I stare at him. A chill returns to my skin. “What?”
Illan sits beside me and lays his cane against across his lap. “When we heard rumors that the king’s justice developed a weapon able to rip out our magics, Celeste and I sent our best spy to meet with my informant.”
“Lucia?” I ask.
He nods gravely. “She sent word that they called this weapon the cure.”
Even thinking the word sours my mouth. The cure to us. The cure to our existence. “What is it?”
“That’s what we don’t know. A tonic? A trinket? Lucia would know best, rest her soul. We were going to wait until my informant could gather more information within the palace. But Rodrigue went after Lucia. And, well, you know his fate.”
“What does this have to do with Dez getting captured?” I ask.
I think of Dez and me near the riverbank. He was scared of going to the palace, but not for the reasons I thought. Because he wasn’t telling us the whole truth.
“My informant feared someone was getting close to discovering them as my spy. Without them, we have no way of knowing where the weapon is kept within the palace. We needed someone else inside. My spy made sure a patrol would find Dez. He was supposed to leave camp that morning, but the prince must have intercepted the message. Either way, he is where he needs to be.”
Dez was going to leave me in the morning. Would he have said good-bye? It’s a petty, terrible thing to wonder at the moment, but I can’t stop it. I hate that I don’t get to be angry with him because he is risking his life.
“How will Dez do that from the dungeons?” I ask.
“How would we break through the palace walls? We’ve done this before. Dez is our best chance. I gave my son the code to break free after his capture. The prince gave us three nights, I believe? When they go to execute him at dawn, Dez won’t be in his cell. He will find this so-called cure and destroy it. And that, my dear, is why there is no rescue mission necessary.”
Remember. Trust me. Dez had planned this all along. The anger that coiled in my gut is gone, unwinds into worry. So much could go wrong.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask. “You didn’t trust me before, so why now?”
“I know the”—Illan’s face is impassive, searching for the right word—“bond you and Dez have always shared. I tell you now simply because I do not want you doing anything reckless to compromise this. No one but my son and the elders know of our plan. Dez will use the code to break out, steal away into the palace, and retrieve the weapon.”
For a moment, I allow myself to remember the cells beneath the palace of Andalucía, though my memory of them is hazy with the murk of childhood fear. I never liked it when Justice Méndez brought me down there to see the prisoners. Still, I recall that outside each was a metallic cylinder as thick as a scroll. Standard code locks have four keys that turn like gears inside a clock. Méndez had a custom-made lock of ten keys, and changed it often, just in case I was able to memorize it. But I wasn’t concerned with escaping. Not then.
“What’s the code?” I squint my eyes as if it’ll make all of this come together.
“Rest, Renata. I expect Dez back at camp by nightfall tomorrow while the executioner is still sharpening his sword. For now, we need everyone assisting in the safe passage of those leaving for Luzou.” Illan’s eyes are faraway and he absentmindedly rubs the silver head of the fox on his cane with his thumb. “And with the weapon destroyed, we buy ourselves another day to live and keep fighting.”
It’s a dangerous game Illan and Dez are playing, but if anyone can pull this off, it’s Dez. When we were twelve, he was caught by a tax farmer near the mountains. I ran to get help, but by the time we came back to him he’d already picked his way out of the locks. I recall the fervor with which he fought Prince Castian at Riomar. I know he’ll return to me. Dez can get out of anything.
“You don’t need me to give you information on the palace, then?”
Illan’s face darkens with what I recognize as a fleeting memory. Regret. “Once Dez has carried out his mission, we will need to get back inside the palace walls to rescue the prisoners in the dungeons.”
Slowly, I nod. “I’ll do what I can.”
After Illan leaves, my stomach still hurts, but when Sayida returns, she assures me the feeling is just the dregs of the poison leaving me. Yet, as I watch the sky darken from the blue of the Castinian Sea to that of a bruised plum, I’m not so sure she’s right. I can’t shake the terrible feeling that twists in my gut.
Andrés. I say his name in my mind. Then his voice: Don’t tell anyone.
