Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (5 page)

He looked up and down Broad Street, at the storefronts that had barely changed, a peculiar tightness in his lungs. “Glans Heath.”

Home.

3

Arlow groaned. He raised a hand to his aching head and blinked at the ceiling, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness, wondering how long he’d been unconscious. The sun had nearly set, leaving the throne room in that eerie state of dusky half-light just before nightfall.

He let his face fall to the side and jerked in shock. A corpse lay a mere arm’s span away—a pair of vacant green eyes glared at him, accusatory.

Arlow pushed himself to his knees, an ill feeling in his gullet. The dead and dying surrounded him; they sprawled like broken things, legs and arms cocked at strange angles. He heard the whimpers and moans of the injured, sounds that he felt confident would revisit him later.

He knew enough of his friends to see the mercy—if Ko-Jin had meant to kill, they would all be dead. He was not sure, however, that dying slowly of a festered wound would
feel
much like mercy.
 

Some had perished already, their eternal silence louder than any moan—deafening. Arlow gazed down at his hands. They were white, clean. Odd, for bloody hands to be so clean.

Arlow forced himself to his feet, though his legs felt unsteady. He walked like a man dazed towards the throne, to stare down at his handiwork. The late king lay upon the stair, black eyes half-closed, mouth open in a grimace. The red satin waistcoat, which had so complemented his warm complexion in life, now looked horribly ill-matched to his ashen skin.

Arlow knelt and closed the man’s eyes. “You were not a good king,” he whispered to the body. “Still, I am sorry this is how it had to happen.”

“Is someone the-there?”
 

Arlow glanced up, unsure which of the fallen men had spoken. “Yes?”

A young guard at the base of the steps coughed wetly. “Doctor?”

Arlow hurried to the lad. He looked to be in his mid-teens, not having outgrown the gangling years yet. He had overly large ears and his upper lip sported a pale fuzz, the precursor of a mustache. His fair head was crowned in a ring of blood, looking black against the marble. Arlow suspected he’d fallen from the second story—fallen or been thrown.

“The doctors are coming,” Arlow said, and hoped it was true.
 

The lad shivered, his teeth clattering. Arlow clasped his hand and shuddered at the icy touch.

“My fe-feet,” the boy said. “Are they mo-moving?”
 

Arlow glanced at a set of motionless, well-worn boots. “Yes, they’re positively jigging. You’ll be alright.”

“The king? I—we…” The boy’s eyes bulged and roamed, confusion puckering a rapidly paling brow. He coughed and blood misted the air. “My ma—I need—I’m brea-breadwinner.”
 

Arlow squeezed those cold fingers. “Everything will be just fine.”

“Co-cold.”
 

“Yes, it is a bit drafty in here. Doctor’s coming though, just hold on a little while.”
 

Arlow clenched his eyes shut and begged the Spirits not to take this lad. The fingers grew still and stiff beneath his grip. The coughing ceased.
 

Another roaring silence.
 

Arlow kept his eyes screwed closed for a long while, no longer prayerful, merely wanting to delay the moment of knowing. When at last he did look, he found what he had expected—empty eyes.
 

For several minutes, Arlow merely kneeled there, clinging to the unfortunate boy’s hand, his mind numb. And then that numbness cracked, like a riding crop snapped against a knee.
 

He wept, then. Wept as he never had in all his life; wept the bitter tears of a man not in the habit of feeling regret. He sobbed for this poor lad, for the lad’s mother, wherever she was, and for himself, him and his bloodlessly bloody hands.

The great doors crashed open and a flurry of people entered, torches banishing the shadows. Doctors with medical bags came first, moving with purpose towards the injured. They were followed by a number of Elevated, and—finally—Vendra and Quade.
 

Arlow rubbed his cheeks on his sleeve and sniffed. His breakdown was likely evident on his face, but there was nothing to be done. He squared his shoulders.

Quade’s arrival warmed the room better than a hearthfire. Arlow instinctively leaned towards him, despite the look on the man’s face suggesting he was less than pleased. He strode, arms clasped behind his back, in the direction of the throne.
 

Quade examined the body of the king with an unreadable expression, crouched down and felt for a pulse. He smiled when he found none. “Not a
complete
fiasco, then.”
 

Vendra flinched and bowed her head. Blood gleamed along her hairline, running down the side of her face and obscuring one eye, but Arlow found her timorous posture far more alarming than her injury.
 

“Arlow,” Quade said, at last looking at him. “You are to be congratulated.” Some of the darkness in Arlow’s mind lightened at these words. “Had your wisdom been better heeded, perhaps this could have been done less,” he glanced around at the bodies on the floor, “sloppily.” Again, Vendra winced. “However, the king is dead and his ilk will be dealt with readily enough. I am not so ungrateful a man as to dismiss a qualified victory.”
 

Quade took a seat on the throne itself. He made this seem incidental, as if he merely wished to sit and the throne were the nearest chair. However, something in his countenance exalted as he settled into that seat of power. His long fingers caressed the armrest and his knees parted in a posture of dominance. He seemed born for that throne—his face illuminated in moonlight, strength radiating from every line of his form.

An Elevated girl with white-blonde hair hurried up to her master’s side. “The press are gathering.”
 

The press? Already?

“Thank you, I will come shortly,” Quade answered.

He leaned forward, looking more critically at Arlow, who grew increasingly embarrassed of his swollen eyes and enflamed cheeks.
 

“You’ve had a difficult day, I think,” Quade said kindly. He extended a hand. Arlow mounted the stair and placed his own still-shaking fingers atop Quade’s steady palm. A wave of comfort rushed through him, the kind of warmth that only a true friend can offer. He took a breath, the first that came easily to him since he’d revived.
 

“I have a task for you, Arlow. Something I think you will enjoy.”
 

