The Bone Shard Daughter

Chapter 27. Lin Imperial Island

Iwaited by my window, watching the sun set over the city. I ran my hands over the green-covered journal, trying to calm my racing heartbeat. Tonight, I would reprogram Mauga. Numeen’s engraving tool pulled on one side of my sash, its weight a constant reminder. I had to do this now, before I was caught.

I’d rewritten the spy guarding the cloud juniper in much the way I’d done with the first one. Two of the tree’s berries nestled against the engraving tool in my sash pocket. If I ate them, they’d give me strength and speed, but I wasn’t a cloudtree monk. I didn’t know how long that would last. Still, I might need the advantage.

The journal entries hadn’t at all been as enlightening as I had hoped. I sounded like a younger, much more carefree version of myself, excitable at small things, like seeing dolphins in the Endless Sea.

The sun was lowering itself to the horizon, slow and steady as an old man into a too-hot bath.

I flipped the journal open again, finding a random entry. “I went to Imperial City today. It was beautiful – all the roofs here are tiled, and the streets narrow. So many food vendors!”

I frowned. I’d written as though I’d never been to Imperial City.

The previous entries had all been small highlights. Little experiences that any young woman would write about, but with few identifiers on the specific place or even the people I’d been with.

“It’s much larger than back home.”

Back home? The palace? I flipped pages, scanning, trying to glean something useful. Just the mundane activities of a girl.

The light from the window dimmed. I looked up to find the city bathed in the pale light of a fading sunset. By the clouds on the horizon, it would rain tonight or tomorrow.

I snapped the journal shut. It was time. If I didn’t move now, I’d never move, frozen by indecision.

I’d read the books on advanced commands and overwriting commands over and over, and had pulled several more off the shelf for good measure. I’d had to return twice to the storerooms for more oil for my lamps. My mind felt stuffed with the strange, smooth tones of the command language; I couldn’t fit anything else into the tired recesses of my head. I wasn’t sure it was enough.

I wished I’d had years to study it.

Mauga would be in the dining room, reporting to my father. Mauga wasn’t my father. He had no reason to lock his room when he was away.

My spy construct appeared on my windowsill, ready to report.

“Later,” I said, holding up my hand. “Check the halls on the way to Mauga’s room. Tell me if there’s anyone there.”

The construct squeaked. Sighing, I fished around in my drawers for a nut, which I handed over. “Did you ask Ilith for nuts too?”

It only chattered and scampered away.

“I’ll bet you don’t,” I said to the empty room. “I’ll bet my very bones.”

I went to my door and cracked it open. No one, not even a servant.

I watched the end of the hall until my construct appeared there, running toward me. I stepped back to let it pass.

Its tiny chest heaved. “Nothing,” it said in a quiet, high-pitched voice.

Hearing it speak still unnerved me. It was too much like a person, even though I knew it wasn’t. Somehow it felt different for the higher constructs, which behaved more like servants than animals.

“Give me your report tomorrow.” I left my room and stalked down the halls. No one had lit the lamps yet; the sunlight hadn’t completely faded.

For once, I was grateful Father didn’t keep enough servants.

I smelled Mauga’s room before I saw it – a musky, earthy scent. I came abreast of Bayan’s room. Perhaps he was right that I was the favorite. My nose wrinkled. I certainly had a better room.

For a moment, I stopped, overcome by curiosity. What did Bayan do when he had hours to himself? He’d brought the sickness with him – at least I could always be sure I didn’t have buried memories of him. The relationship we had was the one we’d always had. In the quiet of the hallway, I could hear him moving within his room. The floorboards squeaked as he stepped. If I put my ear to the door, I might even be able to hear him breathing.

I shook my head and stepped away. What did it matter what Bayan was doing? Why did I even care? Just because he’d been kind to me once or twice didn’t mean we were friends.

Mauga’s door was still three doors down. I held a sleeve to my mouth and nose and focused on my goal.

The hinges creaked as I slipped inside Mauga’s room. Darkness shrouded me; only a sliver of light peeked in through the heavy curtains.

