He shoved the spade into the earth and found it frozen and unyielding. He exhaled a gust of sorry mist.
This would be no quick task, but it didn’t matter. He pushed into the ground with his shoulder, casting the icy sod aside into a pile. He was weary before he’d even begun, and his shoulder and lower back soon began to ache. His body warmed from the exercise, his shirt dampening with perspiration, even while the frosty air stung at his skin.
“Should be people here, for a proper funeral.” He looked over to the shrouded form of his friend. “Should be a great event, with crowds and an orchestra. Should be. But you’ve got only me, I’m fearing.”
He blinked aggressively and returned to his work. He had made paltry progress, the ground being so hard.
Peer wiped sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve, then swiped at his eyes. “Ain’t right,” he murmured.
Anger rose up in his chest, though he wasn’t quite sure where to direct the feeling. He glared at her silent form. “It ain’t right, you dying like this. We were supposed to save each other, remember? You were my hope, I was yours. That was the deal.” His expression crumpled.
He had not been her hope, in the end. He had been the vehicle of her death. She had come along at his appeal, to save his spirit-mate.
Peer sniffed, and wiped at his nose. He began to sing, a slow dirge that warbled in his thick-throated voice:
“Adrift, we be, without you here,
You’ve gone, you’ve gone, ahead,
And what, pray tell, can bring us cheer,
When you’re asleep in this eternal bed.”
He scooped and hit rock. Sighing, Peer knelt down in his shallow hole and cleared the dirt with his hands, searching for the edge of the stone. It was wide, clearly, and his benumbed fingers trembled as they probed. He found an edge and began to pry. Grumbling, he retrieved his shovel and wedged the spade under the rock, then pressed his weight into the handle. At length, the slab popped free from the hard ground.
“Need a hand?”
Peer turned to find Whythe standing with one fist in his pocket, the other clasping his own shovel.
“Sure,” Peer said. The word sounded terse, which he regretted.
It was not Whythe’s fault; none of it was. But Peer could not talk to him about it yet. His bevolder’s mind was still too polluted. Whythe wanted to go back to Quade, and would if he had means. He would need to be quarantined—they all would—but not until this was done.
Whythe jumped into the shallow grave, and the two of them hauled the stone up and cast it aside. Whythe wiped his dirtied hands against his trousers. The two of them set to digging silently.
Around them, the birds began to produce a great cacophony of song. The day brightened and warmed.
“I’m sorry,” Whythe said, long after Peer had assumed he didn’t mean to speak.
Peer glanced at the man. His head was bent to the task, and in the early morning light, he looked somehow other-worldly. He was beautiful, and he was safe, and, despite everything, Peer was glad of it.
“’S not your doing. No need to be feeling sorry.”
“She died because—”
“She died ’cause she was brave,” he cut across.
Whythe nodded slowly, his brows drawn down. “She was that.” He turned away. “I’m still sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” Peer mumbled, addressing Su-Hwan’s motionless form.
He looked down at the grave that had yet to clear his knees. This was going to take hours more, and his palms had already begun to blister.
Peer heard another set of feet crunching across the frosty grass. He turned to find Ko-Jin, who carried a steaming mug and a spade. Peer might’ve said he looked well, given that he had appeared so near death hours before. He was clean and apparently uninjured. But he did not look well; his eyes were shadowed.
“Here,” Ko-Jin said, extending the cup of tea to Peer. The warmth through the ceramic felt wonderful against his stiff fingers. “Let me take over for a while.”
Peer acquiesced. He climbed out of the hole and sat down, cross-legged, on the ground beside Su-Hwan. As he sipped, he stared down at the shape of her face beneath the thin white sheet. He had no photograph of her; he would need to remember her features.
Ko-Jin made quicker work of the task than he had, but Whythe’s side of the grave deepened at a much slower pace. He looked immensely relieved when Fernie, Ko-Jin’s Elevated friend, arrived to take a turn.
