Darron turned to him, for the first time appearing grateful. “You’re workin’ with the King? You shoulda said so.” He leaned back and crossed his legs at the ankle. “I knew he’d get us out; I just knew it.”
The little girl stole back into their lean-to like a shadow. “All done.”
Darron got to his feet. “Which way, sir?”
Arlow shook his head at the sudden respectful address—being Chisanta and an elder hadn’t earned him such deference, but apparently being in league with a glorified highwayman was enough to do the trick. “Follow me.”
Arlow led the way towards the forest, heading a herd of begrimed child-bandits. Again, he prayed his characteristic luck would hold, that no camp worker should happen to look out their tents at that moment. His pulse ticked rapidly until they reached the sanctuary of the trees. He guided the band to the place where, a week past, Mae had tied up Poppy Seed—their designated meeting place.
As he approached, Mae rose up from her gig and ran to him with a huge grin, one he could not help but return.
“You really did it,” Mae said, looking around at the scores of freed youths. Spread out amongst the trees, they appeared even greater in number.
Arlow bowed. “Did I not tell you I would?”
Darron, who was still at Arlow’s side, was looking between the two of them with his dirt-darkened face split into a wide, knowing smile. “Your man did real good, missus. You should thank him proper.”
Arlow groaned and gave the lad a gentle shove. “Off with you.”
Arlow and Mae beamed at each other, he suspected somewhat stupidly. Perhaps it was just relief or excitement, but he had the sudden desire to kiss her. He pictured it—taking her wholly by surprise. Knowing her, she’d either thrust her tongue in his mouth or punch him soundly in the nose. But…which?
Foy rode up to them on his towering steed and clicked his tongue to come to a stop. Arlow cleared his throat and shifted his weight.
“You should hurry back, Arlow,” the man said in an authoritative voice. “You will be no use to us as a spy if they find you missing and report it to Mr. Asher.”
Arlow offered the gentleman a sour look. It had been his idea that he should return to the camp rather than leave with Mae, he hardly needed reminding. He should probably be thankful for the interruption, however. No doubt he’d been on the verge of a mistake.
“You’ll meet us in Accord?” Mae asked.
“I will,” Arlow promised.
He then turned on his heel and trooped back to the excavation, to his bed, mentally reprimanding himself all the way.
Dawn had not yet arrived, but birdsong promised its imminence. Peer awoke on the hard earth between the slumbering forms of his companions, ensconced in a small clearing in the forest that was, despite the approaching winter, still bursting with lush verdancy. A magpie, with its oddly long blue tail, stared down at him from an overhanging branch. The air was fragrant with…he wasn’t quite sure what. Something floral. Their glade was peppered with minute purple flowers and clover.
A beautiful place, to be sure. He hated it.
He opened and closed his mouth a few times in a vain effort to remove the foul, sticky feeling coating his tongue. Nausea roiled like a tempest in his belly, his head ached with such intensity he feared his brain had gone to mush, that it should start leaking from his ears. Tentatively, he raised his fingers to assess his face. A mass of contusions and lumps, not to mention a broken nose. He felt the new bump along the bridge and winced. Tremendous.
Peer glanced to Bray. He could not make out her face well in the dimness, but he thought she smiled in her sleep. A clump of russet hair lay across her face, blowing in and out with each breath. Unconsciously, she wiggled her nose as if it itched. Peer reached over tenderly and plucked the bothersome lock away, tucked it behind her ear.
I’m sorry, he thought, gazing down at her. His throat clenched and his eyes burned. I’m so sorry.
The saliva in his mouth grew watery and the tell-tale pressure beneath his tongue necessitated a graceless scurry to the edge of the clearing, where he emptied his stomach. The acidity stung the lacerations in his mouth. He savored that pain, knowing how well he deserved it.
Almost killed my—
“Do you intend to dose yourself today?” Su-Hwan’s cool voice asked.
He jumped and turned to where she lay, her dark eyes open and countenance neutral.
“Huh?”
