The Firebrand Legacy (5 page)

David nodded, a strain of worry wrinkling his
forehead. “I’ll go get Alviar. He’ll find you somewhere to
stay.”

The breeze fluttered over her face as she
waited in the middle of the deck. Her stomach roared with hunger
and her nerves tingled from meeting the twin princes of Navafort.
But above all, a spatter of excitement electrified her immense
relief.

She was here. She was alive.

Alviar was a centaur, a striking contrast of
ink black and snow white. He had a clean, fully white hide on the
horse part of him, and a long, tight white braid on his head. Dark
stubble lined his jaw. A thick black shirt covered his chest, and
at his waist fell the long, shining sword that all Navafortian
knights wore.

“First a trespasser, now a blackmailer,”
Alviar said, approaching from the captain’s quarters. Carine
shivered, not sure whether to bow or run. “Make note, Carine, you
are only here due to mercy. It seems the young princes have taken
pity on you. They could have made you return to shore.”

Carine’s palms sweat. “To return to Esten
would mean death, sir.”

His hard face softened. “Come with me,
Shoemaker. I imagine you might be hungry.”

She walked alongside his horse-like body as
he led her over the deck. Crew members scuttled about as Carine
gazed up to the top of the mast.

Didda’s father had been a sailor. She had
never met him, but according to Didda, he had been known as Jon of
the Mast for how deftly he climbed the mast to affix the sails. She
wished some of his talents had passed down to her. Inheriting his
adventurous spirit would have been helpful now, when only unknowns
lay ahead.

At a hatch near the far banister, Alviar
stopped. “I have teaching to do,” he said, “and will not babysit
you. Our food stores are downstairs, and there you’ll find a few
extra sheets. The crew is using all the ship’s beds, so you will
have to make do for yourself downstairs. It won’t be comfortable,
but then again, you arrived uninvited.”

She was ready to descend at the promise of
food. “Thank you, sir.”

Alviar nearly smiled before he clopped back
to the captain’s quarters.

Carine stared down into the dark. She had
heard of stairs like these. They were built in richer parts of the
kingdom to accommodate centaurs. As the half-man, half-horse
creatures could not easily climb spiral stairwells, all official
buildings made their stairs long and straight.

In the hatch, light was scarce, but enough of
the waking sun filtered through tiny windows up high to reveal the
contents of the room. The first section was filled with food: boxes
of vegetables, dried meat, fruit, and bread piled high.

Carine squeezed her nails into her palms.
There was food enough to last them a year. A pang struck her heart.
Her parents were still starving—if they were even alive. She could
hear the songs Mom would be singing if she were here. She could
spot the water barrel that Didda would rush to open. Carine drank
until her thirst was quenched.

She rifled through the boxes until she found
a great block of what had to be rare Wyrian cheese. With the sharp
edge of her awl, she sliced off a piece and tore off the end of a
loaf of bread. Hands full, she strode across the room and sat on a
folded sheet under the stairs. In the darkness, she took a
bite.

Finally safe and fed, Carine expected to feel
better. But she didn’t. Carine leaned back on the sheet and thought
of her missing parents, trapped in a city so doomed that its
leaders had abandoned it.

So had she.

She woke in the cellar. As nice as it was to
eat her fill and sleep without fear of Selius, that moment between
sleep and consciousness called to mind the terror of her
parents—and Carine’s own terror that Mom and Didda were no longer
alive to fear. Putting her nervous energy to use was the only way
she could think to dampen her anxiety.

“Thank the flames! Somebody else to talk to,”
Prince David said, standing awkwardly when the servant Limly
allowed Carine to enter the room.

Prince Giles wiped his mouth with a cloth
napkin and threw it over a plate of bones and the rind of a pear.
“It wouldn’t seem so dull if you actually paid attention in your
lessons.”

Prince David turned, a half smile in his
lips. “Carine, would you consider the lineage of the Wyrian kings
to be dull?”

Carine bowed, not willing to offend either
prince by taking sides.

Prince Giles shook his head. “The line of
Wyrian kings is fascinating. You can see in their history that they
were headed for doom. It wasn’t just the Heartless Ones that
destroyed them.”

