Incendiary (Hollow Crown) Read online

  A man adjusts his grip around a freshly cut tree and drags it down this street. His shoulders ache, but his thin gloves protect against splinters. His mud-covered boots stomp blue-and-gray cobblestones into the heart of the village. A crowd gathers in front of the cathedral. It is the sixth day of Almanar, and his neighbors carry branches, broken furniture, cut trees. They stack and stack the pyre until no one can reach the top. Music spills from open cantina doors. The drummers have come around, slapping leather skins in time with the festive songs. Couples dance as torches are lit. He sees the faces he’s been waiting for—his wife and child run to him. They help him drag the tree onto the pyre—their offering for the festival of Almanar. Together, they sing and dance and watch the pyre burn.

  Now I know why Esmeraldas felt familiar. Every memory I’ve ever stolen is a part of me. It’s taken years of training to push them back, keep them in locked compartments. But sometimes, they find a way out. I should thank the stars that the memory that has spilled from the vault of my mind is a joyous one. A rural harvest where everyone comes together to burn the old year away. And yet, my hands tremble and sweat drips down my back. I don’t want to look at it anymore. I force myself out of the Gray, shoving the memory back into the dark where it belongs. I’ve heard it called the curse of the Robári. Curse or not, I can’t let it get in the way of finding the alman stone.

  My eyes sting from smoke and the piercing pain that stabs my temples. I push my weary bones to stand. There is no alman stone here. If I were Celeste, where would I have run?

  Then I hear it. A single sound pierces the air.

  At first, I think it’s from another unwanted memory slipping out of the Gray, but it grows clear as cathedral bells on Holy Day. A voice crying out for help.

  Someone in Esmeraldas is trapped.

  Chapter 2

  They say it didn’t use to be like this. That there was a time when the kingdoms of Puerto Leones and Memoria were at peace. Were prosperous. Even when Memoria fell, conquered by the family of lions, there was a treaty. Order. My kind didn’t hide our magics, our bodies, our everything, in fear of a king. This is what we tell our children. Stories. The elders of the Whispers say a lot of things to make the days and nights pass by more quickly, but for many of us the world has never stopped burning.

  It was a fire just like this one that changed me from the inside out. Even now, eight years later, that fire lives within my bones and blood and muscle. It’s brighter than this, brighter than the colorless Gray of my stolen memories. What I told Dez about forgiveness was the truth, but deep inside I know that I’ll always be trying to outrun flames that will never be extinguished.

  I swallow the ash that forces its way into my nose and mouth, and race down a narrow street, following the desperate voice. I hurl myself over the debris that blocks my way. My scarf keeps sliding off. Smoke obscures my sight, and I nearly collide with a horse charging down the road. I skid into a muddy bank to avoid it.

  A door swings from a nearby empty stable—it is here in front of a small house where the cry is loudest. The flames have burned through everything, and I have a feeling this is the origin of the destruction.

  The door hangs slightly ajar, and footsteps large and small go in both directions. Who would return to a burned house? I toe the door open and wait a breath. The roof has already caved in over the living space. The white walls left standing are striped with black.

  “Hello?” I call out.

  No answer.

  Behind the rubble is a hall that still holds. For how long, I can’t be sure.

  “Where are you?” I shout again, forcing my way down the hall and into a small kitchen.

  The room is hazy with lingering smoke and smoldering embers. I chance another step, my eyes sweeping the room. An upturned wooden table and roughly carved chairs, one of them broken into splinters. My next step crunches on broken glass and I make out various sets of footprints, dark with mud and something wet—oil? Blood? I crouch down and touch the substances. When I bring them to the tip of my tongue, I taste both. I spit on the floor.

  There must have been a terrible fight here.

  “Hello,” I say again, but my courage slips from me.

  My attention snaps to the kitchen door swinging open and closed in the breeze. A chill passes over my skin, prickling with warning when I turn to the fireplace. A large bundle lies on the ground, bits of glass strewn all around it.

