The Firebrand Legacy (3 page)

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.

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, hoping 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.

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.

One simple directive pulsed through her
veins: flight. If home couldn’t protect them, they needed to go
somewhere—anywhere—that would, any place where they wouldn’t die
like Louise.

Carine wore her cloak and an old pink surcoat
over her thin, white gown. She had laced her boots up to her calves
and even tucked an awl into her drawstring bag. But the idea of
using the blade for anything other than punching holes in leather
made Carine’s stomach turn.

A breeze channeled through the narrow street
and swirled the unswept glass into a dizzying, twinkling stir.

“Are we really leaving?” Carine asked.
Crossing that threshold would mean this nightmare was real. It
meant leaving Didda, maybe forever. Carine was not okay with
that.

Tears brimmed in Mom’s eyes. Her voice
croaked as she whispered, “We have to.”

Carine glanced back into the home she had
always known. Glass, shoes, and boards cluttered the floor. There
was no food, no warmth, and no hope left within. It was a shell of
the life she had once known.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Carine lifted her
foot and stepped onto the stone of the street outside. She took
Mom’s hand. “Ready?”

Mom shook her head.

“Me neither,” said Carine.

Their Didda-made shoes crunched over
splintered glass as they trailed into an infiltrated Esten under a
star-speckled sky. Remnants of the abandoned Festival—strings of
Navafort’s flags and uncollected wishstones—haunted the eerie
streets. Their pattens clapped over the cobblestone, no matter how
hard they tried to tread lightly.

Carine peeked around a corner of the square,
touching the wet brick with her bare hand before guiding Mom into
the narrow street. This was the same street that had been filled
with cheery Esteners ten days ago. Today, closed curtains blocked
all the windows. The tenants inside must have held their breath as
Mom and she walked by. Carine wanted to announce that she wasn’t
Selius so they wouldn’t have to cower, but it wasn’t worth the risk
of being discovered. Any of them could have also been told to find
a heart. Any of them could turn on her.

They followed the river and passed the ribbon
shop Mom adored. Its door was bolted shut, its windows covered with
paper from the inside. On any other day, Mom would linger in the
window, but today she passed by as a ghost, unstirred by the
thought of little luxuries.

Usually, the river was full of western trade
boats headed for the port. Today, the water rushed beneath the
impressive, three-arch bridges without a single ship.

Carine’s palms sweat. A lack of ships meant
that either the Navafortians had already heard about the Heartless
One upstream, or—worse—other Heartless Ones had attacked the boats’
source towns.

“We can’t go west,” Carine said, careful to
keep her voice low. “Our only hope is a trading ship.”

“You read my mind,” agreed Mom.

At the delta, boats swayed softly in the
water. No one boarded them; no cargo was loaded or unloaded. While
there were usually thirty ships, today were only five.

But even as Carine calculated their ability
to steer a ship alone, her foot caught on something along the road.
Her drawstring bag flew from her grasp as her hands hit the gritty
pathway.

Mom spun. “Oh, thank the flames, Carine. You
tripped. That scared me half to death. I thought someone…”

As Carine turned to move the object that
tripped her, she discovered it was a pale limb with five stubby
white toes. She clenched her jaw, unable to look away. The man’s
body lay strewn in the grass, his skin and face looking almost fake
in their motionless state. Thank the flames, the body wasn’t
Didda’s.

It was Selius. His open eyes were glazed over
like glass balls. To Carine’s revulsion, their expression carried
little difference from when he had entered their house.

“Mom...”

Her mother leaned to see and gasped. “If the
Heartless Ones don’t have a pulse, how can we be sure he’s dead?”
she asked.