They were joined, in short time, by Ander Penton—the old Cosanta came with a bundle of evergreens and berries in lieu of flowers. Peer stood up and shook the man’s hand with two of his own. “Thanks for coming.”
“More will be here soon enough,” the old man assured him.
And they were. Tae-Young and Mearra arrived next, hand-in-hand, followed by Yarrow and Arlow. They were soon joined by Trevva and her Cosanta companion Roldon, and then by Wynn and Malc. And the mourners continued to come—in drips and drabs, at first, and then en masse. It seemed that every Chisanta in Accord had come to pay their respects.
Peer could not blink back the wetness in his eyes fast enough, but these were tears of gratitude and relief. He was not all that Su-Hwan had, after all. She would be buried with love, with a suitable gathering to bear witness to her remarkable courage.
It seemed every shovel in Accord must’ve been gathered. The grave for Su-Hwan was soon joined by a second cold hole in the earth. The Elevated Clea strode into the graveyard with her palms extended. Elda’s petite form levitated in the air before her, and Clea’s fair face gleamed with tears.
In short time, the two graves were cleared. The sun rose in the sky, casting light upon the crowd in the cemetery. Peer wondered what should happen next; he had attended few funerals.
A buzz of whispers crossed the crowd, and people moved to clear a path. The queen herself arrived, with Bray at her side. Chae-Na’s face was pale. Her cheek was swollen and bruised, and she looked in need of rest. But it meant a great deal to Peer that she had come.
Bray slipped through the crowd and came to stand beside him.
“Help me, with…”
“Sure,” Bray said, understanding. Together, they lowered Su-Hwan’s slight form down into her final resting place. Others did the same for Elda.
Peer set her down as if she were a fragile thing, then made sure there were no uncomfortable rocks to disrupt her eternal sleep. He put a hand to her face, feeling the fabric of the shroud. “I’ll be seeing you again,” he choked out. “In the Spirits’ Home. So be sure to go there swiftly and be without pain.”
Bray helped Peer up out of the grave, and he wiped at his eyes. He took her hand, grateful for the firm pressure of her fingers entwined with his own.
“Do you want to say something?” she whispered to him.
He shook his head. He had said, already, everything he had meant to say—little and lacking though his words were.
When it became clear that he would not officiate this impromptu ceremony, the queen stepped forward. She unfolded a slip of paper and began to read, with a hard, determined look on her pretty face.
“These two young women died today, in an effort to stop the menace that is Quade Asher.” Her voice carried across the silent gathering. She managed to appear both regal and heartsore. “They were true heroes, and shall be remembered as such. May we all be so brave in the face of fear. Let us draw courage from their deeds, and determination from their deaths—that we will continue in what they started. Evil shall not be allowed to persist in this world. They died in an aim to extinguish it, and we shall push forward in that same cause. We will finish what they began. So, Pak Su-Hwan, Elda Sameron, may your spirits fly fast and find joy—”
“May their spirits fly fast and find joy,” the assembly echoed.
“For your dying efforts will yet be fulfilled. We will not rest until the danger has passed, and this world is once again safe for those of us you have left behind.”
Peer hid his
eyes behind his forearm. Bray placed her hand on his back.
There was a long moment of silence, and Peer eventually unshielded his vision. The morning had grown so bright that he winced.
He stepped up to the mound of displaced earth and scooped a handful of dirt into his fist. He looked down at the still shape of his friend, and wind in the willow branches whispered mournfully behind him. He sprinkled the earth atop the whiteness of her shroud, but most of it rolled away from her. He stepped back.
Across from him, Clea tossed a handful of earth atop her friend. She hiccupped, her chest hitching. She looked up to meet Peer’s gaze, and he nodded.
The Elevated raised her hands, and the piles of dirt rose up and into the air—all of the bits and clumps of earth swirling in and around each other in mesmerizing patterns, until it flowed into the two graves, filling them slowly and evenly.
Bray tugged at Peer’s hand, but he resisted, his eyes locked on the place where Su-Hwan lay.
“We have to quarantine ourselves,” she reminded him.