Mauga didn’t need a bed or a desk. Straw had been spread across the floor, likely in an attempt to contain the smell. A pile of blankets had been shoved into a corner next to a bowl of water and an empty bowl that smelled like raw meat left too long in the sun. I felt I was exploring an animal’s den, not a room.

When Mauga was done with his reports and Father has dismissed him, he’d return. I wasn’t sure what Mauga did at night. Sleep? Meditate? The thought of Mauga sitting in a meditation pose made me want to laugh. Exhaustion could make even the most solemn of occasions silly. I closed my eyes and breathed. I needed to focus.

There had to be a place to hide. I’d need to take him unawares.

What was I supposed to do – bury myself in the blankets?

It took me another moment before I realized: yes, that was exactly what I had to do. Feeling a little ill, I went to the blankets and picked one up between thumb and forefinger, my other hand still holding my sleeve to my nose.

It was covered in Mauga’s coarse, dark hair. I’d never thought I was squeamish, but then I’d not truly had the chance to test my stomach. Blood and flesh from the constructs was one thing; filth was another.

A scratching, scrabbling sound came from the door. Father must have dismissed Mauga early. I took a deep breath and then ducked beneath the blanket, leaving a corner tilted up so I could see out of it. Could a smell smother a person until they could no longer draw breath? I supposed I was about to find out. Mauga lumbered into the room, heaving out a sigh as he closed the door behind him with his great claws. He shuffled about, his path meandering, his sloth nose near to the ground.

He froze. Slowly, he lifted his head and sniffed the air.

I let the corner of the blanket fall, my palms sweaty. Could he smell me even through his own stink? I didn’t see how, but then, I was human, with a far less sensitive nose. I waited in the dark, my breath heating the pocket of air below the blanket. I could feel the moisture of my breath gathering on the cloth, making it damp. Retching would give me away, so I took in a breath and held it, listening carefully for any sounds.

Mauga must have deemed the room safe because I heard his claws scrape along the floor. He groaned a little as he settled into the blankets, and a small portion of his weight pressed me into the wall. A small portion of Mauga’s bear body was still a significant weight. The breath I’d held burst from my lips. This would be a fine way to die – crushed by my father’s bureaucratic construct, my face frozen into an expression of disgust.

If I moved my arm, he’d feel it. But I had to move if I was to reach into Mauga’s body and procure one of his shards. Mentally, I began to fortify myself. I wasn’t always able to reach into the constructs right away. I still failed a good two out of ten attempts. My wits were sharp but my skills were not yet as practiced as Father’s or Bayan’s. And I was tired, so tired that my bones ached. I’d have only the one chance. I took in a breath quietly and thought of how pleased Father would be when I finally showed him I was his daughter. I was the only one who could be his heir. I was a force to be reckoned with. I pulled my arm up.

Mauga shifted, feeling the movement beneath him. Before he could move away, I concentrated and plunged my hand into his body.

Or I tried.

My fingers met only coarse black fur. Not now. No. Not this time.

Mauga rose. “What? Who’s there?” he said. He always sounded like a person on the verge of falling asleep. But he could move quickly when he wanted to, and his claws were long and very sharp. He might kill me before even recognizing who I was.

My heartbeat galloping, I threw off the blanket. The breath of air I took in felt cold and fresh. “I am Lin,” I cried out, before he could lift his claws.

Mauga regarded me with his soft brown eyes. “You are not supposed to be here.” He lifted his claws regardless.

Horror clutched its fingers around my throat. I could run, but where would I run to? I’d committed to this as soon as I’d walked into his room. I’d known I might die. I pushed past the fear, let it slide away from me.

I held my breath, leaned forward and pushed my hand into Mauga’s body.

This time, it slid in. I watched, fascinated, as my fingers disappeared. Mauga’s claws halted in their descent; his eyes went glassy. I searched for a shard and found more than I could easily count. It was like reaching into the ocean to feel one of the posts at the dock and finding only barnacles beneath one’s fingertips instead of wood. I wasn’t sure where to begin.

The book on complex constructs with more than one shard had assumed three shards, maybe up to ten. Mauga contained at least a hundred. It was a lot of lives to drain for one construct. A hundred men could easily do the work that Mauga did – though I knew Father would not trust those hundred men. The book had said commands for obedience should be placed higher, closer to a construct’s brain. Less urgent commands could be placed lower, where they’d cede precedence to higher commands if they contradicted.

