A boy learning how to wield a sword.
A girl waiting for him on the docks.
They slip like silver water through my fingers until I see pitch black, hear the whistles of solitude.
Panting, I steal his sword just as it’s about to clatter to the ground and race up the stairs to the council hall.
Even in death Méndez kept his promise. Who did he break?
A soldier appears from behind a pillar. She screams through her fear as our swords clash. My blood runs as hot as lava, and I fight with an anger I’ve bottled up for nearly a decade. I am so close. I cannot end here.
I ram the sword through her throat. Warm blood sprays across my face and the acrid taste of it finds its way into my mouth. I turn and spit it out on the ground.
I run through the hall and open the double doors to the meeting room.
Fall to my knees.
Three of them are dead, but they took two soldiers with them. I make to move, when a cry catches me off guard.
In the corner of the room is Esteban.
He clutches a bottle of aguadulce and presses it against a wound in his belly. “I’m sorry,” he tells me.
“Don’t be sorry just yet,” I say, pushing back my fear and trying to focus. “You’re going to be fine. We need you, you hear me?”
Esteban releases a shuddering cry as I yank the bottle of drink from him. I knock back a swig, then pour it over the gash on his chest. It’ll need stitches, but it isn’t as deep as I’d feared. I think of the start of our journey. How he told me that there’s a lot we don’t know about each other. There have been moments when I hated him, but I’ve never wanted him hurt this way. I say a prayer to Our Lady of Shadows and find the cleanest cloth I can—a swatch of old stained tablecloth—and cut it in strips. After all these weeks being injured, I’ve nearly perfected the pressure on bandages.
“Stay here. I’ll send survivors and a medicura,” I say.
He squeezes my hand hard, like he’s afraid to let go. “Ren, Ren, it was me.”
Seeing him now makes the full memory unfurl. Esteban screaming after they caught him. They separated him from Sayida. Méndez cutting into the tender skin of his eyes and lips. The other one broke too easily, he’d said before he started on Sayida.
“I’m sorry,” he sobs.
“I know,” I tell him, and squeeze his hand in mine.
His good eye blinks away tears. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
I shake my head. Because we’ve already had too much loss. Because no one could have sat under that knife without spilling their deepest and darkest secrets. And if they had no secrets to tell, they would simply make them up. They would say anything to make the pain stop. But I don’t tell him any of that. I need him in good spirits.
“Because I need you alive,” I say. “And we both know Margo would have kicked your ass.”
We laugh and sob together. I have to make him laugh because if I don’t give him a reason to keep living, he won’t.
“Thank you,” he says.
I pry his fingers off mine and race back outside. A group of fledglings are running this way and I guide them inside. “Barricade this door!”
Screams come from down in the courtyard. It’ll take too much time to get back to the stairwell, so I hop onto the ledge, take a deep breath, and jump. I grab hold of a tree branch just within my reach. My sword clatters to the ground, but I swing myself down and break my fall into a roll. I misjudged my landing, and I’m face-to-face with a soldier. His dark eyes narrow on me, sword poised to kill.
Blood spews from his open mouth in a final cry as Margo comes up behind him, skewering him in one blow.
I release a hard breath. “Thank you,” I say, and take the hand she offers.
Sweat runs down her brow and a bloody gash cuts her cheekbone open. “Don’t thank me. There’s too many of them.”
“I have an idea,” I say. “Where’s Sayida?”
“She can’t fight. Her arms.”
“She doesn’t have to.”
Margo’s eyes light up when she realizes what I mean. For the first time, our thoughts are aligned. Together, we dash across the lawn to the other side of the cloisters. A dozen armed soldiers chase us across the green. There’s a small chapel there, and as we get nearer, the doors swing open to let us in and shut quickly behind us.
Sayida, along with dozens of others, stanch their wounds and take inventory of the dead.
“We need to get as many soldiers as we can to stand down. Sayida, gather the Persuári,” I say. “We’re going to create a diversion.”
