The Complete Marked Series Box Set

by March McCarron

  The door to the main building flew open before they reached it. “Just what are you children doing out of bed?” a handsome woman in her middle years demanded, fists on hips. Her gaze pulled up, tracing Peer’s height, and she took a step back. “We have company,” she called over her shoulder, her tone a forced calm.

  “We mean no harm,” Bray said, extracting her hand from the child’s and stepping forward. “We only came to ask you a few questions about your family.”

  “My…family?” she repeated, a slight tremor in her voice.

  A man appeared behind the woman, his ginger beard and neatly parted hair beginning to gray. His eyes were slitted with distrust, mouth narrowed in a harsh line.

  “They climbed down the mountain stair,” one of the children piped up. “We thought they’d fall.” He mimicked a falling object with his hands and made a loud splat sound. “But they didn’t.”

  “Children, off to bed with you,” the man said.

  “But, teacher,” several of them complained, drawing the words out in whiny tones.

  He crossed his arms. “The last one of you in bed will clean all the brushes tomorrow.”

  The children scampered away, disappearing with the speed and suddenness of a scared flock of birds. When the sound of their feet dimmed, the gentleman gestured for Bray and her companions to follow him into the bungalow.

  Their home was simple, open, and bright; it smelt of paint and turpentine even with the gaping windows admitting a sea breeze. The gentleman extended a hand, indicating that they should sit on the sofa. Bray, flanked by Peer and Su-Hwan, lowered herself onto the seat. Her body was grateful for the rest, but the tension in the room prevented her from truly relaxing. Bray watched the woman as she poured each of them a glass of water. The man left the room for a short time, and when he returned he had a pistol strapped to his calf, only evident to Bray by the shape it made beneath his pant leg as he moved.

  “You are Mr. and Mrs. Thistleton?” Bray asked.

  They nodded.

  “But those are not your true names,” Bray said, not a question. “You were once called Ellora Asher and Redge Lolling.”

  For a long minute, the only sound was the rush and pull of the ocean beyond the window, an oddly calming backdrop to such a tense moment. The man moved his hand towards his concealed weapon.

  “You have no need to fear us. Please, the gun is not necessary.”

  The man’s hand froze and he darted a keen look at Bray from beneath unruly russet brows. Bray reached down to her pack and extracted a month-old copy of the Dalish Times. It was already folded to a page displaying her own likeness, along with Yarrow and Ko-Jin. She tossed this bit of evidence onto the table, so the couple could see her own face marked as wanted. “Quade Asher is no friend of mine and I will not tell him where you are.”

  Redge held up the paper and compared Bray’s face to the drawing. Aside from the longer hair, the likeness was too similar to deny. “How did you find us?”

  “We got lucky,” Bray said. “We went to see one of your former colleagues in Leeson who now owns an art gallery. He said he knew nothing of your whereabouts, but we noticed one of your wife’s paintings. The artist’s name was different but the style was unmistakable, so we tracked that artist back here.”

  Redge was looking at her with scrutiny, and at first she thought he doubted her story. But he was glancing between herself and the newspaper still, a crease in his brow. “Bray Marron?” he asked, his mouth turning down thoughtfully.

  “Yes, and this is Peer Gelson and Pak Su-Hwan.”

  Redge didn’t seem to hear these introductions. “And you’re from Leeson?”

  “Mountsend,” Bray said, understanding the confusion. They were only a few miles apart, the accents were the same.

  “You’re Bettany and Darl Marron’s girl then?” he said, regarding her with bright green eyes. “Must be. You have her look.”

  Bray’s mouth parted in silent surprise, all thoughts of Quade leaving her mind. “You knew my mother?” she asked, unintentionally whispering.

  “Aye,” Redge Lolling said. “She was my cousin. Bloody nice girl. It was a pity she went so soon.”

  Bray leaned back into the sofa, shock leaving her momentarily dumbfounded. What are the odds? “So that makes us…” she wondered aloud, “Second cousins?”

  The man shrugged burly shoulders. “Never could keep track of all that. Family’s family.”

