It took half a day to sail around to the other end of the island, and the opium began to wear off almost as soon as we’d left the harbor. The children cried and huddled together like a mass of lost puppies. Mephi did his best to calm them, but they really wanted their mothers and fathers. I knew better than to even try. I never knew what to say to children. Instead, I sat away from them, worked the arrowhead loose from my flesh and stitched shut both my skin and my torn shirt.
I had to drop anchor in the shallows, and I urged the children into the water. It looked about to rain anyway and the rest of them would soon be wet. I waded to shore with them, my pants heavy with seawater. The wound in my shoulder was sore, but it had already begun to heal.
A woman sat on the sand, watching me. She was dressed simply, a rough-woven tunic and a wraparound skirt. Before Emahla, I might have said she was beautiful. Her long black hair was plaited behind her, framing a face with wide, expressive eyes and a pointed chin. She rose to her feet when I approached. “Jovis, I presume?” she said. “I was told that’s who would be bringing the children.”
I rubbed at my chin. “What? The face doesn’t look familiar? I’ve had a hundred portraits of myself scattered across the Empire. I’ve been paying gutter orphans to collect them for me.”
She gave me a sidelong look. “Nearly as vain as the Emperor. Will you clamor next to have your face stamped onto coins?”
“With as big a head I’m growing, it wouldn’t fit.”
She placed a hand over her heart in greeting, and I returned the gesture. “My name is Ranami. I’ve heard about you.”
“Good things, I hope.”
“It depends on who you’re asking.” She bent down to greet one of the children. They wandered up the beach like lost ghosts. “A friend of mine is coming to take you someplace warm where you can get washed up and put on dry clothes. We’ll let your parents know that you’re safe. And we’ve got food too. Would you like that?”
The girl nodded.
A man stepped out of the trees, grizzled, with a scar over his milky left eye. I felt my eyebrows lift. I knew the man. But then, damn well everyone in the Empire knew him, because he’d had more posters spread about than I had. Gio, the leader of the Shardless. The stories said he’d killed the governor of Khalute with his own two hands. He placed his hand over his heart to greet me, and then beckoned to the children.
They went, leaving me alone on the beach with Ranami, my boat anchored behind.
“So this is where the leader of the Shardless Few is hiding?”
Ranami’s mouth quirked. “And who would you tell?”
I lifted my hands, palms up in a helpless gesture. No one would ever believe me. I’d made sure of that. “Fair enough.”
Mephi had taken the chance to go for a swim. He rolled in the waves, chattering to himself. I could feel the pull of the Endless Sea from behind me. Somewhere out there were the answers I sought to Emahla’s disappearance. I turned to go.
“I have an offer to make you,” Ranami said.
I knew what she would say before I faced her. Everyone now thought they could buy me, even the Ioph Carn. They hadn’t cared much when I’d been a smuggler of goods, when they could have bought me. First people were afraid when they saw what I could do. And then, once the fear had passed, they started making me offers. The only ones I’d taken so far were to rescue the children.
“Join the Shardless Few,” she said. “Help us overthrow the Emperor.”
I shook my head. “No. And you’re not the first to offer me some sort of loose employment. Oh. Except you wouldn’t pay me, would you?”
She pursed her lips.
“I’m not a hero. I never set out to be a hero in the first place. Those children? Their parents paid me to rescue them.”
“But you can do things others can’t. Unless people exaggerate, you have the strength of ten men and can even make the ground tremble. Think of all the good you could do with that. You could give the people their voices back.”
I looked to the sky and sighed. “The Empire was established to save those people from the Alanga. The Shardless Few is trying to save those people from the Empire. Who, after, will save the people from the Shardless?”
“The Alanga are not coming back, no matter what the Emperor might say. His constructs are more like toys than an army. He’s a tinkerer, not some benevolent protector. And ours are the lives he’s tinkering with.”
I was young, but she was a little younger by my guess. She still had the vigor to believe in ideals. “What does the rebellion plan to do with the people once it’s saved them? If there is no Emperor, who will rule us?”
