The Bone Shard Daughter

Chapter 5. Phalue Nephilanu Island

Ranami had more than made a difference in Phalue’s life – she’d changed it irrevocably, much as Phalue didn’t want to admit it sometimes. Times like now, when she just couldn’t concentrate because of her.

Sweat stuck Phalue’s hair to the back of her neck. The sword in her hand dipped, but she adjusted her grip and gritted her teeth. She’d dive into the Endless Sea before she’d lose a match to Tythus. They were of similar ages, heights and weights – her skill should win out, though. True, she was distracted. As if to prove that point, Tythus darted in, nearly scoring a hit on her pouldron. She batted the attack away just in time.

“Ah, Phalue,” Tythus said, grinning with this near-victory, “you’re not yourself today. A lover’s quarrel perhaps?”

Phalue grimaced. It was an old joke between them. A few years ago, she’d often come to their sparring sessions moody and out of sorts. And he had gently chided her for courting, as he liked to say, “half the island”. He hadn’t been far off, if she were being honest with herself. She’d been an incorrigible flirt, taking up with women both highborn and low. But then she’d met Ranami, and the hot-cold passion had cooled to something more comfortable, more livable.

Lately, though, yes – they’d fought.

Tythus broke through her guard and struck her on the leg. She jumped back, too late, and hissed in pain. That would leave a bruise. She tore off her helmet and sucked in the air. It was still moist with rain from earlier in the morning, making her feel a little like she was drowning on dry land. Perhaps she wasn’t ready to dive into the Endless Sea just yet.

Tythus’ expression sobered, and he lowered his sword. “Really? Something is bothering you. Don’t tell me you’ve broken things off with Ranami. She’s the best thing that’s happened to you.”

Phalue hobbled across the stones of the courtyard, walking off the pain. “No, we’re still together. I just… don’t understand women sometimes.”

He crowed with laughter. “Oh, that’s richer than my auntie’s seafood stew.”

She scowled. “I don’t understand other women.” Or perhaps it was just Ranami she didn’t understand. Ranami reminded Phalue of a spotted dove – all soft and brown, quiet and elegant, with round black eyes that evoked gentleness. But there was a thing of sharp edges beneath the feathers, and sometimes Phalue could feel herself brushing up against it if she dug too deep. She walked past the fountain at the corner of the palace courtyard, glancing at it. It was one of the old remnants of the palace, one of the parts built by the Alanga. They’d taken their last stand against the Emperor’s ancestors here on Nephilanu. Her father’s palace was one of the few buildings that had remained mostly intact.

She nodded at the fountain. “Did it open its eyes again?”

Tythus shifted uncomfortably. “No. They were open for five days, but haven’t been open since. Gives me the shivers, honestly.”

A figure stood in the fountain, a bowl in her hands from which the water flowed. The palace had been in an uproar when the statue’s eyes had opened a few months ago, sightless. Her father had been about to order it destroyed when the eyes had closed again. Nothing had happened. No trumpets, no rumblings, no sudden appearance of people who had old magics. There were whispers in the streets that this meant the Alanga would return and take back rule of the islands, and that it would happen first at Nephilanu. But even frightening stories lost their bite sun-bright day after sun-bright day. “If they did come back, they’d go to Imperial first,” Phalue said.

Tythus frowned. “It’s bad luck to speak of the Alanga coming back.”

“Don’t tell me you’re that superstitious.”

He only pressed his lips together.

Phalue shook out the leg and sighed, her mind turning back as it always did to Ranami. “I asked her to marry me. Ranami,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she was confessing this to Tythus, except that he had always listened when she’d had a problem.

He sheathed his sword. “Well, I certainly didn’t think you meant the fountain. And?” He read her face. “Ah. She didn’t accept.”

Phalue brushed sweat and hair from her forehead. “I’ve asked before. It’s not the first time. But she keeps telling me she doesn’t want to be a governor’s wife. What am I supposed to do with that? Abdicate? I’m not fond of my father’s policies either, but if she were my wife and I inherited, she could help me shape them.”

Tythus only shrugged. He was one of the palace guards; he wasn’t going to speak ill of her father, no matter how freely she might.

“She hates that he ships all the caro nuts away to Imperial. She hates the way the farmers are treated. She thinks it’s not fair. Then what is she doing with me? I’m the governor’s heir. If she’s truly not interested in improving her station, shouldn’t she be courting someone whose station doesn’t repel her? Am I a joke to her? A passing fancy? I took her to the docks where we first met, had set floating lanterns in the water, and she wanted to talk about my father’s taxes! I should have known she would say no.” Phalue was pacing the length of the courtyard. She stopped, took a few deep breaths.

“Phalue,” Tythus said. “I’ve been married for five years now, and I’ve two children. I’m no governor’s child. I’m no governor. Beyond that and most importantly, I am not Ranami. You should probably ask her.”