  “First cousins once removed,” Su-Hwan chimed in. “Yourself and his child would be second cousins.”

  “I have one of those running around here.”

  Bray turned to share her shock with Peer, but found that he had fallen asleep, his head drooped back against the sofa, snoring softly through his nose.

  “Your friend seems worn out,” Ellora said with twinkling eyes.

  Bray smiled. “It’s been a difficult few months.”

  “Well, you are welcome to rest here,” Ellora said. “But if you are not looking for me on Quade’s behalf, why did you come?”

  “For information,” Bray said. “Anything and everything you can tell me about the man. I aim to remove him from power. The more about him I know, the better able I am to form a plan.”

  Ellora—who truly did not look much like her brother—sucked in her lip. “I will tell you all I can, of course, but I do not know what good it will do. He’s,” her eyes flicked down to her right hand in her lap, “more monster than man.”

  Bray noticed for the first time that the woman’s hand was mangled, the bones clearly having been broken and mended poorly, fingers pointing out at wrong angles—only four fingers, Bray noted grimly.

  “Not tonight, however,” Redge said. “It’s late and you lot are plainly tired. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

  Bray agreed. Her limbs already felt like sandbags. The sound of Peer’s steady snores made her own eyelids heavy.

  “We have a guest house with a few cots just down the dock.” Ellora stood to show them the way. Bray roused Peer, who grumbled and followed without ever fully opening his eyes.

  It was full dark, the moon above them a blazing white orb casting light on their walkway.

  “I’ll leave a pitcher so you can wash, though tomorrow you should take advantage of our hot spring.”

  Bray thought the words ‘hot spring’ sounded like magic just at that moment—she felt as if she still had not shaken off the coldness from her plunge into the ocean.

  Just before parting, Ellora beckoned Bray closer to speak confidentially. “Has he killed a lot of people? My brother?”

  Bray gazed sympathetically into the woman’s eyes—blue and kind and utterly unlike Quade’s. “Yes. He has.”

  She shook her head. “Once, when we were little, we were standing on the highest cliff over the North Sea, and I thought to myself: ‘I should push him. I should just push him.’” She bowed her head. “But I couldn’t. He was my brother and I didn’t have it in me.” She heaved a sigh and glanced out towards the beach. “Suppose all those people he killed, their blood is on my hands too. Because I couldn’t kill my baby brother, even though he was a monster.”

  “If you, just a little girl, could have done such a thing, you’d have been a monster too.” Bray placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and squeezed. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” Ellora echoed. She wandered back towards her own bed. Bray leaned against the doorway and watched her depart, watched her sluggish, meandering gait. Haunted, Bray thought. Etched in every expression, every movement, was the ghost of Quade Asher and the pains he’d inflicted.

  Bray’s own ghosts seemed weak, pitiful things by comparison.

  Peer followed the stony slope, knowing he moved in the right direction from the sulfuric tang tickling at his nose. The air turned hot and misty as he rounded a corner. He found himself within a cove freckled with dark pools; steam wafted lazily, like pots of water nearly hot enough to simmer.

  He dropped the bag Ellora had provided him—fr
esh clothes and toiletries—and stripped. His filthy clothes formed a tattered heap, and he breathed easier as warmth kissed his bare skin. The pool proved shallow, the water only just above his knees as he waded in. He sank, submerging himself, in hopes that the hot water might leech some of the soreness from his muscles.

  Peer caught sight of his own reflection in the still water. A stranger stared back at him, this man even more unrecognizable than the one he’d bonded with in the train window, not so long ago.

  Ribs protruded sharply from a cadaverous torso. His shoulder bones seemed to jut strangely from a concave chest, like a diagram of the joints beneath. His cheeks and eyes were sunken; his once-straight nose now boasted a noticeable kink. The straggly beard that concealed his mouth and jaw had grown well beyond his chin.

  He made a sound of disgust deep in his throat and slapped the surface, dispersing the image. He positioned himself so he could lean back against a boulder, his knees and face alone poking up from the dark water. The heat grew almost uncomfortable, beads of perspiration blossomed on his brow, but he did not move. He imagined the last of the poison in his system being scorched away, that the water had restoring properties, that when he unscrewed his eyes again his own face would be reflected in the surface, that the haunted, scarred shell he’d just glimpsed would be no more. He could stand it, the heat.

