The Bone Shard Daughter

Chapter 22. Jovis Nephilanu Island

We were already late. I crept through an alleyway toward the city’s marketplace, where the Tithing Festival was being held. According to the locals, they cleared the marketplace of stalls for the Festival every year.

Mephi, now as tall as my knee, pressed his body against my leg. “We do a very good,” he said in a stage whisper.

For what felt like the thousandth time, I made a lowering gesture with my hand.

“A very good,” he said, only a little more quietly.

This was becoming a habit. And people always talked about habits like they were a thing that would kill you one day. “Jovis has a habit of gambling” or “Jovis has a habit of drinking too much melon wine” or “Jovis has a habit of steering his ship into storms”. It seemed, apparently, that what Jovis had actually developed a habit of was rescuing children from the Tithing Festival, and thus getting his face painted onto more stupid posters. It was probably the most foolhardy way to get a lot of portraits done for free.

But how was I to turn all those people away? They hadn’t come empty-handed. I needed the money. Back in that drinking hall, among the ruin I’d made of the Ioph Carn, and their awed faces, I’d felt larger than I actually was. A sparrow who’d mistook himself for an eagle.

And they’d written a bedamned song about me. A song.

So many justifications. So many little lies I kept telling myself. I’d even once told myself that Mephi would be disappointed if I didn’t cave to those people’s pleas. So a habit was best to describe it. Habits were things done with little reason, over and over, until momentum made them more difficult to stop than to keep going. Click click click. I looked around for the source of the noise. Oh. There was the tip of my steel staff, clicking against the stones as I walked. Very stealthy of me. I’d commissioned it at the last island, because hands weren’t great at stopping blades. And now I’d formed yet another habit – tapping it against the ground when I was nervous. I stopped, leaned on it and took a deep breath.

Rescuing children before they reached the Festival was one thing. Rescuing them at the Festival was quite another. But the parents had been desperate. And generous.

“Keep out of trouble,” I said to Mephi. “You’re still too small.”

He only waggled his head and clacked his teeth at me, like a dog tasting something bitter, but I didn’t have time to admonish him. I peered around the corner.

The square was hung with multicolored flags, someone softly playing a flute in a corner. Distractions for the children. Several of them had started to cry, even in spite of the lulling effects of opium. The sound of it chilled me, reminded me of my brother sobbing that day before he’d gone to the ritual. Five soldiers that I could see, two of them in front of me at the alleyway’s mouth. Three others in the square. One was keeping the children in line. One consulted the census taker’s notes. One stood in the center of the square, chisel already in hand.

And then I caught sight of the child facing the crowd, kneeling in front of that soldier. My mouth went dry. The boy looked like my brother at that age. I still remembered my mother’s hand tight in mine at the Festival, the smell of sweat thick in the air. She’d been squeezing my fingers harder than she’d intended, I think. I hadn’t understood back then. I couldn’t.

Onyu’s gaze had met mine as the soldier numbed the spot behind his ear and peeled back the skin. Blood trickled down his neck, pooling a little at his collarbone. I’d glanced at the soldier’s sweaty face, his lips pressed together as he’d placed the chisel against my brother’s skull, wondering why he was taking so long.

“Little brother, you worry too much. My friends said only one of twenty-five die in the Festival,” he said. He’d always been braver than me.

When the soldier finally hit the chisel, Onyu had been looking at me, his mouth curved in a slight smile. I think he meant to be reassuring. But I watched the life go out of his eyes as the chisel went too far, as it dug into his brain. One moment there, the next gone, surely as a flame snuffed out by the wind.

I didn’t know. Not until my mother held his limp body in her arms and started wailing.

One in twenty-five. And I’d done nothing to stop it.

I’d only been six then, and too small to make any real difference. Now, here, I had the power to push back. I should have waited to attack, gathered more information. But I found my feet moving forward before I could stop them. Habit.

I struck both soldiers in front of me at the same time, aiming for the same spot on the back of the skull. Both crumpled. My hands ached, only briefly. The injuries I’d sustained from my drinking-hall brawl with the Ioph Carn had faded quickly. I wasn’t sure what Mephi was, and I wasn’t sure what this bond between us had done to me, but the precipice had been the day I’d let Mephi back onto my boat. I’d careened past that and now all I could do was see where this led.

