Marked (13 page)

THE DAY AFTER THE ATTACK, AN EAST WIND CARRIES WHAT'S
left of the poppies, and all morning, they drift—bits of ash and tattered blooms, floating through smoke. Confetti for a hollow victory.

Because that is what they're calling this. A victory. Benroyal's forces were driven back, at the cost of three dozen lives. Already there are scraps of hopeful talk. Surely now, Cyan—a nation of millions—is mobilizing against the enemy. The war, they say, isn't just our own anymore. Now the rebels are part of a larger cause. We will fight to the last, they say. We will win.

But I don't feel like a victor at all. I sit in the grass, in the gray-tasting breeze. Mary is dead because I brought us here. I think of my last race and the day I ran away from
Benroyal. I could've stayed in the Spire, and my family would still be together, a circle of four. Pulled apart by my contract, but in heart still knit tight.

Larken approaches like a spirit conjured up in the smoke. He sits beside me, a small wooden box in his hands. “We're moving as much as we can into the tomb,” he says.

I tilt to look back at the rise, eyes fixed on the top. “Up there?” I say. “In those little vaults? We'd be sitting targets.”

“No,” he says. “Not those tombs.
The
tomb. My ancestor Khed the First is buried under the hill. There's a whole empty warren under there. Strong enough to shelter five hundred. The catacombs are sacred, but Vilette and I convinced the Skal to let us open them.”

“Nothing is sacred anymore,” I say.

I settle back down, resting my chin on my knees.

“You'll be safer there. At least at night,” he adds. “It's cool and dry and made to last.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder, and that almost makes it worse. In a second, he's going to say he's sorry, and how deeply he feels for my loss, and then I'm going to shut down or implode or sob. But Larken doesn't apologize. Instead, he puts the box in my hands. The wood's warm and smooth to the touch. There's a sigil carved into it—his ring of nine thrones—but I don't linger over it.

“My father made it for my mother,” Larken says. “And now I'm lending it to you.”

I pause, staring at Larken, but he gestures me to open it. I do.

Inside, there's a sealed horn wrapped in embroidered cloth. The horn is ornamented with jewels, and there's bright, silky silver in the needlework of the fabric. The sweet aroma of balm leaf and poppy and moss-wood springs from the box. This is an heirloom, beyond priceless. I press it back to him, but he refuses, palms out.

“For Mary,” he says.

I wince. I can't bear to hear her name so soon.

“I don't deserve this. I'm nothing, why would—”

“She was a mother to you?” he asks.

“More than anyone else.”

“The oil inside the horn must not go to waste. It is fresh, of the same kind we used to anoint my own mother. Blessed in the Skal-rung, the palace in Raupang. Vilette brought it in case I was lost in battle and would need to be buried here. But I'm alive, and Mary is not. Take this and anoint her in peace.”

He puts a hand at my shoulder again. This time, I lean in like a caving wall.

He sits with me for a long time.

We choose a spot at the base of the hill, near the lower entrance to Khed's tomb. Half shaded, the soil here that's not yet overturned is thick with carpet vine and wildflower buds. Mary will rest here, in the cool green.

I've pulled us so far away from Castra, and now she'll never return.

Hal and I stand side by side, and I shift Larken's box, tucking my right arm around it. Hal calls out to Bear, who's avoiding the freshly shoveled mounds. “You'll have to help me,” Hal says.

Bear nods, and we make our way back to the medic's tent. It's early; not many are here yet. Exhausted, grieving, asleep under the hill, they're not ready to make their way out of the tomb. But Miyu's awake. She waits for us at the entrance of the tent, a covered pail in her hands. There are others like it—metal buckets, the kind we use in the old mess hall—on the ground.

“Fahra left this,” she says. “The water's for you, and the rest.”

“Water?” I ask.

“He went to the spring,” she says. “You know, the stream that ran by the old armory? Fahra walked all the way to the source. Hauled all those buckets. He wanted there to be water for the bodies, from a blessed well.”

I remember the abbey.
Sibat.
The current of souls.

Silent, Hal accepts Fahra's gift.

