The Bone Shard Daughter

by Andrea Stewart

Not that it would matter if they were not. The boat was coming, and they didn’t know when it would come again, or if they would still be free of the fog that always threatened to cloud their minds. Sand felt for the knife at her belt. It wasn’t a spear, but it was all she had. “Let’s go.”

  They left the mango grove behind. In the distance, a low rumble of thunder sounded. The rain was light and Sand knew it wouldn’t turn into a real storm for some time yet. She’d lived a life with memories and her own purposes. She wasn’t sure how long it had been or what had happened to her to lead her here to Maila, but sometimes when she was still and thinking, a memory would wend its way through her mind. That dining hall with its vast ceiling. The murals. The cloud juniper doors and the tall, handsome man in his silk robes. Heat rose up her neck as she followed Shell through the trees. She’d known that man intimately. And he hadn’t only loved her, he had shown her things – secret things.

  The memories hadn’t made clear exactly what. But she had to believe there was a life for her away from Maila. A man like that wouldn’t want an ugly woman of no importance like Sand, but perhaps…? Perhaps they had once meant something to one another.

  “Are you all right?” Shell asked.

  She’d fallen far behind, lost in her own thoughts. She hurried to catch up. Now of all times was not the moment to get caught up in dreams and memories. They had this one chance to take the ship, and she was mooning about. “I’m fine.”

  The sound of their footsteps faded into the rain drumming against the forest canopy, the high, sharp calls of birds. Hope had tightened her throat. She swallowed past it. “Shell, have you ever had memories of a life before this?”

  “No,” he said. He used the butt of his spear to shove a branch aside.

  A little part of Sand withered. Perhaps she was mad.

  A few more steps, and Shell cleared his throat. “But I’ve had dreams. I suppose they could be memories if they were real. But what’s real here?”

  “I don’t know.” Her hand snaked into her pocket, closing around the shard with the strange writing.

  “I don’t remember much of them. But sometimes, when I wake up, I have this impression. It’s like staring at a sunset for too long and then looking away. You can still see it on your eyelids.” He took in a deep breath, climbed up a rock. “For me, I think I smell fresh ginger. And I feel this warmth on my hands, like I’m near a fire. There’s this comfort in my heart and in my bones. I think it’s a man and a woman that I love, and they’re both with me. There’s a child.” He shook his head, and his lank hair dripped. “I don’t know any more than that. I don’t know where I am, what I do for a living, what their names are, what my name is. How can I think of it as any more than just a dream?”

  “Mine are different,” Sand said. Shell’s recollection might be a painting of a few brush strokes, but hers were like the scenes of a play. “I don’t know my name, but I see everything as though through my own eyes.” She wasn’t sure how to further explain, so she didn’t.

  They spoke no more until they reached the cove. Leaf had found it a few days after they’d started looking. Maila was not a large island. The plan had come together after that, with a good deal of help from Coral. They couldn’t be like pirates, using their numbers to storm the boat and throwing its captain overboard. Instead, they had to get what they wanted with a series of steps, like approaching a frightened animal sideways.

  The first step: making sure the boat couldn’t leave.

  Coral, Frond and Leaf were here already, along with four others. They’d been able to clear the fog for more of the inhabitants, but most inevitably fell back into it after a day or two. Only the nine of them had been able to stave it off.

  It had been enough to make the net. They’d all neglected their daily chores in order to set this trap. Coral and Frond already stood in place on the rocks, ropes in hand.

  “How far off?” Sand called.

  Coral pointed to the horizon. Her eyes must have been sharper than Sand’s to spot it earlier, because Sand could only just make out the blue sails. “We’ll have to stay hidden,” Sand said to the rest of them. “Make sure they don’t see us until the boat is well into the cove. On my signal, raise the net. The rest will go as we’ve discussed.”