  Peer snorted in sudden laughter as his mind shifted to Adearre who, despite being from the positively blistering Adourra, could never tolerate Dalish summers without constant complaint. “That is a dry heat,” he’d insist, when Peer pointed out the irony. “It is an entirely different thing.”

  Peer waited for the suffocating, searing pain of grief to strike, but it did not come. Instead there were only twin aches in his throat and chest, neither sharp enough to drive the smile from his lips.

  He sloshed back out of the pool and sorted through the bag of toiletries. His fingers found the leather case that Redge had lent him—a shaving kit.

  Leaning over the black, still surface of the water, he set to work: trimming the long hair away, applying the cream, and then, cautiously, pulling the straight blade in stripes down his cheeks. After he washed himself clean he found the visage in the pool more recognizable. Not quite his old self, but closer.

  Unsure how much time had passed and worried he’d tarried too long, Peer tugged his borrowed clothing on. It was all loose-fitting, but blissfully clean and stench-free. Once he’d laced up his boots and gathered his things, he left the cove, striding towards the beach. The air felt cool after the warmth of the springs, the sea breeze caressing his bare cheeks.

  Bray and Su-Hwan, who had risen and bathed before him that morning, waited near the ocean. Su-Hwan, seated in the sand, bent over a book and clutched a steaming mug. Bray stood with her feet in the ocean, her dress hiked up to her knees, staring out at the horizon. Peer kicked off his boots, rolled up his trousers, and walked down to join her.

  She smiled when he approached. “Thank the Spirits,” she said, turning to him. Her copper hair shone brightly with sunlight. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but that chin-nest of yours was getting out of hand.”

  He laughed. “You’d’ve said something pretty soon, I’m betting.”

  “Probably true.” She looped her arm in his as a wave lapped up around their ankles, the water bitingly cold. She peeked down at their feet. “Think you could still outrun it?”

  “Outrun what?”

  “The waves.”

  Peer bit back a grin, his heart oddly light. “Haven’t tried that in years.” A bell sounded behind them, from the school. Peer turned to the sound. “Class change?”

  Bray shook her head, her smile slipping. “Lunch. Ellora said she would be ready to speak to us over lunch.”

  Peer’s spirit sank a bit. Though they had traveled all this way to learn Quade’s history, he felt suddenly reluctant to know more. It seemed somehow intimate, to hear about Quade’s childhood, and he was not eager for any greater amount of intimacy with that man.

  Still, he followed Bray and Su-Hwan up from the beach, along the walkway that led to Ellora and Redge’s living quarters. Braced for what was bound to be an unpleasant afternoon, Peer was caught off guard by the sound of childish giggling that greeted them.

  Redge had a red-headed boy by the knees, carrying him upside down, swinging the lad back and forth like a pendulum. The boy squealed in delight, letting his arms dangle like a rag doll. Behind them, Ellora readied the table for lunch, humming softly to herself as she distributed plates. Peer smiled, but a small part of him felt as he always did upon confronting domestic joy—like the young boy he’d once been, on the streets of New Brans, spying through windows at happy families with their meals and laughter and warm beds with goodnight kisses. An onlooker only.

  Redge perched his son on his shoulders, legs dangling on either side of his neck. “Say hello to your Aunt Bray, Tenny.”

  Tenny grinned down at them but remained mute. Peer looked between Bray and the lad and was struck by the similarity. Odd, that this boy should share blood with both Bray and Quade. The existence of the latter, fortunately, was not evident.

  “Please, take a seat,” Ellora said. “My husband will look after the children while we talk.”

  Redge kissed his wife on the cheek, squeezed her shoulder and withdrew, with his son clutching at clumps of his hair as if he meant to steer.

  Lunch was a simple, quiet affair. Peer shoveled rice in his mouth and, though it seemed to stick in his throat, forced himself to chew and swallow again and again, knowing he needed to regain body mass if he was to be of any use.

