Incendiary (Hollow Crown)

by Zoraida Cordova

  “My boy told me about Dez,” she says softly. “There’s another way for you. I know what it’s like to lose your love, but you don’t have to lose yourself along the way.”

  I want to tell her that I didn’t lose him, that she knows nothing about me, but even in my grief, I won’t talk back. She’s sheltered and fed us and showed me kindness even though she didn’t have to. For a moment, when I watch her, I think of the grandparents I never met. Would they risk everything for me like this, knowing the powers I wield? Are they still alive somewhere?

  Lydia doesn’t seem to understand, and so I hold my bare hands out to her. With Margo’s illusion gone, my scars are visible again.

  “I was lost long before Andrés,” I say.

  “Robári.” She doesn’t sound fearful or angry but full of pity. She says it as if it is just a word and I am just a girl and there is nothing outside of this storage room except for us. “My mother used to tell me that some were gifted with too much power and others with not enough.”

  Our magics don’t feel like a gift right now, but I don’t tell her that. “Why do this? You could have a normal life.”

  “I’ll have a normal life when I can live with my grandson again. Maybe even live to see great-grandchildren.” She reaches out a hand to my cheek. “Borrow some of my hope, child.”

  Part of me wants to recoil from her touch. For what comes next, I cannot afford a soft heart. Her eyes scan my face, perhaps searching for weakness. Something that will make me stay. But there is none. It’s been carved out of me. There is nothing she can do to change my mind, and she knows that.

  Finally, Lydia takes the rope, and I sit in the corner of her storage room, letting her bind my hands and ankles together.

  “May the Mother of All bless the path you walk,” she says before she returns to her kitchens, “for you do not know what you’ll encounter along the way.”

  I wait, listening to every sound that filters through the crack beneath the door—the people in the boardinghouse who are blissfully unaware of what’s transpired here and the cooks and their dinner chaos, an entire world so removed from me that I can’t even begin to imagine being a part of it.

  Then there’s a pounding fist on the door. Muffled voices. Lydia’s terrified cry. Hurried footsteps getting closer and closer.

  The door slamming open.

  “There she is,” Lydia says, a tremble in her voice. “I caught her stealing food. She’s one of them. Look at her hands.”

  The guards eye me warily before turning back to Lydia. “You’ve done your kingdom a great service.”

  “Are you sure she’s one of them?” the second guard whispers to the other.

  “Don’t matter.” He pulls a velvet pouch from his breast pocket, takes two fat libra coins out, and pockets them before throwing the rest on the floor. “Toss her in with the others. Our night is made.”

  I wish Lydia wouldn’t look at me, but I feel her kind gaze as the guards twist my arms around my back and shackle them before dragging me out of the house. Their armor clinks in the narrow alley like a set of keys.

  I don’t struggle as they take me to the chained wagon at the end of the street. My body moves as if I’m floating, and I half feel as though I’m watching myself from above. When the guard opens the wagon doors, the putrid stench of bodily fluids and too many people sharing a single space assaults my nostrils. Unable to hold my nose, I duck my head into my shoulder, but it’s useless. The odors are too strong.

  There are two benches on either side of the wagon. It would fit perhaps eight people comfortably. Somehow, though, they’ve crammed fifteen bodies in here. I slip on the greasy floor as the guard pushes me in, and when he locks the doors, everything is dark.

  “I’m not one of them!” a young man’s voice shouts from inside the wagon’s belly. There’s a series of thumps that I imagine are his fists against the walls. “My father’s a merchant! Let me send a postmate to the Duque Sól Abene. He’ll sort this out right away.”

  “Which unit were you in?” a disembodied voice asks me. “Is it true there are Whispers here to rise up against the justice once again?”

  “No one is rising up against anyone,” a hard, angry voice answers.

  “I heard they’re curing us,” the someone says, thin as a ghost. “Finally, a cure for all of this.”

  Cure? My stomach drops. The weapon. More people know. I want to ask him where he’s heard such a thing, but the smell is overwhelming, and I don’t dare open my mouth to speak.

