Incendiary Series, Book 1

by Zoraida Cordova

  Castian’s lips tremble as he stands before his father and his father’s guard. He holds in the cry as long as he can, but Davida knows his heart and she knows that this boy is filled with more sorrow than he’ll ever know what to do with. So she rises and she holds him and whispers into his ear. “You’ll be all right, my darling boy.”

  She can feel the king’s rage, like a cold snap against her cheek. He motions to the guard, who grabs Davida by her throat. He pulls out a crude iron weapon. A clamp.

  Castian screams and kicks at the soldier, but his father grabs him. Holds the boy by his shoulders. Forces him to watch.

  “I warned you to be silent,” the king says.

  Davida’s anguish licks like fire at my hands. I pull away, knocking into a stack of crates. The top one tips over and cracks, spilling dozens of plums, plucked before they could ripen. I get down and pick them up for something to busy my fingers with.

  “I’m sorry.” I repeat it over and over, both of us shaking. She won’t remember that day again, but I fear this is one of the memories that will haunt me forever.

  It was the king who did it.

  The king ordered her punishment, not the prince. Castian was a boy. Castian, by the looks of it, cared for her, trusted her. How did that boy become the Castian I know now? Why do the stories say the prince had her tongue cut out? I want to wrench out the worry I felt toward him because of this memory. A scared child locked in a library.

  Like I was.

  And she is not the spy I’m looking for. She’s another Moria who was caught in a war we didn’t start. She could have left with the others. She could have found her way to a safe house. But she didn’t. I shake my head, unable to understand why she’d willingly remain in the palace if not to help the rebels. Some people fight. Some people hide. Some people help in the only way they can. Now I see Hector’s memory differently. Davida wasn’t observing Castian during his training to spy. She was there to see his progress, like a mother watching a child grow up.

  “You stay for him, don’t you?”

  She nods and holds my hands in hers. Davida taps the space over my heart. Her eyes water. She still has dozens of good memories of that little boy. I think of the words Nuria spoke after I took her memory. The cold, empty room in her mind. Is that what Davida is feeling now? She pats my cheeks with a gesture I want to remember.

  In Hector’s memory, he said his favorite quality of Davida was her warmth. Persuári can bring out emotions that exist. Empathy. Kindness. Not just action. What was done to Castian that she would use her power on him?

  “I won’t tell anyone, I swear it.”

  Behind us there’s a loud clattering and pots and pans fall to the floor. I leap to my feet and position myself in front of Davida. Fear tightens in my belly as I open the storage closet door.

  “Judge Alessandro,” I say as fear floods my body. Not for me but for Davida.

  Alessandro stands in the empty kitchen, an alman stone in his fist. It pulses with a memory of Davida and me. His face is twisted in cruel delight as he brandishes it. Davida tugs at my sleeve, and I try to give her a reassuring look.

  “Leo didn’t believe me when I told him you’ve been faking your injury. He wanted proof before we went to Méndez. Imagine needing to prove my word against someone like you.”

  Did Leo tell him where I would be? I think of the moments we’ve shared, the secrets we keep. No. I have to believe Leo wouldn’t.… But I can’t think of that now. I need to get Davida to safety.

  “I don’t know what you think you’ve seen,” I say, raising my gloved hand and my exposed bandaged one in the air. “But we are simply sharing a midday meal. Or is there a new order that outlaws that?”

  “No more from you!” Alessandro shoves the alman stone in front of my face. His slender body is taut with fear. I’ve seen carnival hands feed caged wolves this way. I shield my eyes from the brilliant light of memory in the crystal. “Every word you speak is a falsehood. There’s nothing wrong with your hand, and now Justice Méndez will see it.”

  “Who’s going to read the stone?” I ask, voice calm despite my screaming thoughts. “There are hundreds of judges. There is one Robári.”

  “Bestae.” He spits at my feet. “You overestimate your worth.”

  “I only stated something we both know to be true.”

