wrenched from her grasp and fell to the ground with a clatter. Quade kicked it, and it skidded across the chamber, landing far from reach.
Bray raised her hands before her, fists clenched, making it plain that losing her weapon would not cow her. Quade’s thin lips twisted into a sneer. He sheathed his sword, and changed his stance for hand-to-hand combat.
Quade kicked and Bray only narrowly moved out of the way in time. Much to her own surprise, she found herself forming a pose from the Ada Chae—Crouching Butterfly. It took Quade off guard as well. She caught him in the chest and he stumbled.
“What is this?” His shrewd eyes scanned her up and down. “A Chiona fighting like a Cosanta? Fascinating.”
She kicked, but he was ready. He grabbed her leg and thrust her to the ground. She landed on her back with a grunt and in the space of a breath he was on top of her, pinning her down to the cold floor with the weight of his body. She wrapped her legs around one of his and thrust all of her weight to one side, flipping him onto his back. She punched him in the nose and heard a satisfying crack, but he shoved her backwards, pressed her shoulder blades into the floor once again. This time he placed his knees squarely on her chest and forced his full weight down on her. The breath escaped from her lungs in a long gust.
He leaned in close, horribly close. She could see every detail of his face. The sharp blade of his nose, the deep brown of his eyes, the dark stubble that surrounded his thin, twisted mouth. She could smell the blood that ran from his face where she had hit him. Being imprisoned beneath his weight filled her with desperation. She could not recall what move would dislodge him—all she could think was a kind of panicked chant: Stop, stop, stop, stop…
Tears welled in her eyes and the room began to lose focus. She needed air. Belatedly, she recalled the dagger strapped to her leg. It might as well be on the other side of the room, for all the likelihood of her reaching it.
It would be over soon, she knew. Her feet twitched pointlessly and her arms struggled weakly against the restraint of his strong hands.
He leaned in close and kissed her forehead, as if he were a loving father and she his daughter. “Sleep well, Bray Marron.”
And the room dissolved into nothingness.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Adearre leaned back to glimpse the small window at the far upper corner of their cell. “Sunrise.”
No one responded. Yarrow imagined they were all thinking the same thing: sixteen. They had just passed their sixteenth day in captivity. And miserable days they had been.
Yarrow twitched and darted rapid glances around the room. Sweat beaded on his brow and his muscles screamed at him to rise—to run, jump, do something.
He shifted and his fetters jangled. His tailbone ached from being pressed against the cold stone floor. The manacles brushed against the chafed, raw flesh around his wrists and ankles, but he felt the pain only dimly. What he felt acutely were the ants. They crawled over his flesh—between his toes, up his nostrils, behind his eyes. He jerked, shook his head, attempting to dislodge a phantom. It’s too cold for ants, he reminded himself yet again. Ants can lift twenty times their weight. Or was it thirty times? What had he been thinking of?
His jaw itched, so he rubbed his stubbled chin against his rough-spun shirt—the disguise that he still wore. He nearly gagged upon inhaling his own scent.
They were a grubby group by and large. The men had developed beards of varying quality. His own must be rather sad and sparse. He never could grow a proper one. Arlow used to mock him for that. Arlow, the traitor.
The Chiona had much more hair atop their heads and, save for Bray, they all still wore their civilian clothes. Yarrow wished he had changed. He would feel so much more himself in his robes. Being chained in an ant-infested basement was demoralizing enough without having his identity as a Cosanta stripped away as well.
Yarrow’s bloodshot eyes scanned his companions. The soft blue light that bathed the room gave them the aspect of cadavers, hollow-eyed and cold. Of course, they were cold—Yarrow as well. Then why am I sweating? It was chill enough that he could see his breath before him. That, at least, differentiated him from a corpse. The dead don’t breathe.
There was a famous verse that said as much, wasn’t there? ‘Alas, my dogged breast breathes on.’ Or was it ‘my dogged breast beats on?’ Something like that.
Why they were not dead, he could not fathom. For what reason was Quade keeping them alive? He clearly had no qualms with killing. He must have a motive. Still, to question his continued existence seemed somehow ungrateful. Or perhaps he feared he would jinx it. His mind steered clear.
