Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(67)
So Méndez knows about the Magpie, Illan’s informant. Would they remain here after the king’s display of Lord Las Rosas?
“Yes, my justice,” Alessandro says, and bows one more time before leaving. “I will never rest until I find the traitor and see them executed.”
Not if I find the spy first, I think.
“Is that all? I’m expecting Renata.”
“Yes, of course. That’s what I came to tell you. I found the Robári wandering the halls. I brought her here straightaway.”
A low grumble leaves my throat, but I dart to the front of the chambers where Alessandro deposited me earlier. He was following me to gain better favor. The door to the office swings open and Justice Méndez steps out with Alessandro at his heels. Alessandro gives me a look that says I will see him soon, and then he leaves us alone.
I bow and kiss Méndez’s knuckles. The touch sends a terrible crawl over my skin, and I wish I could scrub my face with a scullery brush. But when he rests a gentle hand on my shoulder, when I see how he softens at the sight of me, my insides twist.
“Renata, I trust you’re feeling better from yesterday.”
This morning, Leo woke me up from a sleep so deep, he had to shake me, as he thought I was dead. I ate a whole bowl of grapes and a loaf of bread drenched in olive oil with poppy seeds and salt.
“Leo works wonders,” I say, touching the cut on my chest, already scabbing over. “Though his hand at healing is not as practiced as yours.”
He seems to like that, and so he holds out his hand for me to take and presses his fingers over my gloved ones. “He’s come a long way. Lady Nuria had him in her employ, but I feel he’ll make a great addition to our ranks one day.”
Does he mean for Leo to become a judge?
I think of his careful warning last night when I asked about the prince. How he sent me to bed and lied about my pallor. Is the same boy supposed to become a hateful soldier in the king’s arsenal?
“Are we going to train, my justice?” I say, realizing that we’ve walked past the courtyard, where I thought he was taking me to practice, and toward a plain wooden door.
“We are, but it isn’t the training you remember.” He says no more, and I know not to ask, as he lets me enter the dimly lit stairwell first.
Knots twist in my gut as my eyes adjust to the darkness. When I was a little girl, Méndez used to teach me how to concentrate on the memories he wanted me to find. I didn’t know that Robári could create Hollows until the day he forced me to keep taking memories from one man until there were no more. Dead green eyes looked back at me from the floor and I was allowed a week on my own. He called it a reward, but I knew it was because I would start crying every time he tried bringing in a new prisoner. And now they want me to do it again, to turn Lord Las Rosas into a Hollow. That will be the end of me. I must find the weapon before the Sun Festival arrives or I will never leave these halls. I will be just like Constantino. Alessandro will find out my lies, and Justice Méndez will carve them out of me with hundreds of jagged knives.
With every step down the stone-walled stairwells, a part of me becomes more certain he’s leading me through a secret passage back to the dungeons or a less glittering cage—that he knows I’m lying.
Finally, five floors down we reach a landing, and I breathe a small sigh of relief at the sight of the alchemy laboratory. A round old man is hunched over vials and blue flames that burn black marks on the bottom of the glass.
Rage fills my throat and strangles my words. I’ve seen this equipment before, in San Cristóbal, the former capital of Memoria. Now our ruins. The Moria apothecuras’ greatest inventions were the distillations of herbs and flowers for medicines. While the people of Puerto Leones were still brewing grass and calling it spiced tea, the people of Memoria were developing alchemy and surgery that would change the way they healed. At least, that’s the story Illan taught us. When King Fernando’s family conquers a region, they destroy the temples and cathedrals first, the libraries second. They rewrite our histories or erase them completely. Who will we be if King Fernado and Justice Méndez employ their weapon?
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Méndez tells me. His gray eyes sweep the large room, the rows of tables and the young and old alchemists who scratch things down on parchment. There’s a girl my age who doesn’t look up when she hears his voice, she’s so focused on pouring liquid from one vial into another and watching the reaction.
I know nothing of alchemy, but I know the pleased expression on her face when she sets the vial down.
“What is all this?” I chance the question, holding my breath. Could this be the source of the weapon?
“Puerto Leones is about to enter the greatest of its ages,” he says. “In order to do that, we have to know everything about our neighboring countries. How they make the things they do and how we can replicate them.”
That’s when I realize what liquid the girl is trying to re-create. The violet color that is too dull in the glass. The dye from Dauphinique, its vibrant purple gathered from the flowers that cannot grow anywhere but their valleys. People have stolen the bulbs and tried to plant them elsewhere, but they will only grow on Dauphinique soil.
King Fernando is trying to cut off trade with his wife’s homeland? Where does that leave the Moria? The empire of Luzou?