The Complete Marked Series Box Set

by March McCarron

  Ko-Jin read the short script twice, then sank slowly to his knees, his head bowed.

  Spirits, Rinny…

  He was vaguely aware of his companions’ efforts to comfort him, but in his mind he had retreated into the past, to a time when a young Dalish girl had first taught him how to pick pockets on a pebbly shore. “It’s a real art, you know,” she had said, with a gap-toothed grin.

  Quade had killed many people, and Ko-Jin had long felt burdened by those deaths. But this was the first that struck at his heart and left him bleeding.

  Arlow gazed down at his sooty fists, bleary-eyed and numb. Even covered in ash and dried blood, the gold band encircling his ring finger was the strangest thing upon his hand. It felt cold and heavy. Foreign.

  “Mr. Bowlerham?”

  Arlow jerked his head up, blinking. “Will you be needing anything further, Constable?”

  The lawman appeared nearly as weary as Arlow felt. The incident had occurred the previous evening, and it was now dusk. None of them had slept.

  “If not, I should very much like to retire.”

  The man pressed a hand to his sandy mustache, covering a yawn. “One moment.” He rose and strode to where two other constables compared notes. As Midington was not a large enough town to have its own regular lawman, others had been called in from the surrounding cities. A murder-suicide that claimed sixteen lives was sensational enough to attract them.

  Arlow fixed his eyes on the place where the floor was in ruins. Snow had fallen through a hole in the roof, shrouding the gore in a white veil. The remains of the dead, such as they were, had been taken away. There had clearly been an effort to clean away the blood, but it remained visible all around him. It was in the grain of the wooden beams crossing the ceiling, and had seeped between the floorboards.

  The room still appeared hazy and smelt charred. The innkeeper was fortunate that his common room had vaulted ceilings, so the guest rooms had been unaffected.

  Arlow shivered and rubbed his hands together. Someone sank down in the seat beside him and extended a mug that wafted temptingly with the smell of fresh coffee.

  “My thanks,” he said, taking the hot ceramic in hand, but not drinking. He desired to sleep, not rouse himself.

  “I’ve been trying to think how we’re going to break it to Ko-Jin,” Roldon said. “About Rinny.”

  “I had a telegram sent already,” Arlow said. “He deserved to know.”

  Roldon’s back curved, his head bowed. “Did you see her face,” he asked his boots, “before she…?”

  He had. And her beaten, vacant expression haunted him. “I did not know,” he began, his voice flat and detached. “I didn’t—I never could have imagined that Quade’s gift could go so far.”

  The man could turn his friends into living bombs, one by one. And he would, given half a chance, as retribution for Arlow’s betrayal. It seemed no matter what he did, he brought death upon the people around him.

  Unbidden, the image of another bloody scene flashed before his mind’s eye: the throne room after the assassination, filled with the moans of the injured and dying. A boy who had asked Arlow if his feet were moving, before he too had turned still.

  “He needs to be dealt with,” Roldon said, a new grimness in his demeanor.

  Arlow let his head loll back and thump against the wall. “More easily said than done, I’m afraid.”

  The blond constable returned. “We have no more questions for you at this time, Mr. Bowlerham. Get some sleep.”

  Arlow hauled himself to his feet and set his untouched coffee on the table. He waved Roldon goodnight and traipsed across the hall. Many Pauper’s people were gathered in the common room, despite the cold. He tried not to look too closely at them, not wanting to witness their grief. His gaze skimmed the room, seeking the only person he had any desire to see.

  “Are you looking for your wife?” the Pauper’s King asked, unexpectedly close at hand. There was no bite in his voice; his face was haggard.

  Wife. Spirits… “I am.”

  “She just went up to your room a few moments ago.”

  Arlow nodded and made to step past his new brother-in-law. His path was blocked.

  “I—” the King began with uncharacteristic hesitance. “I put out the banns.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s likely how Asher knew.” He shook his head. “I underestimated the man, was too busy…”

  “Too busy trying to do right by your family.” Arlow crossed his arms before his chest. “Quade’s got eyes and ears across the kingdoms. He likely would have discovered our location regardless.”

