The Firebrand Legacy (8 page)

Carine rubbed her forehead. “I know I’ll
learn it over time with practice, but—”

“We still have a few days before we get to
Ilmaria,” Prince David said.

Carine sighed, hands on her knees. “A sword
will only help me defeat robbers or knights. None of this can fight
what I really want to defeat.”

Prince Giles watched his reflection in his
blade. “Manakor? Don’t worry about enchantments in Ilmaria or
Padliot. The Heartless Ones don’t like wandering south.”

Carine wiped her forehead. “But if they did,
is it possible for regular folk to kill a Heartless One? Can you
teach me how?”

Prince Giles laughed darkly. “The Heartless
Ones, technically, are already dead. They have no pulse, no
feelings, no blood, no heartbeat.”

“But dragon magic sustains them,” Carine
said.

“Not dragon magic,” Prince David corrected.
He spat the name of the tenth dragon. “Luzhiv.”

Carine let the sword drop. “Either way, is it
possible to cut them off from the dragon? I mean, without the
flame?”

“Decapitation, I hear,” Prince Giles said. He
sheathed his sword casually. “They use that method over in Wyre.
But imagine decapitating a Heartless One. He can control your
sword, your ax, every aspect of your environment.” Giles pushed
aside some rope with his boot and stepped to the mast again,
leaning his weight against it.

Carine stepped after, thinking of that
lifeless body she and Mom had seen by the river. “What about
without leaving a mark, keeping his body fully in tact?”

“The flame,” Prince Giles answered
simply.

“Then someone must have a flame in
Esten.”

“Why?” asked Prince David.

Prince Giles watched the cloudless sky.
“Impossible. All flames extinguish one year after the parent flame
emerges from Kavariel’s mouth—to the second. No matter what wood,
oil, or sap feeds it. Believe me, I have experimented
thoroughly.”

“Well, we’re missing something, then,” Carine
said. “Selius is dead. I saw his body.”

The boys stood frozen.

“What?” David said. “That’s the Heartless
One, right?”

“His body was intact?” Prince Giles
asked.

“Not a scratch. I thought at first he might
be sleeping, but his eyes were wide open, and ten minutes later, he
was still there.”

Prince Giles’ face grew serious as Prince
David jumped to take action.

“Captain,” David shouted to the upper deck,
“turn this ship around!”

“For the last time, Your Majesty, no. As much
as I’d like to help you, I answer to the king and not his son. My
mission, under pain of death, is to deliver his Majesty Prince
Marcel to Ilmaria. Nothing will change that.”

The captain repeated his declaration until
Prince David’s face blued with exertion.

Alviar’s voice boomed from the main deck
through cupped hands. “Do not change course, captain. King’s
orders.”

The captain shrugged. “There you have
it.”

“But I’m a prince!” David said. He trudged to
the balcony of the quarter deck. “Alviar, don’t you understand?
There’s something out there. We have to protect Navafort.”

“We knew about the Heartless Ones when we
left Navafort. Nothing has changed.”

“But now there are more of them! The
Heartless Ones will overtake Esten. There will be nothing for us to
return to.”

“There’s nothing we can do, my prince. Come
down from there.”

“Then we’ll call for help,” Prince David
said. “Alviar, we’ll use your enchanted bowstring. You said anyone
who plucks it will get help. Let’s call for help for Esten’s
sake.”

“That’s only for emergencies,” Alviar
said.

“And Heartless Ones loose in Esten isn’t an
emergency?” Prince David begged. “Innocent people are dying and
terrified.”

Carine swallowed. As much as she wanted to
turn around to find her parents, she still had no way to protect
herself or her parents once she reached shore.

Alviar sighed. “You trust me, don’t you?”

Prince David scowled then wailed, “Stupid
Marcel.”

The prince picked up a tomato and chucked it
in the storage room. Red tomato guts splattered the wall as the
fruit skin slid into a box of potatoes. Prince David sank to his
knees and put his face in his hands. Carine sat by him on the clean
floor and put her hand on his shoulder.