I grasped a shard higher up and pulled it free. I had to squint to see what was written on it.

Esun Shiyen lao – obey Shiyen always. The star identifier was engraved next to my father’s name.

Always was not a word I could easily convert. “Until” and “when” were obvious replacements, but neither word contained “lao” in it, nor were they shaped in such a way I could add a few strokes to change the meaning. I should have taken another shard from the bone shard room and dealt with any consequences later. Then I might have replaced a command instead of seeking to alter it. What else had my father written into the shards? I replaced the one I’d taken out and reached for another, lower down.

This one was not a command shard but simply a reference shard engraved with the tax formulas for witstone.

Another shard dealt with the constructs that reported to Mauga. There were general shards about behavior and temperament. Mauga should be “slow to anger” but “ready to use his claws in defense of the Empire”.

Other shards related to the system of island governors, and the management of the Empire’s mines. One, near the bottom, was a command to never reopen the mine on Imperial Island. That one I considered for a while before replacing. I hadn’t known there had ever been a witstone mine on Imperial.

The light was fading. I dared to open the curtain wider. I needed to come up with a command that would allow me to assume control of Mauga when the time came.

Obey Shiyen always. “Always” was the sticking point.

Time ticked past until I almost thought I could hear the knocking of the water clock in the entrance hall. Sweat trickled down my shoulders and tickled at the small of my back. I wished I’d brought parchment and ink with me so I could scratch out possible solutions. Instead, I turned the words over in my head, trying to find a weakness in them.

I replaced it several times, pulling out other shards and puzzling over their meanings. But I always came back to the first one. This one took precedence, and if I moved too much, Mauga wouldn’t function properly and Father would find me out. I needed to be subtle.

The moon rose and an ache started behind my eyes.

I was Lin. I was the Emperor’s daughter. It was my place to succeed him and my place to make him proud. It was my identity.

Identity.

The identifying mark. With trembling fingers, I reached into Mauga and seized the highest command again.

The star next to Shiyen. Mauga didn’t have an independent concept of who or what Shiyen was. My father had held the bone to his bare chest and engraved the mark.

I could do the same. I could be Mauga’s Shiyen.

I moved aside the collar of my tunic, held the shard to my chest, and took up the engraving tool. I carved over the star, carefully, and felt the change take place in the command.

I placed the shard back inside Mauga and began removing others.

If I let Mauga go, my Shiyen would contradict my father’s Shiyen. Mauga wouldn’t function properly, if he functioned at all.

So I sifted through the other shards for mentions of my father’s name. And when I found them, I added one more stroke, changing Shiyen to Shiyun.

It was close enough to my father’s actual name, and the constructs so rarely ever used his actual name, calling him “Eminence” or “Emperor” instead. It could work – at least until I’d finished rewriting all four of my father’s highest constructs.

As I sifted through them, I searched for one I could modify to replace the highest command. Mauga would still need to obey my father, at least until I was ready.

At last, near the bottom, I found one I could use. Ey Shiyen ome nelone vasa – tell Shiyen about unusual things. A catch-all.

I thought for a moment and then put my engraver to the bone, modifying the command to Esun Shiyun ome nelone bosa – obey Shiyun about most things.

Sloppy, but it just might work. I put it back into Mauga’s body, just below the command to obey me always.

And then I backed away from the construct just as he began to come back to life. I left, swiftly, before he could notice I was there. I blinked in the light of the hallway; the servants had lit the lamps while I’d been working.

I’d done what I could. If it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, I’d have to face the consequences.

I hurried back to my room, trying to run the scent of Mauga off of me. My door, when I returned, was ajar.

My heart pounded in my ears; my mouth went dry.

I pushed the door open, nudging it a little at a time. Someone was sitting on my bed, shrouded in the darkness of the room. Whoever it was sat still, as still as Mauga had when I’d removed shards from his body.

I wanted to run, to go anywhere but into my room where that dark figure waited. But it was my room, and the journal was in there, hidden beneath the bed. If I fled, I’d be leaving my room to be ransacked.

