Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (34 page)

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.

Su-Hwan joined them, landing with considerably more grace than Peer. She wiped sweat from her brow and looked around, her dark eyes uncharacteristically weary, and focused on the little girl who had first spoken. She asked a question in her own tongue and all of the children began to answer simultaneously, speaking on top of each other. Bray only understood a single word in the jumble of Chaskuan, spoken with an accent but intelligible to her Dalish ear all the same: “Elevated.”
 

“They came looking for us and have already gone,” Su-Hwan translated. “Several days ago. Our delay in the forest must have confused them.”

Bray’s shoulder muscles eased. “That’s a relief.”

“These children say that their masters do not like outsiders to come here. They do not think we will be welcomed.” Despite this statement, the children seemed more fascinated by their appearance than afraid. Hopefully their teachers would feel the same way.

Peer jerked his pack up higher on his back. “Only one way to find out.” He began to stride up the dock, and Bray and Su-Hwan made to follow.

Fireflies buzzed in the air, their light transformed by the fog into something ethereal. Surrounded by a drove of children, they marched up the walkway, towards the hazy light in the distance that must be the main building. A little hand snaked into Bray’s grasp. She glanced down, surprised, to find a little boy grinning a gap-toothed smile up at her. He could not be more than seven, she thought, and unlike the other young ones, he was Dalish, with a mop of curly red hair and a scattering a fat freckles. She returned his smile, squeezed his fingers, and continued on walking hand-in-hand.
 

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.