The Firebrand Legacy

by T. K. Kiser

  Carine shot up from her covers. Afternoon light filtered into the dark room; so many days in hiding was ruining her family’s sleep schedule. She shoved the thin blankets off her nightgown and strode to her parents’ mattress on the floor.

  “Didda?” she said in the dimness. “Mom?”

  Didda mumbled from his pillow. Carine squatted, close enough to discern Didda’s silhouette. Her father had been so patient the last few days, saying he was full when she knew he wasn’t just so Carine could eat another bite.

  Mom struggled more than Didda, but in some ways Mom’s voiced complaints motivated Carine. She rounded the mattress to check on Mom, but nobody was there.

  “Mom?”

  Carine swept away the quilt that divided the room. Her shins ran into the bench at the table.

  “Mom?”

  No answer.

  Didda sat up sleepily, and his worry joined hers as he batted the empty sheets next to him.

  “She’s not here,” said Carine, voice rising. “Mom? Are you here?”

  “I didn’t feel her get up,” Didda said.

  Carine ran to the door. It wasn’t bolted as it had been when Carine went to sleep.

  “She’s been parched. We all have,” Didda said, standing and wiping his eyes. “She probably went for water and food.”

  “Alone? At a time like this? Without telling either of us?”

  “Calm down, Carine. I’m worried too.”

  “Calm down?” Carine hadn’t bothered to change her clothes or even wear her surcoat, since they wouldn’t be outside. One old sock pooled below her ankle. Her stomach growled. “The whole point of us shutting ourselves in like this is so we’ll be together. What if the dragon flies over?”

  Didda wrapped his scrawny arms around her, but it didn’t help. Mom was missing out there. Carine hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.

  Part of Carine wanted to put on her cloak and find her mother, to pull her back home to safety. But another part, a stronger part, knew that going outside would just double their family’s risk.

  “Do you hear that?” Carine said. She pressed her ear against the crack between the door and its frame. Outside, footsteps clapped over the cobblestone.

  “It’s me,” Mom’s voice said. She banged the door. “Let me in…Let me in!”

  Carine opened it. “What were you thinking, Mom?”

  Mom stumbled in and slapped the door shut, dropping a nearly-empty water bucket and a bunch of carrots on the floor.

  She fell onto her knees, panting. Her long, graying hair hid her face as she said, “Lock the door. Lock it. Lock it.”

  5 Marked

  Carine promptly obeyed. No sooner did the door latch than Mom pulled her away.

  “Hide,” Mom said. “We have to hide.”

  A million questions whirred through Carine’s mind, but she couldn’t find any words. Mom’s eyes were wide, and her shoulders rose and sank so quickly that she could pass out.

  “We’re not the only ones in hiding now,” Mom gasped.

  “What?”

  “The streets are empty. Everyone’s locked inside. There’s no one out. Did either of you notice when the music stopped outside?”

  Come to think of it, the celebrations had waned over the last several days, and the rain had skirted the celebrants off the streets. But Carine hadn’t heard a peep from the festivities since yesterday. Her heart raced.

  “No one’s outside. Even these vegetables...they were laying on the table unattended, free for the taking. I just took something and hurried back.”

  “Why? Why are they locked in?” Carine said.

  “Maybe they finally came to their senses,” Didda suggested.

  But in the pit of her stomach she knew it was something worse. There was only one kind of person that would be powerful enough to empty the streets of its people, especially during the Ten Dragons Festival.

  Only the Heartless Ones had enough power to frighten Esten. If their dark magic wasn’t terrible enough, the way they acquired their power made them loathsome. They started out as normal folk—humans, fauns, centaurs, gnolls. To gain their power, they sought out the snow dragon Luzhiv, cut out their own hearts, and fed them to him. In exchange, the snow dragon preserved their heartless lives and let them borrow his power.

