I didn’t wait for the spy construct’s answer. I reached for Ilith’s body. Her slick carapace met my fingertips. I pushed against it and found no give.
Ilith screeched – a sound halfway between man and beast. She whirled, her abdomen knocking me to the ground, the nails from her eight hands clicking against the stone floor. I tried to rise but couldn’t; I’d fallen on a piece of web and it clung to my tunic. She was over me in a flash, her old woman’s face next to mine, her body blocking the light. “Lin Sukai,” she said. Her breath smelled of old blood. “Did you think to sneak up on the master of spies in her own lair?”
“I nearly did,” I spat back at her.
She grabbed me by the front of my tunic with two of her arms. Another two seized my ankles. “I could tear you limb from limb right here.”
“Is that what my father commanded you do?”
She laughed. “You have no idea what sort of commands live inside my flesh. You think you can move about this palace and maybe even use bone shard magic, but there are complexities you could never understand.”
In answer, I wriggled free of one of her hands and pushed my fingers into her face. She stiffened. The carapace hadn’t given when I’d tried, but flesh was flesh. The sight of my hand submerged into her face made me feel a bit ill, but I had to rewrite her commands. I felt around for the shards.
I was elbow-deep in Ilith’s face before I found them. They weren’t in a thin column like in Mauga or even Uphilia. They were crowded into clusters. They felt like pine cones. I pulled one at random, trying to imprint in my memory where I’d pulled it from.
When I pulled it out and held it to the light, my courage failed. Ilith was right. I didn’t understand what was written there. There were some formulas, a few words I didn’t know. Frightened, I pushed it back inside and pulled another one. This one had a few words I knew: “when”, “never” and “look out”. I blinked, hoping I just wasn’t seeing the words correctly. I’d read so many books in the library – had I thought those would be enough? I must have just gotten lucky with Mauga and Uphilia. Ilith was a strange, solitary creature, and Father trusted her counsel. He’d made a construct that was nearly as complex as he was.
I pulled shard after shard from Ilith, examining them, trying to discern a pattern to the commands. Of the ones I could decipher, I could see that my father had given her much of her own judgment, marked by parameters I didn’t understand.
At last, I found a shard that spoke of obedience to Shiyen.
“Obey Shiyen unless it runs counter to your wisdom and intelligence.” Both “wisdom” and “intelligence” had numbers written above them. I searched for the reference shards and only found shards that each held at least five more references.
I wanted to tear out my own hair. How could I rewrite something I didn’t fully understand? This would be an even messier job than I’d done on Mauga and Uphilia. But while both of those had been sloppy, they seemed to have held up. My father had called them both to the dining room since I’d rewritten their commands, and he hadn’t seemed to notice a difference.
I puzzled out the obedience command again. I bit my lip. I could still change this in a way to work to my advantage. The number “11” was written next to wisdom. I could change that. I held the shard against my breast and went over the “11” with an engraving tool, molding it into a identification star. Ilith would now obey my father unless it ran counter to me and her intelligence. And I could give her another command. I reached inside her and removed the original intelligence reference shards. This would work. It would have to.
The last construct I had to rewrite was the Construct of War. His lair wasn’t difficult to find. It was a suite of rooms across from my father’s.
I pocketed the reference shards and stepped away from Ilith. She’d awaken soon, and I’d need to get away. Like the other constructs, she wouldn’t remember the moments just before I’d rewritten her.
I stepped carefully over the floor, avoiding the webs. The lighting here was dim, and the webs were difficult to see. My foot caught in a web despite my best efforts. I pulled and shook my foot, trying to dislodge it. A scraping sounded from behind me, and I glanced back to see if Ilith was awake yet.
She writhed on the floor, her eight limbs kicking out to the sides as though she’d fallen onto a patch of ice and could not rise from it. A moan emerged from her mouth. “What happened?” she said. I shrank back, wishing there was something I could hide behind. Ilith managed to get two of her feet beneath her. She pulled herself toward me, dragging her abdomen across the floor. “You. You did something to me.”
