The Firebrand Legacy (10 page)

Limly raised a finger, stroking with his
other hand. “I’m going with you, Your Majesties. If you insist on
going, then I’m coming along.”

Thabo’s eyes sparkled in the ocean’s glow.
“In that case, here is your transport.” He gestured deeper, to a
large metal cone that awaited them on the ocean floor. The merfolk
lifted it to reveal a bar that went lengthwise across it and a net
that plumed out behind it.

“I’ve heard of these,” David said, eyes
dancing. “The merfolk hold onto the bar and swim while we hang onto
the net. They’re even faster than ships.” The crew swam down to the
net and started taking hold.

“Another transport will be along shortly for
you,” Thabo said to Carine, Alviar, and the others that would
continue to Ilmaria.

David turned to her. “We’ll find your
parents. I promise.”

But that wasn’t enough. When David and Giles
found her parents, she would be so far south that the news would
take weeks to reach her. After that, she would have to wait for
word of safety, and only then could she meet up with them—if they
were alive.

It also meant never seeing the princes
again.

“Actually,” Carine said to David and Giles,
“I’m going back to Esten too.”

Giles scowled. “You do realize that there is
magic in Esten, more than ever before?”

“I know.” Carine swallowed hard. “All I’ve
ever wanted was to be safe from magic with my family.” It was
starting to look like too much to ask. Carine had almost drowned on
the ship. She couldn’t fight with a sword. She would face many
dangers in Ilmaria while she waited for Esten’s liberation. “If
nowhere is safe, and there is no escape from magic, I can at least
be with my family.”

“So you’re going back to Esten?” David
repeated.

Carine nodded. “It’s time I find my
parents.”

The merfolk were like a machine. Six of them
held the bar on the metal cone and pulsed with their bodies. They
hurtled the cone forward, and the net whipped behind them. Carine’s
fingers curled around the net from the inside. Limly and the two
younger princes did the same.

“
Woohoo!”
Prince David yelled, and
Carine felt herself smiling, exhilarated. It was only the merfolk’s
kiss that allowed Carine to see in such dark deep water, and what a
gift that vision was. Schools of fish and sea turtles whizzed by.
The ground beneath was a mountainscape, full of peaks and valleys
that the merfolk zipped around with the same ease as a flock of
birds flying through forest branches.

They reached Esten’s shores after hours and
hours of breakneck travel. The merfolks’ tails nearly touched the
sea floor as they pulled back part of the net and Carine pulled at
the water to escape. As light from the surface illuminated her
view, a knot formed in her stomach. Under the sea, Carine was safe
from the dragon Kavariel.

In Esten, there were Heartless Ones. She
would be more vulnerable to more threats than ever. As soon as she
found her parents, they would flee—this time, together.

Carine’s head broke the surface, several
dozen feet to the port. Only two large ships remained, and the
sails of one had been ripped, its sides vandalized.

David broke the surface next, gasping for
breath and grinning as soon as he saw Carine. “We made it.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but this is not the quiet
Esten we left.”

The torch tower still stood empty, and flags
waved above the Bastion, but the sound of the city—even from
here—was neither the cheers of Festival celebration nor the silence
of a hiding people. Esten roared with angry activity, humming like
a hive of bees.

“What’s all this?” Giles slid his hand over
his wet hair, slicking it over his head.

“I can’t see anything from here,” Carine
said, though the volume of the chatter seemed like shouts.

“How can people feel safe enough to be out in
the streets? Esten’s defenses are still down,” Carine said.

“I don’t feel good about this,” David
said.

“How you feel is hardly data we can use,”
said Giles.

David ignored him. “I’m worried about
Grandfather. You don’t think there’s a riot, do you?”

“Your Majesties,” Limly said, gasping for
breath as he treaded water like a drowning dog. “We’ll enter the
castle through the garden in the back. We cannot walk on shore
without first knowing what is going on.”

Carine looked over the marketplace into the
Grunge. The gray skies hung low over the city. The noise came from
Bastion Park, but the Grunge to the north had an air of abandon to
it.

“I’m going home,” Carine said. Home wouldn’t
be the cozy shoe shop she had always known.