Right now it was leading me to pull the soldiers’ unconscious bodies into the alleyway. The milling children and parents in the square were so caught up in their own fears that none of them seemed to notice the soldiers’ absence. When they did, I doubted they’d raise an alarm. That was the problem with ruling a populace that didn’t love you. Few people cared when you got hurt.

Five children, all of them friends and neighbors. The parents had pooled together money to pay me.

I leaned over to whisper in one woman’s ear. “My name is Jovis. I’m here to help the children. When I say ‘stop’, get everyone out of the way. Tell your friends.”

The woman stiffened a little at the sound of my voice, but then nodded and tapped on a man’s shoulder.

I felt something rub against my knee. Mephi, trotting along beside me like some sort of strange dog. People started to notice. When he’d been kitten-sized, he’d been easy to pass over. Now, his odd features couldn’t escape attention. His webbed paws smoothly navigated the uneven streets. His legs had grown only marginally, but his neck had lengthened a little. The nubs atop his head were now prominent, the fur there rubbed bare, though the horns beneath had not broken past skin. And he’d begun to shed. Not fur, but a soft and pale dandruff that shook loose like flour whenever he was dry.

One of the soldiers by the group of children followed a villager’s gaze. His eyes widened.

“Stop!” I cried out.

The square erupted into chaos. People moved toward the alleys. The soldiers all turned to find the source of the shout. Children tumbled toward me, past me, moving like molasses in their drugged states. Mephi, disobedient as ever, darted out to help round them up. “Mephi!” It was useless, it always was.

The soldiers reached for their swords. I lifted my staff and braced it between my hands, ready to meet them.

And then I heard the creak of bending wood from above. On the rooftops, four archers crept to the peak of the roofs and crouched, reaching for arrows. This bond with Mephi gave me speed and strength; what it hadn’t given me was better hearing. Or a bigger brain. I should have known this would happen. One of the parents had told the Empire, and the Empire had set a trap for me. I was oddly flattered – they’d never tried to set a trap for me when I’d been a smuggler, which was probably why I’d been able to get away with that shipment of witstone.

Two more soldiers emerged from an alley. Nine against one.

I took in a breath and the thrumming began in my bones, like the cavernous breathing of some enormous animal. I tightened my grip on the staff.

“Jovis,” called the soldier who had been consulting with the census taker. She looked battle-worn, her armor scored in places, her face weary. The square had nearly cleared, though a few children without their parents lingered at the edges, stupefied by opium. “By the order of Emperor Shiyen Sukai, I am authorized to bring you in for questioning.”

“And the executioner’s block, I’ve no doubt,” I said.

“So you won’t come quietly?” She took a step forward, and her soldiers stepped with her.

“If you know who I am, then you know I’ve fought off fifteen of the Ioph Carn and won. What makes you think you will have any better luck?” I threw up my chin, giving the lie some weight. Truth was, these were the worst odds I’d faced. I noticed a couple of the soldiers shoot one another sidelong glances.

She opened her mouth to speak, but I didn’t let her.

I stamped on the cobbles with my right foot, and the thrumming within me sank into the earth. The stones beneath me trembled, the buildings shaking. My little quake only had a radius of perhaps thirty feet, but the soldiers didn’t know it. Nor did the people of the town. Someone screamed, and the archers dropped their bows to brace themselves on the roof. Everything else faded from my awareness.

I went to work.

I took out their leader before anyone had recovered, striking her sword from her hand with my staff, kicking it to the side. I brought the other end of the staff around to strike her across the shoulders. She went down.

The next two had the presence of mind to attack me, and I laid them out before they could even land a blow.

The clink of an arrow skittering across cobbles sounded. The archers had recovered. I took a breath and stamped again. The one who’d fired the arrow hadn’t had time to brace. I heard a yelp as he fell from the rooftop to hit the ground with a thud. The last three soldiers on foot tried to give me space, tried to circle around so they could surround me. But my staff was long, and I could wield it with force even when holding the end of it. I pulled the end of it up to my shoulder, the metal cool against my ear, and swung. Two soldiers jumped back. The last tripped on a stone and my staff caught her in the chest.