I couldn’t move, my throat too tight to breathe through, my heart drumming against my ribs. I pulled my foot free of the web and stumbled, my gaze still on Ilith’s face. The flesh there began to sag and wrinkle. I took two steps toward the exit.
There could be no running from this problem. It would follow me into the palace hallways above, back to my bed, to haunt me in the dining hall where I sat across from my father. He would notice if something were wrong with Ilith. I wished things could be different, but wishing so was like throwing coins into the Endless Sea and hoping for some return. Turning around felt harder than anything I’d done in my life. But I turned to face Ilith.
And then I ran at her.
I’d always been quick, and running on the rooftops and scaling the walls had refined my strength. She batted at me with her many hands and I flung them away. It was like pushing aside the branches of a fir tree to find the trunk beneath. Her face emerged from within the flurry of her hands. I plunged my fingers into her flesh. Ilith went still, all her brittle upraised hands framing her face. The warmth of her body cocooned my arm. I reached for the clusters of shards, the rough edges like eggshells. I pulled out a shard, and then another, examining my work, trying to find out where I’d gone wrong. The command I’d rewritten should be fine, but I was missing something among the reference shards.
A sick feeling seized my throat, blossomed out until I could taste bitterness on the back of my tongue. I couldn’t stop moving, shifting shards in and out, searching for the mistake I’d made, my fingers trembling.
I couldn’t find it.
I sagged onto the stone floor and felt her webs stick to my shins. I’d dealt with Mauga and Uphilia. I should have gone for Tirang before Ilith, gotten more practice in first. Because here I was, faced with my father’s most powerful construct – and I was at a loss. I gritted my teeth until I felt my jaw would crack. I had to keep trying. I shoved myself to my feet, ready to try once more.
Soft laughter echoed from the cavern walls. Ilith’s sides heaved. “You little idiot. You think this is how you show your father you are worthy? That this is how you earn his love?”
I sucked in a breath, my chest aching. “I don’t want his love.” But a small part of me did. Why couldn’t we go back to the beginning when I had my memories? I was different then; maybe he was too.
“You think he doesn’t know?”
“That I don’t want his love?” The ache turned into a roiling unease. It wasn’t that. There was something else. Something I’d missed.
Ilith’s melting face smiled, and my stomach clenched.
“Your keys, your trips outside the city. Your blacksmith friend. Your blacksmith friend’s family. He knows, Lin. And he’s never loved a fool.”
34
Jovis
Nephilanu Island
I examined the floor, trying to find the spot the man had tripped over. He’d looked so startled, like something invisible had slammed into his knees. The floor remained unremarkable.
Gio pulled out the scroll again. “If we take the correct hallways, we can almost entirely avoid guards at all. The riots should be starting any moment now – I told them at nightfall – and that will thin out their resources further. We just need to time this right.”
I pushed back the hood of my cloak, tasting rain on my lips. I didn’t think I could push people about with my mind. A
t least, I’d never done it before. It wouldn’t have even been something I’d thought to do. “Gio,” I said, my voice low, “that wasn’t me.”
He glanced at me and then back at the scroll. “What do you mean?”
“Whatever knocked the guard over. It wasn’t me.” A liar through and through, but sometimes the truth was the best route. “I don’t have my abilities right now. I don’t know why –” a lie “– but I don’t. I’ve tried. I tried when that construct in the city attacked me.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t do anything,” Gio said with a frown. “It could have been you. Maybe something new you’ve not done before. Maybe it just feels different. Or maybe the man tripped over his own feet.” He shook his head. “We don’t have time for this.”
And then he slipped into the hallway without waiting for my response.
What if it’s someone else? I’d never considered that someone else might have similar strange abilities to mine. Would they have a friend like Mephi, or were they like the cloudtree monks, who drank the cloud juniper tea and ate the berries for unnatural strength? The Empire was vast, and there were islands beyond even its reach. I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.
