Incendiary (Hollow Crown) Page 6

  “Hurry, Rodrigue,” a hushed voice, hidden beneath a black cloak, says. “Get her and get out. The guards change posts at midnight. You have but moments.”

  The hooded figure heaves open the heavy wooden door with rippled glass panes. Rodrigue watches his reflection in the warped surface. His dark brown skin glistens with nervous sweat. He can’t recognize himself in the stolen palace guard uniform—too violet, too tight on his broad shoulders. He nods once more to the cloaked figure and hurries into the dungeon.

  A dimly lit, narrow corridor. Torchlight burns long shadows into worn stone walls. Water drips into puddles from the porous ceiling. Rodrigue breathes heavily as he turns first one corner and then another. Voices and jingling metal echo nearby, and he flattens himself against a depression in the wall. A guard saunters past.

  When the guard is long gone, Rodrigue keeps running. He passes cells full of people. Some hold ten souls. Some three. Some contain only mice scavenging through piles of hay.

  Dozens of eyes watch him stride through the corridor. Rodrigue tries not to make eye contact, but he catches a woman’s gaze. She frowns. Does she know he stole this uniform?

  He clears his throat, grips the hilt of his stolen sword. He counts seconds in his head, knowing he is running out of time.

  “Lucia?” he calls out.

  At the end of the corridor, there is no torchlight. Rodrigue grabs one and illuminates his path through the empty darkness. He holds the flame up to the cells, searching the grimy faces that slink away. Their eyes narrow at the light. Their cracked lips hiss at the intrusion. Then he sees her.

  Alone in a cell so large she looks like a child sitting at its center.

  “What did they do to you?” he whispers. He fumbles for the lock, but the tumblers are so rusted they won’t turn. “Lucia, come to me.”

  Her head snaps up at the sound of her name. But she sees right past Rodrigue and lowers her gaze once more. She is thin, so thin he is afraid to touch her when she reaches him. Her fingers, skinny as twigs, wrap around the iron bars. There is a sickly gray pallor to her skin. Her hair long and brushed back, as if someone tended to her recently.

  “The Magpie couldn’t give me more time,” he says.

  He can feel midnight approaching. Voices echo from the direction Rodrigue has come. Using the sword, he swipes at the lock until his muscles burn. But it isn’t strong enough to break through the justice’s metalwork.

  Rodrigue grabs hold of Lucia’s arm. His sobs reverberate off the walls. He is out of time. He touches his finger to her temple. “Lucia, Lucia, please, say something. I can’t read your thoughts. They’re—”

  She looks up vacantly, silver veins spread across the skin around her eyes and the base of her neck, like snakes across the sand.

  Rodrigue jumps back. Those veins pulse, glowing beneath her skin.

  He drops his sword and it clatters to the ground. He can’t hear her thoughts, can’t see anything inside the mind he loved so deeply. More than that, he can’t find any trace of her power. It is as if her essence—her soul, her spark—is gone.

  “This is a surprise.” A deep, even voice speaks behind him. Rodrigue whirls around. Two guards shove him into the wall. Their fists strike his face, chest, groin until he falls. The ground is wet and cold.

  A third man looms over him. Shadows cut across his angular face. His trim graying hair is brushed back. He pushes aside dark robes and kneels beside Rodrigue.

  “What did you do to her?” Rodrigue spits blood on the man’s face. He doesn’t wipe it away and it speckles his sharp cheekbones.

  “The same thing I will do to you. Rid you of your unnatural magics. You will never harm another soul again.”

  Rodrigue raises a fist to fight, but the guards pull him back down. He turns to Lucia—his life, his love—who shows no reaction. No fear. No concern. No empathy.

  “Do what you want to me,” Rodrigue said. “The Whispers will never be silenced.”

  The man stands, his face turning slowly to Lucia. He holds up a finger decorated with a jeweled gold band. “That was before. It is a new dawn for Puerto Leones. I want you to know exactly what is in store for your uprising. You are quite wrong, you see. Run to the ends of the world if you’d like, but with our new weapon, we will find you.” The man seizes Rodrigue’s chin. “Tell me who the spy in the palace is and I will allow you to spend one more day with your Lucia.”

