I moved for the key before I could think. I saw what he did as soon as I took one step closer. At the base of the bow, just before the stem, was the tiny figure of a phoenix embossed into the metal.
When the blacksmith looked at me, his face was as round and pale as the moon. “Who are you? What are you doing with one of the Emperor’s keys?”
I should have grabbed the key and run. I was swifter than he was. I could snatch it away and be gone before he took his next breath. All he’d have left was a story – one that no one would believe.
But if I did, I wouldn’t have my key copy. I wouldn’t have any more answers. I’d be stuck where I was at the start of the day, my memory a haze, the answers I gave Father always inadequate. Always just out of reach. Always broken. And this man – he was a good man. Father taught me the kind of thing to say to good men.
I chose my words carefully. “Do you have any children?”
A measure of color came back into his face. “Two.” He answered. His brows knit together as he wondered if he should have responded.
“I am Lin,” I said, laying myself bare. “I am the Emperor’s heir. He hasn’t been the same since my mother’s death. He isolates himself, he keeps few servants, he does not meet with the island governors. Rebellion is brewing. Already the Shardless Few have taken Khalute. They’ll seek to expand their hold. And there are the Alanga. Some may not believe they’re coming back, but my family has kept them from returning.
“Do you want soldiers marching in the streets? Do you want war on your doorstep?” I touched his shoulder gently, and he did not flinch. “On your children’s doorstep?”
He reached reflexively behind his right ear for the scar each citizen had. The place where a shard of bone was removed and taken for the Emperor’s vault.
“Is my shard powering a construct?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I don’t know, I don’t know – there was so little that I did know. “But if I get into my father’s vault, I will look for yours and I will bring it back to you. I can’t promise you anything. I wish I could. But I will try.”
He licked his lips. “My children?”
“I can see what I can do.” It was all I could say. No one was exempt from the islands’ Tithing Festivals.
Sweat shone on his forehead. “I’ll do it.”
Father would be setting the reports aside now. He would take up his cup of tea and sip from it, looking out the window at the lights of the city below. Sweat prickled between my shoulder-blades. I needed to get the key back before he discovered me.
I watched through a haze as the blacksmith finished making the mold. When he handed the key back, I turned to run.
“Lin,” he said.
I stopped.
“My name is Numeen. The year of my ritual was 1508. We need an Emperor who cares about us.”
What could I say to that? So I just ran. Out the door, down the alleyway, back to climbing the wall. Now Father would be finishing up his tea, his fingers wrapped around the still-warm cup. A stone came loose beneath my fingertips. I let it fall to the ground. The crack made me cringe.
He’d be putting his cup down, he’d be looking at the city. How long did he look at the city? The climb down was faster than the climb up. I couldn’t smell the city anymore. All I could smell was my own breath. The walls of the outer buildings passed in a blur as I ran to the palace – the servants’ quarters, the Hall of Everlasting Peace, the Hall of Earthly Wisdom, the wall surrounding the palace garden. Everything was cold and dark, empty.
I took the servants’ entrance into the palace, bounding up the stairs two at a time. The narrow passageway opened into the main hallway. The main hallway wrapped around the palace’s second floor, and my father’s bedroom was nearly on the other side from the servants’ entrance. I wished my legs were longer. I wished my mind were stronger.
Floorboards squeaked beneath my feet as I ran, the noise making me wince. At last, I made it back and slipped into my father’s room. Bing Tai lay on the rug at the foot of the bed, stretched out like an old cat. I had to reach over him to get to the chain of keys. He smelled musty, like a mix between a bear construct and a closet full of moth-ridden clothes.
It took three tries for me to hook the key back onto the chain. My fingers felt like eels – flailing and slippery.
I knelt to retrieve the door wedge on my way out, my breath ragged in my throat. The brightness of the light in the hallway made me blink. I’d have to find my way into the city tomorrow to retrieve the new key. But it was done, the wedge for the door safely in my sash pocket. I let out the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding.
