The Last Legacy

by Adrienne Young

  “Good morning,” he said, after closing the book. He looked up at me with bright eyes and I immediately relaxed. He was in a good mood. “Looks like Sylvie will have breakfast set in a minute. Did you need something?”

  I took great pains to keep my voice even and light. “I have good news.”

  His eyebrows arched. “You do?”

  “I was wrong,” I began. “It took some doing, but last night I followed Ezra to North End. He’s got a girl there who works in a tailor’s shop.” Despite my best efforts, I was talking too fast. Smiling too much.

  But Henrik’s expression didn’t change as the information settled in his mind. My heart pounded so loudly that I was sure he could hear it.

  “I don’t think he had anything to do with Arthur. It would only work against him for you to lose that ring from the guild. It was a stupid thought.”

  He folded his hands before him, setting his knuckles against his mouth. “That’s a relief,” he said, lowly.

  I gave him a small smile. “It is. I admit, I was angry when you told me he didn’t want me here. I may have let that anger get the better of me.”

  Henrik sighed. “I’m sure you can understand what he means to me. I’ve raised the boy as my own. Treated him like blood.” He glanced up. “My father wouldn’t have approved. He would have liked Ezra well enough, but he was never convinced that an outsider could truly be one of us. Still, I built a reputation in this city with Ezra’s help. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have this ring.” He unfurled his fingers, staring at the tiger’s-eye gem on his right hand. Slowly, he unfolded the other. “And without him, I know I will never be granted the other.”

  It was something I’d worked out already. Henrik cared about Ezra, but the bond between them was more about business than attachment. He’d had an instinct about the boy, and he’d gambled on that hunch. The dynasty he’d built was on Ezra’s shoulders. My uncle’s ability with the glass was a well-honed skill, but Ezra’s work with the silver was a gift.

  “I think you’re beginning to understand what it means to be a part of this family, Bryn,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “I am,” I said. And I meant it. I’d finally come to the conclusion that the only rules were the ones I made. I had to choose a side, and I was choosing Ezra’s. Even if that meant being left to fend for myself among the Roths.

  It gave me a sense of pride to hear Henrik say it though. Ever since I’d walked through that door, I’d wanted his approval. If nothing else, it was the thing I’d been taught to want. But now, he’d given me my own stake. My own destiny. And even if he was a liar and a cheat, for that, I was grateful.

  “That’s why I’m surprised you would think I’d leave a matter such as this in the hands of an eighteen-year-old girl enamored with my silversmith.”

  A swift prick lit on my skin as the words left his mouth. “What?” My voice was so thin that I could hardly hear it.

  But Henrik’s expression didn’t change as he watched me. He looked the same as he always did. Calm. Settled. “I like things tidy and timely,” he said, the sound of his voice warping in my mind.

  The weight on my chest traveled down to my gut. I couldn’t draw breath, waking a burn in my empty lungs.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “Not really. This is a lesson best learned through failure.” He came around the desk, going to the closed double doors that led to the small library.

  Before they even opened, I knew what lay behind them.

  The doors creaked and sunlight poured into the study, making my eyes sting. Inside, Ezra sat in one of the leather armchairs, his face drawn in a way I’d never seen it. His cheeks were flushed, his jaw clenched as he looked up at me. Behind him, Murrow stood silent, his eyes on the floor.

  He knew. Henrik already knew.

  He stood in the threshold between us, his arms crossed thoughtfully over his chest. “My silversmith seems to think he can take up an apprenticeship as a shipmaker without me knowing. That was his first mistake,” he said. “The second was believing he would get away with it. But I think this little scheme has gone on long enough.”

  My breath was coming so fast now that my head felt light with it. I could feel the danger in the air, like spilled oil from a lamp. In a matter of moments, it would spark. And more than one of us would burn in the flames.

  “Now, I believe this can be fixed,” Henrik continued. “It’s simply a matter of remembering your place.”

  The terrifying thing was that I believed every word. Henrik meant what he was saying. In his soul, this was who he was.

