Incendiary (Hollow Crown)

by Zoraida Cordova

  Tomás pulls the carriage to the side of the road, in plain sight behind two others. One of them looks like it must’ve come from the palace. I wonder if they’ve replaced Justice Méndez yet. I wonder what they’ve done with his Hollow.

  “I bet you wish you’d stayed behind right about now,” Margo tells Amina, whose olive skin has taken on a green pallor as we check our weapons.

  Her silence doesn’t inspire confidence, but this is our unit, and we have to keep going. We disembark from the carriage and go our separate ways.

  Margo grabs my arm when Amina is a few paces ahead of her. “See you on the other side, Ren.”

  I take her hand and we shake. Dez didn’t like to hug or say good-bye, but this feels different. It must weigh on her as it does me.

  I scale the side of a wall, my feet searching for the grooves between the bricks. I pull myself up on top of the ledge. There’s only one guard on duty here. He has no idea that I’m towering above him until it’s too late. I jump, landing on his shoulders and bringing him to the ground with my weight. I immediately dig into his memories, searching for the layout of the prison fortress.

  The port of Sól y Perla is bustling in the bright day. Seagulls search the beach for scraps of things to eat. He loves this city. Loves the way that there’s always something to look at, unlike his current post in Soledad, where the most exciting thing that greets him is the wailing prisoners. But that’s easy enough to ignore when the wind howls louder. Fellow guards posted at the docks wave at him.

  It’s his only day off this month, and he decides to splurge. He pays ten brass libbies for a batch of fresh corvina to take home to his wife and son. He swings the pack of fish over his shoulder and takes a stroll to the docks to watch the ships set sail.

  Superstitious local women in this part of the country like to come to the dock with baskets full of carnations. They rip the petals by the fistful and throw them at the decks of the ships as they pull out into the sea. The riot of color makes him stop and watch the latest ship. Men and women with all hands on deck trying to catch the morning gale that drags the ships out to sea.

  I let go of the guard, and he fumbles on the ground, dizzy and disoriented. I replay the memory over and over again. I have ten minutes before the hour rings from the bell tower above. I need to get to the courtyard, but I’m frozen in shock by a detail of the memory that meant nothing to the guard and everything to me.

  There, on the deck of that ship catching the morning glare, with carnation petals drifting in the breeze, stood a man I’d know anywhere.

  Dez.

  Looking just as I left him. Handsome and fierce as ever, with one thing changed. His left ear was missing.

  It’s impossible.

  It must be an old memory, from when he was still alive.

  Because I watched him die—I saw his head roll and come to a stop right in front of me. I saw the blood drip from Castian’s blade. Castian’s angry blue eyes as he paraded across the stage. So different from the day he cut into the dance during the Sun Festival. The memory of his murderous hands on me sends angry flashes all over my body.

  But still, seeing Dez’s face, so recent, in a memory, feels like a dagger to the chest. A fresh wave of grief washes over me. In all this time, I’ve hardly been able to stop and feel the loss of him. Not truly. Not deeply. The feeling that I will never have him again, never hold him or kiss him or tell him how I feel. My defender, my partner in crime, my best friend.

  No, I can’t do this. Not yet. Not now.

  With the minutes counting down, I shake myself out of my stupor and drag the guard around a corner. I tie him down, then gag him, but continue reliving his footsteps along the port of Sól y Perla, where the rest of the Whispers are now, hopefully escaping to Luzou. I can’t stop the questions racing through me. When was the last time Dez went on a mission that required a ship? There was an excursion to Dauphinique where he was gone for four months. He’d come back with a scraggly beard, his first real facial hair. He’d tried to kiss me but it looked itchy, so I waited. That was three years ago.

  I see the face of the man in the memory over and over. Honey-brown eyes and a full dark beard. It could be anyone. But when he tightened the ropes on the starboard side, I could see him so clearly, see the scars on his bare arms. I know those scars, I’ve traced my fingers all over them. But Dez looked different in the memory. His ear was missing. How could that be unless it happened recently?

