Division of the Marked (The Marked Series) (48 page)

“And?” Bray pressed.

“The sphere,” she whispered.
 

Bray looked up at Ko-Jin, and saw the same relief etched in his features. The others were out there, and they had the sphere.
 

Though so were Quade’s children. They would not all be so easily dispatched as these three, nor as careless as to carry a light.

Bray pulled the sword from the girl’s throat and hit her in the head with the hilt, knocking her unconscious.
 

There was nothing for it but to wait and see. And pray to the Spirits above that this girl was wrong—that they were, all of them, still unharmed.
 

Yarrow watched Ko-Jin and Bray disappear through the solid wall.
They’ll be safe
, he hoped.

Adearre and Peer looked to him with tired eyes.
 

“Come,” Yarrow said. He darted down the hallway towards the stairs, his stiff legs half in anguish, half in ecstasy.
 

The sphere lay at the end of the hall, casting the cobwebbed corners in its watery light. As Yarrow jogged up to it, he felt that same sense of loss. Every feeling save his own winked out of his mind.
 

He scooped the ball from the ground without halting and pounded his way up the stairs, praying that he would reach the top before encountering resistance.
 

No such luck. Two large figures appeared in the doorway. Yarrow tucked the sphere protectively against his chest. Peer and Adearre shoved past him. Yarrow watched, in the limited light, as Adearre and Peer each met a foe. He held his breath, knowing how exhausted his companions must be, and smiled widely as the two shadows crumpled to the ground.
 

Peer gestured for Yarrow to follow and they ascended to the top of the stairs. Mercifully, the long hallway remained vacant. As they had planned, Peer hopped through the window rather than running toward the exit. Adearre did likewise. Yarrow tossed the sphere to Adearre, who caught it like a ball in a game, and Yarrow hoisted himself through the opening and landed with a soft thump on the grass. Moments later he heard footsteps in the hall and they pressed themselves flat against the wall to avoid detection.

The breeze stirred Yarrow’s hair; he smelt the fresh air, and felt wonderfully, joyously free. The sun sat poised over the Eastern Sea. The air stirred, charged and thick.
 

Yarrow set his jaw as Adearre handed the sphere back to him. Even drugged and weary, they estimated Peer and Adearre the better fighters. Yarrow would protect the sphere, and, if need be, flee. He hoped it would not come to that. What would Bray think of him if he abandoned her closest friends? What would he think of himself?

Yarrow breathed in deeply through his nose, summoning a sense of resolve. He tucked the sphere into his shirt in an effort to dull the light it produced. It gave his form a strange, glowing protuberance.
 

The three of them crept through the largely deserted compound. Yarrow held his breath as they passed the dining hall. Through the holes in the exterior, they could hear the sounds of many dozens of people conversing and eating. He hoped their meal would last.

He followed the example of the others and pressed himself against the walls of the buildings, keeping low and out of sight. They progressed as slowly as they dared.
 

Abruptly, a voice broke the silence, sounding as though it had spoken directly into Yarrow’s ear. He froze, a jolt of shock running through his body. Adearre nodded his head toward the open window just above them and Yarrow understood—the person speaking was within.
 

Peer motioned them to move past quietly and Yarrow trailed behind him.
 

“After tonight, the sphere shall slumber in the Eastern depths for five hundred years,” the voice through the window said. Yarrow stopped, this time to listen. The voice was certainly female, but it sounded strange, wrong. It was flat and lacking emotion, like a child reading from a book he or she did not understand or care for.
 

“If its heat is less than eighty-six, its pretty wings cannot fly.
Bendrada en talemer anara san.
The Scimitar of Amarra rests in an unmarked grave west of Porramore.
Inirra sosa mesra empericam.
The key to a circle’s diameter is irrational...”

Yarrow felt his jaw go slack, his mouth open.
This was Fifth prophecy
. It had the sound of it, but was utterly unfamiliar.
 

Against all reason and the urgent gesturing of his friends, Yarrow raised his head so that he could peek into the room. He spied two figures, one sitting on a wooden rocking chair facing him and the other hunched on a stool scratching notes in a book. The girl in the chair was perhaps Yarrow’s own age, though it was hard to tell. Her face was like those porcelain dolls sold by street vendors in Chasku—perfectly smooth and serene, as if never once smiling or frowning. She was Dalish, with milk-white skin and dark brown hair. Her eyes shone an alarming shade of green, but vacant and glassy. Her lips, a deep red against her pale face, moved and words came out, but no expression crossed her features, not even a flicker. It was eerie, unnerving.
 

A chill raced down Yarrow’s spine.
This woman was a living Fifth
.
 

There had not been a Fifth in hundreds of years. Yet here she sat—no doubt due to the ministrations of the sphere and the unnatural persuasion of Quade Asher. Yarrow could have smacked himself in the head for his own stupidity—
of course!
The Fifth of the past had always chanted the names and cities of the children who would be marked on the eve of Da Un Marcu. Hadn’t he been reading a passage of such names just before he left the Cape? Arlow had taken the book and read them, proclaiming, “and then it’s just names—utter nonsense!”
 

“Yarrow,” Peer whispered urgently. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

Yarrow remained fixed. This woman was a weapon.
 

“We should take her with us,” Yarrow said. “He can use this information against us.”

Adearre shook his head. “Yarrow, there is no way!”

“You don’t understand. The Fifth are the reason gunpowder was invented. They predict the movements of those living—she can undo us.”

Peer glanced up at the window. “Might be we should take care of—”

Adearre shook his head again, this time with authority. “I will not kill an innocent.”
 

“If we could sneak her away with us…” Yarrow said.