  His eyes went to Murrow. “Leave his hands. He still needs to work.”

  My lips parted as I looked between Murrow and Ezra. Murrow’s face was tense, his nostrils flared, but he gave Henrik a nod. He was the one who would carry out the punishment. A reminder for him, too, I thought.

  Henrik took the three steps between us, stopping before me, and a tear slipped down my hot cheek as I looked up at him. “Please don’t do this. It was my idea to lie. I—”

  “Bryn.” He gave me a genuine look of sympathy, setting one heavy hand on my shoulder. “He’s not the only one who will pay for the mistake.”

  I blinked, and two more tears dripped from my chin.

  “You will not move from this spot until Murrow is finished. Your punishment is to watch.”

  His hand squeezed my shoulder a little too hard before it dropped, and he walked out of the study without another word. The door closed softly behind me and when I looked up, Ezra was already getting to his feet. He unbuttoned his jacket and took it off before he threw it onto the chair. I watched in horror as he squared his shoulders to Murrow, who was rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

  Anger rippled beneath Murrow’s subdued face. Anger at Henrik, at me, or at Ezra, I wasn’t sure. All were justified. No matter which way you looked at it, Murrow had been pulled into the mess whether we’d intended it or not.

  I sniffed, wiping at my face.

  “Close your eyes.” Ezra didn’t look at me as he said it.

  I obeyed, pinching them shut and sucking in a breath as a horrible silence stretched out. I waited, a sickness brewing in my belly. When the first sound of a fist striking flesh broke the stillness, I wrapped my arms around myself, my fingers tangling into my shirtsleeves. I held on so tightly that I lost all feeling.

  I listened as Murrow beat him, blow after blow landing against bone and muscle, the painful sound dragging in Ezra’s throat like a whip stinging me every time I heard it.

  All at once, I could feel every frailty. Every single crack in the stones I’d been built with. And there was no armor to protect against a wound like that.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I have one memory of Bastian before. Sometimes it surfaces in the last moments of a dream, sometimes while lost in thought, staring out a window.

  In it, I’m small. I’m standing on the stairs and I know I’m barefoot because my feet are cold. I watch the shadows play over the floor as voices in the dining room drift in the silence. And then I see it. A flash of gold in the firelight as my father takes his polished pocket watch from his vest and opens it. It clicks softly as he closes it again, and that’s it. There’s nothing else.

  I’ve asked myself many times if it’s a memory at all. Often, I’ve wondered if it’s the culmination of Sariah’s stories, tangled up in the details of the little portraits that line her study shelf. Details that have come together in a kind of patchwork that lives in my mind. And though nothing about the image has ever felt real, it’s still been the anchor that’s held me to the Roths all these years.

  The house down the alley in Lower Vale had lived in my memory as a place of warmth and belonging, even if it was the place responsible for my parents losing their lives. Now, I feared I might lose myself.

  I curled up tighter beneath the quilts on my bed, hugging my knees to my chest. It had been a never-ending day, taking hours for the sun to start falling, and the meals at the din
ing table had come and gone without me there. No one knocked on my door.

  I wasn’t even there. Not really. I’d retreated in my mind to the night that Ezra came into my room and taught me how to pick a lock. The way his eyes had been focused, the candlelight dancing over his smooth skin. The flash of silver scars on his hands. I’d been angry that night, but it had been the first moment that I felt like someone had seen me. Not the girl I was so good at pretending to be. The one that lived inside of me. It had also been the first moment that the walls around Ezra Finch had begun to appear climbable.

  He’d known even then that he was leaving Bastian. His plan had been in motion long before I’d joined the Roths. And even though it had made my heart ache to imagine him gone, it was nothing compared to the despair that tightened around me in knowing he would have to stay. He was a penned, treasured thing. Henrik’s precious jewel. And he would never let him go. He would never let any of us go, I realized.