Again, I face another sleepless night, my mind a flurry of thoughts fighting for dominance: Dez. Illan’s plan. The twisting dials of a cylinder lock. Four letters that click into place. Four letters that get scrambled every night by a new guard.
A strange feeling tightens in my belly.
Nerves, I tell myself.
In the darkness, I search my mind for signs of hope—in Sayida’s comfort, in the promise in Dez’s kisses. In the way Esteban saved my life. After a while, hope finally ignites, tiny and distant, but alive and buzzing like a firefly within my heart. I hold on to that tiny light. It comes and goes, but it’s something.
Four letters. Dez knew them. He would have had to memorize them.
I push and pull my covers, too hot, then too cold in the unsettling night.
The Gray gathers in my mind like storm clouds. My temples ache. I struggle to push them back. To think of anything else. The most recent memories of Dez help. His full mouth trailing kisses along my neck. His eyes like fire in the moonlight. A promise made in the dark. How I watched him sleep and struggle until I took Dez’s nightmares, with the grazing of my fingertips on his temple.
But they weren’t nightmares, only a string of memories, a tumble of images that didn’t make sense together. And yet, perhaps they do.
Four words.
Dez chasing the hound.
Dez eating the orange.
Dez watching the flag.
Dez searching for me.
My mind turns like metallic gears. Like the keys of a cylinder lock. Four letters.
Hound. Orange. Flag. Ren.
A mnemonic device for remembering a code: H. O. F. R.
I bolt upright, my head throbbing, my vision spinning.…
A mnemonic device that I now know, but that Dez no longer does. Because I took the memory as he slept.
Because I allowed myself to touch him. Because I truly thought in that moment that if I loved him, it meant I couldn’t hurt him.
Dez doesn’t have the code to set himself free.
I do.
I should have known better. My power only destroys, nothing else. I will always hurt those I love the most. Never love a Robári. You will lose yourself. That’s what they say, and they might be right.
I push aside the blankets, frantic. Around me, the camp is quiet with sleep.
Panic floods my veins—never have I felt like this. My muscles tremble so hard I have to stand still, so very still, in order not to shake. I temper my breaths. In. Out. Inoutinoutinout. I fight with my mind to rationalize what could be happening. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps the memories I pulled were meant for something else.
But another voice whispers inside me, curling its truth around my chest and squeezing so hard I can’t breathe.
If I ripped away Dez’s memory of the code, he won’t be able to break free. If Dez can’t break free from his cell, he won’t be able to find the weapon. And then? He’ll be in his cell the morning of the execution. In two days. We are a full day from the capital. That leaves so little time. I remember again the prince’s white grin as he sparred with Dez. The feline grace of his movements. His preference for blood and spectacle. The way he struck his own soldier when questioned. I don’t make promises to Moria.
I have to tell Illan what I’ve done. But as I scramble out of my bed, wincing at the lingering pain in my shoulder, I realize that if I tell Ill
an, he’ll have to call a meeting of elders to make a decision. There’ll be a debate, voting, procedures that take time. That’s time Dez doesn’t have.
I have to be the one to go to Dez—no matter what Illan or the elders decide.
No matter that I will never be welcomed back to the Whispers, because once again I’ve betrayed them. What have I done?
My hands shake as I strap my sword back onto my belt and hurry into my boots. The air already feels thinner, the night giving way to the coming day, as I sneak out to the horses, whispering softly to calm them. Dez will die the day after tomorrow, and it will be my fault. The thought is choking, blinding. I have to steady myself. I have to make it to him. I breathe in, breathe out, and mount.
I trust you, Ren. That was his mistake, wasn’t it?
Never trust a Robári.
I can’t think as the horse picks up speed. I can’t feel anything but a dark, pulsing shudder of truth. He will die, and I am the one who sentenced him.
Unless I get there first.
