Incendiary (Hollow Crown)

by Zoraida Cordova

  “Stand down, you fool!” the familiar voice says.

  Justice Méndez sweeps into the cell with Gabo at his heels. The justice’s fine leather shoes slosh through the muck covering the ground. He was never afraid to get dirty. At the sight of him my heart revolts against itself. His gray eyes take in Lozar’s body, the knife, then the mess of me. His hand is extended, as if he can create a wall between me and the officer. Then he seems to remember himself, his elegant features turning to stone.

  “Uncle,” I whimper.

  I can see his age in the silver weaving through his short beard and thick black hair. He’s thinner than the young medic that I remember, but not sickly. It’s like he’s been carved out and tapered to show his strength. His face sharp as diamond edges. There is a war in my heart over the man I despise. The one who traded candies for my power. The man who read me stories before bed and then later signed away the lives of my family and others. How can I have no memories of my own parents, but now that he is in front of me, something inside me unhinges? Memories of him drift from the Gray. Form and re-form like ink in water.

  I catch the moment when he softens. He sees me, as if for the first time, like the day I was presented in front of him by the guards who’d plucked me from the woods outside my home. A little Moria girl with crude hand-stitched gloves.

  “Renata.” His voice weighs me down, like my feet are encased in mortar. It takes all of me not to look away from the intensity of his stare. “Can this be you?”

  “Yes,” I say, my voice strangled. “I’m sorry—he was trying to kill me.”

  “Renata.” The way he says my name has an edge. I shouldn’t have sought him out. It was a mistake to think he’d be happy to see me. He knows where I’ve been these past years. He knows that I can’t be trusted. He takes my bloody hand, and I use all my strength not to withdraw. His thumb traces the freckle at the base of my thumb. Dez kissed me there once. “Do you remember what I said to you when we last saw each other?”

  The day the Whispers stormed the palace and set the capital on fire. The day I first met Dez and he saved me from this gilded cage. The day I last laid eyes on Méndez and swore I never would again.

  “You said—” I swallow the choking cry swelling to the surface. “You said you wouldn’t let anyone take me away.”

  I stiffen as his hands rise in the air, not to strike me, but to wrap around me.

  “You have come back to me,” Justice Méndez says. He takes my face into his hands and examines me this way and that, as if I’m a horse he plans on purchasing. But then I see his eyes land on a distinct cluster of freckles along my jaw. He’s trying to find a way I could be an impostor, a look-alike. His thumbs trace the scars on my palms, over and over like he’s trying to memorize their pattern. Is it that dark in here or are there tears in his eyes? “I do not believe it.”

  My throat aches as I find the courage to lie and lie well. “The Whispers are in upheaval. I was able to break free from the safe house. I made it to the capital, but I had nowhere to go. I had to steal—I haven’t eaten in days—I was captured and brought here.”

  I wince when he holds my injured hand tighter. He keeps his finger pressed over one of the cuts. His gray eyes snap to the guards waiting in the shadows.

  “My justice—she killed the prisoner—” the older guard says.

  “He was a Ventári,” I say, and wince again at the burning pain in my palm. “He saw that I had run away from the Whispers and tried to kill me.”

  “You let this man have a weapon?” Méndez’s voice is colder than the draft squeezing through the crack of the door.

  “We didn’t know he was here,” the older guard stutters. “The cell was empty before—”

  But Méndez silences the guard with a pointed finger, then returns his attention to me. The hard edges of his face soften.

  “My Renata.” Is that satisfaction in his voice? He wraps his arm firmly around my shoulder. I let myself soften in his hold. Relieved. Grateful. Pliant. I let out a real sob. I’m betraying everything I love because a fissure in my being remembers how safe I once was with this man.

  Méndez guides me through the dark. We step over Lozar’s body. I killed him, and we are walking over him as if he’s a puddle in the market square.

  “Clean this up.” Justice Méndez waves a dismissive hand at the guards and they scramble to lock the cell.

  “Yes, my justice,” Gabo says, and bows.