Miyu moves to leave, but turns before loping off. “Fahra asked me to tell you: He prays for her, and the others too.
Emam arras amam
.”

I nod, a breath away from choking up. My mind whispers the words.

In this life or the next.

In the tent, I put the box down. Hal and Bear lift Mary's body, moving it onto a clean-sheeted gurney. She's still dressed in the same dirty gear she wore during the attack, but Hal's brought a simple white shift for her, salvaged from the old infirmary. Crudely, another sheet's been draped over a chin-high tent cord, and Hal reaches for it, to pull the makeshift curtain closed. He looks at me, and I understand.

I take Bear's hand, and lead him away so Hal can clean Mary up and dress her alone. Far behind the thin curtain, we sit on the ground, which is as littered and dirty as you'd expect it to be. The bloodiest work—the real evidence of battle—has already been disposed of, heaped into barrels and burned away. But there are still abandoned plasmatic lines here, oxygen masks, and crumpled bits of discarded wrap. Small reminders, in case we forgot. As if we ever could.

We wait as Hal struggles with his task. Every whisper of movement is deliberate and gentle. Finally, the pile of her dirty clothes tumbles to the floor, and the movement stirs the air. The smell of death. But then the sound of rippling water. The rainwater drip-drip-pour in the bucket as Hal soaks up a handful of cloth. A burst of something sterile and antiseptic. My eyes are drawn to the pantomime shapes behind the curtain, but I force myself to look away. Barely breathing, I listen. Finally, there's a hitch of breath, a quiet sob.

At the sound, Bear twitches. The grief burns so plainly in his face. It's all I can do to not reach out to smooth it away. Before I can stop him, he bursts up and out of the tent. I want to follow, but a second later, Hal is finished. He pulls aside the curtain.

He's as wrung out as the cloth resting at the lip of the pail.

He takes a step forward, and at first, I think he's going to fall. But he doesn't. Straightening up, he reaches out and hugs me tight.

And then I'm alone with Mary.

Even in death, Mary's defiant. She's supposed to look peaceful, as if she's at rest. But her mouth's slightly parted, and it's as if any second, she's going to wake up gasping and angry.

Sibat,
Fahra says. Life after life. One rippling current.

And so I try to imagine a more gentle death, her soul cascading, slipping away like water in a stream. But I look at her pearl-gray face and see that's a lie. No, her life was ripped free in a split-second blast. Every part of her—her smile, her hoarse laugh, her sharp-edged scolding, and her selfless grit—is gone. Scattered like so many bits of poppy ash. I open Larken's box and look at the horn, and the tears come hard and hot. What good is royal incense and oil? What good is water and sacred words, when Mary is gone? How can any of it matter, when I've lost my foster mother?

My sob is a keening, broken cry. No. Not Mary.

She is my
always
mother.

And as my eyes drift back to the box, I finally sense the gift in my hands. This oil was offered to me, not because the ritual's holy or it will bring her back or send her off in peace. The anointing's given as a lasting gesture. One final expression of love.

Hands shaking, I open the horn and pour a measure of oil onto the cloth. Gently, I press it against her skin. I anoint her forehead, the one that touched mine when I was small and sick with fever. I anoint her hands, her hands that threaded stitches and burned toast and cupped my cheek. I anoint the sun-spotted softness above her breast, the heart
that took in an orphaned child, the heart that was bigger than two worlds.

I anoint her with Larken's gift and Fahra's water, with all the prayer that is in them. When the horn's empty, I lean down and kiss her temple. I give her what's left, the last of my tears.

We bury her at sunset.

Afterward, I can't bear the thought of spending the night in the tomb. I leave word, then slip back to the makeshift infirmary. It's peaceful here now, just the handful of patients who can't be moved yet and the pair of medics still working this shift. I check in, then claim my own half-curtained spot. Exhausted, I settle near the front, so I can try to fall asleep while watching the stars. But every time I close my eyes, it's not the night I see. I see the flash of battle; I'm caught in the rumble and thunder. Mary and all our fallen—their faces loom. Dead, they whisper to me, but I cannot reach them through the smoke.