Markless, p.1
Markless, page 1
This is an Arthur A. Levine book
Published by Levine Querido
Levine Querido
www.levinequerido.com • info@levinequerido.com
Levine Querido is distributed by Chronicle Books
Text copyright © 2024 by CG Malburi
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023938686
ISBN 978-1-64614-377-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64614-399-3 (Reflowable EPUB)
The text type was set in Legitima.
for swen
long live all the magic we made
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Acknowledgements
Some Notes on This Book’s Production
Ruti saw her first soulbinding when she was six. She was stealing a few coins from the coat pockets of Ayra, whose blacksmith shop sat in the slums of Somanchi. Ayra was prone to little cruelties toward the Markless—a kick or a shove here and there—and he deserved to lose a few pennies so that Ruti and Kita could eat that night. Ruti slipped into Ayra’s shop and crept over to the table where he’d laid his roughspun brown coat, made from the cheap fibers of the slums.
A wealthy woman stood in the shop, fine azure cloak held to her round midsection as though she was afraid of touching anything. Her daughter tucked in beside her, huddled into her own smooth cloak and peering around at the clanking-loud, dusty shop. The woman peered at Ayra’s intricately wrought metalwork, then began to haggle.
Then Ayra’s dusty-faced apprentice tumbled into the room. Not a true apprentice—he hadn’t been bonded, then, and he had no skill over metal. Instead, fire followed him from room to room, little bursts of flame whenever he was angry, such as when he kicked Markless away from Ayra’s hot stoves in winter. The woman and the girl eyed him with suspicion and lifted their hands in greeting.
Ruti saw the marks on each of their palms—the completed circle on the woman’s, an etched pattern made half majimm and half endhi—and the unfinished circle of majimm on the girl’s hand. She allowed herself a moment of envy, a weakness no Markless will ever admit, and she watched from the shadows as the apprentice pressed his own palm with its ashto half circle to the woman’s and then the girl’s.
When his palm touched the girl’s, a glow erupted between them, emanating from their hands and joining them, and Ruti felt as much as saw the way that the girl’s eyes lit up in quiet ecstasy. Her mother looked on in horror. An apprentice in the slums was no match for a noblewoman, but when their hands separated, they’d each had a full circle on their right palms.
The apprentice left the slums soon after. Majimm and ashto combined means mind, a formidable power but one with no use in a blacksmith’s shop, and he had a rich soulbond now, anyway. Ayra had replaced him with another fire-prone apprentice with ashto in the half circle in his palm, and they’d moved soon after to a bigger shop far from the slums.
Ruti had never left the slums. She’d brought back the food for Kita, but he’d still been so sick that he couldn’t move. She rubbed the underside of his jaw until he opened his mouth to eat, spooning in mashed corn while he shivered helplessly, skin the pale grey of old snow. In the morning, she felt the cold block of him curled up against her, the breath gone from his body. She was alone again.
*
There had been others in the twelve years after Kita, more Markless who found her and stayed with her for a time. At first, it was only because Ruti was quick and resourceful, skilled at finding food where others could not. Later, they came to her for her more unique abilities.
“I want a paint,” a Markless boy tells her today. He’s young, maybe only nine or ten, and he looks around furtively in Ruti’s tiny shop. There isn’t much to see, only shelves with unmarked jars and dusty books. Ruti keeps anything that matters in the back room where she sleeps. “I know you gave Eidan one. I need one, too.”
“Eidan is twice your age,” Ruti reminds the boy. “I don’t give paints to little ones.”
The boy raises his pointed chin. “I’m not afraid. I can take the pain.” He pulls down his tunic past his necklace, showing her a scrawny copper chest covered in scarring. “A Bonded guard with lightning once found me in the Royal Square,” he says, not without some pride in his voice. “But I survived.”
But I survived, the rallying cry of the Markless. It’s dangerous to be a Markless in Somanchi, and even more so in the Inner Circle. In the slums, there are few who can afford to do more than harass the Markless. Being Markless in the Inner Circle is a death warrant.
Ruti narrows her eyes at the boy, seeing what he isn’t telling her. “And why were you in the Royal Square?”
The boy’s jaw clenches. “I was just … I was looking,” he says finally, defiantly. “My parents were nobles. I know it. I have a locket from them.” He shows her the necklace again, opening it to show her letters etched inside. “This is gold. They left it for me because they knew that I would find them with it. But I can’t find them without a mark. I need a paint.” He slams his hand down on the table between them, palm up, beseeching. “They want me. I know they do. I know—”
“You know nothing, little one,” Ruti says sharply. The dreamers are the ones who get killed first. “Your parents threw you away because you were Markless. They won’t want you even if you do find them. Even if you have a false mark on your palm. They will never accept you.”
The boy stares at her, his fists clenched, and Ruti waits, staring back with uncompromising eyes. He is the first to fold, sagging as he shatters into tears, and Ruti slips around the table and wraps her arms around him.
