Division of the Marked (The Marked Series) (24 page)

Yarrow leaned his head against the frame of the carriage window, watching the foliage stream past him. The flora here differed from Chasku, not starkly, but just enough to feel foreign. He could hear Peer whistling from the driver’s seat over the thunder of horse hooves.
 

Yarrow had kept his gaze firmly out the window to avoid the awkwardness within the carriage. He and the others had remained in near-silence all morning and afternoon. He could feel Bray and Adearre examining him now and again, sensed the distrust in their eyes. Bray’s feelings were a hard ball of tension in the rear of his mind. He had done his best to ignore her, as he found the alteration in her disposition too dismaying to linger on.
 

Ko-Jin had made a few half-hearted attempts to lighten the mood, each rejected with icy stares. He had since given up and had reclined, his eyes closed and his breathing regular. Yarrow sincerely doubted he was, in truth, napping—the great coward. Still, Yarrow wished he had thought of the ploy himself. They couldn’t, of course,
both
pretend to sleep.

The flying greenery had begun to make Yarrow feel motion sick. He leaned back and his eyes met Adearre’s. The Adourran’s golden stare was unreadable, his mouth downturned; he did not look away upon being discovered, but continued to inspect. There was something eerie and unsettlingly invasive about the man’s look. Yarrow cleared his throat and stood to reach his pack on a storage shelf. He extracted a tome and returned to his seat. He had only just begun his project of cross-referencing, after all. The fact that the book gave his eyes a place to rest without discomfort was an added bonus. Within moments he was immersed.
 

“Is it the Fifth’s words you read?” Adearre asked, his musical voice breaking Yarrow’s concentration.

“It is,” he said and carefully turned a page.
 

“Why do they interest you?” he asked.

Yarrow looked up at that. Bray watched him, waited for his answer. “Why do my interests interest you?” he challenged.
 

A hint of a smile quirked at the man’s mouth. Bray’s eyes narrowed.
 

“I aim to take the measure of you,” Adearre said.

“You wonder if you should distrust me, or merely dislike me,” Yarrow said dryly. “We’ll get on much better if we’re honest with each other.”

Adearre laughed, but it did not cut the sense of enmity. “Then answer my questions honestly and help me form my opinion. Why do you read the Fifth?”

“In general or at this moment?”

“Both.”

Yarrow placed a marker and closed the book, meeting Adearre’s gaze. “In general…it’s hard to explain. There is so much more to it than prophecy—there is science, math, history, astronomy—it’s a massive jig-saw puzzle, and if I could only manage to put all the pieces together, I would know… truth. Every bit I manage to interpret, I’m one step closer.”

“And at this moment?”

“The Fifth frequently enter cycles, patterns. They talk about the same event or fact over and over, giving slightly more or different information each time. I seek further reference to the fire in Greystone, or our shrinking numbers, in hopes of understanding either more fully.”

“Do you have an explanation as to why so many more Chiona have been lost than Cosanta?”

Yarrow shook his head but took a guess. “If they are being targeted, perhaps the culprit has a greater interest in your kind than mine.”

Adearre nodded solemnly.

“Well,” Yarrow asked, smiling with feigned humor, “have I passed your test?”

“No.”

It was not Adearre who spoke, but Bray. Yarrow’s insides froze, as if he’d been plunged into frigid water. He was tempted to ask her to elaborate, but he did not think he could bear to hear whatever negative opinion of him she had formed. The knowledge was crushing enough without further elucidation.

He assumed his most apathetic expression and shrugged at her, as if unconcerned, then opened his book again. He felt her spike of anger, but he did not look up. They continued on for another hour in silence.

Peer pulled them to a halt so they could attend to the necessary. Bray and Adearre climbed out of the carriage immediately. Yarrow took the opportunity to kick Ko-Jin in the ankle. His friend hissed.

“You’re no help at all,” Yarrow said. “It’s been like an inquisition in here.”

Ko-Jin smiled and nodded, suddenly alert. “Better you than me, mate. And to think I once had a crush on that girl! No, I’ll continue to ‘sleep,’ thank you very much.” He closed his eyes again.

Yarrow snorted and hopped down from the carriage, in search of an accommodating bush.

Dusk encroached upon them as they stopped in a clearing at the base of a great hill. Gnats hummed in Bray’s ears as she leaned over her Dalish map. She traced her finger along their route, feeling the rough parchment.
 

“We can keep riding through dark and stay at the inn in Clanton,” she said at last. “Or make camp here.”
 

“Clanton—swore I’d never stay in that dung heap again,” Peer said.

Adearre looked up into the cloudless twilight sky. “The weather is sound.”

“Agreed.” Bray folded the map and returned it to her bag.

The matter settled, Peer, Adearre, and Bray set about the familiar tasks of making camp.

She turned to where Yarrow and Ko-Jin stood. “Collect fire wood.”
 

Bray worried how the Cosanta would respond to her first order. Neither man looked terribly pleased by her tone, but they merely nodded and moved toward the nearest wooded area.

Bray, alone with her two usual companions once again, felt some of the tightness leave her shoulders.

“How were they?” Peer asked, as he fastened the feed bag to the nearest horse.
 

Bray waited for Adearre to answer. She’d been dying to know what he thought of Yarrow’s assertions.
 

“Ko-Jin pretended to sleep most of the day,” Adearre said, his eyes following the backs of the two men. “Yarrow insisted again that he believes marked children are being killed. He is either the best liar I have ever encountered, or he is in earnest.”

The idea of Yarrow Lamhart as an accomplished liar was completely incongruous with her memory of him. She had to remind herself, for the umpteenth time that day, that her memory of him was irrelevant.
 

“I think perhaps,” Adearre said, “we should act as though we trust them.”