“Lin.”
Bayan. My limbs felt made of stone. What had he seen? I turned to face him – his brow was furrowed, his hands clasped behind his back. I willed my heart to calm, my face to blankness.
“What are you doing outside the Emperor’s room?”
2
Jovis
Deerhead Island
I hoped this was one of my smaller mistakes. I tugged at the hem of the jacket. The sleeves were too short, the waist too roomy, the shoulders just a bit too broad. I sniffed the collar. The musky, star anise perfume went straight up my nose, making me cough. “If you’re trying to attract a partner with that, best try a little less,” I said. It was a good piece of advice, but the soldier at my feet didn’t respond.
Is it still talking to oneself if the other person is unconscious?
Well, the uniform fit enough, and “enough” is what I could hope for most days. I had two full, standard boxes of witstone on my boat. Enough to pay my debts, enough to eat well for three months, enough to get my boat from one end of the Phoenix Empire to the other. But “enough” would never get me what I truly needed. I’d heard a rumor at the docks, a whisper of a disappearance similar to my Emahla’s, and I’d be cursing myself the rest of my life if I didn’t suss out the origins.
I slipped from the alleyway, resisting the urge to tug at the jacket hem one more time. Nodded to another soldier when I passed her in the street. Let out my breath when she nodded back and turned away. I’d not checked the yearly Tithing Festival schedule before stopping. And because luck rarely worked out in my favor, this meant, of course, the Festival was here.
Deerhead Island was swarming with the Emperor’s soldiers. And here I was – a trader without an Imperial contract, who’d had more than one run-in with the Empire’s soldiers. I held the edge of my sleeve in my fingers as I navigated the streets. I’d gotten the rabbit tattoo when I’d passed the navigational exams. It was less pride and more practicality. How else would they identify my swollen and bloated body if I washed ashore? But now, as a smuggler, the tattoo was a liability. That and my face. They’d gotten the jawline wrong on the posters, the eyes were too close together and I’d cut my curling hair short since then, but aye, it was a likeness. I’d been paying gutter orphans to take them down, but then five days later I’d see some damned construct putting another one back up.
It was a shame that Imperial uniforms didn’t come with hats.
I should have taken my witstone and fled, but Emahla was a string in my heart that fate couldn’t seem to stop tugging. So I set my feet one in front of the other and did my best to appear as bland and blank as possible. The man at the docks had said the disappearance was recent, so the trail was still fresh. I didn’t have much time. The soldier hadn’t seen me before I’d clobbered him, but he’d patched a section of the left elbow and he’d recognize his uniform.
The street narrowed ahead, sunlight filtering down through gaps between the buildings and laundry hung to dry. Someone inside called out, “Don’t keep me waiting! How long does it take to put on a pair of shoes?” I wasn’t far from the ocean, so the air still smelled like seaweed, mingled with cooking meat and hot oil. They’d be preparing their children for the Festival, and preparing the Festival meal for when their children returned. Good food couldn’t heal wounds of body and soul, but it could soot
he them. My mother had prepared a feast for my trepanning day. Roasted duck with crisped skin, grilled vegetables, fragrant and spiced rice, fish with the sauce still bubbling. I’d had to dry my tears before eating it.
But that was a time long past for me – the scar behind my right ear long since healed. I ducked beneath a shirt hung too low and still damp, and found the drinking hall the man at the docks had described.
The door creaked as I opened it, scraping a well-worn path along the wooden floorboards. This early in the morning, it should have been empty. Instead, Imperial guards lurked in dusty corners, dried fish hanging from the ceiling. I made my way to the back, my shoulder against the wall, my wrist hidden by my thigh, my head down. If I’d been a better planner, I’d have wrapped the tattoo. Ah well. My face was the bigger problem, and I couldn’t wrap that.
A woman stood behind the counter, her broad back to me, hair tied up in a handkerchief with a few loose strands stuck to her neck. She hunched over a wooden cutting board, her fingers nimbly pleating dumplings.