  “Lucia!” I gasp, my voice ragged, disbelieving. I yank my hand away from Esteban, whose face is twisted in fear. He doesn’t even reach for the flask of aguadulce he always keeps close to chase away the migraines that accompany his magics.

  “What is it?” I’m suddenly aware that Dez is by my side, hands soothing, brushing my hair from my clammy temples. Just his hands. The susurration of his voice in my ear. “Ren. What did you see? Is Lucia still alive?”

  “Dez, the king—the justice— Somehow— They took it—” I don’t know what I’ve seen. I don’t know how to put words to what Rodrigue went through. The justice was there, and his is a face I was not prepared to see.

  “Esteban—Ren—I need you both to speak.”

  Margo snatches the paper Esteban was writing on, his letters sloppy, as if he couldn’t keep up with the speed of the memory. Her blue eyes flash wide, moving faster across the words pulled from my mind.

  “They’ve figured out how to win this war,” Margo says, and crunches the paper in her fist before smoothing it out again. The notes are meant to be presented to the elders.

  “What do you mean?” Sayida asks, taking the parchment from Margo’s shaking hand.

  I still hold the alman stone. The light has been snuffed out, turning it into another bit of translucent crystal. Ordinary. Empty. I think of Lucia’s face, so strange, covered with silver veins, so much like the magic whorls that burn across my hands. Then there was the justice himself. It’s been years since I saw him or heard his voice. I want to scream. I want to jump into the river and be carried away. I don’t know if I’m strong enough for what is supposed to come next.

  “They can rip out our power,” Sayida says breathlessly. “But how?”

  We look to Dez. Each of us sits around the fire, the way we might have when we were children telling stories. Now our monsters are real and we don’t know if we can defeat them. Dez takes the parchment last and reads, then looks to the canopy of trees, the white light of the moon just visible between gaps. He’s worried, yes, but he doesn’t share the surprise the rest of us feel.

  “You knew,” I say.

  Dez meets my stare. “Yes.”

  Margo and Esteban curse under their breath. Sayida presses her lips together, nose flaring. I feel something cold settle into my heart.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he says. “The order came from the elders themselves.”

  Margo stands and kicks at the closest pack. Mine, naturally. “You owe us an explanation, Dez. I believed Celeste and Rodrigue had information that could help us. Instead all we know is that our enemies have figured out a way to end us.”

  “Yes, the Arm of Justice has created a weapon to rip out our power,” Dez says. “My father learned this four months ago.”

  “Four months?” I repeat.

  Dez stands and stomps around the fire, unable to keep his nerves hidden. “He heard it from a spy called the Magpie. I don’t know who they are, or if they’re Moria at all. My father never reveals his spies to anyone, not even other elders, for fear of endangering them.”

  “How did this Magpie learn of the weapon?” I ask.

  “That’s what Lucia was sent to discover,” Dez says, rubbing his hands over his face. His golden stare is distant, and he pulls away from us in a way he’s never done before. “She was caught. Rodrigue left on his own to find her, but we now know what happened. We had hoped to uncover what the weapon was and destroy it. But the fact that it can do more than steal magics . . .” He trails off, almost breathless. “We couldn’t dream up such a cruelty.”

 
“Where did it come from?” Margo demands, as I ask, “What else can it do?”

  “We don’t know how they forged it.” Dez stops pacing, arms crossed over his chest. “That man told Rodrigue that they can find us anywhere we go. It can detect our power. It won’t be safe to travel in numbers.”

  “What about the rest of the families we’re to help smuggle across Luzou?” Sayida asks.

  “We have to get them there sooner,” he says, slowly regaining his resolve. He meets our eyes again. “We’ve always had to be one step ahead of the justice. That can’t change now.”

  Margo faces the fire, flames dancing in her blue stare. “They can rip out our powers. The way you rip out memories.”