  I slap myself. Sayida’s magics must be having a lingering effect on me. Altering the things I see. Making me dredge up feelings that I need to control.

  I won’t fail you.

  Make sure that you don’t.

  The clock marks five minutes to the hour, and I race across the side of the building, guided by moonlight and faint gas lamps. A wail comes from the courtyard of the prison. My heart thunders as I run, and I worry that something has happened to Margo or the others.

  Once I make it to the courtyard, I quickly discover it’s not a wail or a scream, it’s the whistle of the wind. All at once I know why they named this place Soledad. It has a way of making you feel like you’re all alone with nothing but an expanse of hills on one side and the cold, dark sea on the other.

  I give a quick whistle. Dez used to signal by whistling a sparrow call, and it stuck with us. It made Esteban furious because he couldn’t roll his tongue or get his lips to make the softer sound.

  Stop it, I tell myself. Focus. Focus on here and now.

  As I stand alone, I wonder if the scream I heard wasn’t the wind at all. I wonder if it was Margo or maybe Amina, who is untested and new to missions like this. At the very least, Tomás is in the carriage, ready to take us away when we’ve secured the Robári.

  When the clock marks the hour, I know something is wrong. They should be here. There’s a shrill whistle, sharp like the kind made between fingers, not our familiar sparrow tune. I turn to find the source of the noise, and suddenly I’m not alone.

  I’m surrounded by a dozen guards.

  Alarm bells go off along with the chime that marks the hour.

  And then I see them. Margo and Amina, skulking in the shadows. A door with a metal sun opens, and as they head inside, Margo turns around, staring straight into my eyes. Unflinching.

  I won’t fail you.

  Make sure that you don’t.

  Filipa never trusted me.

  Margo never trusted me.

  I didn’t realize how much I’d come to feel for Margo until this moment, as the pain of her deception rips me in two.

  I don’t struggle as the guards drag me into the prison. I understand now how the Whispers truly think of me, and what my role in this mission was all along—the bait in the trap.

  Chapter 31

  The dimly lit room where they’ve locked me up faces the sea. What once might have been a classroom in the days when this place was a Memoria university is now a bare room with a table of weapons and half a dozen lamps, only one of them on. There’s a wardrobe in the corner likely used for storage. Rain pelts the double-paned glass window that rattles in the wind. There is no one else here except for a guard and Judge Alessandro.

  “Be sure not to injure her,” he says, sniffing. His large eyes are rimmed with dark circles. He takes note of my bracelets. I thank the Lady I hid the pouch with the rest of the metal. “Remove the platinum. All of it. We will need her in prime condition for the presentation tonight. Fetch Prince Castian, won’t you?”

  I jerk my head up, and cold dread pools in the pit of my stomach. “Castian is here?”

  Alessandro crumbles a piece of parchment and throws it at me. “It’s Lord Commander to you.”

  “Right away, my justice,” the guard says, standing at attention near the door with his sword already drawn.

  My justice? Only Méndez carried the title. They must’ve found his Hollow and already elevated Alessandro. His feet whisper across the stone floor as he paces around me.

  “I knew you were not to be t
rusted. I told Méndez over and over that he should have brought you here straightaway.” He shares Justice Méndez’s overconfidence. I hope that it will be his destruction, too. “Pity about him. Still, even I could not predict you were foolish enough to enter here by yourself.”

  They haven’t found Margo or Amina. Bitter anger rips through me. For a brief moment, I consider throwing them to the justice, but that feeling ebbs and is replaced with a cruel hurt I haven’t felt in a long time. They betrayed me. They left me. And yet, I cannot bring myself to do the same to them.

  “You underestimate me,” I say. My casual tone seems to bother him. Dez used to do this, and it always worked for him, getting his enemies too enraged to act thoughtfully. “Don’t worry, you’re not the first.”

  “Says the bestae who keeps escaping the palace only to be brought right back. This time you will not be given mercy.”

  Mercy. The word echoes in my head like droplets of water in an empty cell. I stomp on the ache that swells in my throat and force myself to be the person he expects.