“Auntie,” I said to her, deferential.
She didn’t turn around. “Don’t call me that,” she said. “I’m not old enough to be anyone’s auntie except to children.” She wiped her floured hands on her apron, sighed. “What can I get for you?”
“I wanted to talk,” I said.
She turned around then and gave my uniform a long look. I don’t think she even glanced at my face. “I sent my nephew along to the square already. The census takers would have marked him by now. Is that what you’re here for?”
“You’re Danila, right? I have questions about your foster daughter,” I said.
Her face closed up. “I’ve reported everything I know.”
I knew the reception she’d received upon her report, because Emahla’s parents had gotten the same – the shrugged shoulders, the annoyed expressions. Young women ran away sometimes, didn’t they? And besides, what did they expect the Emperor to do about it?
“Just leave me in peace,” she said before turning back to her dumplings.
That soldier in the alleyway might be waking up right now with a splitting headache and a good many questions on his lips. But – Emahla. Her name chased itself around my head, spurring me to action. I slid around the end of the counter and joined Danila at the cutting board.
Without waiting for any sort of approval, I picked up the wrappings and the filling and began to pleat. After a startled moment, she began again. Behind us, two soldiers bet on their game of cards.
“You’re good,” she begrudged me. “Very neat, very quick.”
“My mother. She was – is – a cook.” I shook my head with a rueful smile. It had been so long since I’d been home. Another life, almost. “Makes the best dumplings in all the isles. I ran about a lot, sailing and studying for the navigational exams, but I always liked to help her. Even after I passed.”
“If you passed the navigational exams, why are you a soldier?”
I weighed my options. I was a good liar – the best. It was the only reason I still had a head on my shoulders. But this woman reminded me of my mother, gruff but kindhearted, and I had a missing wife to find. “I’m not.” I slid my sleeve up enough to show the rabbit tattoo.
Danila looked at the tattoo, and then at my face. Her eyes narrowed, then widened. “Jovis,” she said in a whisper. “You’re that smuggler.”
“I’d prefer ‘most successful smuggler in the last one hundred years’, but I’ll settle for ‘that smuggler’.”
She snorted. “Depends on how you define success. Your mother wouldn’t think so, I’d guess.”
“You’re probably right,” I said lightly. It would deeply pain her to know how far I’d fallen. Danila relaxed, her shoulder now touching mine, her expression softer. She wouldn’t give me away. Just wasn’t the sort. “I need to ask about your foster daughter. How she disappeared.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” she said. “She was here one day and then gone the next, nineteen silver coins left on her bedspread – as though a silver phoenix was all a year of her life was worth. It was two days ago. I keep thinking she’ll walk back in the door.”
She wouldn’t. I knew, because I’d thought the same for a year. I could still see the nineteen silver coins scattered across Emahla’s bed. Could still feel my heart pounding, my stomach twisting – caught in that moment of both knowing she was gone and not being able to believe it.
“Soshi was a bright young woman,” Danila said, a quaver in her voice. She struck the tears from her eyes before they could reach her cheeks. “Her mother died in a mining accident and she didn’t know her father. I never married, never had any children of my own. I took her in. I needed someone to help.”
“Was . . . ?” The word thudded from my mouth; I couldn’t form the question.
Danila picked up another wrap and studied my face. “I may not be old enough to be your auntie, but to me you are still a boy. If the Empire had anything to do with her disappearance, she’s already dead.”
I have never been in love. We never met as children, we never became friends. I never took the chance, never kissed her. I never came back from Imperial Island. I told myself the lie, over and over. Even so, my mind layered on top her teasing smile, how she rolled her eyes when I made up a particularly silly story, the way she leaned her head onto my shoulder and sighed after a long day. But I needed to believe the lie. Because every time I thought about living the rest of my life without her, panic fluttered up my chest and wrapped itself around my throat. I swallowed. “Did you look for her? Did you find any trace?”