  When moonlight finally cast through my window, I pushed back the quilts and sat up slowly, lighting the candle beside my bed. I wished I had never come to Bastian. That I’d refused to board the Jasper and taken my chances with my uncle’s retribution. I wondered what Sariah would have said if I’d asked her to keep me. To pass her enterprises into my hands and match me with a fine young man from the lower rung of the port city’s merchant families.

  The things I’d once dreaded sounded safe now. The allure of the Roths was poison in my veins and I felt withered by it. But Sariah had sent me off without so much as a tear. She’d only handed me that blasted letter.

  My brow pulled as I remembered it. When I’d arrived in Lower Vale, I’d dropped it into a drawer, and after days of dreading the moment I would open it, I’d almost completely forgotten about the message altogether. My feet found their way across the cold floor and the top drawer of my dressing table squeaked as I pulled it open. Inside, the letter that Sariah had given me was nestled in the stack of blank parchments.

  I picked it up and sank to the floor beside the bed, tearing open the wax seal. The thick paper unfolded and the smell of my great-aunt’s potent ink filled my nose, making me so homesick for her house that tears threatened to fall again.

  Her handwriting moved across the page unhurried. Steady, like her. But it wasn’t the letter I’d imagined, a string of paragraphs that strung together a goodbye. The script was barely two sentences.

  Bryn,

  The day you were born a Roth is not the day your destiny began. It began the day you stepped off that ship in Bastian.

  Love,

  Sariah

  Emotion grew thick in my throat as I read the words, my fingers curling around the parchment so tightly that my grip creased the corners. Sariah had found her way out of this house, but only by the grace of her brother Felix. I couldn’t help but wonder what price she had paid for her freedom. It was an escape the rest of us would never have. Not as long as Henrik was head of the family.

  I glanced up to the closed window. The one Sariah’s grandson Auster had climbed out of before he’d left and never looked back. I wondered what had happened to make him walk away with nothing. What had he seen? What had he done?

  My eyes trailed across the room to the closed door. I got back to my feet and dried the tears from my face before I opened it. The hallway was dark except for the light coming from Murrow’s room.

  He was still dressed, poring over the ledgers he’d been asked to check, and he didn’t give any indication that he heard me as I leaned into the frame, watching him. He looked younger. Softer, as he sat at his desk, a burning lamp casting its glow over him.

  When he felt me there, his quill froze midair. He looked over his shoulder and I cringed when I saw his hands. Both sets of knuckles were raw and red, covered in busted, swollen skin that had been cleaned. Probably by Sylvie. Murrow hadn’t bothered to wrap them, perhaps so as not to forget what he’d done. But the torture was heavy on his face. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  “He’d have done the same for me,” he said, swallowing.

  It was such a sad thought that I could hardly bear it. That’s what this family did to you, I thought. Murrow had carried out Henrik’s orders without question for the same reason that Ezra had struck Tru for ruining the coin count. I suspected it was also the reason Ezra had stood by and watched when Arthur hit me in that alley. There was always a trade being made.

  If Murrow had refused to do as Henrik said, Casimir or Noel would have obliged. There was no shortage of respect for Ezra in this house, and even that would have been a mercy. But there was no worse possibility than Henrik doing it himself and Murrow knew that.

  “I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” I whispered hoarsely.

  Murrow let out a long breath. “You didn’t.” His eyes returned to the ledger. “I knew.”

  “You knew?”

  The quill turned in his fingers before he set it down. “I’d been following Ezra to the piers for a while before I figured it out.” He shook his head. “I knew something was going on. And I was worried about him.”

  “You never said anything? Never asked him about it?”

  Murrow shrugged. “Figured he would have told me if he wanted me to know.”

  That was how this worked. Not asking questions. Looking the other way. He’d kept his mouth shut for Ezra’s sake, but he’d known exactly what would happen when Henrik found out. And from what I’d gathered, Henrik always found out.

  “Henrik will be gone until morning,” he said, quietly. “He’s out trying to get to the bottom of this thing with Arthur.” Murrow’s gaze traveled past me, to Ezra’s closed door. It lingered there before he turned back to the ledgers.