  “That’s kind of you to say.”

  “No, it’s merely honest.” Again, Arlow tried to pass the taller man. He was stopped with a hand to his shoulder.

  “Once we’ve rested, we must return to Accord. I have a meeting with the king. I would have you come with us, Arlow. Your input would be valuable.”

  A woman wept somewhere to Arlow’s left. The sound was clawing under his skin, making him feel a bit wild. He wanted desperately to be away. “I can’t. My part in the assassination—”

  “Has been pardoned.”

  Arlow’s lips thinned. He had read, of course, of Jo-Kwan’s brilliant move to offer sweeping clemency. But he was not convinced that this decree would extend to him. He had orchestrated the assassination of a king; such a thing was unlikely to be forgiven.

  “We need you, Arlow.” The man, for all his fierceness, was looking upon Arlow with softer eyes.

  He couldn’t understand this sudden change. “I had not thought you so eager to align yourself with a nobleson.” He lent the invective the same scorn his brother-in-law had used in the past.

  Linton closed his eyes for a moment. “You saved Mae; I saw it. When you noticed the explosives, you covered her with your own body. I am not too proud to admit when I am wrong.”

  Arlow grimaced at his feet. It was true—he had knocked Mae to the ground and shielded her as best he could. But it hadn’t been an act of conscious chivalry, it had been mere thoughtless instinct. When allowed time to contemplate his options, he was never so selfless.

  “Please say that you will accompany us back to the capital.”

  Arlow did not want to commit himself; he searched his mind for a reasonable excuse to delay. His attention pulled, again, to the cold ring on his finger, and inspiration struck. “I must speak to Mae first,” he said. “I could not make such a decision without consulting my wife.”

  Linton narrowed his eyes in a moment of skepticism, then shrugged. “Very well. Rest, brother.”

  Arlow was finally permitted to walk past. He drifted up the stair as if in a dream. He paused to look at the room which had been Yarrow’s, and felt a pang of loss. He and Bray had left town some hours earlier. The absence of his oldest and favorite friend—the person who liked him best despite his less-than-agreeable qualities—always made him feel very much alone.

  As he reached for the door to his own room, he experienced a lurching sensation in his abdomen. Mae would be within, and he wasn’t certain where they stood, or how they were to move forward. He gulped a rallying breath and swung the door inwards.

  Within, Foy Rodgeman sat on the end of the bed beside Mae, a supportive arm around her shoulder. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she held herself stiffly, neither accepting nor rejecting the older man’s embrace. They both looked up at Arlow. He wondered how he must appear, standing there in the doorframe, watching them. Would this new bitterness clogging his throat be visible upon his face?

  Foy disengaged himself and stood. “Goodnight,” he murmured to Mae.

  Arlow turned sideways to allow the man to pass. He listened to Rodgeman’s funereal pace as it receded down the hall. Then he shut the door.

  Mae had not moved. She still wore her wedding dress—the creamy cotton now gray with soot and black with blood. Her ringlets had long since wilted; her face was pale.

  “Well,” he said, hoping more words would follow
once the silence had been breached.

  When she said nothing, he thought to try for levity. “Not the finest start to a honeymoon.”

  She sighed in reply, then glanced up at him with older eyes. “I’m wrung out, Arlow. I got no energy left for anything but honesty, and I won’t sleep ’til we’ve gotten this sorted. So, what’s it to be?”

  Arlow’s brow furrowed and he shook his head, uncomprehending.

  She sighed again, but this time with annoyance. “We said we’d marry legally, but not live that way.” He was tempted to point out that she had said this, not him. But he held his tongue. “So, are we to go separate ways in the morn?”

  This outcome had never occurred to him, and his pulse raced at the prospect. “No,” he said, too loudly and without thought.