David swam back. “Wait a minute. You’re
leaving, just like that?”

“We are as disposable as hair to you,” Giles
said, the slightest of smiles revealing an intended joke.

As much as she regretted ever leaving her
parents, if she hadn’t boarded the ship, she never would have met
David and Giles. Now, they would disappear into their royal lives
and she could return to peace with her family.

“Goodbye,” she said, heart aching. She met
David’s eyes one last time and gave a small smile to Giles.

Carine couldn’t take any more, so she ducked
underwater, making use of the last hour of the merfolk kiss,
watching the sand as it rose closer and closer to the water
surface.

She swam between the ships anchored at the
port and stepped onto dry sand, dripping thick drops onto the
shore.

A splash of water made her turn.

Princes David and Giles stood behind her,
dripping wet in their ruined royal clothes. Limly swam slowly
behind them.

David looked at his brother. “We decided to
come with you for moral support,” he said. “You know, just in
case.”

Just in case her parents were dead. Just in
case the baker had killed Mom and the Heartless One had killed
Didda.

Carine met their eyes, joining them in
ignoring Limly’s disapproving shouts. “Thank you.” She turned to
walk home as David and Giles flanked her on each side. “Let’s
go.”

“Lovely street,” Giles said.

Carine shushed him and clutched her arms as
an evening chill made her soaked dress freeze. Even with all the
activity in the city, the streets were still littered and
abandoned. Windows were boarded and doors bolted shut. It wasn’t
lovely. It was broken.

“Soot and ash,” said David beside her when
they found the end of Carine’s street. The shoe shop was intact,
but the window was gone, and the door marked by Selius swung wide
open.

Carine swallowed hard. No one was there.

Her mind spun. Despite what she knew about
the danger they were in, Carine had still expected her parents to
be waiting for her at home. Deep down, she had counted on it.

“I’m so sorry, Carine. You okay?” David
said.

Her vision blurred as she stepped inside. The
room was dark, and it still smelled rank from Festival. Her
father’s green cloak was missing from his hook. He had taken it
when he went to get the pig’s heart. There was no more food in the
house than there had been during Festival.

“Is this the whole house? What happened to
the window?” said Giles, kicking shards of glass aside with his
shoe. David elbowed him, but Carine looked closer.

“Selius happened to it,” Carine said.

“Yes,” Giles said. “I’ve been thinking about
that. Has it occurred to you that it might not have been the
Heartless One whose body you saw? Is there any chance you saw a
look-alike? a twin?”

Carine frowned. The possibility
hadn’t
occurred to her. But now, looking over the glass on the floor, she
saw that the shards glinting blue in the early moonlight were
spread unevenly.

“They’ve been back here,” Carine breathed.
“At least, someone has.” And there, right at the base of Didda’s
overturned stump were a pair of boots, the very same ones that
Selius had stolen.

Carine stepped back. It didn’t make any
sense. Selius’ corpse had been barefoot, but at first she thought
nothing of it. What did it mean for his shoes to end up back here?
It could be some enchantment or some trick.

“I’m not surprised your parents aren’t here,”
said Giles. “It sounds the whole city is in South Esten.”

“So you do think it’s a riot?” David
blurted.

Carine wiped her eyes. Giles had better be
right. She immediately replaced her shoes with a dry pair, one with
azaleas engraved in the toe. She pulled her other surcoat and
undergarments out from under her bed.

“Here,” she said, pulling out the last two of
Didda’s garments. “Put these on.”

Giles grimaced.

“Don’t be so proud,” Carine said. “If there
is a demonstration going on, I have to find my parents in the
crowd, and if you plan on joining me, you’d better not be wearing
those clothes. Drenched or not, they’ll give you away.”

Giles took the clothes with reluctance, and
Carine closed the front door while they changed.

The princes jumped out the open window in
their common garb. For Carine, seeing her father’s clothes on the
boys panged her heart. They didn’t wear his clothes right. They
weren’t him.

“Dishonor to the Cowardly Marcels!” yelled
one of the many protesters as Carine and the princes neared Bastion
Park. They threaded through the crowd, stopping only so Carine
could stand on tiptoes, looking for Didda’s green cape or Mom’s
long, unbraided hair.