Bray nodded slowly. “Yes, it will be easier to find them out if they don’t believe we’re suspicious.”

“Thus far,” Adearre said, “there is nothing to be suspicious of.”

“Except that they’re Cosanta.” Peer looked at Adearre as if he’d gone daft. “Which is more than enough on its own, as far as I’m concerned.”

Bray laughed in agreement and Adearre bit his lip.
 

“You know I like the Cosanta no more than the two of you,” he said. “But that does not make them guilty of a crime.”

Their conversation was perforce ended by the return of the two gentlemen in question. In addition to arms full of timber, Ko-Jin had two fat rabbit carcasses dangling from his belt.
 

“Dinner,” he said, holding them up to her. He looked pleased with himself, but her frown deepened as she took the creatures.

“We have provisions.” She inspected the precise wounds in the beasts. Was his aim to demonstrate his skill with a knife?

“Fresh meat is always better,” he said, taking them back and setting to skin them.

Peer built up the fire, and in no time the night air was full of the crackling of dripping grease and the aroma of charred meat. Bray refused any of the rabbit, and rather chewed on the dried meat they were meant to be eating. Her jaw creaked with the effort.
 

The uncomfortable atmosphere of the day had abated. Ko-Jin recounted to the group at large a humorous story of how he had accidentally offended the warriors of the Adourran flatlands by killing and eating several desert hares—an animal apparently highly prized and honored in that region. Peer and Adearre laughed raucously, along with Yarrow, and Bray glowered at the lot of them.

Peer must have noticed her expression; he came to sit by her and put his arm around her shoulder. He took a bite from a rabbit leg, his lips gleaming with grease in the firelight. “Why so glum?” he asked softly, through a mouthful of meat.

She shoved him. “Not an hour ago they were culpable for being Cosanta. They offer you a little meat, and now you’re all best mates? Bloody men…”

Peer gnawed on the bone and discarded it. “We decided to pretend to trust them, remember?”

Oh, right…
“Does that mean we have to be so chummy?” she grumbled.
 

Ko-Jin stood and climbed to the roof of the carriage, to his trunk. He extracted two swords. Bray’s body stiffened with readiness for an attack, until he came back into the light and it became clear that they were merely wasters.
 

Ko-Jin nudged his seated friend with a foot. “Come on, I need a workout.”
 

He tossed one of the wooden swords in Yarrow’s lap.

“You know full well I don’t pose enough of a challenge to qualify—”
 

“I’ll work with what I’ve got. Up you get.”

Bray watched as Yarrow, with obvious reluctance, followed his friend several paces from the fire. He did not hold the weapon with much confidence, nor wield it with particular skill for a Chisanta. Bray and her companions were all significantly superior swordsmen. Ko-Jin, however, moved with incredible speed and agility, making swordplay look more a dance than a sport. It was mesmerizing to watch. His braid bounced and his robes swooshed, but his face was almost bored as he pushed Yarrow further and further into the clearing, stopping every now and again to give his friend instruction and encouragement.

Bray wanted to join them, longed for a bit of physical exertion to chase away the stresses of the day. She and her companions frequently ended their days by sparring as well.

“Should I get our wasters?” Peer asked, his gaze directed as hers was.

Bray nodded. She and Adearre approached the Cosanta while Peer extracted their own practice weapons from the carriage.

Yarrow noticed them and paused; he wiped sweat from his ruddy face.

“Have you come to join us?” Ko-Jin smiled devilishly. “I’ve never sparred a Chiona before.”

Bray’s fist clenched tight around the smooth bamboo hilt in her hand. He mocked them.

“We should be happy to educate you, then,” she said through clenched teeth.

His eyebrows shot up and his mouth turned up at the corner; he bowed his head to her with sardonic reverence. “How shall we pair up?”

Yarrow made to back away, heading towards the glowing embers of their cook fire. Bray stopped him with an upraised hand. Perhaps it was callous, but she wanted him to know, without reservation, that any one of them could physically subdue him.

“Adearre is wounded. He will sit out.”
 

Adearre made as if to protest, but Bray cut him off. “I’m sure he will be able to offer excellent criticism. He has a good eye,” she said to appease him. And it was true—she hoped Adearre would spot weaknesses. She wanted to find the Cosanta’s soft spots, just in case this tenuous marriage came to blows.

Bray stepped forward to face Ko-Jin, and Peer moved to oppose Yarrow.

She cleared her mind, breathing in the night breeze, perfumed with heather and smoke. Ko-Jin whipped his waster about in several blinding circles, the bamboo slicing the air like the switch of a crop. His features became smooth and emotionless. She decided not to use her gift, no matter how much she’d like to. He didn’t know what she could do yet, and she didn’t want to reveal her advantage over a mere sparring match. No, she would have to meet him equally.
 

They circled each other, weapons held ready. A gust of wind tugged at Ko-Jin’s braid, but his eyes remained locked on her with predatory intensity.
 

And then he struck, lunging with such speed she barely had time to raise her own weapon in defense. She felt his wooden blade tap her side, and though he had moved with dizzying swiftness, the strike itself was gentle. She seethed as he stepped back to start a new round. To best her so immediately, while still holding back enough to soften the blow, suggested both extreme skill and a kind of mocking sportsmanship. She would have preferred the bruise.

They readied again, and she was determined to strike first this time. She lunged and he parried effortlessly. He attacked and she blocked. He twisted and struck her squarely on the backside, though again the blow was soft as a friendly pat.
 

Her face heated with anger and embarrassment. His eyes crinkled in amusement.

They went again. He won.
 

In the fourth round she thought that she had him, but he twisted out of her way and caught her in the shoulder, ever so gently. By this time she was on fire with frustration and humiliation.
Spirits be damned
, she thought.
Forget holding back. I’ll wipe that smug smile off his face.