  The others nodded. Sand went to her spot in the trees overlooking the cove. Shell went to the rocks on the beach. Coral and Frond ducked behind outcroppings. When they all were in place, the cove looked mostly undisturbed. As long as the captain of the boat didn’t look too closely, they wouldn’t be any the wiser until it was too late.

  Sand found herself reaching into her pocket again and wrapping her fingers around the shard.

  It was bone. The answer came to her all at once. Maybe it was the feel of it in her palm, but she wasn’t crouched in the trees anymore, the seagrass obscuring her form.

  She was in a library, shelves climbing close to the ceiling. A row of windows, high up, let in the light. The man stood in front of her, his back to her. Even without seeing his face, she knew who he was. Her heartbeat quickened. He looked upon the shelves, his hands clasped behind his back. “This is everything,” he said, his voice echoing from the walls. “This is all the knowledge I have.”

  Memory-Sand strode to a shelf and ran a hand across the book bindings. The smell of old glue and paper rose from their spines. “I want you to teach me.”

  “We pass this knowledge down linearly,” the man said, still not looking at her. “Father to son to daughter to son.”

  “Family,” memory-Sand said. “Am I not now your family?” She took one creeping step toward him, and then another.

  He turned to face her then, and though he gave her a forbidding look, she was not afraid. “They said I could have married more advantageously than you.”

  Memory-Sand felt her lips curve into a smile. “There’s still time, you know. You can tell everyone you’ve made a mistake. Nullify the marriage. Go marry one of those dull women your advisers put before you.”

  He reached out a hand to touch her cheek. “You’re too clever.”

  “As are you.” She kissed the base of his throat, took his hands in hers and kissed those too. “You had to know, the way I did, that we would end up this way.”

  He sighed and kissed the top of her head. “My knowledge is your knowledge. And I could use the help.”

  “The Alanga coming back to haunt your kingdom?”

  “It’s not a joke, Nisong. I know people are restless with the rule of the Sukais, but there will come a day when they need us. You see the traces of them all around you and in our cities; how can you mock their existence?”

  “Hush,” memory-Sand said. “You know I believe you.” She twined her fingers in his hair.

  And then he was leaning down to kiss her, wrapping his arms around her, his warmth suffusing her. Heat and excitement electrified her veins.

  A salty breeze gusted across her face, bringing with it the rain. Sand blinked. She wasn’t in her husband’s embrace. She was on Maila, in the forest near the cove, her knees damp from kneeling in the mud.

  The blue-sailed ship was near. This close, she could see the dark wood of its deck. A cloaked figure stood near the stern, robes billowing in the wind. They didn’t seem to notice the salty spray of the waves or even take heed of the rolling ocean. They moved with the boat as though they were a part of it. Sand had spoken with all the island occupants of their time at sea. All of them had vague memories of this one master of the boat and no other crew.

  Sand glanced at the beach. Her compatriots were still hidden. They’d have only the one chance at this.

  She watched as the boat navigated through the reefs, trying to mark its path as best she could. If they were able to commandeer it, they’d still need to breach the reef on their way out. Shell had surveyed the shoreline, and everywhere he’d looked he’d seen the reef. No wonder this was the only ship that came here. As the ship sailed into the cove, Sand quieted her thoughts. She needed to focus on wha
t was happening here and now.

  The only person visible on the entire deck was the cloaked figure. When they moved, it was all at once. Flowing from the stern to the bow, pulling on ropes, unwinding them. Sand couldn’t follow the movements. It was as though the person had more than two arms and legs. At last, they heaved an anchor overboard and then disappeared below decks.

  Nothing happened for a little while after that. Sand shifted in her spot in the seagrass. Her knees and back ached, but she didn’t dare move too much.

  The figure reappeared. This time, with others. Men and women lined up on deck. Sand felt her pulse pounding at her throat. Had that once been her, standing on that deck? Several of them stepped onto the rowboat, and the figure stepped into it after, lowering it with the pulleys into the water. Once they’d rowed to the beach, the men and women stepped out, and the cloaked figure rowed back to the boat.