He’s just a little one, a child who wants to pretend. Ruti had been a dreamer too, when she’d been a babe, and she holds him tightly now, sways with him, and sings a few words in a whisper to summon a spirit to soothe him. Still, the boy quakes in her arms, and only after a long time can he look up to face her.
But there is no acceptance in his eyes now. “You’re wrong,” he says, eyes like fire, and he twists around and walks to the door of Ruti’s shop. He stops in the doorway, turning back. “I’m going to find them. And they’re going to love me.” He runs from the shop, and Ruti glimpses him through a dusty window as he races off in the direction of the Inner Circle.
“No one loves the Markless,” Ruti murmurs, and she knows that she’ll never see the boy again. She closes her eyes, hums a quiet chant for his protection, but it won’t be enough. Not for a Markless child who hasn’t learned his place. Not for a Markless child who still longs to be marked.
There are precious few Markless adults. Children are too quick to dream.
Ruti sighs, closing the door to her shop for the day. After sunset, the older Markless will raid shops and attack strangers on the streets, desperate for something to eat or use. They give her shop a wide berth, fearful of her chants, but it’s better not to tempt them.
She tidies up with an eye out the window, watching for little ones who might be out alone. Most of the Markless children are in the orphanages that the late King Adiel opened in the slums. It had been an immensely unpopular decision among the Bonded, but a necessary one as disease from the slums had threatened to spread into the Inner Circle. The Bonded might not see the Markless as worthy of the treasury’s coin, but they’d shuddered at the thought of Markless children passing on their sicknesses to the children of the Inner Circle.
The orphanages are grimy, unpleasant places, but still the safest place for the smaller children at night.
She catches sight of a grubby little girl through the window, peering out from behind a pile of old garbage across the road. Ruti hurries to the door and pulls it open. The girl stares at her, matted brown hair plastered against dark, rough skin, quick hands forming into trembling fists. Her fingers are narrow and long, bare of any hint of fat. “In,” Ruti orders.
The girl scampers away. Her foot treads on an uneven end of the coarse brown rag that she wears, tearing it free, then she hesitates and peers back. Ruti purses her lips. She hears a raucous shout from down the road, Markless boys who’ve gotten into the drink, and the girl freezes, clutching her slender fingers around something in her hand.
Aha. The girl has stolen something, something she’s fearful of having to share, and Ruti says again, urgently, “In. I don’t want it.”
The girl only stares.
Down the road, the Markless boys appear, brandishing a green bottle that they take turns drinking from. There are three of them, and they look—not well-fed, but not malnourished, either, an unusual sight in the slums. “Look,” one of them slurs to the others. He points at the girl. “What’s she got?”
The girl quakes, squeezing her prize more tightly in her grubby brown hand. “Hand it over,” the second boy says, sneering down at the girl. The girl squeaks and turns, making a mad dash for an alleyway, bu t the boys are too quick.
In a moment, one of them is upon her, and he lifts her in the air by the foot as she flails, peering at her critically. “She’s not going to survive the night, anyway. Why waste food on this little thing?”
The second pries open her fingers, and the girl’s eyes widen, her mouth opening as if she’s trying to shriek, but unable. “Well, well,” the boy says gleefully. “Chocolate.”
Chocolate is next to impossible to find in the slums, and Ruti feels her own mouth watering from her doorway at the thought of it. The girl still doesn’t speak, but she reaches for the chocolate, heartbroken, and Ruti heaves a sigh.
It’s the little ones. She tells herself that she’s hardened, that she is made cynical and harsh by the slums, but she can never stop herself when they’re concerned. “Give that back,” she says, stepping out from her shop.
The boy holding the girl gives her a scornful look, but the others recoil, their eyes wide and fearful when they catch sight of her. “It’s the witch,” says the boy with the chocolate, flinching back. “We shouldn’t anger her.” Ruti tilts her head, waiting.
The first boy scoffs. “I’m not afraid of any witch. Especially not a Markless who claims to have the spirits’ favor.” As though he isn’t Markless as well. No one looks down on the Markless like other Markless do. “Give me the chocolate. You can choose to run.”
“Put the girl down.” Ruti’s voice is calm, but she takes a step forward, feeling quiet rage bubbling through her. “Now.”
The boy smirks at her. “Or what? You’ll sing a spell at me?” He looks speculatively at the shop. “I wonder what I might find inside that little house of yours.” He doesn’t notice the other two boys creeping back, their eyes on Ruti.
Ruti watches only the first boy. “You leave me no choice,” she says, and she begins to sing.
Her voice rises and falls in a glissando, rhythmic and musical, and she feels the bubbling sensation of magic as it emerges with her song. Her music has no words, no definable tune to follow, but she knows instinctively where it will carry her regardless. When Ruti sings, magic comes, the spirits drawn to her voice as though she has the powers of a Bonded.
The spirits gift the worthy men. To the Bonded, blessings ten. That’s how the old rhyme goes. The world is alive with magic, drifting through the skies and thick in the earth around them. The hungry spirits seize it all for themselves but they spare some—a gift—for each of the Bonded.