She lifted her chin. “We will rule ourselves. A Council, formed from island representatives.”
I didn’t ask any further questions. I knew an invitation to proselytization when I heard one. I ran a hand over my face. Endless Sea, I was tired! The dry clothes and hot food promised to the children sounded like heaven to me now. My feet squelched in my shoes each time I shifted my weight, my wet pants clinging to my thighs, my shoulder a dull ache. “Sounds like a messy process.” I strode toward the water. “I’m not what you’re looking for.”
“Wait!” she called after me. “I know what you are looking for.”
I stopped.
“A boat of dark wood and blue sails, heading toward the greater islands. I know where it’s going.”
I had no idea where the boat was anymore, and I’d never known its destination. “What do you know about it?”
She wasn’t going to tell me just because I’d asked. Of course she wasn’t. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you must help us first.”
I pivoted back to her, helpless as a puppet being jerked about by its strings. Emahla – always for her.
“What would you have me do?”
23
Jovis
Nephilanu Island
“And that’s all you want from me, I suppose?”
When a shark offers up a pearl, be wary of its teeth. My father liked to tell me that when we were sailing, though I found this lesson most often applied on land.
Ranami uncrossed her arms. “Ten days of your time is not much to ask.”
“And I expect I can just sit myself down here, wait for ten days and you’ll give me the information I want.” Internally, I was screaming. Ten days. Ten days of letting that boat get farther and farther away, grasping for answers that were slipping through my fingers.
“No,” Ranami admitted.
“Tell me what it is exactly that you want me to do, and then we’ll talk.”
“Come back with me; let Gio and the others explain.”
“The others,” I said flatly. How many of the Shardless Few were gathered on this island? If the Emperor had his spies out and about, they’d find out soon enough. And who needed to trust people when you had constructs as small as squirrels who could do your work? Yet the promise she dangled in front of me – of knowing where that boat was going – flashed like a fishing lure on a sunny day. I was guessing at this point, following a trail that had long since grown cold. If I knew its end destination, I could find the quickest route there, catch the boat while it was still docked. I thought of Emahla’s wine-dark eyes, what it would be like to see them again, and I felt like my throat was being pressed by the weight of all the islands atop one another. “Do you know if she’s still alive?” I said in a low voice.
Ranami’s eyelashes fluttered, her gaze going to the sand. “I’m sorry,” she said and she sounded genuinely remorseful. “All I know is that you were looking for the blue-sailed boat. I didn’t know—”
I swept past her and heard Mephi splashing out of the sea to follow me. Of course she didn’t know. No one seemed to know what happened to these young men and women, why they were taken. But she knew where they went, and that was something. “It doesn’t matter.” I had to take this chance. I had to stop lying to myself, telling myself I’d find it again on my own. I wasn’t a child, hopin
g for glimpses of sea serpents from shore.
She hurried to keep up with me and I didn’t wait. “You don’t know where you’re going,” she said in a firm voice before stepping in front of me. And she was right: I didn’t. Where did one hide the rebellion’s leader from the Empire?
The forest floor was damp beneath my feet. Most people were glad to see the rains come after seven years of a dry season. Yes, the winds picked up and made the sailing quicker. But the rain made the sailing a fair bit more miserable, and the ever-present moisture in the air made me feel like my fingertips had grown permanently wrinkled. Mephi scampered ahead and around us both, pouncing on dew, snapping at a butterfly, clambering halfway up a tree before jumping down again. He didn’t say anything, for which I was eternally grateful. All I needed now was to be explaining to this woman why my pet talked.
Ranami led me to a cliff covered in vines and vegetation. Birds and monkeys called in the trees above, their voices layering on top of one another. The skies had cleared, though I knew that wouldn’t last. There were no roads out here, no villages, not even the hint of rooftops in the distance. That would help with the spies, I supposed. And then Ranami drew aside some vines to reveal a crack in the cliff’s face. A crack barely large enough for a person to shove themselves through. She looked to me, her gaze cool.