  As the horse pulls the wagon across cobblestone streets, I feel every bump, and I begin to tremble. I wonder if maybe I acted too rashly. Terror flows through my veins. I dread going back to the place where everything started. The palace of Andalucía, and the cathedral beside it, headquarters of the king’s justice. Prince Castian’s home and capital of the kingdom.

  But as we roll closer and closer to our destination, and I again hear the familiar sound of the wrought-iron gates opening to let us in, I sink so deeply into my fear it becomes part of me. Fueling me instead of hindering.

  After all, I’m no longer the seven-year-old they stole from a forest clearing. I’ve spent eight years training beside the strongest Moria in the world. Training beside Dez. I’ve spent eight years learning to find a cause to fight for.

  I know you. I trust you.

  That was his last mistake.

  I am ready now.

  And I will be ready tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. I have a plan, and this time, I can’t fail.

  I think of Justice Méndez. He won’t be able to resist coming to see me once I tell the guards I’m a Robári. . . . I can already feel his skull in my grasp. But first, I will find the weapon.

  Dez’s death will be avenged. After all, I made Castian a promise I intend to keep.

  Chapter 11

  Silence falls in the darkness of the wagon as it jostles from our excess weight, a ship in a storm. I keep my eyes down and try to become aware of the capital’s deep night sounds. Hooves on cobblestone. Cheering from a tavern. Guards laughing from the wagon’s seat. From somewhere, a cry for help that won’t be answered.

  An older woman who was crying earlier has sobbed herself out and is now nothing but a tremor beside me. Crammed as we are, I can feel the shake of her shoulders as they brush against mine. The smoothness of her skin makes me think of luxury. What could she have done to get captured by the Second Sweep?

  Trying to make more space for myself, I grab the chains that link my manacles together and tug them, doing my best not to think about the sticky substance they leave on my skin. My elbow hits something soft.

  “Watch it,” a deep male voice growls inches from me. There’s a sliver of light filtering in from the gas lamps in the palace courtyard. A face that’s all angles and covered in bruises, and his breath stinks of liquor gone sour.

  I pull my arms tight to my body and try not to breathe through my nose. Waste and urine mingle in the midsummer humidity, which eventually bleeds into the smell of rotting food as we pass by the kitchens. And beneath all that is something sweet. Something that doesn’t quite belong. We must be near the narrow alleys that link the cathedral and the palace.

  My lungs long for the clean air; my heart craves light. For a moment, I try to imagine that I’m back in Ángeles, in my drafty, small chamber in the San Cristóbal cloisters with creaky wooden floors, a window narrow but tall that lets in the sun to wake me up. I’m never going to see that room again. I’m never going to walk through the wide halls or sit in the library with a stack of parchments the elders encourage us to read. Learn our histories before they are rewritten by the Bloodied King, they said. I’ll never sneak down the turret to meet Dez at the waterfall, or skin my knees falling during sparring drills. I will never.

  I made that decision, but a shudder rips through my lungs because also I never thought I’d be back at the palace. I picture a younger version of myself walking hand in hand with Justice Méndez. A rag
doll in Dauphinique lace and satin gloves.

  The wagon halts, and there’s the rattle of a cylinder lock’s keys turning until they sigh with release and reveal the guards in the flickering light. The first guard, the one with a gap-toothed sneer, gives his torso a bit of a stretch. He’s dramatic in all of his movements, like he’s taunting us with his ability to move freely. I can tell he likes to cause pain. I’ve seen that look before. Castian had it in his eyes when he fought Dez in Riomar and when he drove his spiked gloves into his own guard’s face.

  I’m dragged out of the cart with the rest of the prisoners, and that’s when I finally place the smell: incense. The stench of it does little to cover up the filth of the capital and the dungeon. For a moment I see nothing, only feel the steady beating of my heart concentrated in my ears.

  I promised myself I wouldn’t come back here. If my old mentor could see me now—what would he say? Méndez is not a man with remorse. But he was never cruel to me. Would he order me killed on sight or chain my hands and use me for my power once again? If I managed to sneak into the palace, he’d never believe that I was there of my own free will. No, this deception has to start in the belly of the palace.