  “You’re right, Robári, that I can’t touch you. Not while you have the good justice blinded and bewitched. But”—his cold eyes shift to Davida—“if I recall, some of the ladies have reported jewels missing. Do you know what the punishment is for thieves?”

  Their fingers are broken, then healed, then cut off. Davida makes a terrible choking sound. I stand directly in front of her, but I can’t shield her from Alessandro for long.

  “The torture she’ll endure,” Alessandro says, and his eyes light up with something more than fear. There’s a cruelty there that I hadn’t seen before because I dismissed him as a sniveling apprentice. He’s far more dangerous than that. As he unsheathes a dagger, I see the part of him that feeds on inflicting pain. “Pity. But I’ve heard she’s no stranger to punishment. I do not believe the king will forgive a second infraction.”

  No matter what I do, someone is going to fear me. The maids, the courtiers, the judges. I chose to return to the palace. I chose their fear. Davida didn’t. She’s Moria, living in secret. And I’ve put her in danger. I’ve bought myself time until my hand heals in the eyes of Justice Méndez, but what after that? Alessandro will not forget this.

  Unless…

  I get on my knees and hold my hands up in supplication. “Please,” I beg the young justice. “Don’t hurt her. I have been lying. Arrest me. But let her go.”

  Davida yanks at my sleeves and shakes her head. I shove her off as the rattle of a manacle clangs. When I look up at Alessandro, his smile is arrogant.

  The moment he yanks my hand to clap it in irons, I grab his face with my bare fingers and grind my teeth against the rapid burn of my magics. I drain his memories of the last day. I watch his day unfold. Slinking barefoot into the kitchens with the alman stone, taking one from the vaults, shouting at Nuria, demanding answers from Leo. His mind makes me sick because it leaves me with hate. Hate for myself. Hate for things I don’t know. It slithers like pus from a festering sore, and when I let him go, I fall right beside him.

  I rest my head on the cool kitchen floor. Pinpricks of light race across my vision. Davida drops down at my side.

  “I’m all right,” I say, and take the hand she offers to help me stand.

  We have a mutual understanding as we look at the unconscious judge at our feet. I survey the kitchen and find a bottle of clear liquor. I unstopper the cork and spill it on his pristine black robes.

  Davida raises an eyebrow and signs, Where do we take him?

  “The only place he won’t be able to make excuses,” I say.

  Together, Davida and I drag him through a side door in the kitchens and down a service hall that leads to Justice Méndez’s office. We prop him on a chaise. Davida removes the almost empty bottle from her apron. She unstoppers it with her teeth, takes a swig, then wedges it in the crook of Alessandro’s arm.

  When we hear the cathedral bells marking the end of the midday break, we slink out of the office’s main doors. The corridor is empty.

  “He won’t remember,” I assure her.

  Be careful, she signs.

  We walk back to the main tower in silence, where the festival preparations have doubled. We are two servants walking to our next task hand in hand. When Davida stops trembling and we reach the kitchen entrance, she takes my hands in hers and kisses my cheeks. I summon all my strength to swallow the desire to be held, to have something so close to a mother’s touch.

  “I’m sorry I brought this to you,” I whisper. “I’m supposed to protect you.”

  Davida signs, but I don’t quite understand when she says, Good heart. Protect us all.

  I run back to my room, sweat soaking the
underarms of my dress. I’m confident I removed Alessandro’s memories of our encounter, but he’ll still have his suspicions. Eventually I’ll be caught. I can’t repeat what I’ve done today. Davida is not the Magpie, she’s a Moria working in the palace. That means the spy is still out there, and I don’t feel any closer to finding them.

  I stop when there’s a pinch at my side. A cold breeze blows against me, and for a brief moment I hear voices coming from the end of the hall.

  All the memories I’ve stolen are taking a toll, playing tricks on me. When I get to the library door, the voices get louder, the ache in my temples returns harder than ever. There’s something here. I can feel it. An ache wedged like a knife between my ribs.

  I try the library door. It’s locked. I fish for the clip in my pocket and the door sighs open with the right turn of my wrist. White rays filter from the windows, illuminating the dust in the air. The room is cold. As cold as Lady Nuria’s rooms downstairs, but without the lit fireplace to help. The windows here are not barred like mine. There’s no need, I suppose.