I heard the impact of the arrow before I felt it. A ripping, wrenching sound. I faltered, barely catching myself before I could fall. And then a fiery gout of pain from my shoulder. Grimacing, I stamped again, but this time, the archer was ready for it. I heard no more archers falling from the roof. I had to end this quickly, lest I become a pincushion. I took two swift steps toward the remaining two soldiers on the ground, punching one in the gut with the end of my staff, bringing the end of it around to clobber the last one in the head. Vicious moves, but they worked.

When I whirled, I saw a familiar figure running across the rooftops.

“Mephi, you idiot!” I didn’t have time to say anything else.

He sank his sharp little teeth into the calf of one of the archers. He was a fair bit larger than when he’d attacked Philine, so I wasn’t surprised when the archer let out a scream and dropped her bow, trying to dislodge this creature from her leg. Two more archers, and one was aiming at Mephi.

I didn’t think. I threw the staff, hard as I could, at his head.

He tried to get his hands up to protect his face, but they were tangled up in the bow and arrow. The staff hit him, and he rolled off the roof. He hit the ground with a thud and did not rise.

The last archer made a run for it.

“Shit.” My staff hit the cobblestones with a clatter, and I went to pick it up. The other archer was still wrestling on the rooftop with Mephi. I needed to learn how to throw knives or something. I had only my staff – and I could help Mephi or stop the other soldier from raising an alarm. Something in the thrumming shifted. I became aware of how wet the square was. The water puddled on the cobblestones, gathered in the gutters, in clay jugs in the building to my right. Even in the bucket someone had left in an alleyway at the edge of the square. They felt almost like… pieces of myself. And then, just as quickly, the sensation vanished.

I didn’t have a choice, not really. I threw the staff at the soldier trying to dislodge Mephi. It went just a little wide, clattering against the tiles. But her grip slipped from Mephi at the noise, and he opened his jaws. The slick tiles provided no purchase as she overbalanced. She rolled to the edge of the roof, falling to the ground with a yelp. She lay there, still.

I was surrounded by blood and bodies, a few of which were still groggily coughing up yet more blood.

A squeak sounded from behind me. Right. The children. The whole reason I’d gotten into this mess in the first place. Some of them had escaped with their parents, but some had come from smaller, neighboring islands and were relying on the soldiers to get them home.

“We’re leaving,” I said to them. “Now.”

The arrow still jutted from my shoulder, aching every time I moved. I reached back and, bracing myself, snapped off the end. Pain radiated from the wound in a burst, setting my teeth and making my breathing come short. I’d have to see to it later. Right now, I had to keep moving.

One of these children’s mother or father had betrayed me, had betrayed all of them. But I still had their money jangling in my purse, and besides, it wasn’t the child’s fault. I’d get them away from the ritual and into safe hands. More easily done on this island, where the Shardless Few had dug in a small foothold in the countryside, away from the cities.

I herded the children through an alley and they went, docile as little lambs. Mephi scampered down from the roof, clinging to a gutter pipe. It protested at his weight. And then he was jaunting beside me, overtly pleased with himself. “Did a very good,” he said.

“No. You would say, ‘I did well.’”

“Did well?”

“I did well.” And then I sighed. Was I really teaching the basics of grammar to this creature? “And you didn’t. I asked you to stay out of it.”

Mephi let out a snort that told me exactly what he thought of that command.

“Aren’t pets supposed to do what their masters say?”

He gave me a long look, and despite the pain in my shoulder I laughed. So he wasn’t exactly a pet. A friend maybe. I hadn’t had a friend since I’d left home to search for Emahla, years ago. Even now I worried at my frayed focus. We’d lost the blue-sailed ship, much as I’d tried to convince myself that we hadn’t. I lied to myself each time I woke – Today I will find it again. It had been weeks.

Each time I confronted the truth, my loyalties clashed painfully. Didn’t I care about Emahla? Didn’t I want to help her? But Mephi couldn’t stand the smell of witstone, and he couldn’t explain why. I’d tried to burn it in his vicinity once, and he’d vomited until he could only heave up bile. I’d stolen things I shouldn’t have, had driven hard bargains, had ignored the pleas of those asking for help. But I couldn’t cross this line. I hated myself for it.

But I couldn’t hate him.

At the docks, the dockworker construct tried to stop me, with my five children huddled behind me. “Please state your goods.” I knocked it into the water with a sweep of my staff. I’d long since gone past elegance and lies.

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?”