  “You did well in telling me, Gabo. She should’ve been brought to me as soon as possible.” Justice Méndez’s eyes cut to the officer. “You, on the other hand, Sergeant Ibez—I am disappointed in you. I understand you chose to not follow my instructions.”

  “Your Royal Justice, please!” The words are said in a frenzy. “I believed her to be a liar. As you preach, they are charlatans. Deceivers—” His dark eyes widen with shock.

  Deceivers.

  That’s the last word he manages before Gabo slashes the dagger across his exposed throat.

  I swallow my scream as Méndez’s hand grips my shoulder even more firmly.

  “Come, my sweet,” he says. “You are safe now, with me.”

  Chapter 13

  I should never have gotten lost in the woods. With Justice Méndez’s arm around me, it takes all of my willpower to remain calm. It’s the Gray that won’t keep still, releasing a memory like dust from an unearthed tomb. It is so clear, swirling with the color that normally bleeds out of my memories from the Gray. For the first time, I’m not swallowed into the memory, but it is simply there for me to grasp.

  When I was a little girl, our home always had an altar dedicated to Our Lady of Whispers with her crown of stars and the moon at her feet. Back then, I knew nothing of the goddess or the people she gifted with magics that vein the earth. I knew that I had a power I couldn’t always control, and I’d wonder at the strange glow that traveled under my fingertips. I didn’t have the burn marks that come with taking a memory because my parents never let me take my gloves off outside the house. My mother was a Persuári and my father an Illusionári. I remember my mother channeling her warmth into me when I was afraid of the dark. I remember my father casting shadows on the wall to take the shapes of the stories he told me. Those are the magics the king and the justice claimed were responsible for the most devastating plague in our history.

  The day I got lost, I tugged on my wool gloves and followed my father into the woods. The flowers on our altar had withered, and so I was to help pick new ones.

  “You must be very careful, Nati,” my father would warn. I’ve never seen kindness in anyone else’s eyes the way it lived in his, even when he was serious. When I let myself remember him, I realize he was scared, too. “Stay close.”

  But I didn’t stay close. I found a patch of wild gazenias in full bloom. I followed their orange hearts and yellow petals through the dry woods until I came across an open field. I’d never been so far from home before and I’d never left the woods. I tried to turn back, calling for my father and mother until I came across soldiers in the king’s dark purple-and-gold uniforms.

  “Are you lost, little one?” a woman asked, coming close. I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but I can still remember the fear that overpowered me then. I nodded and told the soldiers exactly where I lived and what my house looked like.

  They didn’t take me home. They brought me to the palace, with promises of seeing my parents there.

  I was taken to a nursemaid who washed my hair and changed my clothes before bringing me to Justice Méndez’s study. I was made to sit in the same chair I sit in now. It has a leather groove and a high back that stretched far above my head.

  Méndez always had a smile for me. His patience was remarkable with a girl who did nothing but cry for her parents at first. He sent up cherry cakes with fresh cream and oranges encrusted in burned sugar and drizzled in clover honey. He said I could see my parents if I followed instructions.

  Nameless guards brought a blindfolde
d man into the room. His mouth was gagged and his hands were tied. I cried again, but now Méndez knew he could calm me down with more delicacies. At home my mother fried potatoes with rosemary and cooked squash we grew ourselves. We ate meat once a month if there were enough rabbits to hunt. I’d never seen or tasted such wonders as I did my first time in the palace.

  “This man,” Méndez said, “has a secret. Have you ever seen snow, Ren?”

  I wanted to correct him. My father called me Nati. It was comforting, familiar, my name. Anything else made me feel uneasy, out of sorts, like an entirely different person. But I wouldn’t correct this man. There was something in the justice’s gray eyes that made me stop. So instead I answered his question with a nod.

  “All you have to do is find this man’s secret. He’s keeping something very dear to me hidden in a place with snow.”

  “I don’t know how,” I said, and it was true. I’d never used my power before. My mother explained it once. She said I was blessed with the magics of memory. Only the Lady of Whispers knew everyone’s secrets and it was a gift I had to keep to myself.

