“An accident. What sort of accident sinks an entire island?”
“I’ll wager it’s the Alanga, and he’s just too old and weak to stop them. Maybe this island is next. Maybe they all are.”
They gave me sharp looks when I slid into a chair at their table. There were, after all, plenty of other tables without occupants.
“I’m intruding, I know,” I said, “but I’m looking for someone.”
Their expressions did not change until I waved down the owner of the establishment and ordered sweet melon wine for us all. And then they exchanged glances. One of them shrugged. They both eased in their chairs and looked to me, waiting to hear what I’d say next. Drink was an easy way to make friends, and I wasn’t looking to make permanent or loyal friends of them. Just afternoon friends. Friends enough to pick their minds clean and leave them with the thought, “He was a nice fellow.” Enough to dissuade them from finding any Imperial soldiers stationed here as soon as I left.
“A boat came this way. A dark wood boat with blue sails. Smaller than an Imperial caravel, but large enough to carry some passengers – perhaps ten uncomfortably.”
“When?” said the man on the left.
“Recently. In the last few days.”
He rubbed at his chin. “No, haven’t seen it. Wish I could give you more for your trouble.”
The other man only shrugged again, and I wondered if that was all his body was capable of doing. But then he frowned. “You should ask Shuay. Older woman, works just north of the docks selling cooked crab. She knows nearly everyone on the island and keeps a sharp eye on the docks. Sees everyone that comes in and out.” The owner set our mugs of melon wine on the table, and he took a drink. He laughed, his gaze on the bottom of his mug. “Probably saw you when you came in.”
Mephi crept down my shoulder toward the man on my left, who proffered a hand to him. Mephi sniffed it, and the hair on his back lifted. He backed away, head low, ears flat to his skull. Lips drew back from bright white teeth.
“Hey now,” I said, scooping him up and depositing him back on my shoulder. I was half-afraid he might spout off “not good” again, raising far more questions than I knew how to answer.
“What sort of pet do you have there?” the man on my left asked.
A thousand lies ran through my head at once. But these were just fishermen who found Mephi curious, and Mephi hadn’t said a thing. “I’m not sure,” I said, trying to soothe the creature. The fur on his back eventually smoothed. “He claimed me, I suppose. Lost his mother. Have you seen anything like him before?”
“Can’t say I have. I’d be careful though. I know a woman who took in a baby seal. It was an orphan and she though it was cute. Grew to nearly the size of a fishing boat and bit three of her fingers off before it swam away.”
“I’ll be careful.” I took a small sip of melon wine. One more piece of information. I spoke slowly, gauging their reactions. “I’m heading for the next island in the Monkey’s Tail. East. I need to get there quickly.”
They exchanged glances.
“You won’t find much of that trade here,” said the shrugging man, “except through the Ioph Carn.”
The Ioph Carn. They were as bad as the Empire sometimes. Either you paid the Empire, you paid the Ioph Carn or you paid them both.
“I’ve heard that fishermen keep pieces of it sometimes, just in case they need to outrun a storm.” I brushed my purse, the coins inside clinking together. “I’m willing to pay a premium.”
The man on my left grunted, tapping his fingers on the table. Dirt and fish blood stained his fingernails. And then he reached into his purse and pulled out a sizeable chunk of witstone, showing it to me beneath the table.
Mephi curled tighter around my neck, his whole body going tight until he felt like a snake trying to make a meal of me. I had to untangle his paws from my shirt, loosening his grip. “I’ll pay you ten silver phoenixes.”
“Not good!” Mephi shrieked. “Not good not good!” He darted down my arm, hung over the edge of the table and swiped the witstone from the man’s hand. It clunked onto the floor.
Even a half-full drinking hall had too many eyes. All of them locked onto me and Mephi. Infernal creature! I shot up from the table so quickly that my chair overturned. I should have left him there, screaming, his fur all on end. I could find witstone somewhere else and be rid of both this island and beasts that spoke. Emahla should be all that I cared about. But I’d not even finished the thought before my hand was around the nape of his neck, lifting him, setting him back on my shoulder. “May the winds be favorable,” I said to the two fishermen, and made for the door.
