The Bone Shard Daughter

Chapter 17. Jovis An island in the Monkey’s Tail

He offered me five more coins to take the boy too. The boy was the son of a family friend, and his daughter hadn’t wanted to leave without him. It was a pittance in comparison to what the man had given for his daughter, but wasn’t I going that way already? And what was two stolen children if I was already going to be executed for one? The Empire couldn’t very well chop my head off twice. Not that they wouldn’t try, but I’d not heard of the Emperor bringing anyone back from the dead just yet.

These were the lies I told myself, because I didn’t want to admit that it seemed to make Mephi happy, and that mattered to me.

As soon as I’d agreed, the beast had climbed back down my shirt, curling his way around the children’s ankles and begging to be scratched about the ears – delighting and charming them both. I supposed it was just as well. If we all had to share my boat for a couple of days, at least one of us should be good with children.

I watched the man say goodbye to his daughter, both trying to hold back the tears. They’d not see one another again for a long time. He could report her as dead to the Empire. But Ilith’s spies were everywhere, and if he tried to follow they’d put the puzzle pieces together. I missed my own family more than I could say, so I let them have their moment. I hadn’t thought in a long time about how it must be for my mother and father – one son dead at eight years old, and the other gone for years, his face on reward posters from the Empire. I’d not written to them, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that I had a family at all. I didn’t think about it because it hurt to, like lifting the bandage on a wound that had never quite healed.

When they were done, I beckoned to the children. “Come on,” I said to them. “Keep close and don’t say anything.”

“What about the construct?” the girl asked.

I pivoted and lifted a finger. “That. That was saying something.”

“But—”

“If you say the wrong thing, we’ll all be caught, and the Empire will chop my head off.”

They both sucked their lips into their mouths, eyes wide. Mephi rose to his haunches and patted their arms with his paws. I let him comfort them, but there was no point in trying to shield them from this reality. Children understood life and death, though adults liked to think they didn’t. And I wanted to get out of this alive.

“Good? Good. Let’s go.”

I heard the tap of their footsteps as they followed me onto the docks. The construct saw me coming and hurried toward me. I ignored its approach, making a beeline for my boat. Mephi leapt aboard as soon as we were close enough, and I knelt to unwind the rope keeping us moored. Rain began to fall in large, splattering droplets, darkening the wood beneath me. I didn’t stop, even when the construct stopped in front of me.

“The Tithing is five days away,” the construct said. “You are not authorized to remove children from the island this close to the Festival.”

“That’s fine,” I said smoothly. “But I’m a soldier, and I have orders to take these children east.”

“You are not a soldier.” The construct spoke with a note of triumph, as though it had spent all day puzzling out my earlier words.

“I am,” I said. “I was shipwrecked, and I lost my uniform and my pin.”

“The Empire would have reissued them to you,” the construct said, still smug.

“They would have – if I’d the time to request them. But I’m on an urgent mission, and requesting a new uniform and pin would delay the purpose of that mission.”

The construct peered at me with narrowed eyes, the feathers on its head ruffling. “What urgent mission?”

I laughed, rose to my feet and tossed the end of the rope aboard. My boat drifted a little from the dock. The children behind me remained mercifully silent. “Are you trying to trick me? I’m not to speak of the mission objectives. The Emperor himself handed down the order.”

“The Emperor himself?”

“Yes.” I stared into the construct’s face, letting nothing crack. I was a soldier. I could tell this lie to myself and make it feel true. “Now stand aside and let me be on my way.”

“I cannot allow smugglers free passage in and out of the harbor.”

“I’m an Imperial soldier.”

“You have not shown me proof. You could be a smuggler.” The construct’s voice rose to a whine on the last words.

“You also don’t have proof that I’m a smuggler,” I said, reaching behind me to seize one of the children by the shirt. “I’ve got places to be.” I gave the girl a little heave to help her jump onto the boat, and took hold of the boy. The boy, having seen what I’d already done, jumped with my helping hands.

The construct muttered to itself on the dock, its voice like the whine of a boiling teapot.

I didn’t wait to see what conclusion it would reach. I leapt aboard my ship and set to work on the sails. Mephi followed me, chattering at my feet. If I still had bruises from the Ioph Carn’s beating, I couldn’t feel them. The sails hoisted easily, the rope pricking my palms. The rain began to fall in earnest, a gray gauzy curtain between us and the rest of the world. I lifted the cargo hatch as we began to move out of the harbor. “Go in here,” I told the children. “It’s dark and a little wet, and I’m sorry for that, but once we’re out on the ocean and away from other boats, I’ll let you up.”

I think they had a little more confidence in me after what I’d done with the construct. They lowered themselves into the cargo hold with no complaints – not even when I swung the hatch shut over them. Mephi ran from the bow to the stern and back again, trying to bite at the rain. I laughed at his antics. Of course, the creature hadn’t seen rain before. It had been a dry season, and this was the first rain of the wet season. I wondered if, when the dry season came back seven years later, Mephi would even remember what that was like.

“Yes,” I said to him as he dashed past me. “Water from the sky can be an amazing thing.”

He stopped biting at the rain to look at me, and then lifted his head to the sky again. “Water,” he said in his rusty hinge voice. “Water!”