  My mouth tugs into a grin. “I take it you found the gift I left behind? I would have wrapped Méndez in a pretty Dauphinique lace for King Fernando, but I didn’t have enough time.”

  A muscle jumps in his throat. “I suppose I should thank you, because now here I am, justice to the king.”

  “Congratulations.” I answer his arrogance with a cruel laugh. He leaves the window and marches to face me. There’s hesitation in the way he keeps his distance, the way a hard breath shudders through him.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks.

  “Only the things I saw in Méndez’s memory about your wife.”

  His eyelids peel back as he raises his fist. “Silence!”

  “Castian was in those memories, but I’m sure you knew that. I wonder how long you’ll last as the justice when the prince gets rid of you and takes back his queen.”

  Alessandro’s lip curls into a snarl, and he punches me once. Blood spills across my tongue where the inside of my lip has split on my tooth. I spit at the floor but miss his feet.

  “You won’t be laughing when you’re on that table,” he says. “You’ll be a complete and utter monster. We’ve already turned one Robári into our own to command. Prince Castian will reward me when I present you to him. He is eager to get his hands on the next one. What better gift to give our crown prince than the wretch that tried to kill him?”

  I laugh. He doesn’t know. No one knows that Castian tried to stop the justice’s experiments. No one but Méndez and Cebrián, and now me. My mouth tastes sour at the thought that Castian—the person I hate most—may be my only way out.

  “I’m going to drain every last memory out of your skull,” I tell him calmly. “When people look at you, they’re going to see the nothing you already are.”

  “That’ll be difficult to do in chains,” he says.

  I try to summon my power, but it doesn’t surge the same way it did in the dungeons. It is like trying to lift a brick wall with my mind. My whorls light up but sputter, flames in the wind.

  Alessandro laughs at my efforts, when there’s a sharp, frantic series of knocks on the door. The guard answers it, and there’s a commotion out in the hallway. I wonder if Margo and Amina have found the Robári while I’ve been locked up here. What a fool I was to think that the elder would trust me. I wonder, if I were to become one of those creatures—would they come back for me? To finish me off? Would they even be able to tell the difference between the monster they thought I was and the one Judge Alessandro wants to turn me into?

  You decide who you’re going to be. Sayida was wrong. Everyone keeps trying to decide for me. At some point, I’m not going to be able to stop them.

  I try to listen to what’s happening outside the door.

  “He’s been taken, my justice,” a woman’s voice says, panicked.

  “What do you mean, taken? How could the prince have been taken?” Alessandro shouts.

  “It appears the prisoner was not acting alone,” another guard says.

  There’s the hard slap of a palm on skin. “Fools. You will be the ones to explain this to the king. I will accept no blame for the poor administration of security by my predecessor!”

  There’s a rattle as the door to the room slams shut and a cylinder lock twists into place. I pound my fists against the solid wood, when something cold and clammy touches my shoulder.

  I whirl around with my fist raised, then stand in shock at the man before me. Where was he hiding?

  He holds his hands up to shield his eyes, his skin the color of ash, cracked in places where the flesh is dry. Red welts mark the insides of his elbows. His hair is dark, the only thing that betrays the unnatural aging of his skin. It’s as if whatever has accentuated his powers is destroying him from the inside out.

  The Robári who steals magics instead of memories.

  The weapon.

  This is the future that awaits me.

  “You.” The word slips out, defeated.

  “Me,” he responds loudly. When he speaks, it is like holding a conch up to your ear.

  “You’ve been here this whole time?” My eyes roam the room. There is a closet with the door swinging from the hinges.

  “That new justice does not know my hiding places.”

  He sits down on the floor, a few feet from the window, and stares at the sea. His stillness makes my skin crawl.

  “But I have learned all the hidden doors of this place,” he continues. “You will, too.”

  I go to the window and let myself sink to the floor. No wonder prisoners here go mad. There is no way out. There are the guards on one side and the sea on the other. When I close my eyes, I see Margo staring at me as she shook my hand, the good-bye we usually never said. She knew she was going to betray me.

