Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (35 page)

Just before parting, Ellora beckoned Bray closer to speak confidentially. “Has he killed a lot of people? My brother?”

Bray gazed sympathetically into the woman’s eyes—blue and kind and utterly unlike Quade’s. “Yes. He has.”

She shook her head. “Once, when we were little, we were standing on the highest cliff over the North Sea, and I thought to myself: ‘I should push him. I should just push him.’” She bowed her head. “But I couldn’t. He was my brother and I didn’t have it in me.” She heaved a sigh and glanced out towards the beach. “Suppose all those people he killed, their blood is on my hands too. Because I couldn’t kill my baby brother, even though he was a monster.”
 

“If you, just a little girl, could have done such a thing, you’d have been a monster too.” Bray placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and squeezed. “Goodnight.”
 

“Goodnight,” Ellora echoed. She wandered back towards her own bed. Bray leaned against the doorway and watched her depart, watched her sluggish, meandering gait.
Haunted
, Bray thought. Etched in every expression, every movement, was the ghost of Quade Asher and the pains he’d inflicted.

Bray’s own ghosts seemed weak, pitiful things by comparison.

Peer followed the stony slope, knowing he moved in the right direction from the sulfuric tang tickling at his nose. The air turned hot and misty as he rounded a corner. He found himself within a cove freckled with dark pools; steam wafted lazily, like pots of water nearly hot enough to simmer.

He dropped the bag Ellora had provided him—fresh clothes and toiletries—and stripped. His filthy clothes formed a tattered heap, and he breathed easier as warmth kissed his bare skin. The pool proved shallow, the water only just above his knees as he waded in. He sank, submerging himself, in hopes that the hot water might leech some of the soreness from his muscles.
 

Peer caught sight of his own reflection in the still water. A stranger stared back at him, this man even more unrecognizable than the one he’d bonded with in the train window, not so long ago.

Ribs protruded sharply from a cadaverous torso. His shoulder bones seemed to jut strangely from a concave chest, like a diagram of the joints beneath. His cheeks and eyes were sunken; his once-straight nose now boasted a noticeable kink. The straggly beard that concealed his mouth and jaw had grown well beyond his chin.

He made a sound of disgust deep in his throat and slapped the surface, dispersing the image. He positioned himself so he could lean back against a boulder, his knees and face alone poking up from the dark water. The heat grew almost uncomfortable, beads of perspiration blossomed on his brow, but he did not move. He imagined the last of the poison in his system being scorched away, that the water had restoring properties, that when he unscrewed his eyes again his own face would be reflected in the surface, that the haunted, scarred shell he’d just glimpsed would be no more. He could stand it, the heat.
 

Peer snorted in sudden laughter as his mind shifted to Adearre who, despite being from the positively blistering Adourra, could never tolerate Dalish summers without constant complaint.
“That is a dry heat,”
he’d insist
,
when Peer pointed out the irony.
“It is an entirely different thing.”

Peer waited for the suffocating, searing pain of grief to strike, but it did not come. Instead there were only twin aches in his throat and chest, neither sharp enough to drive the smile from his lips.
 

He sloshed back out of the pool and sorted through the bag of toiletries. His fingers found the leather case that Redge had lent him—a shaving kit.
 

Leaning over the black, still surface of the water, he set to work: trimming the long hair away, applying the cream, and then, cautiously, pulling the straight blade in stripes down his cheeks. After he washed himself clean he found the visage in the pool more recognizable. Not quite his old self, but closer.
 

Unsure how much time had passed and worried he’d tarried too long, Peer tugged his borrowed clothing on. It was all loose-fitting, but blissfully clean and stench-free. Once he’d laced up his boots and gathered his things, he left the cove, striding towards the beach. The air felt cool after the warmth of the springs, the sea breeze caressing his bare cheeks.
 

Bray and Su-Hwan, who had risen and bathed before him that morning, waited near the ocean. Su-Hwan, seated in the sand, bent over a book and clutched a steaming mug. Bray stood with her feet in the ocean, her dress hiked up to her knees, staring out at the horizon. Peer kicked off his boots, rolled up his trousers, and walked down to join her.