Arlow raised his head and met the man’s dark gaze. “More assassinations?”

“No.” Quade smiled. “You have proven an invaluable, loyal asset. You have my gratitude, and what’s more, my trust. Which is why I would like you to go to Dalyson on my behalf.”

“Dalyson?” Arlow asked, wondering what he could possibly have to do in such a backwater city.
 

“The Pauper’s King has agreed to meet with an emissary of my choosing. I need you, Arlow, to sway this man to our cause, and to be my eyes and ears if he permits you to remain with him.” Arlow realized his mouth had parted and quickly shut it.
The Pauper’s King himself?
“You can appreciate, I think, what it would mean to have the man as an ally. He has a network across Trinitas that even I am in awe of.” Quade’s eyes shone, hungry.

“Yes, certainly.” The Pauper’s King had long since been a source of fascination for Arlow, and part of him heartened at being given such a task. The rest of him doubted. “But why, may I ask, have you selected me as emissary?” As the son of an aristocrat, he would win little love amongst such people. It seemed a poor choice on Quade’s part.

“Because I fear that one of my Elevated might be swayed by him. You, however, know yourself. You will not be charmed by a highwayman. Besides, I am in need of a little luck in this case.” He winked.

Arlow’s mouth quirked into a slow grin. “Luck, at the very least, I can offer you.”
 

Quade patted the back of Arlow’s hand and stood. “I must address the press now. You will set out in the morning?”

Arlow bowed his head, already planning the trip in his mind.

Quade squeezed his shoulder as he walked past. “Be safe, then, brother.”
 

The incessant thundering of the train resounded in Peer’s head as they blazed through the Dalish flatlands. He watched the landscape flit by beyond the window, his forehead pressed flush against the cool pane. The vibrations seemed to make his teeth shake in their gums, but he didn’t pull away.

“Aches the head, don’t it?” he mumbled.
 

“Yes, love. I imagine it does.”
 

Peer focused a bleary gaze on his friend, whose form flickered, indistinct. His golden eyes were sharp, as was the bright white of his smile, but the rest of his figure could not hold its shape. The steadily growing light of dawn threatened to dispel him like a shadow.

“Carriage travel’s much the better, even if it’s slower.”
 

“You prefer the company of horses, I think.” Adearre’s voice had taken on the tinny note it often did before he faded.
 

“To most folk, not all,” Peer said. When he was a boy, living with the last foster family before his marking, the horses had been the only living things on that farm he could tolerate. There had been one in particular, a chestnut mare called Brown Sugar; she had taken an immediate liking to Peer, an unusual occurrence in his childhood. He’d slip away whenever he could, spending long hours in the barn brushing her coat over and over again. All these years later, he still found comfort in that familiar task, grooming a horse—in the muscle memory of those motions, in that equine musk that he couldn’t quite describe, except to say it smelt like sanctuary. “Never thought I could miss anything more ’an I missed that mare.”
 

Adearre didn’t answer. Peer blinked several times, trying to make his eyes focus. When the train compartment at last resolved before him, his friend had gone. Peer’s lungs burned, and he forced himself to inhale.

He peeled his face from the window and caught his reflection in the glass, was struck by how unrecognizable he’d become. The hair atop his head had grown out in prickly tufts and his haggard face sported an untidy beard.

He turned away from the stranger in the glass, towards the others in the compartment. Su-Hwan, the slight Chaskuan girl who was his frequent companion, sat across from him with her feet tucked up under her, a book in hand.
 

Next to her, slumped like a corpse, sat the Fifth—her green eyes and pale face vacant, her lips moving their constant stream of truths. A scribe sat at her feet, writing down every word.

Peer had long since tuned her out. Quade had likely kept them together in the hopes that he’d translate her Deltish out of sheer boredom.
Not bloody likely.

“It’s after noon,” Peer said, his voice rough with disuse.
 

“That is correct,” Su-Hwan said, not looking up from her volume. He thought her an odd girl, her youthful face as emotionless and smooth as a porcelain doll.
 

“Well, ain’t it time for my drugging?” Peer asked. He heard the longing in his voice and cursed himself. He couldn’t let on that he needed the stuff, that the thought of sobriety scared him more than any other torture they might devise—infinitely more terrifying than the restful embrace of death.

She surveyed him, her expression its usual placid indifference. “Quade has determined to cease your dosage.” She turned a page in her text. “Until you agree to cooperate.”

Peer’s fingers moved to his inner elbow. “He ain’t worried I’ll be getting a new gift?”

Another careful turn of a page. “He is not.”

Peer licked his lips and tried to force the panic from his voice. “And why’s that, then?”

Su-Hwan pierced him with her dark, cold eyes. “I informed him that your grief alone would be more than sufficient to impede you.”

Peer looked to his feet, hoping to mask his desperation. In the steadily approaching distance, the city of Accord stood grim as tombstones beyond the marshes.
 

The compartment door slid open, admitting an Elevated Peer didn’t know. He appeared to be a good five years Peer’s junior, a dark-complected Adourran with shrewd eyes.
 

“Quade sent me. He wants you and Whythe to stay with this one,” he jerked his head towards Peer, “on the train.”

“Very well,” Su-Hwan said in her even tone. “Thank you, Kelarre.”

The Adourran smirked. “Not disappointed to miss the victor’s procession? Of course not—disappointment’s an emotion. You don’t feel those, do you?”

Peer sat straighter, his brow creased.
Victor’s procession?
 

Su-Hwan lifted her chin. “I am pleased to do as Quade bids.”

“Hold on,” Peer said. “What’s it Quade thinks he’s accomplished? I never heard of no parade for kidnappers and murderers.”

Kelarre wheeled his keen gaze and smug look on Peer. “What? Conquering Trinitas without killing a single—”