“Yes,” he agreed, distantly.
He gazed out at the dispersing crowd. It occurred to him how relentless living could be—always forward. And all he wanted was to turn back for a time.
Whythe wrapped an arm around his shoulders, as if offering to carry some of his weight. Peer leaned into him with a quivering lip. Yarrow appeared beside Bray, and she slipped an arm around his waist as they walked back to the palace.
“Five days,” Peer wondered aloud. “What might the world come to in five days?”
“Ko-Jin thinks it likely that Quade’s forces will have launched by then. We may come out to find ourselves under siege,” Yarrow said.
Peer sighed. Five days. It would be a torment, to be left to the isolation of his own thoughts for so many hours. His own mind, he knew, was not polluted directly. He had not even seen Quade. But he had spoken with Whythe, and there lingered the ghost of Asher’s influence deep within those maple eyes.
“A siege,” Whythe echoed.
Peer didn’t know what to say, what to think. He glanced once more over his shoulder, at the mound of dirt that marked Su-Hwan’s grave.
Forward, he thought grimly.
Chapter Twenty
Vendra set foot upon Dalish ground with a sigh. She inhaled deeply, her chest expanding, and waited for her customary seasickness to dissipate. The air was fresh and cool. She glanced over her shoulder, towards the port where Quade’s ships were arriving in a steady stream—so many wide white sails flapping in the distance, like sheets drying on a line.
“Mistress Alvez,” a voice called. “We’re ready for you over here.”
A large marquee had already been erected in the pebbly sand. There, a sister Cosanta named Mercy was beckoning for Vendra to join her.
Vendra’s boots crunched across the stony expanse. As she walked, she looked out over the seemingly infinite pools and marshes between their camp and Accord. It was poor ground for a siege.
She slipped inside the tent, and inclined her head to Quade’s appointed general. He was a serious man called Sier Peava, formerly a historian and strategist. He was inexperienced in warfare, of course, but so were they all.
“It’s here somewhere,” the man mumbled, shifting through a bucket of rolled parchments with a furrowed brow. “Ah, here,” he said, plucking free a tube of paper, which looked indistinguishable from the others to Vendra’s eye.
He unfurled the parchment and anchored the curling corners with weights. Vendra moved close to the table, curious. Before her, an old blueprint of the capital city sprawled in faded blue ink.
“It’s out of date,” she said. The city had grown considerably since this rendering.
“It is.” Peava bent low, scrutinizing the map. “However, the aqueducts beneath the city will not have changed.” His long, dark fingers skittered across the map affectionately. “Here and here,” he said, pointing.
“And the whole city uses the same water source?” Mercy asked, as she idly toyed with her golden braid.
“Yes,” General Peava said. “It was quite the feat of engineering at the time it was built.”
It still was, in Vendra’s opinion. Most of the kingdoms’ cities relied on well water and streams.
“This drug of yours,” Mercy asked Vendra, “it will be heavily diluted, will it not? Will it be effective still?”
Vendra grunted, wishing she had a more concrete answer. “It is certainly much more effective taken at a higher concentration, but it should have some effect. Quade understands this—he believes that any small advantage should be utilized.”
“At these levels, what sort of effect should I expect?” Peava asked.
Vendra slung the valise from her shoulder and withdrew a tube of clear liquid, holding it up for them to see. “Taken directly, it causes extreme disorientation, memory loss, and poor judgement. At the levels the people of Accord will be ingesting it, the effect should be the same but less noticeable. Difficulty holding a line of thought, forgetfulness, a general lack of focus…” Vendra placed the phial back into its velvet slot, and slipped a small piece of paper from a sleeve. “This is the recipe. You might give it to Quade, before he meets with his suppliers. Now, assuming these aqueducts are being guarded—”
“They will be,” Peava said. “Sung Ko-Jin knows well the importance of a water source in a siege.”
“How can you be so certain?” Mercy asked.
“Because I taught the lad myself for nearly a year.”
Vendra nodded to herself. She now better understood Quade’s insistence that this man should have the job. “And how do you estimate his abilities?”