THE FIRST TIME I TRIED TO RUN AWAY FROM A WHISPERS’ SAFE HOUSE IN Citadela Salinas, I was thirteen. Much like now, I stole a horse. The beasts are precious to the Whispers, but I didn’t care. During training the other kids lobbed cruel names when they thought Dez and Illan weren’t nearby. My teachers saw right through me. My parents were dead. I simply couldn’t stay there. So I saddled a horse as best I could and ran. I got far and lost along the Cliffs of Jura, but Dez found me.
Now it’s my turn to return the favor.
I ride.
I ride until my thighs revolt with agony. Until my fingers cramp around the reins. My face burning from the wind. The thunder of hooves against a road I shouldn’t be on because it leads right to Andalucía, the capital of Puerto Leones. My eyes play tricks on me, my skull throbs. People appear like ghosts on the sides of the road and then vanish into sails of the Gray. The land tugs the memories to the front of my mind, forcing me to recall the lives that walked this very same road. The last few days have put so much strain on me that the vault in my head is cracking open. I want to laugh because Illan thought it would be meditation, patience that would help me break through. I should have told him sooner that I needed something inside me to break so thoroughly I could never be put back together. That’s what will happen if I don’t get to Dez.
I hear his voice as I ride. I know you’re afraid. So am I.
Over the years, Illan has never sent me on a mission to Andalucía. I prepare for seeing the towering buildings, the palace that glitters when the sun is out. The jewel of Puerto Leones. I hate the girl I was. I’ve wanted to believe she died in the fire, but a part of me wonders if the reason I stayed away was because I’m afraid she’s still there waiting for me, wretched and destructive.
I know you’re afraid. So am I.
“I’m terrified, Dez,” I say to the wind.
Sounds play tricks on me, too. A great drumming rhythm coming from the east as the sky bleeds with the beginning of morning light. I look behind me, and for the first time in hours, my heart swells like a great wave breaking over me, through me. Because they’ve come.
I’m not alone.
When I crest the hilltop, I pull on the reins to bring my horse to a stop. He moves to the side, kicking up dust on the road that snakes down toward the small town before the capital.
Two horses line up on either side of me. Esteban and Margo on one and Sayida on the other.
“What are you doing here?” I manage to ask.
Margo wears a wide-brimmed wool hat, creating a shadow over her pale blue eyes. Esteban holds the reins around her, a red scarf covering the lower half of his face.
“Same as you,” Margo says, voice hoarse. She must’ve been crying. I can see it in the streaks of dirt on her white skin. “You should have come to us.”
“There was no time.” I breathe hard to stop the swell of emotion. I am not alone. “I didn’t think you’d follow me.”
“That’s my fault,” Margo says. Is it difficult to admit this to me? “The elders are wrong. This is the right thing to do.”
“He’d never leave us behind,” Sayida says, pulling down her indigo-blue scarf.
Except he did leave us. Back in that forest. They don’t know of Illan’s plan. They don’t know that I’ve stolen Dez’s memory, that I’m the reason he won’t be able to get free. My tongue feels swollen with the fear of revealing this truth, so I say nothing.
Instead, we stare at the grim warning laid out before us.
Both sides of the main road that snakes to Andalucía are lined with spikes. Dozens, hundreds of spikes, each one a yard apart. Decapitated heads of captured Moria and other innocents doomed to be displayed beside thieves, traitors, and murderers alike. All of them distorted, with rot and decaying flesh punctuating each stalk. The head closest to us is half-eaten by bugs the size of libra coins, eight legs climbing into an eye socket.
The stench hits my nose when the breeze shifts, and my horse rears on his hind legs, as if trying to retrace his steps. I grab the reins and pull. He is my courage, and I will ride him through that walk of death.
The four of us make the symbol of Our Lady over our torsos at the same time, then I click my tongue and lead us onto the wide road. We’re forced to slow down so as not to draw attention to ourselves.