“Oh, I see it now,” Prince David said.
“Fascinating—tell me more.” He smiled at Carine.

Prince Giles frowned.

“I wanted to know if I could…help.” Carine
blurted the words she had prepared, unsure what else to say in the
presence of royalty.

“You don’t happen to know anything about the
Trifolk Wars, do you?” David asked from the table, lifting a piece
of parchment with maps and red lines.

“Only that that’s how Navafort was formed,”
Carine answered, disappointed that she couldn’t be of better
use.

Sunlight shimmered through stained glass
windows on the far wall. The colors danced over a four-poster bed
with red velvet drapes. Two other beds lay set up nearby. A
bookshelf on the side wall was filled with thick volumes and
dazzling, exotic ceramics. Paintings as large as a wall of Didda’s
shoes hung on every wall, looking as though they had just been hung
there.

Spying a pile of unsorted odds and ends in
the corner, Carine offered to sort them, if only as a way to take
her mind off two particular people she loved in Esten.

David grinned at the pile’s mention and leapt
off the chair. “Be my guest.”

“David”—Giles rotated on his seat without
compromising his posture—“will you finish your lessons for
once?”

David ignored him. “How do you plan on
sorting them?” he asked Carine with a glint in his eye. “By object
type or by effect?”

Effect
? Carine suddenly realized these
were no normal objects; it was a wish pile.

“This is my personal collection,” Prince
David bragged. “Some of them I had to buy, but others were
enchanted for me.”

Carine took a step back. Once objects were
enchanted, one could only guess their powers.

“It’s the best collection in Navafort,” he
said, but his boast didn’t impress Carine. “Want to see?”

His Highness Prince David leaned forward,
kicking the contents of the wish pile as he reached down. A gold
bowl rolled a foot away from her. Carine backed up, careful not to
let it touch her.

Prince David produced a child’s black shoe,
no longer than Carine’s finger, and held it on his wide and open
palm. “Take it.” He grinned. “I found out what it does this
morning.”

Carine recoiled. Magic wasn’t a toy. Even
princes’ authority couldn’t rival the twisted wonders of a dragon’s
enchantments.

The prince furrowed his eyebrows. “I’ll show
you how it works first. You’re probably supposed to use the pure
tear of a dove or something but…” He spat into the sole of the shoe
and lifted it to his large ear. A smile spread across his lips, and
he held the shoe out, so it nearly grazed her arms, which were
popping up with goosebumps. “It’s the whale songs. You can hear
them.”

Suddenly, a figure rolled among the thick,
white covers in a four-poster bed at the back of the room.

The sudden movement made Carine jump, until
she saw what it was. The back of a blond head appeared on the
pillow, though the rest of the body was covered in blankets. Prince
Marcel, during all this, was sleeping.

“Don’t worry about him,” Prince David said.
“He’s in
mourning
.”

“As he says,” Prince Giles added. “Though
Marcel should accept that the heir to the throne must make
sacrifices.” Prince Giles stood from the table and took his seat at
a desk by the door.

“Here,” Prince David said, holding out the
shoe again. “It’s amazing.”

Carine shook her head. “No thank you.” Her
voice was little more than a whisper. She should have stayed
downstairs.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a wish
object. You’ve done the wishpiles, right? I thought they had those
all throughout Esten. That’s the beauty of magic. You can get it no
matter how rich or poor you are.”

That was not exactly comforting. Carine dug
her nails into her palms, looking for some excuse to escape. “I’ve
seen the wishpiles, Your Highness. I just don’t participate.”

Prince David cocked his head, light dancing
in his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

She shrugged. “Just because we have wishpiles
in North Esten doesn’t mean everyone is foolish enough to
partake.”

“Foolish?”

Carine broke eye contact. She’d gone too far,
that much was clear. But instead of talking her way out of this
one, maybe she could actually convince David to throw the enchanted
items from the ship. She took a breath and decided to use the
prince’s first name, as he’d requested, to put them on some
semblance of the same plane. “Yes, David, foolish. You’re just as
likely to drink enchanted water that will kill you as will heal
you.”