“Are you trying to get me killed?” I hissed to Mephi. Outside, the clouds had crept in. The air smelled of damp grass and ocean. Wind brushed through Mephi’s fur, and it wasn’t until I put a hand on his back that I felt him trembling.
“Not good,” he whimpered, miserable.
“How am I supposed to find Emahla if I don’t have witstone?”
As if in answer, Mephi took a deep breath and exhaled a wisp of white smoke.
“Well, that might work in a pinch, but it’s not as good as witstone. You’ll have to find a way to get used to it.” I stopped in my stroll down the street, shaking my head. When had I begun thinking he could understand complex sentences? But I could puzzle out the vagaries of chronology later.
I found Shuay near the docks, just as the fishermen had indicated. Steam rose from her stall, mingling with the low-hanging clouds. Wind rattled the fronds that made her roof. “Two pennies for steamed crab legs,” she said without looking up. She was a thin, older woman, black hair laced with silver streaks.
I paid her for two, because people are always inclined to be kinder once you’ve done business with them. She handed over the crab legs on banana leaves, and I proffered one serving to Mephi.
As soon as he smelled it, his trembling ceased. He seized the crab and began to noisily tear shell from flesh, making little sounds of satisfaction as he found the meat within.
Shuay laughed. “Your friend is hungry.”
“I think he’s always hungry.” I fed him another piece of crab leg. He was making a mess of my shirt, but I couldn’t bring myself to care that much. I’d not changed it since the beating, and there was still some dirt and blood caught in the fibers. “I was told you know a lot about who comes in and out at the docks. I’m looking for someone.”
I didn’t even need to pay her. Shuay leaned forward, her elbows on the counter of her stall. She smiled in an invitation to go on, and something about the way her eyes wrinkled reminded me of my mother. A sensation of vertigo swam over me briefly. It seemed only the other day that I was back at home in her kitchen, sitting next to her on the bench, my hip pressed to hers as I chopped scallions.
How old would she be now? Her hair had been all black when I’d left. Did it have silver in it now like Shuay’s? Had her shard come into use? Was she sick like Alon’s mother? I couldn’t even think it.
I breathed in the smell of steamed crab, trying to reorient myself. “Have you seen a boat come through here? Dark wood with blue sails?”
When she nodded, I thought my throat would close up.
“I didn’t just see the boat,” she said. “Saw the captain of it too, and his companion. They came by on their way out.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Tall fellow, long face, big cloak – does that sound right?”
I nodded and choked out, “And his companion?”
“Young lady. Shorter than he was. Big, dark eyes. Thick brows and a thin face.” Shuay frowned. “Not pretty but striking, I’d say. Lips that turned a little upward at the corners. But she looked scared. Terrified. Didn’t say a word, and neither did he.”
Mephi must have sensed my distress because he dropped the crab leg he’d been working on and began to pat my hair with one paw. I couldn’t rely on a verbal description, but the face she’d spoken about bloomed in my mind. Emahla’s face. No
one had ever claimed she was beautiful – except for me. And I’d meant it.
Shuay patted my hand. I was still holding my serving of crab legs, my grip creasing the leaf. “You can sit down if you need to.”
The kindness in her voice almost brought me to tears. I knew deep down that this was another piece of information for her to peddle, to feel important, but I’d done my share of using people for my own satisfaction. I couldn’t fault her.
I tried to keep my voice steady. “Did she have a mark here?” I pressed a finger below my right eye.
Shuay’s expression grew pensive. “Can’t say that she did. Not so much as a freckle.”
All the hope and panic and fear fled, leaving me dark and hollow. Not her. Just someone who looked like her.
“I should go. Thank you.” I handed the rest of the crab to Mephi, my appetite gone. I had things I needed to do.