  I stumble backward so quickly I fall.

  It’s not a bundle.

  It’s a person.

  When I close my eyes, my own memories are bright flashes that suffocate me. The blazing orange and red of fire, like the great mouth of a dragon, devours everything in sight. I slam my fist into the floor and the shock of pain snaps me back to the here and now.

  My morning meal comes up until there is nothing but bile on my tongue. I wipe my face on the sleeve of my tunic. This can’t have been the sound I heard. I tug at my hair, fearing I’ve followed one of my vivid memories by accident, like the time I swore a woman was drowning in the lake and I dove in and found nothing, or the time I didn’t sleep for a week because I was certain there were children playing in my bedroom, singing a lullaby that kept me up all night. I live a life with the ghosts I’ve created, and as this house groans against the wind I swear my power will one day lead me to my death.

  I brace myself on my hands and knees to stand. I have to get out of here. I have to reach the rendezvous point before Dez comes searching for me. A ray of sun beams through the kitchen window and illuminates the glittering glass along with something else, something clutched in the corpse’s hand.

  A copper ring.

  Inching toward the body, I breathe through my mouth. But that only makes it worse, because I can taste the death in the air. I flip the body over, knowing I’ll find a woman. My heart already knows what my eyes take time to see. Half of her body is charred. I brush away the smoldering rubble from her unburned brown skin. Her hair is silver with age, bright red blood is caked around her mouth, and a single brown eye is open and lifeless. If I walked past her in the village square, I would have seen just any older woman in the kingdom with gray-and-black homespun clothes.

  But what marks her as one of us, one of the Moria, is the thick copper ring. The intricate etchings reflect her ranking among the elders of the Whispers, and the copper tells me she’s a Persuári. A refrain from the cruel rhyme sung in schools and taverns throughout the kingdom pops into mind—one copper heart persuades senses vast. On closer inspection I notice the green saliva dried on her chin. Poison.

  “Oh, Celeste,” I whisper, an ache in my chest as I pocket the copper ring to bring back to the elders. Purple-and-blue bruises mar her wrists like bracelets. She must have fought hard. In her hand I find a small glass vial drained of the poison we all carry with us.

  It was Celeste who’d insisted that Robári not be turned away from the Whispers. Most of the elders refused to train us, but Celeste was different. I hoped that I could be different with her help, too. Over the last decade the king has forced the Moria living peacefully in Puerto Leones to flee the kingdom. Celeste has helped families stay and trained young ones to use their powers without hurting others.

  I draw the symbol of Our Lady over her torso, marking the V pattern of the constellations of the goddess. “Rest in Her Everlasting Shadow.”

  Then I whisper, “I’m sorry.”

  I have to search her body for the alman stone. Dez would do it in a heartbeat, I know. Perhaps Sayida would hesitate the way I do, but we came here for the mission. So, holding my breath, I pull back her ash-covered cloak.

  “Mamá!” a voice warbles from somewhere deeper in the house. “Mamá?”

  A child’s voice. I wasn’t hearing things. There’s a survivor in here. I know I should focus on my task—find the alman stone—but the weakness in that cry cuts into me, urging me away from Celeste and to the back of the house, where I discover another door. It’s unlocked, but when I try to pu
sh it, there’s a weight blocking the way.

  “Don’t move!” I shout, my voice muffled by the scarf. “I’m here to help you!”

  “I’m trapped!” the child sobs. “The man tried to pull me out but I ran back in and then everything fell—”

  “Just stay there,” I say, eyeing the door. I take a few deep breaths, then charge. I slam into the door with all of my weight, but it gives only a couple of inches. I look around the room for something to help me push. I grab a broomstick leaning against the wall and use it as a staff, wedging it between the opening. With every ounce of strength I can muster, I push.

  Inch by inch the door widens enough so that I can squeeze into the room.

  At the sight of me, a boy whimpers. “Who are you?”

