Division of the Marked (The Marked Series) (50 page)

The horse crested the hill and Bray saw it was Yarrow—Yarrow alone. He sat slumped in a way that worried her, his face, even in the limited light, looked gray and slack. He dismounted and collapsed on the ground beside her—and then she saw the blood, thick and dark on his shirt.

“Yarrow!” she called, running to him.
 

“Bray,” he said with a weak smile.
 

Ko-Jin appeared at their side, looking again as he had in their prison, shrunken and twisted. He seemed to hardly notice in his concern for Yarrow.
 

“Peer and Adearre?” Ko-Jin asked, as if afraid of the answer. Bray tensed, waiting for the blow that seemed sure to come.

“Peer was alive last I saw him, but captured,” Yarrow whispered. He looked pained, pained beyond his wounds.
 

Bray understood.
Peer
was alive…and Adearre was not.
 

Adearre was dead.
 

She felt hollow, stunned. It seemed an impossible thing; Adearre was so full of life. She had just seen him earlier that very day. How could he be gone?

No tears came to her eyes, but she fell back, landing on her bottom. A dry sob broke from her chest. It was too much, far too much, to take in.
Adearre
…

“We have to get rid of it,” Yarrow said.
 

Ko-Jin gazed out over the hill, toward the approaching enemy. “We can’t outrun them—not all the way across Daland.”

“No,” Yarrow agreed, and he struggled to get to his feet. Bray helped him. Oh Spirits, how colorless his face was.
 

“There was a fishing village not far off, remember?” he said.
 

Bray and Ko-Jin nodded.
 

“A ship,” Ko-Jin said in agreement. “Most of the fishermen will be departing around now anyway. They won’t know which vessel we’re on.”
 

Bray helped Yarrow mount one of the saddled horses, and climbed up behind him. She worried that he would pass out and fall from the saddle without her.
 

She watched Ko-Jin hobble on his twisted foot until he passed beyond range of the sphere. It was an amazing thing, to see a person transform that way. To be, in one moment, small and deformed, and in the next tall and strong.
 

“Stay back a bit,” Ko-Jin said. “It will be hard for me to ride with that thing near.”

Bray nodded and watched Ko-Jin swing onto his saddle. He trotted towards the coast. She waited a moment then kicked her heels and her own steed—a well-trained one, it would seem—sprung into motion.
 

Yarrow’s flesh felt cold to her. He seemed to be drifting off to sleep. She stirred him. “Yarrow!”
 

“Hm?” he asked blearily.
 

“You need to stay awake,” she said. She wasn’t sure, medically, if this was true or not. But if he was awake and talking then he wasn’t dead.

“You better entertain me, then,” he said softly.

“Alright,” she said and racked her withered mind for ideas. “Let’s play the question game.”

“It’s not really a game,” he said, a smile in his voice. She forced a laugh, though it sounded weak and strangled.

“You first,” she said.

The horse pounded and Bray saw the horizon to the west lighten. Dawn.
 

Yarrow did not speak and Bray felt a spasm of panic. “Alright, I’ll go first. What was your mother’s maiden name?”
 

He shifted slightly—still awake, at least. “Trevor,” he breathed.
 

“Good. Your turn. Ask me a question,” Bray said desperately.

A moment of quiet—nothing but the wind and the pelting of the rain.
 

“Did you pay for the wine?” he asked.

“What?”
 

“At the Gallan Inn, did you really pay for the wine?”

Her mind darted back to that night—how young they had been. How happy. Spirits, how she had liked him.

Bray cleared her throat. “No, I nicked it.”

He let out a shallow, pained chuckle. “I knew it.”
 

The fishing village came into view and Bray urged the horse forward. The sun had risen in earnest, casting a weak yellow light across the landscape.
 

“Yarrow,” Bray demanded. “I asked you what the name of your shop was?”

“Hm?”

“What was the name of your family’s shop?”

“We just called it the General Store,” Yarrow said at last. Bray let out a sigh of relief.
 

She slowed as she entered the village, though it was hardly large enough to be called such. Ko-Jin still led. She was careful to keep back far enough that he would not be touched by the sphere’s effect.
 

When they came to the line of boathouses Ko-Jin dismounted. “I’ll find us a boat.”

Bray agreed. She didn’t want to leave Yarrow. Ko-Jin jogged down to the dock and Bray dismounted, then helped Yarrow down from the horse as well. He collapsed his full weight into her and she only barely kept her feet. She placed his arm around her neck, and held him by the waist.
 

“It won’t be far,” she promised. Yarrow nodded, and his feet began to move. Bray saw this with relief, as she was not strong enough to carry him.
 

She took the sphere from Yarrow and clutched it in her other arm. Then they trudged, slowly, towards the sea.
 

The wooden planks of the dock creaked beneath their weight and the salt stung her nose. Gulls cawed and circled above the heads of the many fishermen, moving about purposefully. The diurnal minutiae struck her as strange. Didn’t they know what had happened, what had been lost? Couldn’t they sense it?
 

Ko-Jin appeared a ways down the dock and gestured for Bray to come quickly. “I’ve found us a ride.”

Bray approached, and as she did so Ko-Jin was again transformed. She looked up dubiously at the boat he had hired. It appeared smaller than many of the others and looked a bit rundown to her untrained eyes. She raised a questioning brow at Ko-Jin.

“It’s a sound vessel,” he said. “Fastest one here.”
 