I could leave. Leave Gio to his mad quest. Find some way to get Mephi through the crack of an entrance and back to my boat.
Gio was waiting for me. I could hear his breathing from the hall. “You’re a good man,” my mother had said to me days before I’d left without so much as a note. “Your brother would never have lamented the fact that he died and you didn’t. Even if you do.”
If I’d been a good man, I would have died a long time ago. “Fine,” I snarled to no one in particular. I stepped into the hall and shut the door behind me.
Gio was already silently lifting a chair from a nearby table. He wedged it beneath the door’s handle. “For our friend within,” he whispered. “Though we should be done before he wakes. Let’s go.”
Somewhere above us, I heard someone shout. Footsteps creaked against the floors over my head. Gio’s Shardless and unwitting accomplices at the gate.
“Those were the only guards in this section,” Gio said as I caught up to him. Lanterns hung from the stone walls, placed at long intervals, leaving the spaces between dark. “There will be more when we get to the main floor. Once we go up the stairs, we’ll take a right, then the second left, straight through the dining hall, and the governor’s suites are just beyond that.”
The sound from the gate grew to a dull roar. “Quite the riot your Shardless have started,” I said.
“It’s been brewing for some time. You’ll understand once we reach the main level. Now quiet.”
I held my tongue as we crept around the corner and up a set of stairs. Gio checked the landing before gesturing for me to follow. I obeyed, and walked into something from the opulent dreams of the Ioph Carn. Gold trim and paint accentuated the murals on the walls. The tiles inlaid into the ceiling were stamped in curving patterns, then glazed a cerulean blue. They glinted in the lamplight, and for a moment I had the odd impression I’d found an underwater cave, rife with treasures gathered from sinking ships.
I’d seen the gutter orphans in the streets of the city, hungry for any scrap of food. I’d seen the shard-sick, withering away. And here was enough wealth to feed a hundred orphans and care for all the shard-sick. “It’s too much,” I whispered. Gio shot me a glare and I snapped my mouth shut. But it was too much. I wished I hadn’t seen it.
We made it to the second left before we ran into more guards. We stopped at the corner. Another pair of them, a man and a woman. Both had their gazes fixated toward the front gate, listening to the sounds of the riot.
“Should someone tell the governor?” the man asked.
“He can hear it,” the woman said. “They’ll take him out the back way if the rioters breach the walls. You heard our orders. They don’t need us at the walls just yet.”
Gio patted my arm to get my attention. He motioned – you take right, I’ll take left. And then a countdown with his fingers.
At his nod, we both burst into the next hallway. I could see now that there must have been some truth to the stories. Gio moved with a light, silent step, his twin daggers like extensions of his arms. Despite his graying hair, there was strength in his limbs. I was louder, but we still took both guards by surprise. No inexplicable tripping this time, only two guards lying at our feet. It took me longer than it took Gio, and I received a shallow slice to my ribs. The pain in my arm had lessened, though it hadn’t healed yet. I was going to have a veritable litany of injuries by the time I lived through this. If I lived through this.
“His personal guard will be with him. Six of them, all well trained,” Gio said, his breathing heavy. He gave me a sidelong glance, his gaze dropping to the guard on the floor.
I’d learned a thing or two when I’d rescued the children from the Tithing Festival, but without Mephi I was weak. I hadn’t realized how much that power had compensated for my lack of skill. Always had been more of a talker than a fighter. “My arm,” I said. “I’m slower than I usually am.” Did I sound nervous? Did I sound like I was lying? I shouldn’t have said anything. Never could just let a silence sit.
“There will be more difficulties ahead. Take a breather if you must.”
I could see the doubt in his eyes. I wondered how long it would take until he figured out that my strength had left me just as Mephi had grown ill. If anyone made that connection, they would try to take Mephi from me. And I’d left him in the midst of the Shardless Few, asking him to disguise himself as a harmless pet. Damn that construct for finding me, damn this whole ill-begotten plot, damn my involvement. “I’m fine,” I managed. Best get this over with – find out my fate, one way or another. I needed more rest than I would get.