“I don’t know how to talk to her,” Phalue said, and hated the edge of a whine in her voice. She’d tried to explain to Ranami that her father was urging her to marry, that she would give Ranami free rein to change things once she was installed as governor, that they’d been together for long enough. She’d even once thrown a fit and had walked away, resolving to leave her and court someone else. But she could no sooner leave Ranami than the world could leave the sun. So she’d crawled back into orbit, begging forgiveness – which Ranami had granted with a lingering hug and a kiss to the cheek. No one could ever claim she was not magnanimous.

“Perhaps,” Tythus said, his head tilted and thick eyebrows raised, “you could try listening?”

“You think I don’t listen,” Phalue said flatly.

Tythus lifted his hands in a half-shrug. “Listening is an art. It’s not so much sometimes in letting the other person speak as in asking them the right questions.”

“What are the right questions?”

“I’m just your sparring partner,” he said lightly. “Remember?”

A door on the second floor opened briefly to the balcony, spilling the sounds of music and murmuring voices into the courtyard. Phalue eyed the palace with distaste. “Still going, is it?”

“Your father likes his parties.” Again, his voice was perfectly neutral. “He might enjoy it if you stopped in.”

Stopped in? It would be like a crow trying to roost among songbirds. Phalue’s mother and father had dissolved their marriage when she’d been young, and though her mother had sent her to live at the palace, she never felt like she quite fit in. Her excesses were not drinking and dancing. She shook her head. “Tythus, I would no sooner stop in than you would. You know that.”

He put a weighty hand on her shoulder. “Talk to Ranami if you want to know her thoughts. I’m no soothsayer. You’re prying at a rock and hoping to find a nut inside.”

Phalue sheathed her sword and then redid the tie in her hair. “We haven’t spoken since last night. I left angry.”

“Was she angry?”

Phalue slammed a hand against one of the teak pillars. “No. Just… sad. And that just makes me angrier sometimes.”

“Well, you’ll have to talk to her sooner or later,” Tythus said. “Or just never talk to her again.”

“You’re only two years my senior,” Phalue said, rolling her eyes at him. “I’m not a child.”

“Then go,” Tythus said, waving a gloved hand. “Go be an adult. Go make adult words and sort out your differences. I’d very much like to end on the high note of winning.”

“Unfairly,” she said, a finger raised. And then she shook her head. “We’ll finish this tomorrow morning.”

“Fair enough.”

She didn’t bother to change out of her armor; she preferred it to street clothes or – heaven forbid – to the embroidered silken tunics her father was always trying to get her to wear. And Ranami liked her in armor. She’d confessed to Phalue after one breathless night that Phalue seemed the most comfortable in it, her truest self. And Phalue loved that.

Her heart skipped at the memory, before sinking as she remembered their fight. Always, always at the end of these fights, Ranami would say that Phalue just didn’t understand, and Phalue would say, “Well, then make me understand!” and then Ranami would look at her as though she’d asked a dog to sail a boat. It was like they stood on two different islands when they argued, and neither of them could find a way across.

The forest outside the palace walls was damp and green, just at the beginning of the wet season. The tree branches Phalue brushed out of the way were wet, the street still slick. In the distance an iyop bird repeatedly sang iyop-wheeeee – one last desperate attempt to attract a mate before the heat of the dry season faded and raising young became difficult.

The palace stood at the top of a hill, insulated from the city below. Phalue’s knees jolted as she strode the winding switchbacks, trying to keep her footing. Despite the unrest among the farmers, and despite the unpopularity of her father, the people of Nephilanu Island seemed to like her. They liked her discipline, her lowborn mother, the fact that she often walked down to the city to visit her. Her visits, accompanied by a retinue of guards, had been the inspiration for Phalue to learn how to fight. If she could fight, she’d argued with her father, then surely she could visit her mother on her own.

When she’d beaten two of his best men in a brawl, he’d relented. At first, she’d walked down to the city just to visit her mother. Then it had been to see the markets. And then she’d caught the eye of a visiting governor and had fallen in love for the first time. She’d been a late bloomer at nineteen, but she’d more than made up for lost time.

Halfway down, she had to walk into the mud at the side of the road to let a cart pass. It creaked beneath its burden, the oxen at its front straining to pull the load. More supplies for the palace. She wondered sometimes what it had looked like when the Alanga had built it. After all the renovations her family had made to it, it probably resembled the original as much as a lapdog resembled a wolf. The caro nut farms had made her father rich, and he’d ordered the construction of a new hall just outside the palace walls – one he was convinced the Emperor himself would some day visit.

Phalue scanned the city as she waited for the cart to pass, trying to pick out Ranami’s home among the sloping, tiled roofs pressed too close together. What would she say to her? “Sorry” was the most obvious opener, but oftentimes seemed inadequate. “I understand” would be what she’d most want to hear probably, but it wouldn’t be true. “I love you”? So true that it swelled her chest every time she looked at her.