  We’re all silent. I didn’t want to make the connection, but Margo has done it for me. It’s not enough that she already sees me as a danger; she wants to align me with something so monstrous? My hands ball into fists. “You didn’t see what became of Lucia. She was standing. She was lucid. But her eyes held no life. When I made a Hollow—”

  “Ren, you don’t have to—”

  “I do,” I say. “When I made a Hollow, it emptied the mind of all memories. The body was left alive, but the damage done to the mind was permanent. They fell into a deep sleep. I never saw them again. So no, it’s not the same thing, Margo.”

  “But you live with those memories,” Sayida says. “Where did Lucia’s power go after it was taken? What does the king do with it?”

  “Forget the ship to Luzou,” Margo says. “I say we go to the palace at first light. Let’s end this. Break in. Kill the king. Kill the Príncipe Dorado. The palace burned once—we can do it again. I’m sure you remember, Renata.”

  I think of my room in the palace filling with smoke, watching from the window as the capital burned. Sayida reaches for my knee and squeezes. Everything in my body wants to run away, to scream, to leave this place and never come back. But I made a promise to myself that I would do everything in my power to right the wrongs I committed. I shut my eyes and see the man who threatened Rodrigue. I knew him well once. I knew the palace.

  Rodrigue escaped the bowels of that place and got a message to us. He died for it. Celeste died for it. An entire village burned. I remember what the guard said in the boy’s memory.

  “Margo is right,” I say, surprising everyone, but especially Margo. She frowns, as if I’m playing a trick on her. “We should go as soon as possible. When I took the memory from the boy, Francis, one of the guards said that no one could know they were there. Why not parade Celeste in front of everyone in Esmeraldas? Why not use the weapon on her?”

  “They’re protecting it,” Sayida says. “The Bloodied Prince likes a spectacle. I say they’re waiting for the right time.”

  “All the more reason to head them off at the pass,” Margo says.

  “We’re outnumbered,” Dez says.

  “We’re always outnumbered!” Esteban throws up his hands. “You once charged the Matahermano himself in Riomar with no one behind you.”

  “And I lost,” Dez snaps. “We all lost that day. I won’t make that mistake again. The mission was to get the alman stone and discover what was so urgent Celeste was willing to risk exposing herself. Now we know this weapon can detect Moria magics. Destroying this weapon is our first priority, but we have to be smarter than the king and the justice. We won’t get a second chance. Believe me—going back to Ángeles is difficult for me, too, but we can’t afford to fail. This is too important. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” Margo says without hesitation. And the rest of us follow.

  Dez’s brow is set with a tense frown. I don’t foresee any one of us sleeping tonight.

  “It’s settled, then. We keep making for Ángeles at first light.”

  For every league we travel, we sink into a different kind of denial.

  Denial that we’ve lost the war to King Fernando and his justice. Denial that each and every one of us is going to end up like Lucia. For most of us, the worst the king could do was lock us up and torture our bodies. But that was before. The idea that our very magics are at stake—the core of who we are? It’s unthinkable. And yet there’s no other explanation for the memory I witnessed. Are they out there now using this weapon to find us? Justice Méndez’s face floats in my vision as we move. His sharp cheekbones, his meticulously groomed black hair shot through with streaks of silver, and gray eyes that noticed everything. I have countless blank spots in my memory, but I could never forget him. The man who was both a captor and a father to me.

  I fall back behind the group to compose myself. My heart races too quickly, my breath too sharp. Dez is far up ahead of me, but he hasn’t spoken a full sentence since last night anyway. He still strides with the confidence of a general. Sometimes when I see him, his build, his posture, the way he walks, from this far off, I am reminded all over again of why we are all so willing to follow him, to listen to what he says. Even if we don’t agree with him.

  My heart would follow him anywhere. Especially in times as bleak as these.

  “Perhaps it’s a trick,” Margo says to me as we make our way across dusty Via de Santos. “A way to draw us out of the Memoria Mountains. The king keeps Moria at his disposal as weapons, doesn’t he? Hypocrite bestae.”