  I can’t remember how, but I did it. I pressed my unmarred fingers to the bound man’s temples and pulled out a memory of Citadela Nevadas up in the mountain range of the same name. I described the small wooden houses with chimneys puffing out black smoke. Men hauling wood through a snowbank and into a cabin full of swords and other weapons.

  Before I could even finish, Méndez shouted, “Citadela Nevadas. Send an infantry right away.”

  Now, as I lean back in the chair that I’ve grown into, my eyes flick to the wall behind Méndez. There’s a map of the kingdom of Puerto Leones hanging there. It changes bit by bit every year, erasing provincias. There’s a mountain range west of the capital, the only place in the country where it ever snows. Three years ago, I was sent on a mission to scout Citadela Nevadas.

  It was nothing but ruins and I couldn’t remember why, but I knew it was because of a memory I had stolen. I didn’t know it was once a holdout from the queendom of Tresoros, which never recognized the treaty between their former country and Puerto Leones.

  I can’t find Nevadas on the map, either, but the mountain range is clearly drawn and capped by white snow.

  The justice’s study hasn’t changed in a decade, except perhaps for a different guard standing at the door, and the smattering of gray in Justice Méndez’s dark hair. His sharp cheekbones have a touch of red, as if he’s been somewhere sunny recently. Though he must be in his early forties, he has the wrinkleless face of someone who seldom smiles or laughs.

  Méndez takes a white cloth, dips it into a brown jar on the right side of his desk, and rubs the table down with it. The liquid is pungent with lemons and orange rinds. Once the wood gleams, he pats the surface, on which stand neat rows of metal instruments, small knives, vials in clear bottles the shade of pond water, a porcelain bowl full of balls of cotton, long, slender needles, and black thread.

  Before Méndez became the head of the king’s justice, in charge of overseeing peace and order, he had been a medic in the king’s army. It’s part of the reason why he knows what is most harmful to the body and how to craft the best instruments of pain. From the drawer, he takes out a clean pair of calfskin gloves and tugs them on.

  This would be so much easier if I were a Persuári to guide his emotions or a Ventári to see what he’s thinking.

  “Come, Renata.” His storm-gray eyes focus on my face, silently interrogating my features for any signs of deceit. “Your hand, please.”

  Dez’s boot knife is in front of me. I consider grabbing it and stabbing it through the thick veins on the top of his hand. It is a wild, sudden impulse that vanishes as quickly as it appeared. Extending my bare hand to the most powerful man in the kingdom, save for the king and prince, I lower my head with shame that is far too real.

  My knuckles are a bloodied mess of torn skin, and the gash on my palm has clotted. I can’t help but wince and bite my tongue as he pulls my fingers open to assess the damage.

  “Are you afraid?” he asks. Those gray eyes never miss a thing. He did not become this man by believing every story that was brought to him. His body is rigid, but the anger he showed to the guard—the dead guard—has been replaced with careful suspicion. I would be a fool not to be afraid.

  Some part of me doesn’t believe that he would hurt me. Not when I am more useful to him alive.

  “Yes,” I say.

  His cheek twitches. “I must assume the rebels have poisoned you against me.”

  “They tried.” My voice grates in my throat, these recollections taking the shape of daggers. “The Whispers kept me among them. I was too valuable to kill. Too dangerous to trust. They—” I cut myself off, letting my rage fill the silence. None of these words are lies and perhaps that is the spark of the anger that makes me tremble. I have not forgiven Méndez for using me as a weapon, and I have not forgiven the Whispers for doing the same.

  “Hold still,” he warns. “This will kill any infection you might’ve contracted in that muck. Though I’ll have to keep an eye on it. The skin is too red for my liking. He missed your tendons, thank the Father of Worlds.”

  “Thank the Father of Worlds,” I echo.

  Then all my thoughts evaporate as he pours a solution over my raw and bloody hand, and it stings so much that I fear I’ll faint.

  “Don’t tell me the rebels have taken your courage,” he says.

  I frown, shaken by his words. “What do you mean?”