“There’s too many of them.”
“Not for long,” I say. “Do you still have the metals Lady Nuria gave us? Margo—”
“I know what to do. Yanes, Gregorio, Amina!” Margo rallies her fellow Illusionári. She takes off all the rings on her fingers, except one. Yanes, Grego, and Amina slide them on. For the younger Moria, precious metals are a luxury. I can see them call on their powers, the irises of their eyes sharpening.
With a wicked grin, Margo leads her small group back out to the lawn and whistles between her fingers. The Illusionári spread out. Moving as one, they mirror Margo’s body language, pressing their hands against the air until it ripples around them like pebbles breaking the clearest surface water.
Six purple-clad soldiers advance, and Margo’s foot trembles with anticipation as she waits for them to close ranks. A deep, thundering cry comes from around us. Four spotted lynxes as big as wolves charge forward with bared teeth and sharp claws digging into the air. Their fur gleams in the sun, and they spring, corralling the rest of the soldiers into the center of the lawn.
My stomach tightens with the aftereffects of their powerful Illusionári magics, but it’s working. They’re drawing the king’s soldiers away from the others.
“Stand down,” I say.
Half of them draw their swords.
Sayida and her three Persuári step onto the grass. She shuts her eyes, holds her palms up, and the others follow. This close together, they create a stream of undulating colors. They weave through the air like ribbons, streaming toward the king’s soldiers, into their noses, their eyes, their ears. Sayida always tries to draw out the good in people and so those who did not draw their swords fall to their knees. I think of the guard in Esmeraldas, when Dez made him give up his weapon. Some of the soldiers stand down. A few run.
“Stand down!” I shout again at the remaining soldiers.
They don’t.
“We fight,” Margo says, drawing her short sword. Her unit follows.
We are a fury of metal and bloody fists. Bone ripping through knuckles, the tender skin of lips tearing in half. I shake with the violence that is a living thing inside me. I slip into that rage the way memories slip through my fingers, and as I stand over a fallen soldier, her dark eyes fluttering as my fingers dig into her temples, I know that this anger will be the end of me one day.
It is a cacophony of voices—Méndez, Lozar, Dez—countless others whose names I don’t know.
With my heart on my lips, I let go of the soldier.
She blinks, staring around the lawn. She’s survived.
But we’ve won.
We gather the dead soldiers and dead Whispers in the courtyard. The Whispers still living scream in agony. A Moria woman weeps as she carries a young boy in her arms. She lays him down among the others.
“On your word, Commander,” a Persuári named Victor addresses Margo.
For a moment, Margo’s blue stare falls on me. I see the moment she steels herself, her arms behind her back in the same posture that Dez always took when faced with an impossible task, as if commanding his body to listen to him, to stay still.
“You.” She points to the woman I spared. The soldier sways on her knees.
“Tell your king what has happened here. Tell him that we will not fall. Not now, not ever. The Whispers are alive and together—we make a thunderous voice. Do you understand me?”
/> She nods rapidly, tears streaming down her face when she looks to the three soldiers who refused to surrender. No one speaks of mercy. Not when the numbers are on their side.
Margo turns to the three, who are silent in their bindings. A part of me wants to stop this. We should be better than the crown. But I have witnessed too much pain. Too much death. We did not start this violence, but we will finish it.
“A life for a life,” Margo commands. “Your king owes us thousands.”
I shut my eyes and hear a series of blades slice across flesh.
When it’s over, there is a line of red where the dead soldiers have fallen across the green field.
In the distance, the soldier Margo set free is a purple dot running south, back to the capital to deliver our message.
For a long time, we stand in utter silence. Barely two dozen of us, lingering like ghosts across a field of horror. Not even the wind howls through the mountains.
Then a young girl runs up to me. She tugs at my hand and her cry drives like steel into my core. “Come quick! It’s Illan.”