  Carine trembled. As much as she hated the dragon Kavariel, the beast did bring their kingdom one thing they needed: the enchanted flame. Only Kavariel’s flame could splice the link between the Heartless Ones and Luzhiv. When runners delivered tongues of the flame to the ten towers that surrounded Navafort—including its capital city Esten—those blinking lights meant protection from the Heartless Ones.

  These nine days were the longest Navafort had ever gone without the flame. Now, Kavariel’s flame wasn’t here to stop them. For the first time, the Heartless Ones could enter Navafort without a threat.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Didda said. “The Heartless Ones know that as soon as Kavariel relights the flames they’ll die.”

  Mom wiped her face. “I thought the same thing, but then I realized that maybe everyone knows something that we don’t. And then…I saw blood. Down the street at the northwest square. A lot of it. And as I ran back, someone followed me. I tried to run a long way, so he couldn’t track me, but…I don’t know if I lost him.” Her voice broke, and Didda wrapped his arm around Mom’s shoulder.

  “Someone followed you here?” Carine said, voice rising in horror. “Here? Can’t we do something?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Mom said. “Hide.”

  Her family owned little; there wasn’t enough furniture to conceal them.

  “There’s no place to hide,” Carine said. “We’ll block the door, in case he tries to come in.”

  Mom nodded, wiping her eyes.

  Carine bent over the tree stump that Didda sat on when he carved. Her fingers dug into the bark. It scraped the floor as she dragged it to the door. “Help me with the benches.”

  Didda followed her to the table by the hearth. They each grabbed an end of the first bench and carried it to the door. Carine’s arms shook as she carried it. It thudded as they dropped it to block the doorway.

  “Quietly!” Mom hissed. She bent her ear to the crack of the door frame. “There was something else too.”

  Carine wiped sweat from her forehead and searched the room for anything else remotely heavy. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to hear any other detail that threatened the only thing she had ever wanted. Carine had already lost her sister. It wasn’t too much to ask that her family and little shoe shop stay safe. It may be dark and lonely, but at least home was always safe.

  Mom’s voice was little more than a whisper. “There was a sign carved into some of the front doors. It was never there before…a heart. But it did not speak of romance. It was almost…anatomical.”

  Didda froze, but Carine was determined to protect the door. She grabbed the long end of the table and pulled. It grated against the floorboards. Her back ached, but she pulled anyway, batting the quilt away as she tried to turn the table to the door.

  Carine had always told herself that the dragon was a greater threat than the Heartless Ones. After all, the Heartless Ones hadn’t entered Navafort for two hundred years. Carine had been telling herself for days that those sorcerers would not think to check Navafort’s borders after all this time. The Heartless Ones wouldn’t like to come this far south. They preferred the colder climates of other kingdoms, like Fletchkey and Wyre. They wouldn’t risk dying when Kavariel delivered the flame.

  But, like Kavariel, the Heartless Ones were unpredictable. The Heartless Ones weren’t a strategic army, but renegades whose motives and goals were known only to themselves.

  “I really think I lost him,” Mom repeated, threading herself out from behind the pile against the door. “I’m sure he wasn’t a Heartless One. Besides, I don’t think he followed me home. I really think I lost him.”

  Didda hugged Mom. A
bead of sweat trickled down Carine’s forehead. She pulled the table all the way to the door as Didda said, “Don’t worry. He probably wasn’t a…he probably wasn’t anything to worry about. Probably just a land-hungry soldier from Padliot, come to take back the terrain he believes to be theirs. It’s a good thing you ran.”

  Mom smiled, and Carine dodged around the table to push it the rest of the way. She held back tears. This was their safe house. She was supposed to be safe.

  “Oh, sweet Carine,” Mom said, pulling her into a hug. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I was just seeing things. Let me get some water. I think I’m just dehy—”

  A fist slammed into the front door. Carine jumped and Mom shrieked. Didda trembled.

  All at once, every fear culminated in one grating sound. The three stood amid the furniture, but on the other side of the board that was the door, metal scraped wood.

  A practiced, unwavering note emitted as a blade etched one, two, three, four slow strokes. A shadow flickered through the razor thin cracks between the door’s vertical wooden beams.