  As I stand here, I can’t breathe. It’s like I’ve stepped into the Gray. The color is vibrant at first and then washes out from the books lining the walls, and the chaise where I sat watching the city, my home in the woods, fall to flames. I stumble to the window and fumble with the latch. I open it and let in the cool air. Down below is the maze of royal gardens. I breathe the scent of freshly cut hedges and filth of the capital that can never truly be masked.

  I grip the sill for support. Memories press into the forefront of my mind as if trying to break down a wall. I shut my eyes, but I can’t escape the images flashing by.

  Trays of cakes and pastries. Roll of a die. Dez asking me, “What are you doing here?” A book burning in this very fireplace.

  Why would the prince of Puerto Leones have a book filled with Moria legends in this library? Why was he here? This was my favorite place. Can’t I have one thing without Castian staining it with his whole existence?

  My breath comes in short, fast pants and I let myself fall. I sink my face into my folded knees.

  Stop, I think to the Gray. I need you to stop.

  I wish I could carve out my own thoughts the way I do others’. I wish I’d never returned here. Every thread I pull unravels something else.

  I hear Dez’s voice. Trust me.

  “I do,” I whisper to an empty room, to a boy who is dead.

  Suddenly, I want to see him. I want to conjure Dez amid the terror of my thoughts. I find him in small memories tucked behind others. The one that I want is the one of the night he rescued me. It is unfinished, wedged in the Gray. Breathing fast, I wade through the dark of my thoughts, like retracing the paths in the dungeons, the halls of the palace.

  But I know what else I will find there. Dead eyes gaping back at me. A little girl eating sweets. My own hands, small, covered with the beginnings of the scars and whorls I bear now. I promised Illan once that I would work on unlocking the Gray, but that was a different time. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t in a palace full of the Arm of Justice. Dez was still alive. He would have helped me through it, told me that I was strong enough to face a lifetime of stolen pasts. Right now I can’t even face one. Shouldn’t seeing him be enough for me to try harder?

  “I miss you, Dez,” I say. “But I can’t go there alone.”

  I’m not going anywhere because tomorrow is the Sun Festival, and I have run out of time.

  THE QUEEN’S COURTYARD HAS BEEN MADE EXQUISITE FOR HER GARDEN PARTY, decorated like the Second Heaven reserved for those whose truest virtue is love. As the princess of a foreign kingdom, and queen of Puerto Leones, it is clear she does not want to spare any expense for the first celebration of the day. Leo said it is tradition for the queen to host a party for select guests, though everyone seems to have noticed the absence of both the prince and the empress of Luzou.

  The young queen sits under a canopy with her handpicked favorite ladies of court, radiant in Dauphinique violet under the afternoon sun, while the king sits on a newly erected throne covered in bright green ivy and flowers. He stares at the crowd, simmering in a mood so foul, not even Justice Méndez, who just returned from Soledad this morning, approaches him.

  The Hand of Moria stands directly behind the king on two out of four marble pedestals. I’m surprised to see the new Ventári without Méndez in sight. She’s gaunt and seems familiar because I see myself in her and the Persuári beside her. Everything about them is clean, stiff, their eyes so still they don’t even seem to blink. It’s as if they’re almost made hollow but hold just enough memories to perform their duties. I look at the empty pedestals. That’s where I’m supposed to stand, after my demonstration. When I become one of them and Justice Méndez unwraps my bandage and fits my hands with manacled gloves that only King Fernando will have the key to. They tell me my power is a curse, but they keep presenting me as a gift.

  Fear floods my stomach as I linger behind a hedge. I can’t stay in this manicured garden surrounded by the swish of silk gowns and twinkling jewels, mouths stuffed with delicacies and nobles drunk on fizzy cava, swaying to the musicians in the corner.

  I turn down a hedge-lined path. The farther I go, the fewer partygoers surround me, so I continue, reveling in my moment of solitude. I press my hands to either side of the leaves that flank me, the gravel crunching beneath my heels.

