The Bone Shard Daughter

Chapter 32. Jovis Nephilanu Island

The claws on my arm detached, only to be replaced by teeth. I struggled to clear my head. I hadn’t been this outmatched since I’d been face down in the street, Philine and her lackeys standing over me. I reached again desperately for the power in my bones. Again no strength surged in my limbs, no tremor radiated from the ground. I’d forgotten what it was like to be without it, afraid of very little. Now fear surged in my throat, choking me.

I kept my arm in front of my face, keeping the construct from lunging for my throat. Behind the mass of its body, I caught a glimpse of torn clothing and a few scraps of bone against the wall. It could have been refuse, but I knew better. I’d found the Shardless Few’s missing spy.

And if I didn’t do something soon, I’d be joining her.

I didn’t have my staff or my strength, but I’d gotten by before without either. I formed a knuckle into a point and jammed it into the construct’s eye. It roared and released my arm. I jumped back. Blood stained my shirtsleeve, and the glimpse of torn flesh beneath flipped my stomach.

The construct was between me and the alley entryway. I couldn’t call for help; if I was rescued, I’d be hard-pressed to explain why a construct had attacked me. I darted for the remains of the spy, hoping she’d carried a weapon. The construct moved at nearly the same time.

Sticky, dark blood met my fingers. Errant bits of dead flesh. Cracked bones where marrow had been sucked out. Terror made my hands shake.

My fingers closed around a leather hilt.

I spun before even seeing what I held. The construct stopped just short of me, a growl in its throat. It was a sinuous beast with oversized jaws and patchy black fur. It had not been constructed with care; its bones pressed against its hide like the struts of a tent. It reminded me of the fish I’d seen washed ashore once, remnants from the depth, flat and dark and full of teeth.

Its yellowed eyes took in the knife I’d seized. Wasn’t much of a weapon, really. More like the kind of thing to eat with or to take fishing. And here I was, brandishing it like I held a sword. Confidence had won me more than one encounter, no matter how little I’d earned it.

The construct, however, was convinced only briefly.

It darted for me, teeth bared. I jumped back, slashing at its face with the knife. By the look of the scars across its muzzle, I hadn’t been the first to try this tactic. And the beast had learned. It ducked beneath my clumsy attack and snapped at my torso. My shirt ripped. I didn’t look to see if teeth had broken skin. I was still alive, and fast running out of time.

Use yourbrain, Jovis! I’d been the best smuggler in all the Empire before I’d met Mephi. Had a taste of physical prowess diminished my wits? I’d survived the Ioph Carn without Mephi. I could survive this. I couldn’t out-fight this creature with a knife. I had to find some other weapon or run, and it was standing, growling, between me and the alleyway entrance. There was nothing else among the cold cobblestones I could use. I waved my knife again, trying to square my shoulders and appear as large as possible. The construct’s bony shoulders rolled as it stalked closer.

My foot slid as I backed into the pile that once was the Shardless spy.

I’d been lying to myself. There was still something I could use. I tightened my fingers around the leather hilt of the knife, my palm damp with sweat. I took one more step back and threw it right at the construct’s face.

The knife bounced from its head, but I hadn’t been meaning to kill it. I used the distraction to reach down and seize the dead spy’s ripped robe. And then, as the construct leapt for me, I threw the cloak over its head and wrapped it about its sinewy neck.

There are tales in the Empire that the Poyer wrestle bears. Would that those stories were true and that I’d had some acumen in such sport. Instead, I held tight to the fur at its shoulders, the cloth bunched in my fingers, trying to get behind it, to gain some control. It bucked and writhed, the meat-rot scent of it filling my nostrils. The knife was there on the ground, just out of reach. My injured arm burned. Blood ran to my fingers. My grip slipped. As if sensing my weakness, the construct stilled like a cat just before a pounce.

No. Not like this. Not this far from home.

I gritted my teeth and wrenched my shoulder to the left, pulling the construct with me. It stumbled, and I loosed my grip long enough to seize the knife. Before it could bite me again, I plunged the knife where I judged the eye to be.

It sagged, the muscles slackening as the blade entered its brain. I let it go, wanting to slump to the ground with it. I was a mess. My hair was wild, my clothes filthy, my arm bleeding out like a gutted fish. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost the nosepiece Gio had applied.

Something had happened to Mephi. The thought pounded at the inside of my skull, echoing my pounding heart. I had to get back. Now. I ripped the torn sleeve from my shirt, using the cloth to bind the wound. My bag still hung from my shoulder, the information Gio had asked for within. But I remembered his interest in Mephi. Had it been a ploy, a way to get me to leave? Mephi hadn’t wanted to be left alone. He hadn’t wanted me to leave. Had they done something to him?