  She didn’t meet his gaze. “So, then, are we husband and wife for true? Is that what you want?”

  Arlow opened and closed his mouth soundlessly. He wished he could sit, as he was growing unsteady on his feet, but they could not discuss such a matter side-by-side.

  “Could we not,” he began in a careful tone, “simply go back to the way we were before?” This question pained her. He could easily discern the hurt that crossed her features. And so he hastened to add, “For a time, at least. So that we might decide for ourselves, without outside interference, if this marriage is something we want.”

  She nodded her head, but it was an unhappy acquiescence. “Very well. For a time.”

  Then she stood and reached behind her, attempting to unfasten the buttons of her dress. They were plainly out of reach, so Arlow swept forward to help. He slipped the first four cloth-covered buttons free with deft fingers, and then she waved him away. “I can manage the rest.”

  But she did not continue, and Arlow was unsure what she was waiting for. Until she pierced him with a look that plainly demanded he turn his back. The room felt, suddenly, much colder. He turned around.

  As he stared at the blank plaster wall, he listened to the sound of her disrobing, and then the splash of water in the basin as she cleaned herself. He could not help but imagine how this scene might have unfolded, had he given her a different answer moments before. He could just see himself washing away all of that grime and blood from her smooth skin. This imagined moment filled him with a keen longing, and to his surprise, the sensation had more to do with intimacy than eroticism.

  “So,” he asked, as she sloshed a rag into the basin. “Where would you like to go tomorrow?”

  “Linton wants us to come to Accord with him.”

  “He expressed as much to me as well,” Arlow answered. “I’m not certain it’s a good idea. I doubt the king will look kindly on my presence in his city.”

  He could hear her toweling herself dry. “You’ve gone on and on about how you think there’re better ways to run a nation,” she said. “Now you’ve got the chance to make some changes, do some real good. You ain’t willing to risk it?”

  “You think we should go?” he asked.

  “I do,” she said. Simple—direct. He liked that about her.

  Arlow exhaled. “Very well. I did appoint you my judgment, after all.”

  She made a huffing sound that he couldn’t interpret. Then he heard the squeal of bedsprings.

  “You can clean up now,” she said. “I’m done.”

  He turned around to find her already beneath the blankets, trying to pound a pillow into a more comfortable shape. She didn’t meet his gaze, so he turned his attention to the wash water.

  He unbuttoned his borrowed robes and stripped off his undershirt and trousers. The water was cool, raising gooseflesh up his arms. He caught sight of his reflection in the glassy surface, and splashed his disappointing visage away.

  “Mae, I—” he turned to the bed, but found that her eyes were closed, her breathing even.

  He swallowed the words he had meant to say, and they burned all the way down his throat. Then he bent back to the basin and set to scrubbing away the blood, ash, and guilt.

  Chapter Seven

  Bray pushed through the door of the silk shop and stepped back out into the streets of Andle, tucking the small bag of purchases under her arm. She raised her hand to shield her eyes against the glare of the sun and searched up and down the boulevard.

  “Where did you go…” she murmured, scanning the line of storefronts, the bustling shoppers.

  She turned right and peeked through the window of a salon, and then a haberdashery. She counseled herself not to panic. He had no doubt merely wandered off, not left her… Surely he had not abandoned her without a word. He wouldn’t do that.

  “Bray,” Yarrow’s voice called from the next stall, a bakery.

  She hid her sigh of relief with a smile. “Hungry?”

  “I hadn’t thought so,” he said, brow quirked seriously. “Until the smell drifted down to me as I waited.”

  The collection of baked goods did smell positively spiritly. They were lined within a clear glass case, and each looked twice the size of a common pastry. A man in a blue-and-white striped apron gazed at Yarrow expectantly, a look of amused confusion on his round face.

  She laughed. “Then order something.”

  “You see, I found myself rather drawn to that one.” He pointed to a sugar-encrusted scone. “But the gentleman warned me that it contains pecans, in case I had an intolerance.” He looked down at her with an expression that she could not name, but which rather made her want to laugh. “So,” he began archly, “do I suffer from any allergies?”

