The Firebrand Legacy (2 page)

The room was dim. While Carine had been
buying vegetables and chasing thieves, Didda and Mom had been
nailing boards over the windows. They wouldn’t risk a single
enchantment floating into their home. They also didn’t want
Festival-goers peering in like children peering into fishbowls.
Bits of light streamed through cracks between the boards, just
enough to see their way around.

Home was one room. The front half was the
storefront where shoes, boots, and leather belts lined the shelves
for sale. Carine had made some of them herself, and carved all the
designs on the more elaborate shoes.

“What happened out there?” Didda asked. “Why
were you late? I was minutes from looking for you.”

Carine pushed back her hair with the hand
that held her drawstring purse. “It’s not good. They’re getting
worse.”

Mom glanced to the door, as if she could see
through it to the ones that played games outside. A worry line
creased her forehead. “What happened?”

Carine sighed. “Let me put the food
away.”

She pulled aside the quilted blanket that
divided the storefront from the table and Carine’s bed. All she
wanted now was to retreat with her family, to distract herself from
the fears and dark memories that always struck this time of
year.

“What happened?” Didda repeated. His fists
rested on the tabletop as Carine pulled the bread from the basket
and set it on a cloth.

“The neighbors have been talking. They said
that if the dragon doesn’t punish us for not paying tribute, then
they will.” She stared down at her fingers. They still had dirt on
them from picking up the bread.

Didda poked the table. “Now you listen to me.
Don’t trouble yourself over them for one second. Do you
understand?” His eyes blazed. “I will not let anyone hurt you. I
will not.”

Carine shuddered inside, knowing the reason
his voice trembled. Didda would do anything in his power to protect
his daughter. She was the only one he had left.

Mom squeezed Carine’s arms. Her eyes sparkled
with sympathy. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “We have each
other.”

That night, as the light faded in the cracks
between the boards, Carine sat on her bed and thought. Mom had said
not to be afraid because they had each other. But losing each other
was exactly what Carine feared.

Outside, the festivities clamored on, the
noises trickling into the shop. A girl laughed, and a few men were
singing battle hymns down the road.

When Carine and her sister Louise had
traipsed through town, Festival had been magical in a good way. It
was like a dream: candy, music, activity. Their older cousins used
to show them the best spots in Esten to hear faun music and the
best views to see King Marcel when he announced the Ten Dragons
Festival had begun.

Carine was four the last time she experienced
Festival that way; Louise was six.

Her parents told her later, when she was
older, that her cousins and aunts were supposed to have been
watching Louise. They told Mom that they spotted Louise just as the
beast’s claws crashed onto the street. She was too far away for
them to save her. When the dragon flew off, they looked for her
body, but all was ash. Carine and her parents never visited their
extended family again.

Carine tucked herself under the blanket and
tried to clear her mind. But thoughts hounded her. The more she
tried to forget, the more she remembered. The main thing Carine
remembered about Louise was her curls: black ringlets that danced
when Louise laughed. And Louise had loved to laugh. Sometimes she
felt guilty that she didn’t remember more. Even the curls were a
detail her parents had mentioned time and again, so sometimes
Carine feared she was inventing memories.

Outside someone shouted, “Is that him?”

Carine froze. An image of yellow and orange
flames flashed in her mind’s eye. She saw them filling the street
outside, licking her window, creeping inside, engulfing her,
turning her to ash like Louise.

“That’s a bird.” Someone else giggled.

Carine pressed her face into her pillow, too
rattled to feel relief. After a moment, she crept up from bed and
triple-checked the lock.

Dark and alone, no one could touch them. Dark
and alone, they’d be safe.

Mom, Carine, and Didda laughed around the
table playing cards. Didda told stories that his father had told
him, complete with accents and voices. In the evenings, Carine and
Mom took turns brushing each other’s hair and creating wacky styles
they would never wear in public. Mom hummed old tunes that Didda
and Carine danced to in the shop. It was lovely.

But now something wasn’t right.

Nine days passed. Not three, not four.
Nine.

Every year when the flame went out, no one
knew exactly when Kavariel would arrive. Sometimes he came the
first day, sometimes the third or fourth. But Festival never lasted
more than five days. Never.

The food had grown scant. The card games grew
dreary. Carine and Didda had used up all their leather making new
belts and carving designs. Carine had drawn as many pictures as she
had carbon for, engraved as much as she could stand with dismal
lighting. She had organized the shoes three times, sorting them
once by style, once by size, and once by value.

Their throats were parched and their words
were few. Their bellies ached. Carine spent her afternoons by the
boarded windows listening to the waning, confused celebration of
the Festival-goers and the numbing rhythm of splattering rain.
Sleep was the only respite…

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.”

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.”