  By the time they were nearly finished eating, Ellora’s hands trembled. She kept her eyes clamped down on her bowl. When there was no more food to eat, and so no reason to prolong the inevitable, she stood and offered to take their plates. Her hands quaked so violently, however, that Peer took over the task for her, collecting the dishes and bearing them back to the kitchenette.

  When he returned, her hands were hidden beneath the table and her expression was one of summoned strength.

  “I am ready if you are,” Ellora said, at last raising her blue gaze. “Though this will be…difficult for me. I do not usually speak of him.”

  Bray arranged a notepad and poised a pen, ever the note-taker. “We understand. Take as much time as you need.”

  Ellora licked dry lips and inhaled through her nose. “I was three and a half when he was born,” she began in a strong voice. “His…abnormality was obvious right away, though no one said a thing about it. He was a disconcerting baby; there was something about his eyes and his gaze that just didn’t feel right, made the hairs on your arms stand up. He reminded me of my neighbor’s cat. It would stare at you with those unflinching eyes, like it longed to eat you if only you weren’t so big. Quade was like that—he would stare, not like a baby, but like a predator. And he almost never cried, at least not the way babies should. When he wanted something, food or changing, he’d make this shrill sound but his face wouldn’t screw up with tears. He scared me even then, but I felt like a bad sister to think so.

  “It only became more obvious the older he grew, that there was something wrong with him. I knew it and I knew my parents did too, though they said nothing. He was smart—learned to read before I did. He’d know things a little boy just shouldn’t know. And animal carcasses started showing up in our yard—frogs with missing legs, rabbits with all their organs neatly removed. He made people uncomfortable, always did. Even strangers could sense right off that there was something wrong with him, some coldness and cruelness that went right to the core of him.

  “When he was seven or so, he created a gang with all of the neighborhood boys. None of them wanted to, of course, but there was no resisting his wishes. They were afraid, even the older boys, so they did what he said. Crimes popped up all over: thefts, vandalisms, the Crookson’s dog. I don’t think Quade did any of it himself. He liked having others do his bidding. Enjoyed the power of it.


  “Not too long after that, this traveling archeological exhibit came through Leeson. The head historian gave this great speech about how knowing the past can help you shape the future, about how the greatness of a man can be measured by how many people remember him after he’s gone. We were all entertained—there were neat trinkets from around the world, mock-digs, you know, sand that kids can sift through to find buried treasure—but Quade was rapt. Afterwards he was obsessed; he read every book in the town’s circulating library on history and archeology, especially anything having to do with that crazed Adourran dictator...” She glanced up, as if trying to recall his name.

  “Alfenze Guenez,” Bray offered.

  Ellora wagged her index finger. “Yes, that was it. Anyways, he started forcing his gang to conduct ‘digs’ all around Leeson. Any of his underlings who didn’t pull his weight was beaten. When he was thirteen,” Ellora licked her lips again, “he declared one day at dinner that he had a girlfriend. Poppy Cleaver. She was the younger sister of one of his cronies, two years younger. I saw them together after that. He would always be dragging her around by her wrist and she was always crying. He’d make her sit next to him on the stoop outside our house and he’d pet her hair and make her tell him that he was handsome, that she loved him. After a few months, though, Poppy disappeared. We all knew; we knew for certain when her body washed up. They said she was mutilated, all her fingers cut off. One of Quade’s cronies confessed, but didn’t implicate my brother.

  “That was the last straw for my da. I heard him arguing with my mother about it, heard him say he was going to go find his son and take him to the constable’s office. I heard the door shut when he left, and that was it. I never saw my da again. He never came home; his body was never found. Quade killed him, I knew it and so did my mother, but neither of us went to the constable. I was a coward, I guess, but I didn’t want to be the next mutilated body discovered, and he always had a weird…fixation on me. Sometimes I’d wake, and he’d be standing at my bedside, staring down at me, stroking my hair. Though, most of the time I couldn’t sleep, so I just pretended, tried to keep my eyes closed and my breathing even so he wouldn’t suspect.