Peava’s expression turned unnaturally neutral, and he responded in a flatter voice. “He’s a sharp mind, and well-studied despite his age. But he’s also big-hearted, which will make his actions more predictable. He will always choose whichever course risks the fewest lives.” The older man shook himself, as if to clear away some mental confusion. “But, to the point, the aqueducts will certainly be well-guarded.”
“It’s no matter,” Vendra said. “Mercy will not be seen.”
Her sister Cosanta bobbed her head. “No problem.”
Vendra wondered, briefly, if the woman ever used her ability to spy on others. She made a mental note to sweep her tent before having any conversation she would not want overheard.
She snapped her valise closed and secured the latches. “If Quade’s suppliers have any questions, you know where to find me.”
Vendra bowed, then turned from the tent. She slapped a hand over her mouth, to conceal a jaw-creaking yawn. She had been so ill during the voyage from Adourra to Daland that she had barely slept. A nap, with a cot on solid, unmoving ground, sounded blissful. She wended up the beach, where tents and other temporary necessities were popping up all around her, and wandered to Quade’s bunk, the largest of the makeshift shelters. He was not within; she did not expect him to return anytime soon, as he had much to prepare.
Vendra unlaced and removed her boots, slipped out of her robes, and climbed into bed. She balled up beneath the thick blanket. Daland might be transitioning from winter to spring, but its winds were still biting and persistent.
Her weary mind slipped into sleep almost at once, despite the abundance of noise and movement in the camp just beyond her retreat. She plunged into murky dreams.
First, she dreamt of her father. She dreamt he had locked himself in the closet of her room back at Cape Cosanta, though some part of her knew he had never once been there. She could hear him weeping from within. She knew he was going to kill himself, and so she banged and tugged against the door helplessly. “Stop—don’t—I need you—don’t—stop!”
The door flew open; however, there was no closet within. Instead, she walked out onto a wooden stage in the center of Accord. Snow swirled around her, though she could not feel the cold. She turned her head, and there was a sea of people all shouting in unison.
She saw Quade, and smile
d. She raised a hand out to him. But then he turned, and her gaze fixed upon his face. Not his face, and yet—
He was a horror to behold. The cruelty in his eyes, which normally glinted so kindly, pierced her spirit like a blade. The understanding that flooded her mind was heart-stopping. She saw him, truly saw him, and in doing so she saw herself.
Vendra shot up in her cot, coughing and gasping. It took her a long, disorienting moment to remember just where she was, and why. Her mind was clear. She had the nagging sense that this had happened before. Her hands trembled violently as she cast aside the blanket. Cold prickled at her skin. She pulled on her clothes hastily, not bothering with half the buttons.
She stumbled out of the tent. It struck her like a blow—the sight of the army milling all around her, the score of ships bobbing on the horizon. The scope and magnitude of what they meant to do left her reeling.
“Are you quite well, Vendra?” a kind voice sounded, breaking her trance. She turned to find the general staring at her with concerned eyes. She supposed he must have spoken to her without her hearing.
“Yes,” she said, stamping a painful smile on her face. “Yes, I’m so glad I caught you. I just realized that I gave you the wrong recipe. You haven’t given it to Quade yet, have you?”
“No,” Peava said, patting his pocket. “I was on my way now—”
“Thank the Spirits,” Vendra said. “I’m afraid I’ve been rather sleep-deprived. I’d hate to have made such an expensive error. Wait here just one moment.”
Vendra turned from the man without waiting for a response, and jogged back into Quade’s tent. Her eyes moved briefly to the bed and she had the strong desire to vomit. She moved to the chair where she had slung her bag. Opening the latches once again proved difficult, given the violent shaking of her hands. But she managed at length, and extracted the stack of cards for her various poisons and drugs, which outlined ingredients and method of preparation. She shifted through them, and found one that worked in nearly the opposite way that Quade desired—a drug that sharpened focus and increased stamina, for a time.
The Complete Marked Series Box Set Page 104