It took me most of the afternoon to hunt down more witstone, and it took the rest of the afternoon to get Mephi to accept it. Or at least to form some semblance of tolerance. There must have been some smell attached to it, because if I touched it, he shrank from my hands, hissing and spitting, looking more like a pincushion than an animal. I had to run water over my hands before he’d get anywhere close to them, and still he curled his tail around my neck as though he meant to choke me with it.
What choice did I have though? He was an animal I’d plucked from the ocean only days ago. Emahla was the woman I’d pledged my life to. And perhaps Shuay was mistaken. Perhaps the woman she’d seen was Emahla. I had to know for myself. I felt it like a string tied tight around my body, painfully taut, dragging me onward.
I went back to the docks at sundown.
The man who’d paid me to smuggle his daughter was there waiting, a box of supplies at his feet. His right hand rested on the shoulder of a little girl, her hair plaited, her eyes somber. His left hand rested on . . . another child. A boy of the same age. I didn’t need to look at the man’s pleading expression to know what he was going to ask of me.
There should have been a word for this feeling – of surprise, yet not surprise. My mother had scolded me often when I was young: “One foolish choice is like a rat you let go. It will spawn more consequences than you first thought possible.”
Mephi chirruped at the sight of them, the first sound he’d made since I’d slipped the witstone into my pocket.
My foolish choices were spawning armies.
16
Lin
Imperial Island
Blood stained my fingers. I wished I had an apron like Father’s, or Bayan’s. But I made do with a tunic I never wore anymore, wedging the cloth into the space between my fingers and fingernails.
I’d found the room where Father kept the parts. Bird parts, monkey parts, cat parts, parts of animals I’d never seen or even heard of stacked in an insulated icebox. The room itself was dark and cold, carved from the stone below the palace. Even so, it smelled faintly of decay and musk. I’d taken some parts I was sure wouldn’t be missed – small ones. A sparrow’s wings, the soft little body of a rat, the head of a salamander. I squinted as I crouched over the pieces on my bedroom floor. The stitching was harder with body parts this small, but according to the book I’d read, the bone shard I’d put into its body would mend any mistakes. It was the larger bodies that had to be more delicately put together, for the bone shard magic could only mend small mistakes.
I tried not to be overeager. I was more interested in carving a command onto the fresh shard waiting in my sash pocket, and in using the magic to move my fingers through and inside the construct’s body. Would it work for me? Or were there some details from my past that I’d missed? Perhaps I didn’t have the ability to work with the shards, and that was why my father kept me from his magic.
A knock sounded at the door, and my heartbeat kicked an echo. I shoved the construct beneath the bed, wiped my hands again, lamenting the blood that had settled and dried in the cracks. I didn’t have time.
The knock came again, as if to emphasize that point. I smoothed my hands over my tunic and went to the door.
I pulled open the door so quickly it stirred a breeze. With the breeze came the scent of sandalwood.
Father stood at the door, hands wrapped around the head of his cane. He leaned on it and peered into my room. Not for the first time, I wondered what accident had removed his toes. And then I remembered what I’d been doing.
If I looked back now, he’d notice. So I kept my gaze on him, hoping he couldn’t see my pulse fluttering at my neck, trying to form a mental picture of my room. Had I left anything out I shouldn’t have? It was too late to do anything except wait.
His gaze trailed back to me. “I haven’t seen much of you lately,” he said. “I’ve been busy, of course. The constructs are in constant disrepair and the soldiers are always bringing them back to me to be mended. But you’ve not come to dinner.”
I’d been expecting Bayan. “I’ve been meditating,” I said, remembering the advice he’d given me. “Bayan said it helped him to regain his memories.” I let my gaze fall from his, feigning embarrassment to be caught in the middle of it.
Father nodded. “It’s a good idea. I’m glad you’re trying to remember. There is much that you’ve lost. The young woman you were before – she’s still there, I’m sure of it.” He focused somewhere past my shoulder.