  He can’t be older than five—six, at most—with large brown eyes, skin made darker by smoke, and a mop of auburn curls. A heavy wood crossbeam has pinned him to the floor and there’s a stitched doll clutched in his fist. Is this what he ran back in here for? He should have run away and never stopped. There was a time when I could have been this child, parents taken by the king’s justice. Thank the Mother at least he doesn’t have any external injuries.

  “I’ve got you,” I say, making sure my scarf is tight over my face. He might be a child, but it’s best he doesn’t get too good a look at me. After all, I’m still a Whisper.

  The boy starts screaming. “Mamá! Mamá!”

  I didn’t realize what I might look like to a child trapped in a house about to collapse—my face and hands covered in soot, my dark eyes rimmed with kohl. Daggers at my hips and black leather gloves reaching for him. I was about his age when I was taken, though the palace guards wore decidedly finer armor.

  “Please,” I beg. “Please don’t be scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He doesn’t stop screaming. His panic makes him choke and cough even worse until, for a moment, he pauses to gasp for air. And in that pause, I can hear a sharp metallic whistle pierce the sky. Esteban’s signal—the Second Sweep has arrived.

  Over the pop of fire, the terror of the boy’s whimpers, and the thunder of my own heart, there’s a rumble of hooves pounding the parched earth.

  I pull down my scarf, breathing in short, shallow gulps of air. We need to get out—now. Holding out my hand, I show the child that I want to help.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I tell him.

  The words don’t mean anything to him. I know that. But I also know that I can’t leave this boy behind to die—and I can’t wait for him to calm down before the Second Sweep finds us.

  The gallop of horses is getting closer.

  I grab the boy by the wrist. The elders have warned me against using my power unless it’s on people they choose. They don’t trust that I can control my magics. But its side effect is one sure way I know to put him into a painless stupor long enough that I can carry him out to safety.

  The boy’s screaming louder, unable to do anything other than call out for his mother. Keeping hold of his wrist with one hand, I bite the tip of my glove and pull, my hand now exposed and clammy. The glove falls to the ground as the cry for a mother who won’t answer pierces my eardrum.

  So I do what I must. What I am feared for. Why the Whispers distrust me and why the king’s justice used me.

  I steal a memory.

  The raised scars whorled on the pads of my fingers heat up, stinging like a match on bare flesh as a bright glow begins to emanate from my fingertips. When I make skin-on-skin contact, my power burns its way through the mind until it finds what it’s looking for. The magics sear fresh scars onto my hands as I grapple with something as slippery and transmutable as a memory. When I was a girl, I screamed and cried every time I used my power.

  But now the heat and pain focus me. Entering someone’s mind requires complete control and balance. Once the connection is made, a number of things can go wrong. If I let go too soon, if we’re interrupted, if I steal too many memories, I could leave his mind hollow.

  As my power latches on to his most recent memory, I brace for the shock of seeing into the child’s mind.

  He can’t sleep. Papá and Mamá sent him to bed, but Francis wants to wait for Aunt Celeste to return from one of her adventures. Then he hears footsteps.

  Clang.

  The noise comes from the kitchen. Maybe Aunt Celeste is back! Francis pulls off his covers. Cold toes touch the stone-tiled floor. Maybe she’ll keep him company, tell him one of her stories of ancient princesses from the long-gone kingdoms of Memoria and Zahara. Or of the old glowing temples of the magical Moria. Last time she put her finger to her lips and made him promise to never repeat those stories.

  He tiptoes to the door and twists the doorknob.

  He freezes.

  There are strange men in the kitchen. Francis feels his voice creep up, wanting to scream for Mamá and Papá. But a twisting fear in his heart tells him to stay quiet.

  There’s a crash. Glass breaking.

  Then fire.

  Men screaming. One of them catches flame, flailing and running across the room.

  He sees Aunt Celeste. Wants to call out to her, but then she turns and does something very strange: While the guards try to put out the rising flames, she takes a glowing stone the size of a crab apple from her pocket and swallows it.