She smiled when he approached. “Thank the Spirits,” she said, turning to him. Her copper hair shone brightly with sunlight. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but that chin-nest of yours was getting out of hand.”

He laughed. “You’d’ve said something pretty soon, I’m betting.”

“Probably true.” She looped her arm in his as a wave lapped up around their ankles, the water bitingly cold. She peeked down at their feet. “Think you could still outrun it?”

“Outrun what?”

“The waves.”
 

Peer bit back a grin, his heart oddly light. “Haven’t tried that in
years
.” A bell sounded behind them, from the school. Peer turned to the sound. “Class change?”

Bray shook her head, her smile slipping. “Lunch. Ellora said she would be ready to speak to us over lunch.”

Peer’s spirit sank a bit. Though they had traveled all this way to learn Quade’s history, he felt suddenly reluctant to know more. It seemed somehow intimate, to hear about Quade’s childhood, and he was not eager for any greater amount of intimacy with that man.

Still, he followed Bray and Su-Hwan up from the beach, along the walkway that led to Ellora and Redge’s living quarters. Braced for what was bound to be an unpleasant afternoon, Peer was caught off guard by the sound of childish giggling that greeted them.

Redge had a red-headed boy by the knees, carrying him upside down, swinging the lad back and forth like a pendulum. The boy squealed in delight, letting his arms dangle like a rag doll. Behind them, Ellora readied the table for lunch, humming softly to herself as she distributed plates. Peer smiled, but a small part of him felt as he always did upon confronting domestic joy—like the young boy he’d once been, on the streets of New Brans, spying through windows at happy families with their meals and laughter and warm beds with goodnight kisses. An onlooker only.

Redge perched his son on his shoulders, legs dangling on either side of his neck. “Say hello to your Aunt Bray, Tenny.”

Tenny grinned down at them but remained mute. Peer looked between Bray and the lad and was struck by the similarity. Odd, that this boy should share blood with both Bray and Quade. The existence of the latter, fortunately, was not evident.

“Please, take a seat,” Ellora said. “My husband will look after the children while we talk.”
 

Redge kissed his wife on the cheek, squeezed her shoulder and withdrew, with his son clutching at clumps of his hair as if he meant to steer.
 

Lunch was a simple, quiet affair. Peer shoveled rice in his mouth and, though it seemed to stick in his throat, forced himself to chew and swallow again and again, knowing he needed to regain body mass if he was to be of any use.
 

By the time they were nearly finished eating, Ellora’s hands trembled. She kept her eyes clamped down on her bowl. When there was no more food to eat, and so no reason to prolong the inevitable, she stood and offered to take their plates. Her hands quaked so violently, however, that Peer took over the task for her, collecting the dishes and bearing them back to the kitchenette.
 

When he returned, her hands were hidden beneath the table and her expression was one of summoned strength.
 

“I am ready if you are,” Ellora said, at last raising her blue gaze. “Though this will be…difficult for me. I do not usually speak of him.”
 

Bray arranged a notepad and poised a pen, ever the note-taker. “We understand. Take as much time as you need.”
 

Ellora licked dry lips and inhaled through her nose. “I was three and a half when he was born,” she began in a strong voice. “His…abnormality was obvious right away, though no one said a thing about it. He was a disconcerting baby; there was something about his eyes and his gaze that just didn’t feel right, made the hairs on your arms stand up. He reminded me of my neighbor’s cat. It would stare at you with those unflinching eyes, like it longed to eat you if only you weren’t so big. Quade was like that—he would stare, not like a baby, but like a predator. And he almost never cried, at least not the way babies should. When he wanted something, food or changing, he’d make this shrill sound but his face wouldn’t screw up with tears. He scared me even then, but I felt like a bad sister to think so.