She sat up. “I am wondering if yesterday’s events were sufficient to make you desirous of quitting.”
“What do you know about it?” Peer grumbled, letting himself fall back into a sitting position in the dirt, too tired to return to his blankets.
Su-Hwan said nothing for long enough that Peer believed her to have gone back to sleep, so he was surprised when she at last answered, “I lived with a family in Maskju for a year when I was seven. The mother was a laudanum addict. She’d been prescribed it after having a stillborn, to calm her nerves.” Su-Hwan looked younger as she spoke, some traces of her characteristic placidity slipping. “She took too much and nearly drowned her two-year-old son in the bath one day.”
Peer closed his eyes, held them shut. “Did she quit after that?”
“She tried to,” Su-Hwan said. “Ceased taking it cold. Suffered terribly for a few days. Then she cracked, took so much it killed her.” She studied her hands. “Her husband sent me back to the orphanage after that.”
Peer grimaced. He remembered well what it felt like to be passed from family to family, never believing any situation permanent. “I’m sorry.”
“I bring it up only as a caution.”
The pale light of dawn broke through the trees. They would have to wake Bray and be off soon. It would be at least another day of hiking before they reached their destination. A pity they couldn’t have taken a ferry after the incident at the dock. It would have been a lot easier, not to mention quicker.
“Don’t know what to do,” he said, embarrassed to hear his voice tremble. “After…well, I should chuck the stuff. I shouldn’t a taken it in the first place. But I won’t be up for any hiking in this state. Maybe just a little—”
“Don’t you dare,” Bray’s voice unexpectedly cut in, “put one more drop of that poison in your body.”
Peer squeezed his eyes closed again, hoping that if he didn’t see her, she would perhaps not see him. “You’re awake.”
“You don’t puke quietly,” she answered tartly.
“I’m…I’m…” What? Sorry? Pathetic? Still wanting the stuff, even after all this?
“Yarrow, Ko-Jin, and I all went through withdrawal. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Peer. It’s going to be awful, and then it will be over. Okay?”
Peer hung his head. It wasn’t the same. They’d been drugged against their will; he’d done this to himself. “What? We’re going to just camp here until it passes?” He snorted at the thought. They didn’t have enough supplies, nor were they safe. Bray had not killed those Elevated the day before—a mercy that suddenly struck him as very un-Bray—and they would have sent word. More would be coming. And it wasn’t a big island.
“Why not?” Bray asked. “It’s not ideal, but we can manage.”
Peer shook his head, but arrested the movement when it made his skull pound. “I won’t be putting you two in danger. More danger.”
Bray extracted herself from her blanket and came to kneel before him. Her hair stuck out from her head like a ruffled pigeon, and her eyes shone greener for their blazing expression. She placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed with strong fingers. “We’re in danger no matter what we do right now. Things are total crap, Peer. Best we can do is take care of ourselves so we can face what’s coming.” She swallowed. “I love you, Peer.”
He glanced away and gave a short, fake laugh. “Spirits, Bray, when’d you get so soft-hearted?”
“If I’ve learned anything this past month, it’s that the things we love in life can be taken at any
moment. So there is no sense in playing it cool—better to be honest and have no regrets. I love you, Peer.”
A tear darted down his cheek and he brushed it away. “Love you, too.”
Bray gave one definitive nod, as if that decided something. She then helped him stand, and half carried him back to his blanket, where she tucked him in. “Try to sleep some more.”
Much to his own surprise, drowsiness returned. He felt cool fingers running through his hair and a tension somewhere deep within him eased. He slept.
The next days passed as if time were running through a sieve—in painfully slow dribs and drabs. Peer could keep no food in his stomach, he trembled and sweated and panted as if having run a long distance.
After he’d scratched his arm enough to break skin, Bray had wrapped his hands in cloth. He felt bound, trapped, rabid. He wanted free movement of his fingers but couldn’t even form the request, his tongue too heavy for speech.
Sometime in the blackness of the second night, he heard the sound of screams from within the forest—Adearre’s screams. He sounded desperate, pained. Peer struggled to get to his feet. “Adearre!” he bellowed.