I stepped out of the alley and into the sunlight, feeling like I’d stepped from a nightmare world into the daytime one. A few people down the street glanced at me but then hurried away. At least I could count on fewer people peering at my face, thinking they recognized me from somewhere. I ran nearly the entire way to the edge of the city, dodging fishermen and irritated denizens. The day was clear, but I felt in a haze, faces rotating around me like stars in the night sky. My arm throbbed.

If Mephi was hurt, if he was injured, I’d kill the lot of them. I’d find a way.

I threw money at a cart driver heading to another city and rode with him, ignoring the way he looked at me when I jumped off partway there. And then I plunged into the forest, feeling my way back by memory. Every so often I stopped to close my eyes, to reach for that thrum in my bones. Each time I hoped I would find it. When silence answered, I had to choke down a breath. My throat was too tight to even swallow.

The cliff face loomed in front of me. The crack – where was the crack? I stumbled from side to side, brushing past vines to search for it. There. Without hesitation, I turned to the side, breathed out and lunged into the gap. My nose scraped against the stone; my breath warmed my face. The only light I could see filtered green through the vines.

The space opened up, but I couldn’t see anything. They must have left. Taken Mephi and cleared out. I didn’t know what they wanted with him. It hadn’t occurred to me before that someone might take him from me. I put a hand to the wall, trying to steady myself.

Who would I chase after: Emahla or Mephi? My heart threatened to kick free of my ribs. It was too cruel a choice. I’d die making it.

A hand touched my arm. “We put out the lamp in the entrance,” Ranami’s voice emanated from the darkness. “We’ve seen the Emperor’s spies about so we need to be cautious.”

I couldn’t put words to the relief I felt. I sucked in a breath of cool, damp air, my head spinning. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. “Mephi?”

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Panic fluttered up my throat.

“He’s sick,” she said finally. A thousand painful possibilities flashed through my head before she spoke again. “You should see him.” She took my hand and guided me through the passageway.

She let go once we reached the main hall, the fire roaring in the middle. Mephi was curled on his side by the fire.

I tossed the bag aside and went to him. He didn’t respond when I touched him. His cheeks were warm to the touch, and not only from the fire. He sighed a little as I stroked the nubs of his horns, the skin there worn bare of fur. He’d been hungry and tired lately – had I just not noticed the signs of illness?

“You’re hurt,” Gio said from behind me. I hadn’t heard him walking up.

My arm began to throb again as if the reminder had prompted my wound to reassert itself. It didn’t seem to be healing the way my wounds usually did. I gritted my teeth and shook my head. “What happened to him?”

“He collapsed,” Ranami said from behind him. “Was doing fine this morning, started to look a little unwell and then just collapsed by the fire. I’ve been able to feed him a little broth but that’s it. Feels like he has a fever.”

Gio knelt next to me. “It’s nothing that we did,” he said as though he knew the thoughts that had been swirling in my mind. “He could have just fallen ill. Animals do sometimes.” His voice was calm, even. “Now tell me what happened to you.”

“He needs a doctor.”

“I’ll have one of our Shardless medics look at him. Now tell me what happened to you.”

I told him – the rolled sheet of parchment I’d obtained, the construct, the spy’s remains in the alley. “I killed the construct and came back here as quickly as I could.”

Gio stood. “We need to get into the palace. Tonight.”

I couldn’t think straight enough to even get my legs beneath me. And he wanted me to infiltrate a palace? “Fool” and “rebel” sometimes meant the same thing. “What do you want me to fight with?” I lifted my injured arm. “This?”

“I’ll have a medic see to you, and you’ll have some rest before dark, but we can’t waste any more time. The Emperor’s spies have discovered our informant – which means when the construct doesn’t report back, its master will find out. Eventually that means Ilith or Tirang… and then the Emperor himself. Regardless, the second-tier construct in charge of this region will know our plans. We need to move while the information we’ve received is still good.”

Fanatics were all alike, cut from the same cloth and dyed different colors. “I can’t. Not tonight. Not until Mephi is better.”

Gio pursed his lips, his brow shadowing his eyes. His gaze focused somewhere over my shoulder. And then he refocused, nodding his head. For a moment I thought he’d agreed with me. But then he spoke. “We go tonight or you’ll get nothing from us.”

I wanted to break his bones. “I’m not leaving him.” Not again.

“What good will you be to him here? He has a fever, Jovis, but he’s still eating. As far as I can tell, he’s in no danger of dying. But everyone here, him included, will be in danger if we don’t use this information now and overthrow the governor.”

“Not if I take him back to my ship. Or would you stop me?” I matched his glare and was surprised to find Gio stood taller than I did, his shoulders broad despite his age. Tension hummed in the air between us. He was old and missing an eye and my arm was torn, yet there was danger in what we were doing. It felt as though we both stood at a precipice. But I wouldn’t be bullied into leaving my friend.