Illan lies beside the willow tree where Dez’s headstone is marked. He’s alive, thank the Mother of All, but there’s a dagger driven through his rib cage, his own fingers covered in blood as he tries to stop the bleeding. A young soldier is facedown beside him with a crack on his forehead. A silver fox head split from its cane.
“No.” The cry trembles through me as I crouch beside him, pressing my palm over the knife wound in his stomach.
I know I should say more. I owe him my life. I owe him—
“Renata. I must show you this before I go. . . .” Illan takes my hand in his and rests it over a heart that struggles to beat.
I remember his face eight years ago, eyes fierce with rebellion. Hope. He carried me out of the palace himself, and I thrashed and screamed in his arms because I didn’t want to go, didn’t know he was saving me. He changed my life forever.
“Sayida!” I shout even as I’m already surrounded. “De—” I catch his name on my lips. It feels wrong that he’s not here, not by his father’s side.
“Please,” Illan whispers. His throat makes a gurgling sound. Blood filling his chest, his throat. He guides my bloody hand to his forehead, and when my slick fingers make contact, I know what he wants me to do.
Tears slide down my cheeks, my fingertips glow, as I send a pulse of magic to retrieve the memory he offers.
Queen Penelope is going to change her mind. He can see it in the way she paces the reading room, her golden hair hazy in the sun, like a halo. The hatch under the rug is still open, and dust clings to his hair and clothes.
“Your Majesty,” he begins, but she cuts him off.
“No, you do not get to placate me,” she says, settling fierce blue eyes on him.
“I only mean to remind you that this is how we end the bloodshed. The king must have a single heir. An heir he can trust, he can mold. An heir he thinks will carry on his legacy. But you will be there, by the prince’s side, keeping his heart full. Our next king must have a full heart.”
Queen Penelope takes a deep breath. The daughter of old kings, her bloodline tied to this earth. She lifts her golden circlet and places it on her regal head. “I promised my father we would end this war.”
“We will meet by the river at sunset.” Illan grabs her hands and climbs back down the hidden stairwell.
“What if the child will not come?” Celeste asks. Disguised in common servant clothes, the spy twists her copper ring, the only sign that she is nervous.
“He will. You’ve mastered the art of turning emotion into color. No child could resist.”
Celeste nods and marches into the wood, where the golden-haired prince sits at the bank of the river. He can’t be more than four, but his entire childhood will be gone after today. The prince throws stone after stone while a smaller boy cries beside him.
“Shhh, Mamá is on her way back,” the prince says. The second boy tries to crawl away.
“Hello, young one,” Celeste says.
Prince Castian looks up from the baby. “Who are you?”
“I am a sorceress.” Celeste waves her fingers in the air. She pulls at the boy’s feeling of wonder, bright blues and greens swirling all around. “The most powerful in the land.”
The prince’s eyes widen. “Can you teach me?”
Celeste nods. “But you know what the king’s rules about magics are. You must not tell a soul. Do we have an agreement?”
Castian steps forward and holds out his tiny hand. “Wait. I have to watch my brother until my mother returns.”
Celeste glances up and sees the queen watching from afar, concealing herself behind thick oak trees, profound grief already etched across her face. “The child will be safe and sound in the basket. Or do you not wish to learn?”
The prince has doubts, but his curiosity wins, and he follows Celeste into the thicket of trees, chasing the colorful ribbons in the air. His small fingers try to grab hold of them, but he can’t. She uses that innocence, that wonder, and lulls him into a transfixed state.
It is in that moment that Illan must do his part. He breaks for the second boy and lifts him into his arms. He throws a bundle into the river, then hurries through the forest, this life pressed against his chest.
He pauses for a moment, then looks back to the shore. The queen’s cry rings out, true and broken, never to see her second son again. The blankets bob in the rushing waters. Celeste vanishes into the forest. The prince weeps as he watches his mother break apart.
“What have you done?” the queen shouts over and over. The prince would never know she wasn’t shouting at him, but at herself.