On the odd morning, she missed her days of philandering. A new woman every few weeks, a new passionate tryst. But the day she’d met Ranami at the docks had knocked the wind from her. If Phalue took a long view of things, Ranami didn’t seem overly special. She’d been crouched at the edge of the dock, long lashes shadowing her face, slender fingers pulling a crab trap up from the depths. Who fell in love with the way someone drew up a crab trap?

Phalue had noted Ranami’s beauty first, and then her gracefulness, and then the way her lips parted a little as she concentrated, her brows forming the smallest of lines at her forehead.

Her approach had… left much to be desired. She’d offered to buy a crab, and they clearly weren’t for sale, and Ranami had frowned, confused, and had said they were for her personal use. Ranami knew who she was, and what use would the governor’s daughter have for a random crab from the docks? And then she’d guessed Phalue’s intentions soon enough, and had turned her down.

“I’m not interested in being toyed with.”

“Is it that you’re not interested in women?”

Ranami had given her a long look, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “It’s not that you’re a woman. It’s you.” Not the most auspicious of beginnings. She’d left Ranami alone, as she’d asked, but her words had given Phalue cause to reflect. She had broken things off with her latest paramour, and endured three full months of celibacy. Had she been so reckless with others’ feelings? And then, to her surprise, Ranami had sought her out at the palace. “Perhaps I’m making a fool of myself,” she’d said, eyes downcast, demure, “but if you’ve still some interest…” She’d handed her a basket with a crab inside.

Phalue tapped her fingers against her scabbard, Ranami’s words echoing in her head. It’s you. Was it something about her again this time? She tried to shake off the uneasy feeling that it was. It lay slick over her heart like oil over water. If it was, she’d make Ranami say the words, make her break it off – because Phalue just couldn’t.

She picked her way through the narrow streets near the dock, the gutters clean from the rain but still smelling faintly of fish. A few gutter orphans caught sight of her and followed her down the street. “Please, Sai. Please.” She reached into her purse and tossed them some coins. Her father gave her an allowance every tenday, and what else was she to spend it on? She always made a point of helping the orphans or the shard-sick when she strolled into the city.

Ranami lived in a small one-room apartment above a merchant who sold steamed buns. She smelled it before she saw it – fish sauce and scallions, and the sweet scent of steamed bread. The merchant lifted a hand when he saw her, and she gave him a quick nod before turning into the alleyway where the stairs were, feeling a little foolish as she dodged dripping remnants from the rooftops. If her father had his way, she would be dressed in silks and sent to other islands to treat with them. She’d have learned diplomacy rather than battle. As her father’s only child, she was an asset, and he often moaned that she was going to waste. But he never seemed to gather the willpower to set against hers.

Phalue laid a hand against the stair railing and froze. Something was wrong. She should have sensed it before, but she’d been too caught up in daydreams. There was no sound coming from the upstairs apartment. And the door, which should have been closed, lay slightly ajar. She put a hand on her sword. “Ranami?” she called.

No answer.

“Uncle,” Phalue called out to the bun merchant, “have you seen Ranami this morning?”

“I’ve not seen her at all today, Sai,” he called back.

She would have gone to set her traps by now, and she always liked to buy two buns from the merchant before she set out. Phalue’s heartbeat quickened, her lips numbing. Keeping her hand on her sword, she barged up the rest of the stairs and into Ranami’s apartment.

Part of her had expected to find Ranami here, startled, wondering what Phalue was doing. The curtains were drawn; the room dark. She drew her sword, but as her eyes adjusted, she could see – there was no one here.

Ranami’s normally pristine home had been turned upside down. The linens were stripped from the sleeping cushions, belongings pulled from cupboards, chairs overturned. The books on philosophy and ethics Ranami had practically begged her to read lay scattered across the floor. Phalue’s head pounded. She shouldn’t have been so stubborn. She should have come back sooner to apologize, should have never left Ranami’s side. Who would want to ransack Ranami’s home? She made only a modest living as a bookseller. And where was Ranami?

Phalue sheathed her sword and picked up a dress strewn across the floor. It was the one Ranami had been wearing the day they’d met – the golden cloth bright as turmeric, setting off her dark skin and darker hair.

“Ranami?” she called again, and she could hear the desperation in her own voice. This couldn’t be real. She felt like she’d stepped through into a mirror world, and if she just tried hard enough, she could step back through to her own. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. The same dark room greeted her. But this time, she saw the piece of parchment on the table.

She marched over, the floorboards creaking beneath her boots, and snatched it up. She had to pull a curtain aside to have enough light to read by.

If you want to see Ranami again, come to the Alanga ruins at the road leading from the city.