had withered, and so I was to help pick new ones.
“You must be very careful, Nati,” my father would warn. I’ve never seen kindness in anyone else’s eyes the way it lived in his, even when he was serious. When I let myself remember him, I realize he was scared, too. “Stay close.”
But I didn’t stay close. I found a patch of wild gazenias in full bloom. I followed their orange hearts and yellow petals through the dry woods until I came across an open field. I’d never been so far from home before and I’d never left the woods. I tried to turn back, calling for my father and mother until I came across soldiers in the king’s dark purple-and-gold uniforms.
“Are you lost, little one?” a woman asked, coming close. I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but I can still remember the fear that overpowered me then. I nodded and told the soldiers exactly where I lived and what my house looked like.
They didn’t take me home. They brought me to the palace, with promises of seeing my parents there.
I was taken to a nursemaid who washed my hair and changed my clothes before bringing me to Justice Méndez’s study. I was made to sit in the same chair I sit in now. It has a leather groove and a high back that stretched far above my head.
Méndez always had a smile for me. His patience was remarkable with a girl who did nothing but cry for her parents at first. He sent up cherry cakes with fresh cream and oranges encrusted in burned sugar and drizzled in clover honey. He said I could see my parents if I followed instructions.
Nameless guards brought a blindfolded man into the room. His mouth was gagged and his hands were tied. I cried again, but now Méndez knew he could calm me down with more delicacies. At home my mother fried potatoes with rosemary and cooked squash we grew ourselves. We ate meat once a month if there were enough rabbits to hunt. I’d never seen or tasted such wonders as I did my first time in the palace.
“This man,” Méndez said, “has a secret. Have you ever seen snow, Ren?”
I wanted to correct him. My father called me Nati. It was comforting, familiar, my name. Anything else made me feel uneasy, out of sorts, like an entirely different person. But I wouldn’t correct this man. There was something in the justice’s gray eyes that made me stop. So instead I answered his question with a nod.
“All you have to do is find this man’s secret. He’s keeping something very dear to me hidden in a place with snow.”
“I don’t know how,” I said, and it was true. I’d never used my power before. My mother explained it once. She said I was blessed with the magics of memory. Only the Lady of Whispers knew everyone’s secrets and it was a gift I had to keep to myself.
I can’t remember how, but I did it. I pressed my unmarred fingers to the bound man’s temples and pulled out a memory of Citadela Nevadas up in the mountain range of the same name. I described the small wooden houses with chimneys puffing out black smoke. Men hauling wood through a snowbank and into a cabin full of swords and other weapons.
Before I could even finish, Méndez shouted, “Citadela Nevadas. Send an infantry right away.”
Now, as I lean back in the chair that I’ve grown into, my eyes flick to the wall behind Méndez. There’s a map of the kingdom of Puerto Leones hanging there. It changes bit by bit every year, erasing provincias. There’s a mountain range west of the capital, the only place in the country where it ever snows. Three years ago, I was sent on a mission to scout Citadela Nevadas.
It was nothing but ruins and I couldn’t remember why, but I knew it was because of a memory I had stolen. I didn’t know it was once a holdout from the queendom of Tresoros, which never recognized the treaty between their former country and Puerto Leones.
I can’t find Nevadas on the map, either, but the mountain range is clearly drawn and capped by white snow.
The justice’s study hasn’t changed in a decade, except perhaps for a different guard standing at the door, and the smattering of gray in Justice Méndez’s dark hair. His sharp cheekbones have a touch of red, as if he’s been somewhere sunny recently. Though