Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (31 page)

Bray traced the route with her eyes.
Almost there
. They’d need to hire a ferry, of course, but she suspected she’d meet Quade’s sister by tea time. Just what kind of reception she would receive remained to be seen.

She opened Peer’s pack to tuck the map away—he usually liked to have such things on his person. More to the point, he didn’t trust her to read them properly.
You hold a map upside down
one
time—

“What’re you doin’?” Peer’s voice cut off her reverie.

“Hm?” She stood up straight. “Oh, just putting the map in your bag.”

He crossed the room and yanked his sack from her grasp. “Don’t go rootin’ through m’ things.” He slung the bag over his shoulder and stomped from the room, leaving her to stare after him in bewilderment.
 

After a quick last look around their cabin to ensure all of their limited possessions were packed, she trudged back up the stair, muttering to herself about tetchy traveling companions. Her annoyance gave way to wariness as she mounted the stair and heard the distinct sound of Dalish voices on the deck of the ship, voices that certainly did not belong to Peer or Su-Hwan.
 

Cautiously, she crept up the remaining steps and peeked around the corner. She stifled a groan when she spied the backs of four young men wearing matching blue coats. She scanned their belts for holsters, but they appeared to be unarmed.
 

“—Apologize for the inconvenience, but all incoming ships are to be searched and all occupants to undergo neck inspections, by order of the
pro tem
ruler of Trinitas.”
 

Bray closed her eyes and swallowed. She’d been prepared for Quade to have a presence on the island, but hadn’t anticipated it would be so organized.
 

The captain turned to Su-Hwan for translation. She repeated the Elevated’s words, and he huffed and muttered a string of what sounded like expletives.

“Those who resist will be assumed conspirators and detained for questioning,” a second youth said in a nasal, haughty tone that brought Arlow Bowlerham to mind.
 

Su-Hwan translated this as well, and Spirits bless the girl, she appeared bored by the exchange rather than nervous. The Captain bowed in assent, though he continued to glare at the Elevated with blatant contempt.
 

A tall young man, perhaps three or four years Bray’s junior, produced a handkerchief and bottle of rubbing alcohol. He approached Peer first. “Lower your collar.”
 

Peer, who looked none too steady on his feet, wagged his head from side to side in an infantile refusal.

Great Spirits, Peer, how much did you drink?

Accepting that this was going to come to blows, Bray marched up onto the deck. One of the four observed her, and must have recognized her as one of those ‘rebels’ plastered all over Trinitas, as his pock-marked face lit with excitement. “It’s her. The ghost!”

Bray tossed her bag aside and walked up to the lad, her demeanor relaxed. “The ghost, huh?” She pursed her lips contemplatively. “I think I like that.”
 

He took a swing—a blow that would have sent her reeling if it weren’t so obvious and slow. She ducked, and when his arm was extended and his balance off-center, delivered several swift blows to his solar plexus. He let out a wheeze and thumped down on his butt.

Bray grinned, her heart ticking merrily in her chest. After being cooped up on a ship for so many days, a winnable fight seemed just the tonic for her temper.

A second Elevated—a person whom she had taken for a man from behind, but who turned out to be a rather broad-shouldered woman—darted forward to aid her companion. Bray batted at her unruly hair and squared her shoulders, aligning herself as Yarrow had taught her. Nonsense though it sounded, the Cosanta tenet on ‘rooting’ made a tangible difference in combat.

The woman bared her teeth. Her pale eyes and hair, taken with her moon-white face, gave her visage a curious, blanched aspect, like a vase of fabric flowers left too long in the sun. She did not strike, but rather extended her empty hands before her, as if she cradled a ball. In the space between her palms, a flame sprung from nothingness—grew to a flickering orb of fire that cast warm light across the deck of the ship and illuminated the woman’s ghostly face.
 

Bray sucked in her bottom lip. She, of course, had nothing to fear from a fire gift, but she would feel rather badly if this confrontation lost the captain his vessel. His
wooden
vessel.

She was still contemplating how to minimize this risk, when the fire in the girl’s hands suddenly extinguished with an impotent fizzle. The Elevated’s eyes widened in shock, and she gaped down at her empty hands.
 

Bray’s eyes flicked to Su-Hwan, her mouth quirked with smug satisfaction.
Well done, girl.
Taking advantage of her foe’s growing sense of horror—a feeling Bray well remembered—she shot forward, struck two quick, efficient blows, and watched the girl collapse to the deck of the ship.

With her own adversaries, for the time, dispatched, Bray turned to assess the situation at large. Su-Hwan fought with a certain analytic precision. A Cosanta, clearly, but with a vigor that seemed somehow Chiona in nature. Bray was so captured by this strange blend that, for a moment, she failed to notice Peer’s predicament.
 

He was barely putting up a fight. His arms were only half raised, as if he were not aware of the fists connecting with his face. Several wounds bled red streaks down his already swelling face. He staggered, more unbalanced than Bray had ever seen him. She watched with an increasing sense of alarm as he stumbled like a drunk man, as the back of his legs hit the railing and his body lurched rearwards, and, for an instant that seemed to last a long minute, as his feet swung up from the deck and his weight propelled him over the gunwale. She heard the sharp smack of his body hitting the ocean below.

“Peer!” she called, her chest constricting.
You can’t swim, idiot!

She pounded across the deck, streaked past the Elevated who had sent Peer over the edge—
Su-Hwan could handle him—
and jumped up onto the rail. She shielded her eyes with her hand and examined the choppy, green sea below. No Peer.