“If Grandfather didn’t prize him so much, we
could be back there in Esten, making a difference. I felt bad about
leaving Esten, even from the beginning. We’re their princes. We
should be doing something. And now to know that there is yet
another Heartless One in Esten, one so powerful that he killed
Selius…”

Carine pressed her lips in sympathy. “I know
this probably isn’t what you want to hear right now, but you’ll be
safer in the south.” So would she, not that it did much good for
her parents.

“I know that”—he wiped his face with his
fingers—“but what about the kingdom? I have people I’m responsible
for, more than just Marcel. Does anybody get that? I shouldn’t have
left. I should have stayed and fought. So what if I’m no good with
a sword? So what if I can’t compete with Manakor? At least I would
die for a cause.”

She patted his shoulder. “King Marcel will
figure something out for Esten.” It didn’t seem to help. After a
moment of silence, she spoke her true thoughts. “Alviar said I
couldn’t escape Manakor any more than I could escape my own skin.
Do you think that’s true? Do you think everything has a name that’s
being called every minute?”

David’s attention shifted. He had big, brown
eyes, so defenseless and attentive. His voice got quiet. “Have you
ever been to a funeral?”

Carine’s throat tightened. She had been small
when they buried her sister Louise, but she still remembered the
red casket and the white linen that covered it.

“My dad died before Giles and I were born,”
he said.

Carine had known this. Mom and Didda said
it’d been a tragedy when the heir to the throne died in a border
skirmish with Padliot when his wife was pregnant. The would-be king
never even found out they were having twins. His wife survived, but
spent her days allowing foreign suitors to court her.

“They didn’t bury his casket in a grave. They
keep it with the other Marcels in the catacombs. His casket is
covered in glass, and under the glass on the linen is written my
dad’s name in shining Manakor.” Prince David smiled. “Don’t get
uncomfortable. I know how much you love that language.”

Carine grinned.

“I used to go down there sometimes with
friends. We’d pretend we were exploring, and I would show them the
caskets and everything. But I went there mostly to try and figure
out why Giles and I had to grow up without a dad. I mean, we have
Grandfather, but since we’re not named Marcel, we may as well be
unrelated. Grandfather doesn’t want the line of Marcels to be
broken. The Marcels are supposed to have a great destiny, you know?
I always thought about that name. Was it planned out for my dad to
die that way at that age? For a while, I thought it wasn’t fair.
But then, one day I got to thinking that if I have a name too, a
Manakor name, with a destiny and everything, then that means I
might not be fated as the stupid middle child. Maybe I can be
heroic like my father, even if it means dying a heroic death.”

It was a new experience, sitting on a stair
in the cellar while someone her age, someone like a friend, poured
out his heart. All Carine could do was watch his dopey ears stick
out when he clenched his jaw and see his pale lips tremble with
anxiety. She felt like she knew him, like she had known him a long
time, and everything that he did made her want to laugh for its
familiarity. And everything he said made her want to cry for his
heartbreak.

On the outside, however, she sat casually on
that stair, though she thought that if he looked closely, David
might see in her eyes the admiration that felt like joy.

Carine exhaled. “Do you want to play a card
game?”

Prince David snorted. “Here I am, pouring out
my heart, and you want to play cards?”

Heat rose in Carine’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,
it’s just in my family, we never talk about my sister. We just make
shoes or sing or drink tea.”

“Or play cards,” Prince David suggested. He
didn’t ask any details about Louise, thank the flames.

“Exactly.”

The prince’s eyes sparkled. “All right. I
don’t know how to play anything, so you’ll have to show me. And
maybe after that, we can work on dealing with negative
emotions.”

Crack.

Lightning struck. Carine shrieked on her step
and huddled against the wall. David jumped up. He stared at the
open hatch at the top of the steps. The sky, which moments earlier
had been a serene blue, had turned dark. Ominous clouds gathered as
rain sprayed down.

“What the—” David held onto the banister, and
Carine clung to the wall as the ship rolled. The crates fell,
crashing bread and onions over the floor. The water that fell
through the hatch flowed down the stairs in a river. When the ship
tossed, the water sprayed over the stairs onto the food crates.

“Stay here,” David said, pushing past her.
“I’ll be right back.”