Aside from Adearre, it was hard to tell if any of the others were awake. The Chiona all existed in a constant stupor. Without a clear notion of time or proper light, it would probably have been difficult to feel truly awake, even if they weren’t all perpetually drugged.
Yarrow envied them. He and Ko-Jin were drugged as well, with a kind of accelerant. It made his mind run in circles, his muscles itch to move, his heart pound in his chest. Their captors clearly didn’t want them to enter the Aeght a Seve—they made the Chiona too sleepy to attain the level of vigor required, and the Cosanta too on edge to achieve a peaceful state of mind. They were, all of them, barred from even that reprieve.
Yarrow studied Bray, as he so often did. He suspected she must be awake, though she did not look up at him. She sat calmly, her knees tucked up to her chin. Whenever she fell asleep, she twitched and called out—nightmares.
She appeared desolate, but Yarrow could not know her feelings.
It was the sphere—the thing at the center of the room, bathing them in its cold swirling light, but kept well out of their reach. It had stripped them all of their gifts. Yarrow felt strangely impotent without his additional sense, and lonely. Though he had not seen his family since he was a boy, he had never been truly severed from them until now.
He knew he was not the worst off, however. Bray seemed to bounce back and forth between dejection and rage. Her inability to escape gnawed at her. But even she was not the most pitiable of the lot.
Yarrow found it hard to look at Ko-Jin. He was so used to his friend being the very definition of strength and physical perfection. But since they had woken in this cell, with the horrid sphere for company, Ko-Jin had reverted to his former condition. He’d turned small and brittle, his back hunched and his foot twisted and deformed. He had wept silent tears that first morning, and since then had remained uncharacteristically quiet, his eyes blank, dead—though he, like Yarrow, could not sleep.
Yarrow knew he could not bear much more. A man had his limits. He would surely go mad without rest. His eyes itched and his muscles ached and shuddered. To be bone-wrenchingly exhausted and unable to sleep was a horrible torture. It had been many days since he had started to long for sleep far more than he longed for escape.
Escape. Surely, if he could just sleep, he could think of a way to break free. ‘Dissever yon bindings, my sweet, and render unto mine spirit thy fair liberty.’ What was that from? The Marking of Mellack? No, no it predated that. Adreon Sefelton perhaps?
Yarrow felt the muscle below his eye spasm and blinked.
The thick door to thei
r cell pushed open, the wood brushing against the stone floor, and a tall youth entered with a tray. His nose wrinkled as he stepped in. Yarrow didn’t wonder. They must smell dreadful, between lack of bathing and having only rarely-emptied chamber pots for the necessary. The odor of captivity was far from ambrosial.
The boy did not speak to them. None of the youths ever spoke. Clearly, it had been forbidden. Yarrow had tried to get them to talk at first, but had long since given up that fruitless endeavor.
The boy handed each of them a dark stone bowl of congealed, gray porridge, then departed in a hurry. Between the effect of the sphere and the smell, Yarrow imagined dealing with the prisoners must be a loathed chore.
They were never given eating utensils, and the porridge was too thick to drink from the bowl. Yarrow sighed and plunged his filthy, trembling fingers into the food, scooped it into his mouth. It was disgusting, pasty in texture and cold, but wonderfully welcome none the less. They only received two meals a day, neither terribly filling. Yarrow’s hunger would be distracting if his tiredness did not eclipse all other concerns so fully.
If any of his companions had been asleep, they roused themselves to eat.
When Yarrow had finished his own breakfast and licked his fingers clean, he set his empty bowl down and looked up.
“Peer,” Yarrow said, his voice rough with disuse. “What’s on the bottom of your bowl?”
Peer flipped the vessel over. “It’s chalk. A message.”
“What does it say?” Adearre asked.
Peer stared at it for a while, his lips moved as if he were trying to sound the words out, his forehead creased in concentration. Finally, he let out a sigh of frustration and handed his bowl to Adearre on his left. “Can’t read it.”
Adearre took the offered dish and read: “‘You have a friend here. Be patient.’”
The Complete Marked Series Box Set Page 31