We’ve ridden for hours, pushing our stolen horses onward without rest as the landscape changed from the Forest of Lynxes to the lush greens that border the Rio Aguadulce, but Andalucía is an oasis in a dry valley. I rub the flank of my horse. The capital is filthy, so we won’t stand out in our travel-worn clothes. Margo tucks her necklace into her brassiere. She never speaks of where the golden starfish pendant came from, but no matter where we are she doesn’t take it off. The others put away any visible metal. I have no jewelry to heighten my power. Robári are matched with platinum, a metal so rare, I’ve never even seen it, not even so much as a button. Though I can’t help but wonder, if I did procure a piece, would the Whispers even allow me to keep it?
We can’t pass as pious pilgrims, so we’ll be young farmhands trying our luck in the bustling, boisterous, rat-infested city everyone talks about.
The palace is at the very center of it all, the heart surrounded by streets that course like arteries and alleys like veins. The justice’s cathedral and the executioner’s square are beside the palace, connected beneath the city by a maze of tunnels that lead to sewers.
I remember Dez standing at the bottom of a hidden stairwell while the city burned around us. I trusted him the minute I saw him, but when he led me to Illan and the Whispers, waiting with the other children they were able to rescue, I screamed and fought. I remember closing my fist around one of the iron gates. Was it Illan or Celeste who yanked me free? My heart races and a sick feeling floods my gut. I turn over the side and throw up what little is in my stomach.
“I don’t suppose you ran away with a plan?” Esteban asks. When I sit back in my saddle, I realize he’s offering a handkerchief to me. It is the smallest gesture, but my eyes sting as I clean myself.
“Dez is in the cells,” I say. “I can retrieve the code, but I have to get down there.”
“How can you get the code?” Sayida asks me.
“I’ll steal the memory from the guard,” I lie.
Slowly, we canter up the final hill. My muscles are sore from riding and the poisoned cut throbs, a dull memory of pain that feels near and far. The Ren who lived in this city was rosy-cheeked and had a taste for sweets. She was spoiled, naive. Even at this distance, my nerves twist and warn me to go back, because perhaps I’m still naive to think I can save him, to think I’ve changed at all.
“I’ve never seen the capital before,” Esteban says nervously. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a narrow spyglass.
“Get a good look,” Margo says dryly. “It might be your last.”
I expect Esteban to respond with a teasing remark or, at the very least, a smile. But instead, he kicks his horse
and rides ahead of us.
The traffic into town is heavier than I’d expect for so early in the morning. There are vendors lugging wagons brimming with fruits and vegetables. There’s a round woman who has four small children sitting on her rickety carriage and a fifth one who waves at me from atop a mountain of potatoes. But there are also young country girls in simple blush-colored dresses walking arm in arm, likely to spend the day at the market stalls. A group of boys in their Holy Day best riding in a carriage with their parents. Of course. It’s Holy Day. The justice doesn’t hold executions on Holy Day because it belongs to celebrating the Father of Worlds.
I kick at my steed and ride faster. Andalucía looms ahead. The shimmering palace juts above the other buildings like a gem encircled by rocks. Even its surrounding hedges are tall, taller than the iron gates that twist like ivy and create a perimeter.
To get there, we’ll have to go through the market square, where stone buildings with elaborate spires reach toward the sky. The wealthier rows of houses will be on the other side of the city, with their colored glass rippling in neat lines, and though I’m too far away to see, I know they depict scenes of the Father of Worlds and his creations.
As we approach, I imagine the best route for us to take once we cross the pillars that mark the entrance to the city. Here, buildings on the fringe of the bustling market and courthouse are mostly five or six stories and boxed around the cathedral. The closer the buildings are to the cathedral the tighter and taller they are, packed like crooked teeth leaning into a gap.
The fringe has a line of posts for horses, as the cobblestone streets are labyrinthine and crowded. The right of way is for pedestrians like those farm girls with small brass libbies in their pockets. Esteban is already tying his horse to a post, the creature lapping up water from a trough. He pretends like he doesn’t know me, which is no different than when we’re in Ángeles.
“Take your gloves off,” Margo murmurs as she comes to a stop beside me. “They’re a dead giveaway in the height of summer.”
Incendiary Series, Book 1 Page 11