  His dark lashes cast long shadows over his cheeks. Of all things, a smile breaks across a face otherwise carved from marble. “When you were eight, I wouldn’t let you go with the other court children to visit Tresoros Manor. You packed a bag and decided to climb out of your window. You got halfway down before you slipped. Broke your arm.” He selects a set of sharp tweezers and points to the pale scars on my right forearm. “You had ten stitches and couldn’t use your magics for weeks. But when I patched you up, even when I set your shoulder back in place, you didn’t flinch. You didn’t cry. There were no tears in your eyes. Not like you have now.”

  I try to swallow, wet my tongue, but everything is dry. I don’t have this memory, but as he gently, meticulously plucks splinters from my knuckles, I believe him.

  “Pain takes a toll on everyone,” I say.

  He makes a noncommittal sound. I take the moment to study him.

  Gray eyes. Graying hair. Graying beard. It’s like he’s been coated in salt from the middle valleys. His touch is soft, holding my hand as if he’s putting together pieces of fine Andalucían glass. When he at last sets the tweezers down, he washes my wound once again with the burning solution and turns my palm faceup. The cut extends from the base of my fingers to just above my wrist, red at the sides but no white or green of infection. He takes a breath, as if relieved, before threading the needle. Kisses the tip in the candle burning on his desk.

  “Tell me, my sweet Ren,” Méndez asks, “how did you escape?”

  Without warning, he pushes the threaded needle into my skin. The thread follows through. My heart spikes. I bite down on my molars. Does he want me to be that fearless little girl once again? I don’t want to remember her. But if this is the way to get closer to the weapon and to Castian, then so be it.

  “Illan’s son,” I manage to say. I feel a hitch in my throat and take a moment to smooth out the wrinkles in my lies. “His capture had the rebels distracted.”

  “I was surprised to hear Illan wouldn’t surrender for his own son,” Méndez says. “But the bestaes do not value life the way we do.”

  Can he really forget that I am Moria, too? Was I such a good traitor that he counts me in his terrible we?

  The tendons of my throat hurt. For a moment, I think of Dez’s caress along my jaw, down to my clavicle. Embarrassed, I focus on the map behind Méndez. There is an empty space in the north of the kingdom where I know the Memoria Mountains to be. Is it that easy to wipe out the memory of a plac
e? Simply redraw lines and leave gaps in the world?

  The next stitch is followed by a cold numbness. I wonder if Dez would be proud of me. I didn’t even flinch that time.

  “They’re unraveling,” I say. “I saw a chance. I knew I wouldn’t get another. They don’t allow me in meetings, but I listen when I can. No one was afraid of me going anywhere.”

  There’s a green fleck in one of his gray eyes. Was that always there? “Why was that?”

  “I suppose,” I say, “because I had nowhere to go.”

  It isn’t wholly a lie. All truth changes depending on who tells the story.

  He holds my hand hard in his. I stare into his eagle eyes, probing into mine to find the betrayal. “You could have returned to me.”

  “If I could have, I would have been at your side. As long as I can remember, one of the Whispers has been with me.” Dez rarely left my side when we were children. Even when I wandered around the San Cristóbal ruins, there was always someone there, watching. I look at my hand, where his fingers leave imprints. “You’re hurting me.”

  He lets go, breathing hard, like he’s shocked at his own display of emotion. It’s hard to look at him this way. It’s worse to think that he actually cares for me.

  “A few more,” he says. As he adds stitch after stitch, I remember a time I walked with Justice Méndez in the palace gardens, forbidden to all but the justice of the crown, and he let me read under great gnarly trees draped with Leonesse moss and pale cosecha flowers. When the wind sailed through them, pink petals rained on me, so at night I had to untangle them from my braids. I would soak my hands in rosewater and powdered gold like the other girls at court to get rid of blemishes and impurities on their skin. It never worked on me. I am a network of scars, and I fear I’ll never be much more than that.

  Finally, Méndez lowers the needle, and wipes away the excess blood that bubbles up. “It’ll scar.”

  “It’ll blend in. Thank you, Uncle.” I let my voice soften even more. “I’m sorry, I meant my justice.”