Bray nodded and she helped Yarrow step up onto the ramp. It was narrower than made her comfortable—perfect for one man, but tight for two people walking abreast. The harbor waters sloshed against the hull below her. Ko-Jin hobbled behind, his ill-formed foot scraping against the wood.
 

As Bray stepped onto the deck of the boat she was greeted by a cheery, bearded man with a large pink nose and watery eyes. “Master and Mistress Chisanta.” He bowed his head to her. His eyes moved to Yarrow. “Spirits!” His gaze lingered on the blood. “This man needs medical attention—there are doctors a plenty up at Easterly Point!”

“I thank you,” Bray said, her breath labored. “But this is, I’m afraid, an emergency. We need to be at sea.”

The man shrugged but still eyed Yarrow with concern. “As you say, miss. Molla!” he shouted over his shoulder. A thin woman with greying hair appeared by his side.

“My wife,” he introduced her. “Could you do something for this lad? I’d hate to have him die on my deck, here.”

Molla raised an eyebrow, clearly wondering, like her husband, why they did not seek a doctor’s care. “I’ll do what I can,” she said and gestured for Bray to follow her below deck. Bray managed, with trouble, to aid Yarrow down the stair and into the hull of the boat.
 

“You and your husband work this vessel on your own?” Bray asked as she helped Yarrow lay on a pallet. She felt the vessel sway beneath her and heard the sounds of footfalls above her as the fisherman moved about.

“Aye,” the woman answered, as she carefully ripped away Yarrow’s shirt to inspect the wound. She drew in a breath and Bray’s mouth fell open. The cut was just below his navel, about a handspan wide. The metallic odor of his blood assaulted her nose. It looked horrible. She felt her throat clench with panic.
He could die
, she thought.
A wound like that could surely kill him
. Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought—weariness overcame her.

“Now, now,” Molla said sternly. “Tears won’t help the lad. Get me some clean linen from over there.” She gestured to a cabinet at the far corner of the cabin.
 

Bray aided the fisherman’s wife as best she could as the woman cleaned the wound then extracted a common sewing needle and thread. She sanitized the needle over the fire, then began to stitch Yarrow back together.
 

Bray had never seen anyone receive sutures before. It looked just the same as sewing up a ripped seam in a pair of trousers. She felt an insane desire to laugh and repressed it. Yarrow forced his eyes closed, gritted his teeth. His face, once pale, had turned ashen.

The woman completed the stitches and moved away to wash her hands.

Yarrow’s eyes opened—they found hers. She took his hand. “It will be alright,” she said softly.

He rocked his head back and forth on the pallet. “No. It can’t be alright.”
 

Molla returned and looked down at them with shrewd eyes. She crossed her arms before her chest. “How are you possibly still awake?”
 

“The drugs are still in my system,” Yarrow murmured. For a moment Bray didn’t understand him. The drugs had made her want to do nothing but sleep. And then she recalled; the Cosanta had been given stimulants to keep them from entering the
Aeght a Seve
.
 

“It will fade soon,” she said.

He nodded. She leaned down and kissed him gently. His lips burned against hers.

“Bray?” Ko-Jin’s voice called from the deck.

She pulled away with reluctance. “Yes?”

“We’ve got a problem.”

Yarrow watched from his cot as Bray and the fisherman’s wife hurried up the stairs.

He could only feel minutely concerned by whatever trouble Ko-Jin had discovered. He hadn’t much room for anything besides weariness and pain. The ship rocked him back and forth, like a babe in a cradle. It should be enough to ease him into sleep—glorious, glorious oblivion. But it was not. Instead, it made him want to heave up the meager contents of his stomach. Even his eyes didn’t want to close. They felt strange and itchy when he did shut them, so they remained open, staring at the grain in the wood.

The voices of those above drifted down to him.

“What in the name of the Spirits is that?” Bray asked. Yarrow distantly registered the note of fear in her voice.

“A cruiser, looks like twenty guns. It could blow us out of the water as easy as sneezing,” a gruff voice answered.
 

“Can it catch us?” Ko-Jin asked.

“Yes—easily,” the man said.
 

“Where in the name of the Spiritblighter did they get a warship?” Bray asked.

Yarrow’s mind perked at this.
Quade had a warship?
How unlikely. There were so few of them in existence anymore.
 

“I don’t think they know which boat we’re on, and we were lucky to have departed simultaneously with all the rest,” Ko-Jin said.
 

“They will demand to search the vessels, most likely,” Bray agreed.
 

“Who?” asked the fisherman. “What is this?”

“I’m very sorry to have brought this upon you,” Ko-Jin said. “We will surrender so you and your wife are not harmed. But not yet—we must reach the deeper sea first.”
 

Yarrow’s pulse quickened. S
urrender?
They, after all of this, would go back to that cell, with the Chisanta, the true Chisanta, still utterly in the dark as to what had happened? It could not be. Yarrow would not allow it. He would give anything, anything at all, to deliver them safely from this place.
 

The soft blue glow of the sphere caught Yarrow’s eye. Bray had left it on a seat across the cabin. His mind, though fuzzy and sapped, resolved.

With a pained effort, Yarrow sat up. The stitches pulled at the seam in his belly and he drew in a sharp breath. His feet found the plank floor, and he stood—or attempted to stand. Rather, he fell and caught himself on the side of the cabin, then pulled himself over to the sphere. His fingers clasped the thing, felt its cool smooth surface, as he collapsed into the seat.