“Rain, actually – it’s just made of—” I stopped and shook my head. I don’t know why I thought it made a difference. “Yes,” I said instead. “Water.”

Mephi let out a little warbling cry, and then ran to me, slamming his tiny body into my shins. “Water. Good!”

“I suppose it is.” I sat at the tiller and let the rain soak my clothes.

It had been a long time since it had rained like this. I was thirteen when the last wet season had begun, at the beach with Emahla. We’d made a little game of seeing what sort of bounty we could pluck from the ocean and from the sand. I’d just captured an enormous rainbow crab, and crowing with delight had nearly shoved it in her face. “What have you got? A few clams and a sea urchin? I’ve got –” I seized the claws of the crab, waving them about. “the biggest and most delicious of crabs. He’s Korlo the Crab and he’s happy to meet you. He sinks boats in his spare time. So, you see, I’m not just bringing back food to fill the pot. By capturing this crab, I’ve made myself a hero. They’ll sing songs about me. Jovis, conqueror of crabs! Savior of the seas!”

Emahla only rolled her eyes. “Telling stories again? You’re such a liar.”

The crab twisted in my grip and pinched the meaty flesh between my thumb and forefinger with a claw. “Ow! Dammit!” I shook it loose, and Emahla had laughed.

The rain had started then, all at once. Clouds had been threatening it for days, but had chosen that moment to follow through.

We’d both been born in a wet season, though it had been a long time since. It still rained in a dry season, but not like this. This was as though heaven held an ocean, and the dam keeping it there had finally burst. Water rained from the sky like a waterfall. Emahla had laughed again, throwing her arms and her head back, letting her bucket of clams fall to the sand. Just like that – with the rain sticking her hair to her skull, gathering like glass beads on her eyelashes, running like tears down flushed cheeks – I knew.

“You’re beautiful,” I’d blurted out, and had changed our friendship for ever.

All the joy had rushed out of her. “You’re such a liar,” she said again, but this time, she didn’t sound sure. And then she’d turned and run from the beach, leaving her bucket behind.

She hadn’t spoken to me again for fourteen days, which to me had seemed like a lifetime. I’d knocked on her door several times, only to be turned away kindly by her mother or father. The one time her younger sister had opened the door, she’d bluntly said, “She doesn’t want to see you,” and had shut the door before I’d had a chance to ask for anything.

I’d forgotten what life was like before we’d been friends. I tried to find other boys and girls to play with, and while they accepted me into their groups with little protest, they asked first if I spoke any Poyer, if it was true the Poyer had bears for pets and what did my name mean? Surely it had to mean something. They didn’t laugh at the same jokes Emahla did. They had their own language, and I floundered when I tried to adapt, because I did not want to. I wanted the comfort of Emahla’s presence, the way we understood one another.

When finally she’d knocked on my door again, I’d been breathless with relief. She didn’t try to pretend it had never happened, or even try to slip into our old conversations first. She stood in my doorway, her black hair streaming in satin ribbons about a solemn face. Eyes so dark I thought they could swallow me. “We can be friends,” she said simply. “Nothing more.”

I was little more than a boy, and had all the clumsy eagerness of a pup. “I was only joking. Come on, don’t scare me like that. I didn’t mean it.”

She stared at me, and my lies were like wet sheets of paper, disintegrating at the slightest touch. I wilted beneath her gaze. She sighed, probably out of pity more than anything. “Do you want to go pick coconuts?”

I’d nodded and slipped on my shoes.

It was never the same again after that, though we both tried. I’d noticed that I liked women, and Emahla was fast growing into one, and I liked her more than any of all the others combined.

Later, on nights where we’d sit on the beach and gaze at the stars, she told me that she fell in love with me on a rainy day in my mother’s kitchen. “You were helping your mother make dumplings,” she’d said, her head pillowed on my shoulder. “You were quiet. For once in your life, you were quiet. And when I sat next to you to help, shoulder to shoulder, I could feel a future in that silence. You always say so many things. Always, always talking. So many stories! But it wasn’t until you were silent that I could feel the truth of you beneath all the words, all the stories. I always knew we could laugh together, that we could do fun things. But I never thought I could tell you what was in my heart, to share pain and disappointment and to have you cup that in your hands. To breathe back your own sorrows. I always thought you’d just make a joke or tell me a funny story about a fisherman who accidentally hooked the moon.”

She’d kissed me the day after the dumplings, solemn as the day she’d told me we could only be friends. And then she’d laughed when it was done, and I’d laughed, and then I’d kissed her again and again, as if the world was the ocean and she the only air I could breathe.

Sitting in my boat, remembering this, I couldn’t tell if I was crying. The rain was warm against my cheeks. Mephi crept over to my feet. He stared at my face and then leapt into my lap. He rose onto his haunches and placed his paws on my chest. “Not good?” he said, looking into my eyes.

“No.” I cleared my throat. “It’s the sort of good that you get sad about because you no longer have it. A very good.”

He pressed his head to my chin, his whiskers tickling my neck. “A very good,” he cooed.

I rubbed the little nubs on his head. I thought of what Emahla would make of this creature. “Someday. Someday we’ll find it again.”

He leaned against my chest and sighed.