“A bit of that magic you used earlier might help us in the next fight,” he said. Before I could bite back – again! – that I’d not done anything to fling the soldier down the hillside, he opened the door to the dining hall and slipped inside. I followed.
The dining hall was an ostentatious room of turquoise and gold, painted peacocks with bright yellow eyes adorning the walls. Even the goblets were sculpted, the bowls rimmed in gold. I was surprised the Ioph Carn hadn’t already found a way to plunder this palace, smuggling out pieces of it a little at a time. It was the sort of task Kaphra might have set me to.
Above us, I heard the toll of a bell.
“The rioters have breached the walls. The guards will try to take the governor out the secret passage.” Gio opened the door on the other side of the dining hall and peered through. “They’re in disarray. We can take them by surprise. I’ll go left. You go right.” And then, without waiting for a response, he was gone.
Did he not want to hear me? I didn’t have my powers. I tightened my sweat-slick palms around my staff. The muscles of my injured arm protested; the skin there burned and stretched. But I’d backed myself into this corner. Me, Mephi, Gio. Emahla.
The door to the governor’s suite was open, a guard halfway in and halfway out, shouting into the room. “We need to leave now. Forget the armor – he won’t need it if we hurry.”
Gio ducked and ran the length of the hall, swift and silent as a snake in the water. He thrust one of his daggers into the guard’s back. The man let out a little gasp before crumpling. I dashed down the hallway, sounding like an elephant compared to Gio’s mouse. But the element of surprise was gone and stealth no longer mattered.
Gio had already engaged the next guard. I stepped to his side, bringing my staff down on the woman’s head. Her helmet took the force of my blow, though I saw her teeth grit with the pain. It distracted her enough for Gio to bat her sword to the side. I swung the other end of my staff about and jabbed her in the throat. She went down choking.
Battles were never pretty.
Four guards left. They formed a line between us and the governor. I could see a flash of his frightened eyes by the lamplight, his robe wrapped
loosely about broad shoulders. He had a full head of disheveled gray hair and a thin beard. Something about his face reminded me of the goats I used to see on the mountain slopes at home. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old. Doubtless he’d expected to rule for many more years.
He still might. The line of guards advanced, their swords held at the ready. I reached for the power in my bones again and felt nothing but weariness in them. I’d told Emahla once that I would fight off a thousand armies just to be at her side. She’d laughed and had kissed my cheek. “Jovis, you’re not a fighter.”
“I would be for you.”
Back then I’d thought hopes and willpower could make a thing be so. Now I knew the limitations of body, mind and heart.
Above us, I heard shouts, a few clangs of metal against metal. Another step toward us. I wondered if they recognized me from the posters, or if they recognized Gio. They might hesitate, but this wouldn’t go well for me. Without Mephi’s strength, I had only a rudimentary understanding of weapons. They would cut me down like I was a patch of overgrown grass. I couldn’t blame them for just doing their job.
I brought my staff up to block as one of the guards swiped at me. The clash rang out, reverberating down the hallway much as the impact reverberated down my arm. My very bones vibrated. Before I could react, the man took another step, inside my guard, and seized my staff. He wrenched it from my grasp and sent it skittering across the floorboards. His great big hand seized the neck of my shirt. I wriggled to free myself but found his grip unyielding.
The other three guards converged on Gio. He fought like a whirlwind, his blades flashing, blocking a blow here, nicking an arm there. But the three guards were relentless. They wore at him until sweat dripped from his brow.
What were the Shardless doing right now? Were they on their way to help?
I’d never had anyone else to rely on as a smuggler. Don’t know why I was hoping for that now. I clenched my jaw and kicked back at the man holding me, hard as I could. He grunted as the blow landed. But instead of letting me go, he wrapped an arm about my throat, tightening it until the edges of my vision went dark.
The Bone Shard Daughter: The Drowning Empire Book One Page 29