  It was another unspoken conversation between us. I guessed he knew by now how I felt about Ezra. Murrow may not speak up, but he noticed things. He was always watching. And he might have even known before I did.

  He got back to work, falling quiet, and I swallowed hard. He was as trapped as any of us, but Murrow would die a Roth. I had no doubt about that. And even if he was willing to look the other way, his loyalty would always be here. To this house and this family.

  I walked slowly past my room, to Ezra’s. My hand hovered over the knob for the length of a breath before I turned it, pushing the door open. The small room was dark, but I could see the form of him beneath the quilts on the bed, turned toward the window. He was always this brooding, pensive presence, but here between these walls, Ezra was just a broken body.

  He didn’t move as I stepped inside, closing his door behind me. His bloodstained shirt was draped neatly over the chair in the corner, where the washbowl was filled with pink water. I could already see the bruises that covered the bare skin of his arms and back, even in the darkness.

  The floorboards creaked as I crossed the room and pulled back the corner of the quilt, but he didn’t move. I slipped beneath them, into Ezra’s warmth, and tucked myself behind him. I could see that his eyes weren’t closed as I pressed the line of my body to his. He didn’t argue. He didn’t shift away from me or stiffen under my touch.

  He was still for a long time before he finally reached back, finding my hand. His fingers laced into mine before they closed and he pulled my hand around him, moving my palm to his chest, where his heart was beating hard.

  This was what lay beneath the frozen surface of him, only visible in the dark. I’d felt the shadow of it the first time I saw him. The first time he’d looked at me. And now, we were tangled together in a grim, looming fate.

  In the days leading up to the dinner at Simon’s, I’d been drawn to him like a moth to flame. When Henrik told me that Ezra wanted to trade me like coin to Simon, it wasn’t just the deal that had crushed me. Deep down, I’d wanted to believe that Ezra wouldn’t give me away. That he’d want to keep me for himself, the way I wanted to keep him.

  I pressed my lips to the groove between his shoulder blades and he drew in a deep, measured breath as I closed my eyes. The tears slipped silen
tly over the bridge of my nose, disappearing into my hair.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice fading.

  He said nothing, but as the minutes passed, his heartbeat slowed under my palm. His breaths began to stretch, pulling long until his muscles relaxed against me. I counted them until his grip on my hand loosened and he fell into sleep. The kind of deep, black sleep that let the mind unravel.

  I exhaled, closing my eyes. If we were stuck, at least we were together.

  THIRTY

  That night, family dinner was like any other. And that was the problem.

  Everyone arrived before the harbor bell sounded, like always. We stood behind our chairs, the fire roaring in the hearth as Sylvie brought out platters of food and jugs of rye, placing everything in their usual positions on the table. Even the conversations as we waited were the same. Noel relaying a discussion with a merchant to Casimir. A whispered joke soliciting snickers between Murrow and Tru. Anthelia bribing Jameson out from under the table with one of the grapes from the plate of cheese.

  When I’d woken that morning in Ezra’s bed, he was gone, the linens where he’d slept cold beside me. I came down to breakfast and he was already working. He hadn’t left the workshop since before dawn.

  I’d listened all day with my stomach in knots as the sound of the hammer on the anvil rang out hour after hour after hour. The sound was an echoing reminder. Ezra had been placed back in his cage, wings clipped.

  Henrik appeared at the head of the table and everyone took their seats quietly. I watched, numb, as my uncle unfolded his napkin in his lap. Correctly, I noticed. He was learning.

  Ezra was wearing clean clothes with his jacket on, hiding nearly all the cuts and bruises that covered him, but they still marked his face. His silver-scarred hands had been left untouched, as Henrik requested. After all, he needed them if he was going to complete the pieces being added to the collection that would be presented to the guild. The only true evidence of what had happened that I could see was in the way Ezra winced when he leaned into the wall. As if it hurt to touch anything. But his demeanor was the same quiet, withdrawn presence it always was.