But Ruti is stronger than a Bonded. A Bonded only has mastery over one element, over whatever their joined marks give them. Ruti’s magic has no limits, as long as she has the favor of the spirits she beseeches. She collects offerings, prepares sufficient ones to appease the spirits when her song is not enough, and then she sings out her request.
She’d learned her first song on the streets from a wizened old man with no mark on his palm. The rest she had taught herself by watching how the spirits came to him and learning what sounds together might make magic. She is careful never to offend the spirits, to treat them with respect and bring them gifts when she asks for too much, and she can feel their affection for her in return. They have kept her alive until eighteen, and they can stop any Markless bully in his tracks.
She sings and sings until stone creeps up the Markless boy’s pale, red-pocked arm, immobilizing him, and the little girl can scramble out of his grasp. The boy stares at her in terror, unable to move his arm from its raised position, and Ruti stops singing and directs her glare to the second boy. “I think you have something that isn’t yours,” she says.
The second boy, his eyes wide, hands the girl back her chocolate. The girl scurries away to safety, and Ruti says, “I don’t want to see you attacking little ones again.” She hums a tune, a solemn chant that lets life return to the Markless boy’s arm, and the boys scatter and run, stumbling down the road away from her.
Ruti lets out a breath, leaning against her doorpost and casting an eye down the road. “You should go back to the orphanage,” she says. The little girl is somewhere nearby, she knows, lurking and watching her from the shadows. “The streets aren’t safe at night.”
There is no answer, but Ruti sees a flicker of movement in the alleyway beside her shop. “I know it’s bad in there, but it isn’t forever,” Ruti promises. “Stay in there. Get bigger and smarter. It’s the only way to survive.”
The girl emerges from the shadows and watches Ruti with dark brown eyes. Ruti stares back at her, nonplussed, and the girl takes another step forward, then another, walking toward Ruti with spindly, cautious movements.
When she’s standing in front of Ruti, she thrusts out a hand, and Ruti half expects her to ask for a paint, also. But no, her fingers open, and resting on her unmarked palm is the piece of chocolate. She looks up at Ruti, her chapped lips curved into a smile, and waits for Ruti to accept her offering.
Ruti blinks at her, uncertain of what the girl wants from her. Most of the other Markless fear her, or see only how she might help them. The little ones scamper away unless they’re in danger. “I’m not taking your chocolate,” she says. “I have corn bread inside. Would you like some?”
The little girl’s eyes shine. Ruti says, “Do you have a name, little one?”
The girl shakes her head. She touches her lips, eyes trusting as she looks up at Ruti. Ruti rethinks her question. “Can you speak?”
The girl shakes her head again. Ruti twitches, uncertain of what to do now with this girl who won’t run from her. “There’s no use in saving you if you’re just going to get yourself killed anyway,” Ruti decides reluctantly. “Come inside. You can eat your chocolate in peace.”
The girl follows her inside, and Ruti bolts the door behind them.
It’s been twelve years since Kita, and she’s still picking up Markless children who will inevitably be gone soon enough, lost to Bonded guards or to other Markless children who see no other way to survive than to destroy their own.
This is the fate of the Markless, the children who never should have existed at all.
The girl stays. It’s through no particular effort on Ruti’s part. The little ones who take shelter in her shop tend to scamper off in the morning before she awakens, wary of her even as they look to her for protection. But the girl is still there in the morning, curled up at the foot of Ruti’s bed in a ball of ragged cloth and tangled black hair, and Ruti doesn’t quite know how to ask her to leave.
She tries at first. “This is no place for you,” she says on the first afternoon. But then an Unbonded man appears in the shop, demanding that Ruti sing an empty satchel into riches.
It isn’t the first time that an Unbonded has tried to throw his weight around Ruti’s shop, demanding her magic with a meager payment that would never satisfy a Marked witch. “This is too much to ask of the spirits,” Ruti says tersely, but the man insists that she try, his eyes narrowing as they flicker to the little girl huddled in the corner.
He has the ugly look of a man who would push too far, who would force Ruti to sing a defense that might not work, and Ruti is not so desperate and foolish that she picks fights with every Unbonded man who swaggers into her shop. Instead, she sings in a high, thin voice to the Scaled One, master of transmutation, asking a gift so bold that she expects punishment at once.
She feels the outrage at her boldness as she sings, the magic that soars through her veins turning jagged and angry and cruel. The air darkens around her, and she can see—for a single moment—the pale glare of the Scaled One, the fury at a witch who dares to ask more than she offers. The hissing bellow fills the shop, and the Unbonded man flees as Ruti cries out, pain shooting through the side of her abdomen as though teeth had snapped into her.
The spirits leave no marks when they are displeased, only an agony that lingers for longer than any salve can abate, and Ruti has to close her doors and lie down on her bed for the rest of the day. And still the little girl remains, hovering near the bed as though she hasn’t heard Ruti’s warnings. “This is not a safe place for a Markless who can’t sing,” Ruti repeats.