I took a lamp down from its hook on the hallway wall and thrust it before me, trying not to tremble. “Hello?”

No reply. And then, soft and rasping as a cat’s tongue: “I need your help.”

Bayan. The fear left me in a rush, like a wave eroding the sand beneath my feet. It left my knees weak and my step unsteady. “What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night.”

“I couldn’t think of where else to go.” His head jerked to the side.

There was something wrong with him. I could tell by the way he moved and by the way he didn’t move. I caught my breath and strode into my room, a little bit annoyed. “Father is probably better equipped to help you, no matter what the problem is.”

“No!” he cried out.

I stopped in my tracks, the lamp held high. This close, I could see him shaking, as though he’d caught a chill. “Bayan?”

He turned his face to me.

I opened my mouth but couldn’t speak. Dread dropped a weight in my belly. Bayan’s high-boned cheeks sagged. His lower eyelids fell away from his eyes, leaving red pockets of flesh gaping like two extra mouths. It was as if he were made of wax and someone had held a flame to his flesh. “Do you know what he does? He’s growing things down there, Lin. He’s growing… people. His experiments.”

“You’re not making sense. What do I do?” I reached out and then stopped, my hand hovering above his shoulder. I wasn’t sure if touching him would make things worse. I wasn’t sure what was happening at all.

He gripped my shirt with weak fingers. “Hide me. Please.”

Why had he come to me? Was I truly the only person he felt he could trust? I swept my gaze over the room. A wardrobe stood in the corner, and there was under the bed – though I’d hidden the journal there. “The wardrobe,” I said. I’d have to figure everything out once he felt safe.

He sagged with relief, his hand still gripping my shirt. “Thank you. I’m sorry for all the times I was cruel to you, I really am.”

“Don’t.” Every word seemed to cost him. I put an arm around him and let him lean on me as he stood. Beneath my hand, I could feel his ribs. He gasped a little as he stood, and his ribs gave beneath my fingers as though they were sponges and not bones. He was disintegrating before my eyes and beneath my touch. Was he ill again? And why didn’t he want my father to help him? “Bayan, maybe we should—”

“There you are.” Father stood in the open doorway, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, his fingers grasping his cane. His arms were rough and thin as the dried-out husks of dead branches. A construct stood behind him, a hulking leathery-skinned creature with an ape’s face and fingers. “Bayan is sick,” he said. “I’m taking him with me.”

Bayan sagged in my grasp and said nothing. I felt my father’s gaze on me, waiting for me to let Bayan go, to step away. I should have. Instead, I cleared my throat. “He said he doesn’t want to go with you.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He has a fever and it’s making him delirious. Ipo, gather the boy.”

Though his skin felt soft as uncooked dough, Bayan did not feel warm to the touch. The leathery-skinned creature strode into my room, its arms outstretched. What could I do? If I denied my father now, I had no way to fight him.

“Please no,” Bayan rasped out. “The memory machine.”

The memory machine?But I couldn’t ask questions with my father standing there. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

I let Ipo take him from my arms, a vise about my heart. “Don’t hurt him,” I said to my father.

He looked at me as though I’d grown another eye. “He’s my foster-son. Why would I hurt him?”

But the incredulity in his face was cold. There was something about the way he looked at Bayan, the way he looked at me… I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t fondness or hate, or any emotion I knew. “Just be kind to him.”

Father limped to me and before I could move away he had taken my chin in his free hand. “Who are you to tell me what to do?” He sounded angry; he sounded hopeful. The heat from his hand suffused my cheeks. His gaze roved over my face, from my forehead to my eyes to my mouth.

I parted my lips to speak and felt him lean in closer. “I am Lin.”

He let go of me abruptly. Father turned and strode away, Ipo following behind with Bayan in its arms. “I’ll let him know of your concern when he wakes up.”

The door shut behind them, and I curled my fingers into fists. I wasn’t sure what about my answer had displeased him. This time, though, I wasn’t sure how much I cared. I went to my bed and found the keys I’d stolen and replicated, slipped between the mattress and the frame. I grasped the one for the bone shard room.

I’d rewritten one of my father’s highest constructs. Now for the last three.