Something pushed him to the ground and he tried to buck the weight away. Hands pressed him down. The tears felt cold on his cheeks. “Get off,” he mumbled. “I gotta help him.” He twisted and felt his elbow connect with something, heard a huff.
“No one’s out there, Peer,” a voice insisted. “You’re hallucinating.”
Peer’s heart drummed wildly in his chest. The screams—they weren’t far off. Adearre was close. Peer could save him. Had to save him. “Adearre! Adearre!”
“Adearre isn’t there, Peer,” the voice said, close in his ear. “He can’t be there. He’s already gone.”
Already gone?
The cliff. A gunshot. A long fall.
Peer slumped, the fight draining from his muscles, leaving him trembling and weak. The hand soothed, brushing his burning brow. His head fell into a lap and the person beneath him rocked, hushing softly.
He wept bitter tears as he listened to those frantic cries in the woods—wails in the voice of his dead love. He did not try to move again. Not real. He’s not really here. He’s not in pain anymore.
He listened until the sound faded, dimming as if growing far away, until at last he heard nothing but his own labored breathing. He then slipped back into a troubled sleep.
On the third day he woke, and though still ill and weak, he finally knew himself. “Bray?” he croaked.
She hurried to him. He saw that her eyes were bloodshot, dark shadows marring her moon-pale skin. “How are you? Can I get you anything?”
“Water.”
She disappeared briefly, returning with a water skin. The drink was lukewarm and tasted faintly earthy. His mouth seemed so dry, he imagined the liquid absorbing like raindrops on desert sand. “Thanks.”
He rolled back and stared up at the sky, so blue, above him.
“You seem better today,” Bray said. “The worst is probably past.”
He grunted in agreement—‘the worst’ seeming like a perfect word choice. “Where’s Su-Hwan?”
“She went to get more water. There’s a stream nearby.”
Peer licked his dry lips. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Peer watched as Bray set about preparing lunch—jerky and hard tack, not the tastiest of provisions, but far from uncommon for them. They’d eaten travel food while camped out of doors often enough. Peer never minded.
Bray bent down to unwrap a handkerchief of berries. Behind her, a bush rustled.
Peer’s heart stopped in his chest as the form of a giant cat—no, a tiger—sprung from the brush. The moment it hung in the air above him seemed to last an infinity, immobilized as he was by the absurdity of it. He noticed the long, yellowing teeth—one clearly broken in half—the amber eyes, the way the orange fur was illuminated in the sunlight. Peer rolled, lifted his legs up. The weight of the great beast landed on the soles of his boots, driving him into the ground. Claws scraped his shoulders and he felt the heat of its breath, heard the snap of teeth, as he kicked forward, pushing the tiger away.
The beast let out a rumbling growl as it landed in the glade, its hind paws scraping stripes in the dirt as it maneuvered itself to attack again. Bray made a sound somewhere between a shout and a squawk, pushing herself up from the ground.
Peer felt his belt and found no knife, no weapon close at hand. Panic crystalized his veins—a scream seemed to lodge in his throat, though he uttered no sound. The beast lunged.
Peer tucked his chin down and brought his fists up to his neck, hoping to protect his jugular. The weight of the animal landing on him expelled the air from his lungs. He could do nothing, but his mind shouted out, desperately inarticulate.
The tiger let out a piercing shriek. Peer unscrewed his eyes in time to see Bray pull a knife from the beast and plunge it again. It mewled, a final pathetic note, before slumping down on top of Peer. He stared up at the tar-colored lips and gums, the now lifeless amber eyes. The smell of the beast’s breath made his gut clench, but there was nothing in his body left to expel.
Bray pushed the body off of him. “Are you alright?”
More leaves rustled and Peer tensed, but it was only Su-Hwan returning with water. She gazed at the carcass of the beast with an expression nearly distinct enough to call surprise.
“I thought,” Bray panted, “you said tigers don’t attack people.”