Prince Giles turned ever so slightly in his
chair.

David smiled, relieving Carine that she
hadn’t offended him. “But that’s part of the fun. During Relief, I
run around Esten and find out what happened to the wishpiles.”

“Me too,” said Carine, though not for the
same reason. She would sit in the local tavern and watch her
neighbors explore their finds. She would scout out any items that
she might have to avoid in the future, and listen for any vendors
who planned to incorporate enchanted objects into their products.
She, Didda, and Mom would quietly boycott those vendors.

“They sell a lot of the best stuff to my
family: purses that pour out wine, impenetrable shields—that kind
of stuff,” Prince David said without a beat, still tossing that
little shoe between his palms. “But they never bring the freaks in.
Those are the ones I like to see.”

“Those are the worst of all,” Carine said,
though she couldn’t help but feel fascination when she reflected on
some of the things she had seen. “One year a seamstress opened her
purse and a baby monkey crawled out.”

“A monkey?” He beamed. “Even I’ve never seen
one of those in person. But that’s the thing: everybody always
wants the never-ending money supply. Not me. I found my favorite
enchanted purse over on the far side of South Esten. Some bakers
were showing it off near one of the fountains. It had a coin
inside, so you’d think you hit the jackpot. You could see it
shining in there just waiting for you. But stick in your fingers
and it’d bite them off.”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about,” Carine
said, but her disdain only thrilled him.

“May my house burn to ashes,” he swore.

“Did you try it?”

“No.” He wiggled his fingers. “A local girl
did, though. Lost her finger and her thumb.”

“They’re terrible things, wishing piles.”
Carine surveyed the wish objects scattered around the room.
Enthusiastic or not, this prince didn’t keep organized.

“No one hates the wishing piles, not really.
Trust me, once you hear the whale songs—”

“What about the girl without fingers?”

“That’s why we test. It’s scientific, the way
the wish vendors test. They put the coins in water, try on the
shirts, empty out the purses—”

“That’s fine, but the rules of enchantments
are subtle,” Carine said. One purse could seem like a gem. When
opened, it filled with water. But if you opened it and weren’t
thirsty, it filled with sand. If you opened it when sad and used it
to catch your tears, then it would produce a flower the next time
you opened it,
unless
you met a certain level of thirst.
This kind of discovery was hard to quickly pinpoint, and that was
the general failure of the wish smiths that sought to quickly turn
over their products.

“Which is why I’m testing them.” Prince
David’s eyes were alight.

Carine’s stomach sank; she could no sooner
convince him than she could steer this ship herself. She tried one
last time. “All I know is you’re putting this ship in danger. But I
guess I shouldn’t argue with a prince.”

“You’re right.” His ears moved up when he
smiled. He pointed over to Giles. “And that’s the prince you
shouldn’t argue with.”

Prince Giles, mouth straight, raised an
eyebrow and turned back to his work.

The armpits of her underdress were soaked
through by the time Carine moved the last barrel into an acceptable
place downstairs. She had always maintained the order of their shoe
shop, and the disarray of the food storage area had been
striking.

She had given herself the task of organizing
all unenchanted objects on the ship. The benefits of this job, as
she saw it, would include frequent visits to the princes’ room,
where the princes’ bickering amused her. Even if she couldn’t throw
the enchanted objects overboard, she could learn from snippets of
Alviar’s lessons. At home, beyond what little her parents taught
her, she’d had no schooling at all.

Another benefit was that Carine felt no guilt
in helping herself to a small lunch from the inventory and
luxuriating in whiffs of cinnamon sticks and rosemary sprigs.

Her only trouble was the nagging, sinking
guilt of leaving her parents, a feeling only amplified with every
reminder of them.

But she had to be careful even here. Carine
shivered when she thought of how close she almost came to touching
the enchanted shoe bowl. Even worse, princes that did not see the
harm in blankets that smothered their users or weapons that burned
the hands that held them would be ill-fitted to guard Navafort from
the darkness that magic brought.