“It only became more obvious the older he grew, that there was something
wrong
with him. I knew it and I knew my parents did too, though they said nothing. He was smart—learned to read before I did. He’d know things a little boy just shouldn’t know. And animal carcasses started showing up in our yard—frogs with missing legs, rabbits with all their organs neatly removed. He made people uncomfortable, always did. Even strangers could sense right off that there was something wrong with him, some coldness and cruelness that went right to the core of him.

“When he was seven or so, he created a gang with all of the neighborhood boys. None of them wanted to, of course, but there was no resisting his wishes. They were afraid, even the older boys, so they did what he said. Crimes popped up all over: thefts, vandalisms, the Crookson’s dog. I don’t think Quade did any of it himself. He liked having others do his bidding. Enjoyed the power of it.
 

“Not too long after that, this traveling archeological exhibit came through Leeson. The head historian gave this great speech about how knowing the past can help you shape the future, about how the greatness of a man can be measured by how many people remember him after he’s gone. We were all entertained—there were neat trinkets from around the world, mock-digs, you know, sand that kids can sift through to find buried treasure—but Quade was rapt. Afterwards he was obsessed; he read every book in the town’s circulating library on history and archeology, especially anything having to do with that crazed Adourran dictator...” She glanced up, as if trying to recall his name.

“Alfenze Guenez,” Bray offered.
 

Ellora wagged her index finger. “Yes, that was it. Anyways, he started forcing his gang to conduct ‘digs’ all around Leeson. Any of his underlings who didn’t pull his weight was beaten. When he was thirteen,” Ellora licked her lips again, “he declared one day at dinner that he had a girlfriend. Poppy Cleaver. She was the younger sister of one of his cronies, two years younger. I saw them together after that. He would always be dragging her around by her wrist and she was always crying. He’d make her sit next to him on the stoop outside our house and he’d pet her hair and make her tell him that he was handsome, that she loved him. After a few months, though, Poppy disappeared. We all knew; we knew for certain when her body washed up. They said she was mutilated, all her fingers cut off. One of Quade’s cronies confessed, but didn’t implicate my brother.
 

“That was the last straw for my da. I heard him arguing with my mother about it, heard him say he was going to go find his son and take him to the constable’s office. I heard the door shut when he left, and that was it. I never saw my da again. He never came home; his body was never found. Quade killed him, I knew it and so did my mother, but neither of us went to the constable. I was a coward, I guess, but I didn’t want to be the next mutilated body discovered, and he always had a weird…fixation on me. Sometimes I’d wake, and he’d be standing at my bedside, staring down at me, stroking my hair. Though, most of the time I couldn’t sleep, so I just pretended, tried to keep my eyes closed and my breathing even so he wouldn’t suspect.

 
“Ma was never the same after da was killed. She went a bit wrong in the head, convinced herself that Quade was a sweet boy and that I was just being ‘sullen.’ Quade liked that, really fed off her addle-minded affection.

“That
Da Un Marcu
when he was marked was the finest day of my young life. I should have been scared, that a boy like him would receive some special ability, would learn to fight. But that he was leaving was all I thought of, that we would finally be rid of him. The day he left, I must have gone a little insane, thinking I would never see him again—or hoping. I did the stupidest and bravest thing of my young life. Before he got on the carriage, I pulled him aside as if to wish him well. When I hugged him, I whispered in his ear all the things I’d always wished I could say.

“I wanted to hurt him, even just a little, for all the hurts he’d dealt me and others. I used to think about it, late at night, staring at my bedroom ceiling, what
exactly
I would say to hurt him. I knew that saying I hated him or feared him would cause no pain, on the contrary he would have been pleased. No, if I hoped to hurt him I knew I needed to attack the one thing that mattered to him: his own sense of worth. So I whispered right into his ear the speech I’d practiced over and over again, protected by the crowd surrounding us. ‘Since the day you were born,’ I said, ‘I have pitied you. From your first breath, you have been a pathetic creature, incapable even of earning the love of its own family. You say you wish to be remembered? The truth is,
dear
brother, only those who can inspire devotion are ever truly admired or loathed enough for historians. No person could hold a cold thing like you in esteem. Your death will be as trivial as a beetle beneath a boot.’