I balked. “You can’t be—”
She lifted her arms, sucked in a breath and disappeared into the rock.
Mephi chittered excitedly. I lifted a finger to my lips. “Don’t,” I said. He quieted and only headbutted my knee. I scratched his ears and approached the crack. I lifted the vines like a curtain and peered into the darkness. I thought, when I looked at it, I could see some faint glow from within.
“Will you follow?” Ranami’s voice emanated from the darkness as though she’d become only shadows.
Mephi sat on his haunches, black eyes staring up at me.
“You don’t have to come,” I said to him. “You can wait for me back on the ship.”
He shook his head, chirruped and slid through the crack as if his bones were liquid.
I clenched my fingers, unclenched them, feeling sweat gather on my palms. I’d never been fond of enclosed spaces – which was perhaps another reason I didn’t like the wet season. So much waiting around indoors for the storms to pass. I couldn’t see how far this crack went, how long I’d have to squeeze for. What if there were spiders?
Emahla would do it if our positions were reversed.
With a quick breath, I stepped sideways into the crack, my head facing the light of day. One step. Two. The stone on either side pressed on my chest and on my back. I felt caught between two mountains, with another mountain bearing down on top of me. Was this how an insect felt right before it was crushed underfoot? Three steps. Four. My shirt caught on an outcropping. It wouldn’t tear away when I tugged. I was trapped.
I stopped, trying to quell the panic. One step back, and then forward again. My shirt fell free.
One more step, and I felt the crack widen. A warm body brushed against my legs. Mephi. Just the feel of him relaxed me, knowing he was there and he wasn’t scared. He was much smaller than I was. If he wasn’t scared, I shouldn’t be either.
Finally, I was able to turn my head. A few more steps and I couldn’t feel either wall against me anymore. A lamp flashed in front of my face. When it was lowered and my eyes adjusted, I could see Ranami’s face, grim but satisfied. “We’re farther in.”
The cavern was barely wide enough to accommodate my shoulders, but now it was merely an uncomfortably small hallway and not what felt like a death-trap. If this was where the Shardless were hiding, I understood how they hadn’t been found yet. I had to watch my footing – the floor of the cavern was uneven, though someone had made an effort to clear the jagged rocks away.
Ranami and the lamp disappeared around a corner, and I hurried to keep the light in view. I almost stumbled when I rounded the corner.
The floor here was smooth, the walls widening into a proper hallway. Lamps hung at regular intervals on hooks from the walls, illuminating symbols carved into the rock. I had to look both left and right before I saw Ranami again, walking down the hall.
“What is this place?” I said when I’d caught up.
“We’re not sure,” she said, “but we’re almost certain they made it. That they might have lived here.”
They. One of the Alanga. I’d known that Nephilanu had been the place where Dione, the last of the Alanga, had made his stand against the Empire. It made sense they would have had a hideout here.
“They must have had a lot of oil,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, her voice dry. “It’s quite dark. I see you’ve noticed.”
Lovely. I was glad we were getting along so well already. As long as what they wanted me to do didn’t involve working closely with this woman. “Or they might have lit the place with magic.”
Her shoulders stiffened. The idea hadn’t occurred to her. It was odd to me – that there was evidence of magic all around us in the form of the Emperor’s constructs, yet no one seemed to think any other sort of magic existed. It clearly had in the form of the Alanga. And if folklore was to be believed, cloud junipers had some magic as well, though it was zealously guarded by the monasteries.
When I concentrated, I could feel the thrumming in my bones, the power waiting to be unleashed. The ground beneath me seemed to hold its breath, waiting for me to send that thrumming through the soles of my feet and into the rock. There was something of magic living in me too, either put there or awakened by Mephi. Where he’d gotten it, I didn’t know. I found myself tapping the end of my staff against the wall. When I tightened my grip, sweat made my fingers slip. Sometimes I wondered if magic was like a parasite, a thing that lived in me, but wasn’t a part of me. The thought had kept me awake on more than one night. But I trusted Mephi, and the bond we’d formed hadn’t harmed me. When I was using the magic, when I felt the strength in my limbs and the thrumming in my eardrums, I couldn’t feel fear. All I could feel was a fierce joy. Was it good or not good? I wasn’t sure.