  They were being marked.

  No one dared to speak.

  They were holding onto each other. Carine’s arms wrapped around both her parents’ waists as their arms fell over her shoulders. Their hug and someone’s pounding heartbeat was both comforting in their solidarity and frightening in their collective helplessness.

  The etching stopped.

  Didda emitted a sigh of relief, but Carine watched the door. She had her eye on the lock.

  The bolt was in place. She had just set it. But now, in the silence of five slow heartbeats, the bolt moved out of place. The door unlocked.

  6 Heart for a Heart

  The door rammed open. When it met resistance against the stump, table, and bench, an eye appeared in the gap. The man saw the family huddled together and smiled thinly beneath his full red beard. Carine shivered.

  The man uttered a foreign word.

  Immediately, the furniture in the doorway lifted off the ground. Carine ducked as it zoomed through the air. The bench and table crashed into the shoe shelves. Everything broke and fell in pieces.

  The large man eased the door open and entered.

  Carine held her parents tighter, wishing to wake up from this nightmare.

  “My name was once Selius,” he said in a thick Padliotian accent that made every second or third word sharp, like he was angry. His boots bore the Padliot seal, and the sword at his side was too thin to be from Navafort. His hands were empty, meaning he had no enchanted tool with which to open the door.

  Selius seemed to be from Padliot, sure, but no mere soldier could obliterate furniture. This man had magic. He was a Heartless One.

  “What do you want?” Carine said, pulling herself from the communal hug. “We’ll give you whatever you want.” They couldn’t fight him, so they may as well appease. Maybe he would take a pair of shoes and leave them alone.

  Maybe.

  Selius strode to Didda’s stump, which lay on its side by the shelves. He passed his unwelcome fingers over a dozen shoes piled at the wall’s base. He swept aside the quilt, which no customer did—ever. He walked along the food boxes that had grown empty and returned to the shop side of the room.

  “What do you want?” Carine said again, wishing her voice sounded stronger than a squeak. Even standing was making her feel faint. He needed to leave.

  Selius mumbled something. His shoelaces unraveled. He stepped from his shoes and put his feet on the floor. He had brown socks. A dark crimson splotch at the hem of his pants made Carine step back. Didda found her hand and squeezed it, silently reminding her of his promise.

  “Not much,” Selius answered. “In fact, you should be glad I chose you. I’ve marked your door, see?”

  Carine looked. The air from outside mingled with the stench of closed quarters. The door creaked. Its front was etched with an anatomical heart, just as Mom had described.

  “What that means is I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  A pair of Didda’s shoes flew from the windowsill and landed at the stranger’s feet. He stepped into them. They laced themselves.

  “What I want is a heart.” He poked Didda’s chest. “It can be yours.” He stroked Mom’s hair. “Or yours.” He swirled to Carine. “Or yours. Or”—he smirked—“the heart of an annoying neighbor. It’s your choice, but I want it by tomorrow for my collection.”

  Carine closed her eyes, hiding behind Didda’s shoulder.

  “Why do you board the windows?” Selius asked suddenly.

  No one answered.

  “Well?”

  If they didn’t answer, he would hurt them. “For…for protect—”

  No sooner had Carine begun mumbling than the Heartless One moved his lips. The boards ripped from the windows and crashed to the floor. The sudden light was blinding after so many days in the dark. Carine squinted and blocked the light with her hand.

  “It smells in here too.” The Heartless One mumbled a word in the slithering Manakor tongue. Immediately, all the window glass shattered. If it wasn’t so terrifying, it could have been beautiful. The million cracks set in, leaving glass slivers frozen in place within the window frame. After a moment, they ballooned out and fell, clattering outside over cobblestone and inside over shoes and broken wood.

  Carine’s eyes adjusted to the light. Wishpiles’ contents cluttered the street as though Esteners decided in unison to empty their closets through their windows. Rainwater had soaked it all and swept the wishstones and smaller items to the middle of the sagging street. In other homes, all the windows were shut and curtains drawn. Thank the flames, the neighbors’ doors hadn’t been marked as well.