  The men and women stood still as statues on the beach, their gazes blank and straight ahead.

  Two more trips, and then there weren’t any more men and women on the deck. Sand waited until the rowboat had beached itself, her breathing shallow. And then she stood and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Now!”

  Coral and Frond stood, pulling on their ropes. A net rose from the water. Both of them ran to the trees, wrapping the ropes around sturdy trunks, pulling them taut so that the net blocked the way from the cove. At the same time, two of the others ran toward the cloaked figure with a rope strung between them. The figure drew a knife from their belt, ready for an attack. But the two Maila people threw the rope over the figure and then turned to run back up the beach. The rope caught the figure just below the knees, sending them toppling to the sand. Above, on the cliff, Leaf was pushing a boulder over the side. He had his back to it so he couldn’t see what was happening below.

  The boulder fell.

  Sand flinched. It didn’t crush the master of the boat as they’d planned. But it pinned an arm to the sand. It was enough.

  She rose from her spot in the seagrass and went to meet the others on the beach. The men and women the figure had brought to Maila still stood there, dressed in simple, mismatched clothes. It was downright eerie. They didn’t look at her; they didn’t look at one another. But as she passed them, they started to move. They walked up the beach, single file, heading toward the path.

  “Should we try to wake them?” Coral asked.

  Sand shook her head. “Let them go. We can try later.” She knew where they would go to. The village. It was the trek they all must have taken at some point. She strode toward the boulder, unease building in her belly.

  Leaf ran down from the cliff, breathless. “I meant to crush the person,” he said. “But I couldn’t look or else I wasn’t able to move the boulder at all.”

  None of them could directly enact violence. “At least we were right about there being only one,” Sand said. The net at the end of the cove would have stopped any others.

  The hood of the cloak had fallen to the sand. The figure beneath looked like a man, though not any man Sand had ever seen. One arm was pinned, but three arms still lay free. They pushed at the boulder, and as she watched, the stone moved a little. “Coral,” she barked out. “Sit on the boulder.”

  Coral, to her credit, moved to obey without asking questions.

  The cloaked man grunted as she sat, and lay back on the beach. The rain had subsided to a light drizzle, and he blinked against the moisture.

  “Who are you?” Sand asked.

  He looked to her, his dark eyes solemn. “I am like you.”

  She barked out a laugh. “I don’t have four arms, stranger. You brought these people here. You brought us here. Where did you come from?”

  He said nothing.

  Sand held back the next question and just watched him. She wanted to ask where she had come from, where all of them had come from. “Shell, can we use the rope to—?” Her throat caught. The thought caught with it. No, it seemed restraining this man was also out of the question. No violence, no restraint. What was more cruel though? Tying him up or leaving him here to die without food or drink on this beach? She held out her hand, sweating. “Give me the rope, Shell.”

  He handed her the rope.

  It took all her concentration to tie the stranger’s three remaining hands together. She had to focus on that fact – that tying these hands would allow them to remove the boulder. Every so often she had to stop to wipe the sweat from her brow and to still her trembling hands.

  “Sand,” Coral said from atop the boulder, “what do we do now? We have the boat; we have its captain captive.”

  Sand stood, her legs weak. On the horizon, the waves crashed against the reef. “We figure out how to escape.” She wiped her palms against her shirt. “And call me Nisong.”

  40

  Lin

  Imperial Island

  Something scratched at the shutters. I turned over in my bed, my eyes still bleary. I’d spent half the night on the floor by the door before dragging myself back to bed and crawling beneath the covers. Everything felt hopeless. My father had made me. He knew every aspect of who he wanted me to be.

  My dead mother.

  No, wait. She wasn’t my mother. And he wasn’t my father. He was the Emperor. I was Lin, but I was not the Emperor’s daughter. I burrowed beneath the covers. I didn’t know what I was.

  The scratching sounded at the shutters again, followed by squeaking.