And what was wrong with the young woman I was now? I cleared my throat, shifted from foot to foot. I wanted him to leave. If he thought I was desperate to return to meditating, to remembering, so much the better. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to remember. I did. But in the beginning I’d spent days and nights scraping through my thoughts, trying to find who I’d been before. I’d grasped for it until it felt my head was squeezed tight by bands of iron. All I had was who I was now.
Father noticed – how could he not? “I admire your dedication,” he said, his voice low and gruff, “but I’d like you to join Bayan and me for dinner tonight. We’ve things to discuss and I’d like you there.”
I hesitated. The half-formed construct was still beneath my bed, together with the journal and the beginner’s bone shard book. But when Father said he’d like for me to join, what he really meant was that I had to. He kept a veneer of politeness over his commands, but it was thin, and easily scratched away by disobedience. So I nodded before he could read too far into my hesitation, stepped into the hall and closed the door behind me.
For a moment, Father didn’t move. We stood there next to one another. Even stooped and aged he was slightly taller than me, his cane lending his thin frame some weight. Heat radiated from his robes like a candle burning too hot and too quickly. The sandalwood smell of him filled my nostrils, mingled with the bitter-tea scent of his breath.
A quick glance at me, appraising, and then he limped down the hall. His robes swirled behind him like waves crashing ashore.
I followed, wary.
The dining hall was next to the questioning room. Bayan was already inside, seated at the right-hand side of my father’s place. A place had been set for me across from them. There was a message in this – but there was a message in all the small things Father did. I was the outsider here.
Servants flitted in and out as I took my place at the table. Father was still lowering himself into his cushion, his cane set on the floor beside him, one hand on the table, another hand on the cushion itself. I almost expected to hear his bones creaking and grinding against one another as he sat.
A cup of jasmine tea steamed at my right hand; a small stuffed chicken with golden, crisped skin graced the center of my plate surrounded by a pile of glistening vegetables and white rice. I’d nearly forgotten what a formal meal was like. I didn’t often go to the dining hall for dinner, and Father rarely asked me to join them. Many times I just ate what the servants brought me in my room.
I honestly preferred it that way. Between Bayan and Father, eating in the opulence of the dining hall was like being invited to an el
egant dinner among sharks. Was I here to eat the meal, or was I to be the main attraction?
Four more seats were at the end of the long table, no plates set at them. My spine stiffened as Father’s four highest constructs entered the room. The servants sped up in their work, and I knew they wanted to leave as much as I did. I envied that they could.
Tirang, Construct of War, an ape with clawed feet and a long, wolf-like snout. He sat nearest to my father, his claws clicking against the floor. Ilith, Construct of Spies, who took up twice the space of the other constructs, her many hands folding in front of her on the table. Mauga, Construct of Bureaucracy, a sloth’s large head on the body of a bear. He lumbered in like a bear just out of hibernation, and rolled into his seat. He rocked back and forth until he settled. And finally, Uphilia, Construct of Trade, a fox with two pairs of raven’s wings. She glided in on silent footfalls, her four wings folded at her sides. She sat on her cushion and started to clean her face with one front paw.
These were the four constructs I needed to gain control of. If I had them, I would have my father’s respect.
Father began to eat with trembling hands. I was afraid each bite wouldn’t make it to his lips. But when he spoke, his voice was strong. “News?”
Tirang spoke first, his voice like sand ground against stone. “Your soldiers are stretched thin. In addition to the governor they overthrew, the rebels are gaining a foothold in other islands among the Monkey’s Tail. A little over a hundred of your war constructs have been dismantled. I’d like to request a replacement.”
Father cast his spoon aside. “If Mauga’s bureaucracy constructs cannot repair them, then you’re short a hundred war constructs. There will be no replacements.”
Bayan leaned forward. “Perhaps I could—”
Father silenced him with a contemptuous glance. He looked to Ilith, and I held my breath.
The Bone Shard Daughter: The Drowning Empire Book One Page 13