“Most do not,” the girl said, walking around the body of the great cat. “But rarely they acquire a taste for human flesh. Man-stalkers. They will follow a particular human for a long time before attacking. There was one outside Ucho Nod last century that was said to have eaten three hundred and twenty people before being killed.”
Peer wheezed a quiet laugh. Having gone from fearing death in one moment to having a calmly recited history of man-eating tigers the next, had him feeling downright giddy.
“Fabulous,” Bray responded. She pursed her lips and removed her knife from the body. “Bloody cats. Never trusted them.”
Peer laughed aloud at that. It was most likely the adrenaline, but he felt suddenly more alive. Perhaps because he had looked into the eye of death and, rather than embracing it—as some part of him thought that he would—he had cringed.
He did not want to die.
18
Bray scratched at a mosquito bite on her neck and darted wary looks at the greenery around her. Ever since the tiger incident two days prior, she had been ill at ease, convinced that every stirring branch concealed man-eating beasts.
“Do you need to rest?” she asked.
“Naw, not yet,” Peer said.
He was weak, plainly, his face pale. Bray stepped close and pressed a hand to his forehead. When she ascertained the flesh was cool, that the sweat there was from exertion and not fever, they walked on, picking their way north.
Bray’s mind wandered to Yarrow. It felt an age since she’d seen him. He couldn’t come to her, as he didn’t know where she was, and yet she kept hoping that he might inexplicably appear.
“This way,” Su-Hwan said, moving a bough to reveal a winding path. “It should be just ahead.”
Bray breathed a sigh. Almost there. Perhaps, if they were very fortunate, Ellora Asher would offer them a bath and a hot meal.
Her calves ached and the strap of her bag dug into her shoulders, but with the end at last in sight, she picked up her pace. The forest began to thin and the salty smell of the sea grew thicker as they wended up a moderate but increasingly tiresome slope.
By the time they reached the summit, the sunlight had taken on the rosy hues of early evening. Their destination lay directly beneath them—they gazed down at it from the top of a sheer precipice. The school below was comprised of a modest collection of small, thatch-roofed bungalows interconnected by walkways, all built up on wooden stilts. It sat in an inlet, perched above a turquoise lagoon.
“
Looks to be steps up here,” Peer said.
Bray turned as he directed and spied a series of narrow wooden ledges sticking out from the earth like shelf-mushrooms growing up a tree trunk.
Bray eyed the precarious descent with pursed lips, then shrugged with indifference. She was too weary to work up any real fear. Lowering her feet onto the first step—which, disconcertingly, gave slightly beneath her weight—she said, “If I fall to my death, do pass on my love to our friends, won’t you?”
Peer, adjusting the straps to his own pack, snorted. “Try not to fall backwards. You’ll crush the last of our food.”
Bray laughed, lowering herself down to the next step.
They descended gradually, the sun setting at their backs. The steps were worn smooth like driftwood and made for imperfect footholds. The bag on Bray’s back, taken with the dogged pull of gravity, threatened to tip her backwards, but she remained upright by the toes of her boots, the steely grip of her fingertips.
When at last she dropped down to level ground, her boots landing in pebbly sand, it was dusk and a fog had filled the inlet, obscuring her view.
“You know, there are ferries for hire at the port,” a youthful voice said behind her. “People don’t come this way.”
Bray turned to find a small Chaskuan girl of perhaps twelve years staring up at the precipice. It seemed even higher, seeing it from the bottom.
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Bray said.
Peer landed with a thump, his limbs visibly quivering. Bray held out a steadying hand, but he appeared able to keep his feet.
“You two look old,” the girl said. “I don’t think the masters will teach you. Too old.”
A few more shapes emerged from the haze, also children. Students, Bray realized. It hadn’t occurred to her that Ellora would be teaching children, though she supposed most arts must be begun at an early age. More children arrived, announced only by the thumping of their bare feet on the wooden planks of the dock. They whispered to each other in Chaskuan, looking up at Bray and Peer with awe. It would seem trespassers did not typically arrive the way they had—for good reason.
Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) Page 24