  “I don’t think so…” she began slowly, then she snapped her fingers. “They served almond-crusted salmon at the ball in Accord, and you ate it.”

  “Presumably without consequence?”

  “We’ll take two of those,” Bray said to the baker, smiling.

  “For here?”

  Bray bobbed her head. Their ship wouldn’t depart for another few hours, anyway. “Sure. And coffee.”

  They took seats beneath a striped awning, though the day was a touch too cool for eating outdoors. Bray tried to stop grinning, tried to act as if this moment were utterly ordinary; as if she and Yarrow popped into bakeries for breakfast all the time.

  She knew she ought to feel guilty for her uplifted spirits, given the atrocity they had witnessed several days before. But that event had been so horrific that it seemed more nightmare than true memory. And as it had involved no one whom she knew personally, she had found it easy to put out of her mind.

  Yarrow sat next to her rather than across, their knees grazing beneath the white tablecloth. They faced the street, where streams of foot traffic flitted by.

  “You accomplished your errands?” he asked, settling into his seat cushion.

  “I did,” she said. “I sent a telegram to your family, too.” In addition to Peer and Ko-Jin. She wished they were on their way back to Accord; however, not even Arlow’s supplication could sway Yarrow’s resolve to sail for Adourra.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. They were worried about you, so I just thought to set your mother’s mind at ease.”

  He nodded slowly, chewing on his lower lip. He pulled a notebook from the inner pocket of his overcoat and flipped through a few pages.

  The baker delivered their coffees and scones. Bray busied herself with the cream and sugar, her spoon clinking against the rosebud-painted porcelain. She watched her coffee turn from black to tan; the cream spread like ink bleeding across wet parchment.

  “I’ve written it all out—what you and Arlow have told me. I hope to fill in this most recent gap. The beginning, however…” He ran a gloved hand over his face. “I cannot decide if I should…” he trailed off, and slid the notebook over to her.

  It was a timeline of his own life. He had begun with his marking, but left blank space for the fourteen proceeding years. He had jotted a question mark next to his date of birth, and a note to himself to ask Arlow.

  Her throat clenched painfully and she blinked.

  “Is something
wrong?” Yarrow asked.

  She swallowed and shook her head. “No.” Yes.

  It was his handwriting. Before, it had been a slanted, spidery script. Elegant, but not easy to read. Now, his printing looked more like the typeset of a book. Exact and neat, still, but with an entirely different style. She could not quite say why this made her want to cry, why it seemed so perfectly tragic.

  “You’re worried about seeing your family, then?” she asked, passing the notebook back and taking a sip of her coffee.

  “I just cannot imagine what I would say.” His mouth drew down. “Hello, mother. Nice to meet you?” He shook his head. “It might be kinder not to.”

  She almost put her hand atop his, but refrained. They had not touched in such a way yet; she feared being the first to reach out. “You introduced me to your family not long ago. Your mother was so happy to see you. I think, if you never returned, that would not be kind either.”

  He appeared to consider this, then tucked the diary back into his coat. When he met her gaze again, it was with smiling eyes. She could not look away.

  “Take a dash of coffee with your cream?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips at him. “I don’t actually like the taste of coffee.”

  “Then why order it?”

  “I like it once it’s full of cream and sugar.”

  He shook his head at her, then bit into his scone. He made a sound like a groan as he chewed, his eyes fluttering closed.

  “What?” she asked, liking his expression.

  “I was not aware food could taste so…” he rubbed his fingertips together, shedding crumbs. “Sublime.” He turned back to her. “Do you visit your family often?”

  “No. I haven’t any family.” And then, because this was Yarrow and he deserved honesty, she added, “Save for an uncle I have no wish to see.”

  An image of the man choking beneath her own hands flashed through her thoughts. That moment of mercy when she had released him sat uneasily in her mind. She gritted her teeth and shoved the memory aside.