Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(124)
Tomás pulls the carriage to the side of the road, in plain sight behind two others. One of them looks like it must’ve come from the palace. I wonder if they’ve replaced Justice Méndez yet. I wonder what they’ve done with his Hollow.
“I bet you wish you’d stayed behind right about now,” Margo tells Amina, whose olive skin has taken on a green pallor as we check our weapons.
Her silence doesn’t inspire confidence, but this is our unit, and we have to keep going. We disembark from the carriage and go our separate ways.
Margo grabs my arm when Amina is a few paces ahead of her. “See you on the other side, Ren.”
I take her hand and we shake. Dez didn’t like to hug or say good-bye, but this feels different. It must weigh on her as it does me.
I scale the side of a wall, my feet searching for the grooves between the bricks. I pull myself up on top of the ledge. There’s only one guard on duty here. He has no idea that I’m towering above him until it’s too late. I jump, landing on his shoulders and bringing him to the ground with my weight. I immediately dig into his memories, searching for the layout of the prison fortress.
The port of Sól y Perla is bustling in the bright day. Seagulls search the beach for scraps of things to eat. He loves this city. Loves the way that there’s always something to look at, unlike his current post in Soledad, where the most exciting thing that greets him is the wailing prisoners. But that’s easy enough to ignore when the wind howls louder. Fellow guards posted at the docks wave at him.
It’s his only day off this month, and he decides to splurge. He pays ten brass libbies for a batch of fresh corvina to take home to his wife and son. He swings the pack of fish over his shoulder and takes a stroll to the docks to watch the ships set sail.
Superstitious local women in this part of the country like to come to the dock with baskets full of carnations. They rip the petals by the fistful and throw them at the decks of the ships as they pull out into the sea. The riot of color makes him stop and watch the latest ship. Men and women with all hands on deck trying to catch the morning gale that drags the ships out to sea.
I let go of the guard, and he fumbles on the ground, dizzy and disoriented. I replay the memory over and over again. I have ten minutes before the hour rings from the bell tower above. I need to get to the courtyard, but I’m frozen in shock by a detail of the memory that meant nothing to the guard and everything to me.
There, on the deck of that ship catching the morning glare, with carnation petals drifting in the breeze, stood a man I’d know anywhere.
Dez.
Looking just as I left him. Handsome and fierce as ever, with one thing changed. His left ear was missing.
It’s impossible.
It must be an old memory, from when he was still alive.
Because I watched him die—I saw his head roll and come to a stop right in front of me. I saw the blood drip from Castian’s blade. Castian’s angry blue eyes as he paraded across the stage. So different from the day he cut into the dance during the Sun Festival. The memory of his murderous hands on me sends angry flashes all over my body.
But still, seeing Dez’s face, so recent, in a memory, feels like a dagger to the chest. A fresh wave of grief washes over me. In all this time, I’ve hardly been able to stop and feel the loss of him. Not truly. Not deeply. The feeling that I will never have him again, never hold him or kiss him or tell him how I feel. My defender, my partner in crime, my best friend.
No, I can’t do this. Not yet. Not now.
With the minutes counting down, I shake myself out of my stupor and drag the guard around a corner. I tie him down, then gag him, but continue reliving his footsteps along the port of Sól y Perla, where the rest of the Whispers are now, hopefully escaping to Luzou. I can’t stop the questions racing through me. When was the last time Dez went on a mission that required a ship? There was an excursion to Dauphinique where he was gone for four months. He’d come back with a scraggly beard, his first real facial hair. He’d tried to kiss me but it looked itchy, so I waited. That was three years ago.
I see the face of the man in the memory over and over. Honey-brown eyes and a full dark beard. It could be anyone. But when he tightened the ropes on the starboard side, I could see him so clearly, see the scars on his bare arms. I know those scars, I’ve traced my fingers all over them. But Dez looked different in the memory. His ear was missing. How could that be unless it happened recently?
I slap myself. Sayida’s magics must be having a lingering effect on me. Altering the things I see. Making me dredge up feelings that I need to control.
I won’t fail you.
Make sure that you don’t.
The clock marks five minutes to the hour, and I race across the side of the building, guided by moonlight and faint gas lamps. A wail comes from the courtyard of the prison. My heart thunders as I run, and I worry that something has happened to Margo or the others.
Once I make it to the courtyard, I quickly discover it’s not a wail or a scream, it’s the whistle of the wind. All at once I know why they named this place Soledad. It has a way of making you feel like you’re all alone with nothing but an expanse of hills on one side and the cold, dark sea on the other.
I give a quick whistle. Dez used to signal by whistling a sparrow call, and it stuck with us. It made Esteban furious because he couldn’t roll his tongue or get his lips to make the softer sound.