  She’s talking about the Hand of Moria. The way he keeps one of each of us, like a collection, for his own purposes, even while killing off or torturing the rest in droves. Four Moria stand behind his throne as a symbol of his conquest over us.

  “I saw all the little incendiary saw,” Esteban interjects, keeping his head low, hands gripping the straps of his pack. “Rodrigue’s alman stone was well hidden. The justice did not expect him to escape.”

  I slow my pace, spirit as heavy as my boots. This morning’s river crossing has left us with trench foot, but there’s no stopping until we clear the last tollhouse that marks the end of Puerto Leones and beginnings of the Memoria Mountains—all that’s left of what once was the great kingdom of Memoria. The army of Puerto Leones could never navigate the terrain on foot or horseback, but we know the hidden pass. Besides, the mountains are too arid and rocky to sustain our entire population, so they hold no value to the king. I would never tell the others, but I believe that is why the crown has not tried harder to break through the mountains. They’ve already taken everything they think has value.

  Walking along these empty roads feels like trekking across the ghost of a country. I have lived in Ángeles for eight years. Ever since the Whispers’ Rebellion failed to assassinate King Fernando. But where they succeeded was in rescuing their stolen children.

  I wonder, how long have they been working on this weapon? Was the final straw Riomar? What if it started even before that, when I was a child at the palace? If I try to access the Gray, perhaps I could find out—

  But what if I can’t control all those memories? Innumerable sights, sounds, and emotions layered on top of my own. I don’t know if I could bear it.

  “Illan will know what to do,” Sayida says after a long silence. She tries to stay close to me, but even she gets lost in thought. There’s an emptiness to her words, like she hasn’t yet convinced herself.

  The way home feels still too far, and the two safe houses we know of on this route have shut their doors, leaving us in the sweltering heat.

  The only way to quickly travel in broad daylight is to disguise ourselves as devout pilgrims, stowing our weapons out of sight of the tax farmers who collect from anyone traveling across the kingdom. We wear itchy black clothes and drape alder-wood prayer beads around our necks that symbolize the Father of Worlds.

  The Memoria Mountains are a jagged dark promise on the horizon and the Via de Santos a winding dry road that will lead us there. Pilgrims and citizens of the kingdom stop before the mountain, at the Blessed Springs, whose baths and waterfalls are said to originate at the very body of water where the Father of Worlds emerged into being. We wait until nightfall and sneak past the tax farmers, who are drunk with coin and wine.<
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  No matter how many steps we’ve taken, the mountains never feel closer. Hours later, under the naked sun, sweat drips down my neck and stings my stitched wound. Shouldering the weight of my pack is nearly unbearable, even with Dez emptying half the contents into his, but the only thing stronger than my pain is the fear of what I witnessed. Justice Méndez’s threat: We will find you.

  We come upon a hill crest where we’re not the only others on the Via de Santos. A group of shepherds leers as our paths cross, their heads covered with white scarves to protect from the worst of the sun and dust. My heartbeat drums in my ears, louder than our boots crunching on the gravel path. Sayida quickly calls out a blessing to the Father of All, her musical voice and smile disarming them. They mumble a reply and turn their attention back to their sheep while our unit lapses into tense silence.

  When the sun hovers over the mountains and the beginnings of sunset bleed into the sky, we come to a stop. There’s nothing around but arid earth, yellow grass, and the via.

  “Can you hear Illan?” Margo asks Esteban. Her beautiful, throaty voice sounds strange in the eerie stillness of the countryside, the soft whistling of dry grass along the edge of the road.

  “I’m trying, but we’re still too far,” Esteban replies.

  Illan’s been training Esteban to hone his Ventári ability, how to use silver to heighten his power and stretch the range for communications so that the two of them can speak into each other’s minds even from afar. Esteban twists his silver bracelet cuff and scrapes the back of his ear.

  “Try again,” Dez urges him, shouldering out of his pack. “He needs to know what Ren saw.”

  Esteban pinches the wide bridge of his nose and puts a hand up to silence us. He pulls back the hood of his cloak and undoes the clasp at his throat as though it chokes him. Then he stiffens.