“Of course I looked,” she said. “I asked around. One of the fishermen said they saw a boat leave early that morning. Not from the docks but from a nearby cove. It was small, dark and had blue sails. It went east. That’s all I know.”
It was the boat I’d seen the morning Emahla had disappeared, rounding the edge of the island, the mist so thick I wasn’t sure I’d seen it at all. In seven years, this was the best lead I had. If I was quick, I might be able to catch it.
One of the soldiers in the hall laughed, another groaned and cards hit the table. Chairs scraped against the floor as they rose. “It was a good game.” A beam of sunlight warmed the back of my neck as they opened the door. “Hey you. You coming with us? The captain will bite your head off if you’re late.”
No one answered, and I remembered the soldier’s jacket I wore. He was talking to me.
Danila seized my wrist. The one with the tattoo. Both her voice and her grip were intractable as tree roots. “I’ve done you a favor, Jovis. Now I need a favor of you.”
Oh no. “Favors? We didn’t speak of favors.”
She talked over me, and I heard footsteps approaching from behind. “I have a nephew. He lives on a small isle just east of here. If I have it right, you’ll be headed in that direction anyways. Take him before the ritual. Get him back to his parents. He’s their only child.”
“I’m not one of the Shardless Few. I don’t smuggle children,” I hissed. “It’s not ethical. Or profitable.” I tried her grip and found her strength greater than mine.
“Do it.”
By the sound of the footsteps behind me, there was only one soldier. I could handle him. I could lie my way out of this. But after all these years, I still remembered the trickle of blood from my scalp, running down my neck. The cold touch of the chisel against my skin. The wound felt like fire. The Emperor says that the Tithing Festival is a small price to pay for the safety of us all. It didn’t feel like so small a price when it was your head bowed and your knees digging into the ground.
I am hardened to the suffering of others. Another lie I told myself because I couldn’t save everyone; I hadn’t been able to even save my own brother. If I thought too much on all the suffering, all the people I couldn’t help, I felt like I was drowning in the Endless Sea itself. I couldn’t carry that weight.
Mostly this worked. But not today. Today I thought of my mother, her ha
nds on each side of my face: “But what is the truth, Jovis?”
The truth was that someone had saved me. Sometimes one is enough. “I’ll take him,” I said.
I was a fool.
Danila let go of my wrist. “He owes me for a mug of wine. He’ll be along shortly,” she told the soldier.
The man’s footsteps retreated.
“My nephew’s name is Alon,” Danila told me. “He’s dressed in a red shirt with white flowers embroidered on the hem. His mother is a cobbler on Phalar. She’s the only one on the isle.”
I brushed the flour from my hands. “Red shirt. Flowers. Cobbler. Got it.”
“You should hurry.”
I’d have snapped at her if her grief wasn’t so obvious. She’d lost a daughter. I’d lost a wife. I could be kind. “If I find out what happened to your foster daughter, I’ll figure out a way to let you know.”
She wiped at her eyes again, nodded and turned back to pleating dumplings with the ferocity of a warrior on a battlefield. It seemed the lie she told herself was that these dumplings were the most important thing in the world right now.
I turned to go and the earth moved beneath me. Mugs rattled in their cupboards, Danila’s rolling pin fell to the floor, and the dried fish swayed on their strings. I put my hands out, unsure of where to steady them. Everything moved. And then, just as quickly, it settled.
“Just a quake,” Danila said, though I knew already. She said it more to soothe herself than me. “Some people think it’s the witstone mine causing them – it runs deep. It’s nothing to worry about. They’ve been going on for the past few months.”
A lie she tells herself? Quakes happened sometimes, but it had been a long time since I’d felt one. I took an experimental step and found the ground steady. “I should go. May the winds be favorable.”
“And the skies clear,” she responded.
The Bone Shard Daughter: The Drowning Empire Book One Page 2