  The boy’s scream gathers in his chest as Aunt Celeste falls like a bundle of wheat. When she doesn’t get back up, Francis’s cry finds its way out. “No!”

  The guards all turn to him. Francis wants to move, but his feet feel like lead.

  “Grab the boy,” one of the men says, his golden hair obscuring his face as he stands over Celeste’s unmoving body. “Arrest the family.”

  The flames catch on the wall, spreading up and out.

  “No one can know I was here,” the golden-haired man whispers. “Let it burn.”

  Francis makes to run out the window, but a large hand grabs the back of his neck—

  There’s a white light, shouting that’s louder than the boy’s memory. Something’s wrong. A wrenching pain stabs at my temples. The connection is breaking. It’s like I’m falling straight over a cliff. I try to hold on to the thread of magics connecting me to the boy’s mind, but the thundering gallop of the Second Sweep breaks my concentration. I frantically try to rein back my power, to salvage what I can from the boy’s memory, but I’ve latched on and more memories tumble after, one chasing the other, ripples of color as they’re erased from his mind and flood into mine.

  I shake from the aftershock of it and let go. I try my hardest to stay upright despite the headache that pounds at my temples. The only good thing is that the boy—Francis—is asleep. He’ll never again be able to recall Celeste dying or the soldier trying to grab him. In the years since the Whispers saved me, I’ve learned to comb through stolen memories. These are the ones that become a part of me. I can see Francis running with the kids across the green hills of Esmeraldas. His father laughing with Celeste while making supper. His mother stitching beans for a rag doll’s eyes. Francis running away from the guards to retrieve it.

  I don’t have time to pick up my gloves. I heave the plank off his body, grunting as I lift, and let it slam to the ground. Tucking the doll in his pocket, I scoop Francis into my arms and glance around the room. What fate did his parents face if he ran back here on his own? Who will he have in the world? We’ll take him with us until we get to the next town. Sayida will be able to keep him calm, while Margo can search for allies to take him in. I carry him out the door and into the kitchen, where Celeste lies dead with the alman stone. And this time, I know exactly where it is.

  But before I can take another step, the side door slams open. I stumble back and hold Francis closer to my chest.

  “Put the boy down,” the Second Sweep guard commands, leveling his sword at my face.

  Chapter 3

  I’ve done two of the things the Whispers have trained me not to do—used my power on a civilian and gotten caught.


  Panic and fear course through me as I consider my options. I’m fast enough to outrun the guard if I make for the front of the house, but I can’t leave Francis or the alman stone behind. Either I abandon both, or I stay and fight. Before I can lower him to the ground, the boy snaps awake from his daze. He kicks out of my grasp and screams when he sees me.

  “You’re safe now,” the guard tells the boy, softening his voice. His uniform is pristine, clean, and his youthful face welcoming. “No one is going to hurt you.”

  My blood boils. I know exactly how this works, how easy it is to fall for. The Second Sweep is the caress after the king’s brutal slap. The weapon to show his mercy—putting out fires, rescuing stragglers, offering food and safety. It doesn’t seem to matter that the king’s men razed the village themselves.

  I keep a firm grip on Francis’s shoulders. His muscles tense, but he doesn’t try to bolt. The guard terrifies him just as much as I do, apparently.

  “Let go of him,” the guard demands, but fear makes him stammer. He shifts his weight from side to side, sweat dripping down the sides of his face. “You’re surrounded. There is no way out for you, bestae.”

  I scoff at the insult, but I know he’s right. What would Dez do if he were here? Shove the kid aside and fight. The dagger at my hip is no match for his sword. My real weapons are my hands, my power as a Robári. This guard would be difficult to grab hold of, and I could do permanent damage to his mind. I swore to myself eight years ago that I would never make another Hollow. Dez’s voice rings clear through my mind. He spoke those words during our last failed mission: It’s your life or theirs. Choose the option that brings you back to me.

  I grab the boy by the throat and line up my dagger to his rib cage.

  “You’re not going to hurt him,” the soldier says.