Illan can’t stomach the scene, knowing the pain he’s caused, despite the desperate reason. He broke the queen’s heart, took half of it away from her, and carried the missing piece into the forest, never to look back again.
When I pull away, Illan is no longer breathing. His eyes stare at the sky, mouth slightly ajar with a trickle of blood flowing from each corner.
“Illan,” I say. I shake him, my fingers wet with blood and still trembling at the memory he just showed me.
“He’s gone, Ren,” Sayida whispers beside me.
I know it. And yet, I cannot move. No one can.
I’m momentarily paralyzed by grief, and speechless in my confusion. Prince Castian didn’t murder his brother. Illan took him. To what end? I know what this means, but I can’t face it. I think of the memory I stole from the garden, the secret rendezvous between Illan and Queen Penelope. Illan said it was to save their lives. From who, the king? Illan said they needed to give the king a reason to trust the prince, someone to mold in his own image. And what better way to mirror such a tyrant than a boy who murdered his own brother.
I’m overcome with disgust, shock, sadness. All I want to do is run as far away as possible, but I’ll never be able to outrun what lives inside me. The truths I don’t want to face.
I remember the rest of the Whispers now around me. Unaware of what I’ve become witness to, only focused on the loss of their leader. So I stand, and together, we work silently, building a massive pyre to burn our dead. A few of the older Moria, the ones who have done this time and time again, sing old funeral songs, their voices haunting as they echo in the courtyard. I know these songs, but they are only familiar because they are sung in my memories. I wonder if my mother ever sang them to me.
Night falls by the time we’re finished, and Margo comes up beside me, a torch in her hand. She throws it at the grave, and we inhale the oil and smoke.
“We can’t linger,” I say. “We have to leave as soon as possible.”
“I know,” Margo answers. “By the light of Our Lady—”
“We carry on.”
Chapter 29
We travel under the cover of dark. Margo and I double back for the carriage and make sure the roads are clear. There is but one elder left, and three dozen Whispers, mostly fledglings too young to fight. Still, w
e manage to turn a two-day trip into one, and with luck on our side, we arrive at the port town of Sól y Perla near midnight. Here, there is very little presence of the royal guards, and scores of traders swarm in a night market illuminated by large oil lamps, drunken men and women from all over stumbling in and out of cantinas.
While Sayida heads off to do some trading at the harbor, Margo and I scout ahead. The others wait in our stolen carriage. The beach home facing the sea is pitch-black. Not a single light within. The sea breeze is calming here, the boardwalk clear of foot traffic. The house is mostly empty, with just basic furnishings and simple rooms. There’s a cellar stocked with bags of rice and jars of salted fish. We might be able to pull this off.
“I’ll go get the others,” Margo says.
“Hold on.” I stand back and wait for her to turn to me. “You were right.”
“We don’t have time for this, Ren.”
“It’s only a moment, but it’s important. I wanted to tell you that you were right. About the way that I push myself into loneliness. It didn’t make sense to me until Méndez said all those things.”
“That man should have no place in your heart,” she reminds me.
“And yet everything he was is in here.” I press my finger to my temple.
Margo sighs. The wind blows the loose strands of her golden hair. “You’ve gotten through this before. You can do it again.”
She leaves me. I inhale the scent of the sea to prepare. I am thankful for the reprieve, as Méndez’s memories surround me. When I close my eyes, I see my Robári hands, and Justice Méndez wrapping them in gauze. It was never a father’s touch. His gentle hands were moved by the fear of someone who had too much to lose.
One by one, the surviving Whispers file into the abandoned house. Because all the elders but Filipa are dead, she’s appointed Margo, Sayida, and a Persuári named Tomás as the highest-ranking members of the Whispers. Everyone has a task—to arrange beds, to make food, to prepare weapons, to be ready to leave as soon as we are able.
Incendiary (Hollow Crown) Page 36