  It feels too familiar. Like I’ve walked it before, when I know I haven’t. It is a sensation that jumps out from my memories. I pick up the heavy layers of my pale pink skirts that Leo chose to match to the queen’s court, and follow this feeling. Several times I nearly trip, but with my heart at my throat, I follow the winding turns until I’m at a dead end. A breeze parts a curtain of ivy. Within the hedges is an enclosed garden with overgrown manzanilla and weeds. It looks forgotten compared to the rest of the meticulously trimmed and manicured grounds. That’s when I spot something that doesn’t belong. A white statue.

  Kicking off my heels, I dig my feet into the grass and kneel down. I move the limp green grass and discover the statue is an angel. It isn’t one of the kneeling angels that usually ornament sculptures of the Father of Worlds. It’s the standing guardian that protects the Moria with the sword in her hand. What is it doing here? Is it by accident? Do they just not know? Or did someone meticulously plan this, hiding their rebellion in plain sight?

  I press my hands to the grass in front of the angel’s feet. A cord of magics strikes the bare fingertips of my right hand. The scars and whorls come alight. I look from my hand to the angel’s. There’s a crack beneath the stone that wasn’t there before, a soft white glow emitting from the fissures.

  Alman stone.

  I glance over my shoulder. The music from the garden party is in full swing. Sweet laughter and chatter fill the air. Who knows when I’ll be able to come back to this garden, especially after whatever happens at the festival. I grab hold of the statue’s hand.

  Illan’s beard has patches of black in it still. His pale blue eyes are stark against skin burnished bronze by the sun. Red bleeds where the sun kisses the horizon.

  “You must be calm, Penelope,” the old Ventári says. His hands are slender, reaching for the young queen’s shoulders.

  There, in the enclosed garden, she sinks to her knees. The heavy embroidered silk of her skirt pools around her like rose petals. Her golden hair has come undone at her temples, escaping the tight braid around her head. She clutches a slender gold diadem in her left hand.

  “How can I be calm after what you’ve asked me to do to my children?”

  Illan kneels beside her, his face a rigid mask of honor and duty. “It is far better than what the king will do to them. You know this is the only way we can save both their lives.”

  She shakes her head. She’s small, slender as a wilting flower, but there is still strength behind her grip. She takes Illan’s shirt into her fist. “Find another way. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  Illan places
a gentle hand over hers. “How? Tell me, Your Highness, because we have tried other ways to stop the crown. Take them both and the king will hunt you forever. If Castian stays, if we give the king a reason to trust him, if he sees himself in his son, Castian will be secured as the next heir. The only heir.” He taps her chin, but the young queen won’t look up. “It is up to you, Penelope.”

  She slaps him, her hand a sharp sting on his skin. “You give me an impossible choice.”

  “I give you a choice to save both your children.”

  The queen looks away, her face fading like a portrait left out in the sun. Streaks of tears carve rivers down her face.

  “Please forgive me for what I am about to do,” she whispers to no one and everyone all at once. “Forgive me.”

  She faces the setting sun, staring until it is gone and her world is dark.

  I wrench my hand free as though I’ve been burned, the sight of a young Illan etched like a brand into my mind.

  My skin prickles into gooseflesh, the angel’s eyes demanding something from me. Secrecy. I know, beyond everything else, that this is the most dangerous memory I could ever possess. Queen Penelope met with Illan.

  And whatever happened to Castian’s younger brother, it was clearly not all Castian’s own doing. The Whispers had something to do with it. Illan had something to do with it. He had wanted—had offered—to help save the boys’ lives. Both of them.

  Why would he have done such a thing? Why would he have ever wanted to help the last queen?

  It makes no sense. Too many thoughts race through my head, too many memories. I have to get out of here.

  I grab my shoes and run back out the way I came. At least, I believe I do. The hedges appear to line solid paths but have clever narrow entryways, secret passages that allow you to cut across into other gardens. I could be lost in here for days.