“No,” Adearre said. “We keep to the plan. When we have reinforcements, we will try to get her out.”

Yarrow’s shoulders slumped but he nodded. Peer moved off and, reluctantly, Yarrow followed, leaving the human trove of knowledge behind.

A bell rang not far off. It clanged persistently, furiously. The sound of alarm.
 

They began to run, though still hunched. Yarrow had hoped they’d be gone before the majority of their enemy could begin searching. Of course, the whole plan was a gamble—it rested entirely on a single uncertain hope.
 

Lights began to spring up on the left side of the compound and the noises of people moving, scuffling feet, and voices, grew louder.
 

They crept on, and Yarrow’s heart leapt when he saw the outer wall. Peer thrust Yarrow up over the stony barrier as if he weighed no more than a bale of hay. Yarrow scrambled, one hand on the wall, the other clutching the sphere tucked into his shirt, over the side. His companions joined him in moments.

His breath caught as he saw the orange orb of the sun casting ripples of light on the ever-stretching sea. After a month of darkness, it was the most beautiful thing Yarrow had ever seen. Well,
almost
the most beautiful. Above, however, the clouds had grown dark. The wind smelt of rain.

“It is over here.” Adearre strode confidently along the jagged cliff. They stood on a perch above a high, sheer descent. Below lay the beach not far from their cave.

Yarrow’s hands shook and sweat snaked down his neck. He chanted a kind of mental prayer:
Please let it still be there, please let it still be there
.
 

“Here,” Adearre said.
 

Yarrow breathed a sigh of relief. The rope that Adearre had secured as an escape for Bray so long ago remained, hidden behind a tall clump of dune grass.
 

“Yarrow first,” Peer said.
 

Yarrow nodded. He grabbed hold of the thick, rough rope with unsteady hands and eased himself over the edge, his feet finding purchase on the rocky ledge. As quickly as he could manage, Yarrow walked himself down toward the beach and endeavored not to think of the long fall should he lose his grip. The rope burned his palms, but he ignored the pain. When he was halfway down, light drops of rain began to pepper his face and arms.

 
He felt the sphere start to sink lower, its cool smooth surface rolling against his chest.
It’s going to fall
. Sure enough, the sphere pulled his filthy civilian shirt free from his loose pants and it dropped, landing with a soft thump on the sand below. The feelings of others popped back into Yarrow’s mind as the sphere rolled down the sloping beach toward the sea, still glowing all the while. Yarrow imagined that if such a thing were breakable, it would have been shattered long ago. He continued his descent.
 

Yarrow clutched the rope tighter as he experienced a jolt of alarm from Adearre and Peer. They were afraid.
 

A female voice above him called, “Stop!”

Yarrow allowed himself to slide carelessly down the rest of the way, removing what skin was left to the palms of his hands, and landed hard on the sand. Had it been rocky ground rather than sandy, he likely would have broken his legs.

He scrambled back towards the tide to gain a better vantage of the cliff’s top. Silhouetted against the stormy sky, Yarrow discerned a horrible scene. There were seven people—Peer was on his knees, held down by three figures. He struggled helplessly. Adearre crouched by the rope, a knife in his hand as he sawed at the fibers. An inert form lay beside him—the fool who must have provided Adearre with the knife in the first place. And lastly, Vendra stood, slim, straight, and confident, with a pistol extended in her hand, its barrel trained on Adearre.
 

Yarrow watched, powerless. He felt all of their emotions: Adearre’s focused resolve, Peer’s animal panic, Vendra’s cool determination. She would do it, Yarrow realized as he focused in on her feelings. She was honestly prepared to shoot.
 

“Stop, or I fire,” Vendra said calmly. The rain fell harder, in heavier drops. Yarrow brushed them from his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Adearre!” Peer bellowed, voice cracking. He felt utterly desperate, wild to a degree Yarrow had never experienced.
 

Adearre paused, as if contemplating his options. Yarrow could imagine what ran through his mind. There was no fast way by foot from the cliff to the beach. They would need to find their own rope. It would give Yarrow time to flee, to get the sphere away from these monsters who used it to create an army. Yarrow couldn’t know Adearre’s thoughts, but he sensed the calculation in them, the weighing and measuring. And then the resolve forming again.

Adearre looked down at Yarrow, his face cast in shadow. “Run, my friend.”

Then he sawed at the rope with determination; the last strands separated and the rope fell.

 
A gunshot sounded.

Yarrow saw it through disbelieving eyes. The flash of light, a puff of smoke. Adearre jerked as the bullet pierced his body. The impact thrust him backwards. He fell over the edge of the cliff and, for a moment, hung arched, as if in a graceful backwards dive. Then he landed in a crumple on the sand. Yarrow didn’t need to see the blood, or the twisted broken limbs, or even those vacant golden eyes, to know that his friend was dead. He knew it because of the part of his mind that was Adearre—the part that had felt determined, then pained, and then—for the briefest instant—peaceful, had disappeared entirely. Yarrow sensed the absence, the void in his mind where Adearre had once been, and his throat clenched painfully.

For a moment there was silence, save for the drumming of the rain.

Then Peer shouted, “No! Adearre!” He struggled, his features twisted into inhuman rage.
 

And then Yarrow felt him; felt the grief and loss like a blow to the stomach, like a knife between the ribs. It was as if the most precious thing in the world had been blotted out, as if everything had gone dark and life could hold no meaning, as if…as if Yarrow had just watch Bray die, but in some ways worse, more complicated. How he would feel if Bray died, had Bray been his constant companion for the past decade, had his love for her gone unnoticed and unreturned.
 

Yarrow felt hot trails run down his cheeks and could not say if they were his own, or if Peer’s tears were pouring from his eyes.