  My palms itch with the anticipation of magics. Castian’s face takes up most of my waking thoughts. He clouds everything. Worse than the other memories and the Gray. The promise of emptying the prince’s mind and leaving him in a comatose state thrills and horrifies me. I will be the monster I’ve feared. The kingdom will mourn their prince, and I will live with the memories of Dez’s killer. At least I won’t have to live with them for long. But the walls in my mind darken. There is a shadow around my vision. I do not, cannot, see another way out.

  You are not a girl. You are vengeance in the night.

  That’s what I have to be for Dez.

  The dungeon’s gate nestles in a depression that links the palace and cathedral as the kingdom’s reigning power structures. The Second Sweep hands us over to the two guards posted at the entrance, though I know there are more waiting inside. There’s a metallic moan as one of them turns the keys in the lock and opens the gates up, like a sea monster’s mouth ready to swallow us whole.

  It’s time.

  I watch the guards. The second one averts his eyes as more bodies stumble out of the wagon. My instinct tells me that he’s the one I need to go to. When I take a step closer to him, I can see he’s young, with the dark brown complexion of Tresorian ancestry, like Esteban. This soldier’s face is too soft, delicate. He probably couldn’t buy himself out of the draft like the wealthy merchants and lords of his provincia, and now he’s here, leading us into our cells. Or perhaps I want to imagine that there’s an innocence in his large brown eyes that isn’t there.

  He seizes the chain of my manacles and yanks me forward to the open gate leading into the dark tunnel, but I grab hold of his hands. His dark eyes flick to the whorls that cover my hands, and he stiffens, eyes wide as if I’ve already started to drain him of his memories.

  “Let go! Let go of me,” he says, a scared boy who dwindles in stature at my barest touch.

  “I must see Justice Méndez,” I say, digging my thumb into the inside of his wrist. My nearness sends him into a stuttering frenzy because he knows exactly what I can do to him if I want. I’ve always hated that reaction, but now I’m counting on it. “I don’t belong here.”

  Behind me a commotion erupts. I whirl around as an older guard with sweat-matted brown hair and a long scar across his chapped lips pushes the other prisoners aside to get to me. He snatches a fistful of my hair and tugs. His olive skin is covered in dozens of tiny scars, and I’m surprised they’d let a survivor of the plague enlist.

  “What’s the delay, Gabo?”

  Gabo yanks his hands from my grasp. “She says she wants to see the justice, Sergeant.”

  The sergeant arches a thick brow, studying me. “In a hurry to have your trial?”

  Raising my chin so that it’s out of his grasp, I gather all the strength I can into my voice. “Tell Justice Méndez that Renata Convida has returned to the fold.”

  There’s a moment of silence between the guards, as they consider my words. Gabo seems truly terrified. No one—not even the magicless Leonesse—would willingly seek out Justice Méndez. I note that his name still inspires the same fear, perhaps worse than before.

  “Maybe we should get the justice, no?” Gabo whispers to the sergeant. “Look at her hands. Her scars. Méndez said to send all possible Robári to him as soon as—”

  “I know what he said,” the officer snaps, “but I take my commands from the prince, not Méndez. She goes in with the others.”

  Something in his words gives me pause. Does that mean that he’s going to call the prince instead? Could my fate be this simple—to meet Castian in these cells? What if . . . My thoughts speed too quickly, trying to make a contingency plan in the event I come face-to-face with Castian instead. Would I be able to prevent myself from draining his memories? I grin at the thought.

  “Why’re you smiling?” the officer demands.

  I know the justice has all kinds of ways to know every word that is uttered about him, ears and eyes all over this kingdom. I know what happens when his orders aren’t carried out. Gabo trembles, averting his eyes. No. I decide he’s still my best chance.

  “Because Justice Méndez is going to kill you for this.”