  It was Hao, the spy construct I’d rewritten. I could see the shadow of it between the slats. Automatically, I reached for the drawer where I kept the nuts and pulled one out. Dragging myself from bed seemed easier when I was doing it for someone else. The little spy construct stopped scratching as I approached the windows. I slid the nut between the slats. Little claws tickled my fingertip as the construct took the nut.

  My father would never love me in the way I wanted or needed him to. The grief of it filled me, overflowed. It felt like a wound that would never close. All my life I’d spent trying to earn his approval, and the only way I could have done so was by being someone else.

  My construct outside squeaked again.

  Dutifully, I retrieved another nut and fed it through the shutters. My freedom was so close. Sunlight shone through the gaps in the shutters, scattering barred light across my skin. If I could only just—

  The door was locked.

  Something jolted inside me. But when had I ever let that stop me? My father’s room had been locked. All the doors in the palace had been locked. I’d still found my way through them. What was I doing, moping in this room? There had to be a way out.

  The only thing I had to look forward to now was the Emperor “fixing” my memories, making me into some pale facsimile of his late wife. I’d lose myself anyway.

  I slammed a shoulder against the door. The wood had no give to it. I tried pulling at the handle; I tried throwing a chair at it. I only managed to scratch the wood. I tried the shutters next, pulling and pushing at them, trying to break them. I pried at the wood slats until my fingers ached.

  There had to be a way. There was always a way. I sat back on the bed, trying to think of a solution. I was locked in here alone, without any means to escape.

  A scratching sounded at the shutters again. The spy construct, asking for another nut.

  It was still there, even after I’d been flinging chairs about the room. Hope surged in my breast.

  “Wait right there,” I said to the spy construct.

  I took another few nuts from the desk drawer. Hao would obey my commands without them, but the nuts had brought the construct back to me at this critical time. Perhaps they would provide extra incentive.

  I held the nut so the construct could sniff it. “Hao, tell me how the shutters are locked.”

  Hao sat on its haunches, whiskers twitching, clearly confused.

  I tried again. “These shutters. What is on the outside?”

  “Outside the shutters is the palace, and the palace grounds, and
the city, and the island—”

  “Yes, I know.” I squeezed my eyes shut. There had to be a better way to ask. Numeen and all his family had given their lives. They’d believed I would help them. The least I could do was to make sure they’d not died in vain. “Tell me, other than the corner furnishings and the hinges, is there anything else attached to the shutters in front of you?”

  A long silence.

  For a moment, I thought I’d confused the poor beast again, but then Hao spoke. “There is a bar.”

  I pressed my nose to the slats, trying to see it. “Can you lift it?”

  The construct’s shadow moved as it stretched up on its hind legs. A scratching, then a pause. “No.”

  “Can you bring another construct here? I have more nuts.” I held my breath. My father could have ordered the constructs away from my room; he could have ordered them not to help me, but he’d never shown any construct consideration beyond issuing commands. To him, they had no free will at all.

  But Hao had proven differently.

  The construct didn’t respond; it scurried away. I leaned my forehead against the shutters, setting the nuts in a row on the windowsill.

  Did my father think I had no free will either? He’d made me. Perhaps to him, I was just like a construct. He could put me in a room and expect I’d stay there.

  “Back.” Hao’s nose nudged at the shutters. Another, larger shadow was next to it. I caught a glimpse of brown fur and black, shiny eyes through the slats in the shutters.

  “Hello,” I said to the other construct. “Do you want a nut?” I held one just out of reach. Its little claws scrabbled at the wood, its whiskers twitching as it sniffed. “All you have to do is help Hao here lift the bar on the shutters.”

  The creature sat back on its haunches.

  But I’d done this before. “What harm can it do? You’ve not been commanded to leave the bar alone. Just this one task and I’ll give you five nuts. That’s a bargain, don’t you think?”

  It didn’t move toward the bar, but it didn’t run away either.