  You’re weak, she told me. That’s why I hated you.

  Stupid, stupid, Ren.

  Cebrián sits beside me. Even his nearness is icy, like coldness clings to him. Will it cling to me in this same way? I trace the inside of my arms where my veins show beneath my skin. Not as dark as his, not as terrifying as Lucia’s.

  I hear horses neighing and hooves fading into the distance. They must’ve dispatched a group of guards to go after the Whispers. The rendezvous point at Nuria’s safe house, where all that’s left of the rebels will be until tomorrow when the ship leaves. The bell chimes once again, marking an hour since I was caught.

  Margo’s betrayal hurts, but Sayida is still in that safe house. I think of the fledglings who have no place in the politics and decisions of the council. They don’t deserve to be taken. They don’t deserve the fate that was dealt me.

  I have to get out of here.

  “Cebrián, isn’t it?” I ask, pushing myself up.

  Something about my movement triggers something in the Robári because he looks away from the seascape and at me and says, “Yes, I do believe that is my name.”

  I rest my hand against the window. There’s a storm somewhere out there, the wind whistling through a crack. I shiver.

  “Is there a way out?” I ask. “A hidden door?”

  “No one gets out, girl.” He lowers his voice. “Least of all you and me. They left you here, didn’t they? I was left once.”

  They left you here, Ren. I wanted Filipa’s forgiveness the way I wanted Illan’s. The way I wanted Margo’s. I left people behind, too. But I’ve never stopped to think about what kind of forgiveness I want for myself.

  Why risk my life to try to save them now? They aren’t my friends. My family is dead. But that’s not right, is it? Dez was my family. Illan. Leo. I promised I’d see him again. Sayida. Oh, Sayida. Did she know what was going to happen? Was she part of fooling me?

  “Not everyone,” I say out loud. She wouldn’t. I refuse to believe that, no matter how naive it makes me.

  Sayida is one person. The decision to leave me behind was made by the elder—and Margo. I thought that if I could only get revenge for Dez and des
troy the weapon, then—what? What did I think? Deep down, I know that there is nothing I can do now to change the way the Whispers see me.

  I’ve been fighting this weight that clings to my heart my whole life. What if it isn’t in my heart at all? What if it’s in my mind? Every single memory I’ve collected is a stone stacking up on top of me, pressing me to death. There have always been too many voices, crammed, and shouting, and trying to claw their way out of my mind. What if I stopped fighting them? What if all of those memories were simply—gone?

  I look into the silver eyes in front of me, like liquid alman stone. But when I stare at Cebrián, I see my future. I’m never getting out of here. No one has ever escaped Soledad. But I have another way out.

  “Take my magics,” I say.

  His head snaps up. He watches me like I’ve crawled from under a rock. A creature he can crush. “Why?”

  Because I don’t want to become like you. Because if you make me a Hollow, I will never be a weapon again. Because there is nowhere for me to go from here.

  I think of Leo’s smile and Sayida singing us to sleep. Dez searching for my lips in the dark. Davida signing, Good heart. Protect us all. I can’t even protect myself, let alone the world. I shut my eyes, and hot tears spill down my cheeks.

  “Because I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

  He twitches, a muscle spasm that shakes him like a hanging skeleton. It passes after a moment, and he’s present once again and nods, staring hungrily at me.

  I hold out my hand and repress the shiver that courses through me when his clammy skin closes around mine. Pain stabs at my temples and my heart beats wildly. I have seen death in different forms, and I never thought that this is how my story would end. I remember holding Lozar in my arms and feeling his pulse race. Méndez whispering my name in the end. I can’t cry out for anyone because the ones I love are gone from me.

  So I say nothing and take a deep, steadying breath. The cold Cebrián radiates seems to go right down to his bones. The sting of his power surges up my arm, like sparks of lightning traveling slowly across my skin. I brace for a pain that never comes. Instead, our powers rebound. Cebrián’s last memory slams into my consciousness, brighter than any of my own, like looking inside the prisms of an alman stone.