“I don’t see them,” she said, but neither
David nor Giles answered.

They had been following her through the maze.
David’s hair was still damp, and his eyes were shiny saucers as he
watched and listened. His mouth hung slightly open, as though in
shock, and he read each sign and listened to each chant as though
certain he were dreaming.

“Who is Heartless? The king who hides!”
yelled a woman with a toddler on her hip. Tear stains on her dirty
cheeks spoke to the loss she’d suffered.

Giles kept his lips taught and chin high.

Of the faces and heads, none of them were
Didda’s or Mom’s.

Carine pulled David close to her side. “You
okay?”

His face contorted, as if he were waking up
from a nightmare. His jaw tensed. “I’m fine. I don’t know what’s
worse: that my family name is being attacked or that I resent the
Marcels as much as everyone here.”

Giles tripped over someone and spoke up from
behind. “That’s the problem with Grandfather, isn’t it? He can do
politics. He can come up with legitimate moves, but he’s slow with
them—too slow, in this case.”

“We want a centaur king!” chanted the
crowd.

This silenced both of the princes, so Carine
weaved on and they followed silently, threading through the people,
slowly approaching the looming Bastion. The way Navafort was
established, with harmony among centaurs, fauns, and men, the folk
kinds ruled on rotation. It was supposed to start with menfolk, for
as long as the line of the first King Marcel could go unbroken by
blood. Once that line was broken, the ruling centaur family would
take their place as kings. The fauns would follow.

“I can’t find them anywhere,” Carine said.
“Maybe they already left the city.”

Giles raised his eyebrow. “If nothing worse
has happened.”

Carine glared at him. “They would have gone
south, over the southern bridge.”

A woman next to them pulled her sign down and
said, “The south bridge is out, dear. He obliterated that as
well.”

Carine turned. “Who? Selius?”

The woman shivered at the name. “No, the
other Heartless One.” Her silver hair fell in a single braid to her
waist, which was tied with a shimmery belt of South Esten quality.
“He never says his name. He’s the one that killed Selius. Haven’t
you heard?”

“We’ve been hiding.”

The woman’s eyes fluttered over the boys as
Carine held her breath. Fortunately, she didn’t recognize them.
“It’s a good thing. This Heartless One barges in. He’s been in
every house in my street. Shadowy, he is. Silent, he is. My husband
and I held each other tight as he unlocked the door without a
touch. He crept around the house like he was smelling it, almost
like he was looking for something.”

“Looking for what?” Carine said.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. No one
knows.”

“His heart?” Carine suggested, remembering
Selius’ obsession.

“Maybe,” said the woman. “All I know is he’s
getting more and more frustrated, and even though no one’s seen him
in two days, I just know he’ll be back. He’ll smell out all those
who are hiding. He’ll unlock all the doors, creep into all the
homes. But this time, he won’t let anyone go. I just know it.” She
brushed back a tear. “Which is why the man who is our king must
fight. We need defenses. We need action. Or—”

“Has he killed anyone?”

She held up her picket sign. “There’s been a
lot of people dying, dear.”

Carine could barely breathe. Her parents had
no safe place to hide themselves, and this Heartless One, from the
sound of it, would seek them out. Of all people, they wouldn’t have
what he was searching for.

David’s face was as white as the torch’s
dragon. Giles clenched his jaw.

“Let’s go,” Giles said, pulling her arm in
the direction of the castle.

“Wait!” Carine pulled from Giles’ grip and
turned to the woman. “What did you mean when you said he destroyed
the bridge?”

“From what I hear, it exploded into a cloud
of white dust.” She raised her eyes to the sign as though praying
to it or praying that the king would see it and do something.

A man in front of them turned. “That was no
random act, I say.” He had a faded orange smock and high white
socks. “The Heartless One is trying to trap us all here in Esten.
No news in and no news out. The reason he hasn’t been seen in two
days is he’s been polishing his methods, slaughtering horses and
such things. Once he has us all trapped here, he’ll do whatever he
likes.”