With a measured inhale of salty air, Bray launched herself from the ship’s rail, diving in an elegant arc. The harbor water engulfed her with a sensation akin to assault—the sea cold to an incomprehensible degree, making each speck of her flesh feel bruised and bludgeoned, driving all thought from her mind save for a dire desire to be elsewhere. Her soaking skirts tangled about her legs, weighing her down, causing her to somersault in the sea. Panic, the sort that drowns out all sense of logic and purpose, blared in her mind.

Something tugged on her skirts, pulling her deeper with rough, hysterical hands. Spinning downward, she saw Peer, his blue eyes wide and frantic. He yanked on her dress again, attempting to pull himself up at her expense. She kicked at him—
Just grab onto me so I can phase us—
trying to break his grip on her clothing. The need for air began to burn in her lungs. They spun, him rising and her sinking. With the hem of her skirt still in his hand, he pulled the fabric over her face, blinding her. Bray thrashed—desperate, suffocating. When he would not release her, she at last phased.

It was odd, to phase underwater. The pressure of the liquid around her disappeared in an instant, making her ears pop, but the ache in her lungs did not ebb, would not until she breathed again. The sensation of being soaked with frigid water, too, remained. However, with her dress no longer in Peer’s grip and no pull of the current, she was able to rise.
 

When her head was once again above the water she rematerialized and gasped at the air. However, mid-breath, another sharp tug on her foot shot her beneath the surface, and the breath of air turned into a gulp of water. The brine scorched her throat and the horrifying sensation of icy sea water sloshing within her own chest sent her mind into hysterics.
 

She kicked and flailed, but the relentless embrace of the bitter sea carried her only deeper. Her movement began to slow. Black spots blossomed in her vision.
 

So cold. So tired.

Bray was only barely cognizant of the disturbance in the water beside her, of the strong arm that clamped around her waist and pulled her upward.
 

Next she knew, she was sprawled on the dock, shuddering violently and choking up seawater. She pushed sodden hair from her eyes and gazed up at her savior. The old captain grinned down at her with yellowing teeth, deep creases forming fans on either sides of his merry eyes. His Chaskuan garb and long hair were plastered to him wetly, but he seemed unperturbed by the cold. He said something in his own tongue that Bray could not comprehend, laughed heartily, and patted her shoulder with a kind of fatherly affection.
 

“Thank you,” Bray breathed through a chafed throat. She turned to the sound of vomiting and found Peer nearby, on hands and knees, wracked with tremors, expelling the contents of his stomach.
 

Bray slowly became aware that they were far from alone—a crowd of curious bystanders had formed around them.
 

“Must be in league—”

“Doesn’t she look like—”

“—Quite shocking.”

Bray rolled onto her back and wrenched her dress straight to cover her legs.
So much for circumspection.
 

The shadow of a form blocking the sun announced Su-Hwan’s arrival. The girl was dry and apparently undamaged; she had all three of their packs dangling around her arms. “Good. You are both alive.”

Bray laughed and her chest ached in protest. Su-Hwan handed her a shawl from her bag and Bray, with stiff blue fingers, endeavored to wrap the dry wool around her shoulders.
 

“We must move,” Su-Hwan said. She held out a hand.
 

“I’m fine,” Bray said, pushing herself to her knees. “Help Peer.”

The crowd parted for them, though their gazes held distinct hostility. They were not welcomed here and the Elevated were, that much was clear. Bray forced her frozen limbs to move, hoping to escape before this diverse body of strangers worked up a mob mentality.
 

Behind her, Peer walked with the help of Su-Hwan, his long arm draped around her petite shoulder. The tips of his boots grazed the boards of the dock, his eyes still glazed and unfocused.

Bray cast worried glances over her shoulder at him. She was tempted to punch him squarely in the face.
What the Spiritblighter is wrong with you?
You nearly got us both killed!
 

 
But looking at his battered face, his diminished form, she could feel nothing but anxiety. Plainly, something was eating away at her brother, killing him slowly. Her stomach formed a tight knot of fear.
 

I can’t lose another. I can’t.

Ko-Jin pinched the corners of his eyes, an irritated gesture that had become a habit in recent days. His life had begun to feel like a poorly told joke: what do you get when you jam five Cosanta, two Chiona, two deposed monarchs, and a troubled youth into a tiny cottage? Answer: a headache.

“It
should
be clear, even to you delicate Cosanta, that our primary concern be assassination—”

“Don’t call it assassination. That lends the man legitimacy he does not deserve.”

“Just like a Chiona, to see only the most violent, obvious answer.”

“Must we continue to argue semantics?”

“Must you interpret every comment as an argument?”
 

Ko-Jin supposed he should cut them some slack. When he and Yarrow had first mixed with Chiona, there had certainly been tension, but all of this bickering just seemed childish. His patience was thinning.

Someone kicked Ko-Jin’s boot and he jerked.
 

“Well, what do you think?” Roldon asked him.
 

Ko-Jin made himself focus. He drummed his fingers on the kitchen table. “Quade certainly needs to be eliminated, but I’m afraid that might be the easy part. We also need to break the spell he has over people.”

“If he dies, his gift should die with him,” Arric Denton said. His wife, Mella, nodded agreement. “Take Fernie. Quade’s effect faded.”

Fernie’s head shot up upon hearing his own name. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but seemed to change his mind.

“Fernie was completely removed, though,” Ko-Jin said. “He was essentially quarantined, and even then it took several days for his head to clear. Quade’s influence seems to spread indirectly—it’s like a disease passed by word of mouth. Even should Quade be killed, his followers could keep his ideas alive through mere conversation. He could live on indefinitely. He could break the world even from the grave.”
 

The cottage grew uncomfortably quiet at this proclamation, a silence broken only by the howling wind.