  The torches are few and far between, spotting the muddy stone walls of the dungeons. Water trickles from gaps and crevices, creating puddles. I lose count of the steps we take. The tunnel thins out the farther we go; the walls are closing in. If I held out my arms, my elbows would bend. If I kept running into the labyrinthine passages, the way would become so thin that only a child could slip through. The justice who designed these paths a decade ago used to let prisoners go free. He wanted to play a game. See how far someone could get before they were caught, before they got so lost in the winding dark that they realized it was easier to stay put. There’s no better way to crush someone’s spirit than to give them the false hope of freedom.

  The deeper into the bowels of the dungeons we get, the more I begin to realize that if I lost myself to my stolen memories, my mind would be as desolate and gray as this.

  Someone down the line retches, and then there’s a series of cries as the guards divide us into cells. They’re little more than cages. They were never meant for long-term prisoners, but now they’re used that way, with humiliating buckets brimming with bodily waste in each corner and hay-stuffed cots ripped at the seams. They fill cell after cell but keep me behind. Anticipation coils in my gut, hoping that I will be brought to Méndez after all.

  But when we get to a heavy wooden door studded with iron and a single slat to shove though meal trays, I realize where I am. Solitary.

  I sit on the ground, cold and wetness seeping through the back of my tunic. When I look at the ceiling, there’s a dark stain that seems to keep spreading. But everything is dark in here, except for the rectangular window on the door. The door hinges groan as the lock tumbles into place.

  I wonder how long someone has to be down here before they’re forgotten and discovered dead. A bead of water drips onto my forehead. At least, I hope it’s water. Footsteps echo in the distance. I wonder if Gabo will defy his officer. The thought brings a bitter laugh, because now I’m the naive one.

  I wrap my arms around my knees, thankful I wasn’t stripped of my clothes. The stench conjures a memory of when I was a girl. When I lived in the palace as Justice Méndez’s ward, my rooms were draped with blue chiffon and white ruffled lace imported from the kingdom of Dauphinique east of the Castinian Sea, always an ally to Puerto Leones. Two dozen dolls with real hair on their heads lined my shelves, and wide doors led out onto my own private balcony. Porcelain bowls throughout my rooms were always filled with dried rose petals to mask the smell on the days when there were public executions, though the king has outlawed burnings in the last year. I vaguely remember the small forest cotta
ge I lived in with my parents before that, but they’re only the shadowy impressions of a seven-year-old, so faded that they might never have existed at all.

  Back then I didn’t know that I was the first of the Hand of Moria. Moria power, enslaved to the crown, used to do its bidding, used as symbols of the king’s dominance and control, threats to the parts of the known world he had failed to conquer.

  I shudder as I push my way out of the Gray. I can’t relive that. But I know that if I’m going to survive long enough to carry out my plan, I may have to eventually. For now I allow myself to recall a moment of the good in my life—Sayida singing folk songs. Dez’s grin before a fight. I fish in my pocket for the token he gave me. I turn the coin across my knuckles, a trick Dez taught me when we were kids. He was always so good at sleight of hand.

  A strange noise rattles my solitary cell, and I drop the coin.

  I snap up. There’s nothing but my own frantic breath. My hands slapping cold stone until I find the coin and pocket it.

  It happens again. And this time, I recognize it as a breath that strains to be taken. My eyes, now adjusted to the dark, see the shadows in the corner move toward the weak light at the center of the cell.

  I am not alone.

  Chapter 12

  “Who’s there?” a man asks, his fingertips tapping the space around him.

  Moisture drips from the ceiling, every drop sounds like a hand smacking a tub of water. A draft escapes from a thin crack in the door and whistles.

  I sit just out of reach.

  The man’s breath is ragged. Understandable, as there are more shadows than air. The cell is musty with the stench of rot and bodily waste. Less understandable, however, is the way the man’s bones jut from beneath his skin. Though the weak torchlight reveals a metal flap in the door wide enough to slide food through, it’s clear no one has in a long time. How could they have left him in here? It seems more cruel than the public displays and executions the justice is known for. The Fajardo reign must end.