“Wait!” Carine yelled. She hadn’t noticed any
sign of a storm when they had been on the deck. It didn’t seem
right.

But David had made up his mind. He was
halfway up the stairs when lightning struck again. It hit the
water, and the ship rolled so drastically that David crashed over
the banister.

He slammed straight through the wood,

splitting the banister in two. His body was
sprawled motionless over the cheese and dried meat. Blood flowed
from his forehead onto the yams.

“David!”

Carine didn’t dare move until the ship seemed
to steady, though now the crew scurried overhead on deck, calling
to each other. Slowly, carefully, Carine crawled to the prince.
Fruit juice or blood—or both—stained the sides of his soft shirt as
his boots grazed the ground. He lifted his head. His forehead
folded in pain. Blood trickled down the crease and over his
eyebrows. Thank the flames he was okay.

“What hurts?” Carine said.

David moaned. “Everything.”

Carine took his arm and draped it over her
shoulders. The banister was in splinters, completely broken
through. Water rushed down the stairs in a steady current, rising
already to the tops of Carine’s feet. Carine’s fingers fell on his
bloodstained shirt to help him stand. When he didn’t, she asked,
“Can you move?”

David tried sitting up but fell back onto the
food boxes. “Give me a minute.”

“I’m getting help,” Carine said, letting his
arm fall.

“No!” David said from an instinctive pride,
but then said, “Fine.”

Turning, Carine regretted her resolution.
Water gushed in, rising every second. She held onto the post that
remained of the banister.

“Try to stand up, David. The water’s rushing
in.”

David didn’t answer. She heard his movement
as she faced the river before her. The boat rocked side to side in
huge, unpredictable motions.

Crack
.
Crack
. Lightning snapped
outside.

Bread soaked up water like sponges. Fruit
floated over the rising pool. The banister shook in her grasp.
Chills made her shiver. She took a breath and leapt up the stairs
until she reached the section from which David fell. He groaned,
trying again—unsuccessfully—to rise.

She stepped again. The cold, pelting rain
flattened her hair against her skull and made her shudder. Carine
scrambled over the water flooding the stairs onto the deck and
closed the hatch door behind her, hoping that would keep the rain
from getting in.

The deck was flooding too, from rain as well
as seawater crashing over the rails as the boat rose and fell on an
enormous wave. Carine paused at the hatch door, wanting to go back
downstairs. The clouds blocked the sun. The black sky flashed
white, enough to see that the waves were two or three times higher
than the ship.

Thunder rolled and lightening flashed.

Two crew members struggled to take down the
sail, screaming convoluted orders to each other. On the quarter
deck, the captain fought the steering wheel. Alviar stood central
on the ship, staring up at the sky. Darkness shadowed them
again.

She called out to him, but thunder drowned
out her voice. On hands and knees, she clung to the deck for her
life. One slip and she would slide off into the pounding waves.
Water swirled around her wrists, and every ounce was going down
into the hatch. If someone didn’t help David, he would drown.

She struggled over the ship to find help. Had
she moved an inch or ten feet? The sky went white. Alviar stood
before her, his hooves just inches from her fingers. The burns on
his face enhanced his frown.

“Firebrand,” he said, not to her but to
himself.

Carine’s heart pounded. “Alviar.”

He turned, noticing her.

The world went dark, to the rolling applause
of thunder. Suddenly, Carine felt Alviar’s large hand on her
shoulder. He placed it there with the same care that Mom used when
she told Carine that Grandma had died.

Carine spoke first. “David’s hurt. He’s in
the hatch. He needs help.”

“We all do now,” Alviar said. “This is an
emergency.”

Lightning struck again. Silence passed
between them. Darkness again. Carine’s heart raced. She read the
plea in Alviar’s words, but didn’t want to fulfill it.

“Help him.”

The boat shifted. Alviar grabbed Carine’s
other shoulder to steady her.

“Listen to me. The ship has been struck. We
are sinking.”

“Then help him!” It was her first instinct,
but with fading heart, she realized that freeing David from the
flooding room wouldn’t do any good when the ship sank.