The hallway ended in a room large enough to be a palace’s dining hall. Lamps lined the walls, and though they made the place almost bright, I still felt as if I’d already forgotten what the sky looked like. A group of people sat at the far end of the room at a table of stone. One of the tallest women I’d ever seen stood leaning against the wall, though there was room enough for her at the table. She was dressed in a leather jerkin, a sword strapped to her side. Not quite the bearing of a soldier – no uniform, no brass pins – but she had her hand on the hilt of her weapon and I didn’t doubt she knew how to use it. Black hair fell to her shoulders in waves, framing a chin that was stronger than mine.
Ranami hung the lamp by the door and went to the woman. They embraced, though there was something awkward in the gesture, as though neither quite had their heart in it. “I’m back,” Ranami said. “And I brought the other part of our plan as I promised.”
The tall woman looked me over like I was a stray dog brought in from the storm. “Him,” she said, her voice flat.
I was the one who didn’t want to be here. “Why don’t you tell me what it is you want me to do and I’ll tell you if I can do it before you go judging my abilities.” I could hear the voices of the children from the room beyond, and the thick smell of a rich curry stew. My stomach growled.
Gio rose from his spot at the table. “Jovis,” he said, “I’m glad you decided to join us. You understand, bringing you here, telling you this – it puts us at risk.”
Mephi leaned against my knee. I rubbed his ears, taking comfort from his presence. “As Ranami so kindly pointed out to me: who would I tell? Everyone wants me dead, it seems, including the Empire.”
“You could bargain for your life,” Gio said.
“We both know the Empire would not keep their end of that bargain. Will you tell me or not?”
He exchanged a glance with Ranami. I wasn
’t stupid. This verbal game we’d played was pointless. If he told me and I didn’t agree to their plan, he would kill me. If I did, and I succeeded, he’d likely still try to kill me. Ranami was a believer – she would never pose a threat to Gio. He could smell it on her, like a wolf searching for a dog among the sheep. Me? I was a survivor. I’d bargained with the Ioph Carn and then stolen from them. I would do what I needed to do. He could smell it on me too, I was sure. So we circled one another, wary and snapping, knowing that this might very well end in bloodshed.
“The governor here is a strong supporter of the Emperor,” Gio said. “Much of his commerce comes from sending caro nuts to the inner Empire. It’s made him rich. We overthrow him. Cut off the supply of caro nuts and weaken the Emperor’s support at the beginning of the wet season. Just as the bog cough hits the main islands, the governors will be clamoring for caro nut oil that the Emperor does not have. “If we control the supply, we’ll be able to leverage that to gain new allies and to turn some of the governors against the Empire.”
My gaze flicked to Ranami. She stood leaning against the wall with the tall woman, their fingers entwined. While she didn’t look at me, she didn’t look at her partner either. Rebellions could tear the bonds between people as surely as they could form them.
“And my role in this?”
“If the stories are even halfway true, you’re a powerful fighter. We need someone to assassinate the governor’s personal guard. Someone who can take them all out, if needed. This will be coordinated with a frontal assault.”
I could still feel the thrum of the power within me, now fluttering against the louder beating of my heart. “I’m a smuggler. I’m not an assassin.”
“I’ve been told you took out six of the Ioph Carn’s best fighters and nearly knocked a drinking hall off its foundation in the doing of it.”
“I didn’t knock it off its foundation. I did shake it just a little, but that was more to keep them off balance and frightened than to destroy anything. And I didn’t kill the Ioph Carn.” But I couldn’t deny there’d been six.
The Bone Shard Daughter: The Drowning Empire Book One Page 20