  The Heartless One stepped past his old shoes. The new pair crushing glass underfoot, he circled the room that now spilled open into the street.

  “I used to want all this,” he said, pointing vaguely to their home and to the three of them, standing there together. “I used to want family and love. I was a fisherman in southern Padliot, in love with a weaver. But my profession didn’t impress her father. So, I decided to do something about that. I returned to her, stronger and powerful, but she wouldn’t have me anymore. She asked me how I could love her if I’d already given my heart to someone else?”

  The words emerged like a recitation, like he told this story to feel a pain he couldn’t muster.

  The Heartless One switched to Manakor, louder than Carine ever heard the language spoken. The syllables chilled her arms as her family quilt tore down the middle. With another word, thin strips of leather flew from the insides of Didda’s shoes.

  “I’ll take your soles now,” the Heartless One joked dryly, “but I still need a heart tomorrow.” Carine clenched her teeth. Their pain was nothing to him. “I need a lot of hearts, you see, to prove to my weaver in Padliot that I can love her. So if you don’t get one for me, then I’ll have to take one. Is everything clear?”

  The Heartless One kicked a piece of glass across the floor. He left the way he came, and the door locked itself tight behind him—little good that did.

  Selius whistled lifelessly outside as he crossed the blasted out window. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and he disappeared down the street.

  Blood pumped through Carine’s system. All their careful preparations…all that they’d done to protect themselves from the dangers of Festival… Selius had destroyed everything.

  “Why did we stay here?” Carine whispered before anyone else spoke.

  Neither of her parents answered. None of them could ever leave Esten for good. Doing so would feel like abandoning Louise. Even though the truth now seemed obvious, Carine had really believed that they would be safe in their home. She never fathomed shattered window glass and broken boards across the floor.

  The breeze gave her chills.

  “What will we do?” Mom whispered.

  Selius would return tomorrow, and if they stayed here, he would kill one of them.

  “We’re stuck,” Carine said, hop
ing to be proven wrong. “We won’t survive fleeing without money or food. We can’t go out and kill someone for him. We can’t sacrifice one of us. We can’t wait around to be killed.”

  Didda clenched Carine’s hand. “We will not uproot just because one man waltzes in here. I’m going to protect you, no matter the cost. I will not fail you. I promise.” His eyes were alight with sincerity, rage, and fear, which made his face look wild.

  Mom covered her mouth. “You can’t go hunt for someone.”

  Carine swallowed. “Didda, you can’t.”

  “Can you two trust me, please?” Didda stood. His voice was hushed. “There is a pig farm just outside the city. I can slaughter a pig, take its heart, and pretend it is human.”

  “What if Selius doesn’t believe you?” Carine asked. “He’ll kill one of us!”

  “Or all of us,” said Mom.

  Didda shook his head. “I have a plan. I’ll be back by dusk. If not...”

  “No if not,” Carine said.

  “Listen.” Didda put his hands on Carine’s upper arms. “If I’m not back by dusk, I want you and your mom to run.”

  “Run? Run where? We have nowhere to go. We have no supplies. Didda, let’s stay together.”

  But Didda’s green eyes were set with determination. “Don’t worry. This is just a backup plan. It won’t come to running. I’ll be back by dusk.”

  Didda kissed Carine’s cheek, grabbed his cloak from the hook, and left. His footsteps echoed off the houses of the empty street, resounding into their broken, infiltrated home.

  7 Escape

  At dusk, Carine and Mom stood at the open door. At their noses lay the anatomical engraving of a human heart, their fate if they did not escape.

  “Why isn’t he back?” Mom asked, glancing down the street in each direction without crossing their threshold.

  The same question gnawed at Carine.

  When Selius walked out the door with Carine’s world in shatters, everything changed. The home she had always believed in was no longer safe. If home wasn’t safe, it couldn’t be home.