A quick intake of breath from behind me, the scramble of feet against stone. “Catch it!” Ranami cried out. She brushed past me, hand outstretched. I followed the length of her arm and caught a glimpse of brown fur as something scampered around the corner.

All of the Shardless seemed to move at once, like ants after a foot has pressed into their anthill. Ranami’s shout echoed down the hall, vibrating off the walls. Even as I darted after the creature, I could hear others taking up the call.

A construct spy, here in the Shardless hideout. I’d not waited until that cart had gone out of view; I’d not checked behind me. I couldn’t be sure, but some deep part of me knew: I’d brought this ruin upon them. I didn’t have the speed or strength that my bond with Mephi gave me, but desperation made me quick. I surged past Ranami, following the construct into the dimly lit hall. It darted away from me, even as I strained to reach it.

I leapt for it, reaching. My hand grasped empty air.

And then the construct was squirming through the gap in the rocks, out of the cliff face, into the forest.

Gio and Ranami came up beside me, both of them breathless.

Gio raked me with his gaze. “You were supposed to take the long way. You’ve led them to us.”

I hadn’t done it intentionally, but saying so would be cold comfort at a time like this.

“We can’t wait until tonight anymore,” Gio said. “We have to leave now.”

Ranami proffered a hand to help me up. “I’ll watch Mephi. Make sure he gets some food in him and rests. I won’t let him come to harm. Please go. We will give you what we promised,” she said. She swallowed. “We all have people we care about who are in danger.”

I reached again for the thrum in my bones. Nothing. There was the matter of my skills – the ones they’d wanted me on board for in the first place – now vanished. But I thought of Emahla and my mother, and at the corners of these thoughts crept the faces of the shard-sick. I do not care about them. They are nothing to me. I’d opened my heart a crack for Mephi, and now it seemed the whole world came flooding in. And this was my fault. The guilt lay thick over my heart.

One breath in, one breath out. “I’ll go,” I said. And the weight of the words felt like an anchor into the Endless Sea.

“Get him bandaged,” Gio said to Ranami. “I’ll get the supplies and get everyone together.”

The medic cleaned the wound – did it look any less angry than it had a moment before? – and wrapped it tightly. “I’d tell you to rest it,” she said, “but you won’t. If you come back… when you come back, I’ll change the bandage.”

Now that I’d made the decision, calm had settled over me like a morning mist.

Gio arrived back at the entrance a moment later, my steel staff in his hands, a pack strapped to his back, knives strapped to his sides. “The Shardless will create a distraction at the gates,” he told me as we walked into the forest. Rain pattered against the leaves, my feet squelching with each step. “We’ll have to climb, but there’s a hidden entrance to the palace, built by the Alanga. The governor kept it in case he ever had need of a speedy escape. There are guards but we have their locations and when they rotate out. We take the governor while the Shardless are working the main gate.”

“How do they plan to take the main gate?” I hadn’t seen that many Shardless in the hideout – not enough to storm a palace.

Gio’s mouth settled into a grim line. “We start another riot. Conditions in the farms here have been getting worse. Even people living in the cities have family working the farms.”

“So no special weapon then?”

He halted in his tracks, turned and glared at me. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re holed up in an Alanga stronghold.”

Gio snorted and strode into the trees. “These rumors of old Alanga weapons are ridiculous. The place was empty when we arrived, except for bats, animals who’d made their dens in the caves and the odd cobweb.”

I thought of the book, still nestled among my things. “You didn’t find anything? Seems hard to believe.”

“It’s been hundreds of years. The only things standing from their time are the ruins.”

“And the stories,” I said.

He shook his head and pushed past a branch. “Who knows what’s true and what’s not? The Emperor propagates most stories, and his forebears too. Those are his words and the words of his ancestors. You should know more than most that stories stretch the truth. Every time he feels insecure in his rule, he sends out those stupid troupes to act out the defeat of the Alanga.”

There is truth in lies. “So the tale of Arrimus, who loved her people and defended them against the sea serpent Mephisolou, is a fiction of the Empire? Seems a bright fiction to be told by an Emperor who claims the Alanga are dangerous. And what of Dione, the greatest of the Alanga, who wept and begged for death when the first Emperor found him?”

Gio’s shoulders stiffened. “Only fools believe everything they hear.”

Interesting. I’d raised his hackles in some way. I prodded him further. “And only fools discount everything they hear.”

“What fish do you have in this net, Jovis?” Gio asked with a sigh. “Are you one of those who worship the memory of the Alanga, who hope for their return? Or are you just an ass?”

Despite my unease, I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ve been told I’m the latter more times than I’d like to admit.” We trudged in silence for a while before I cleared my throat. “I don’t know you, Gio. I’ve heard of you. But if we’re to wade into this side by side, I want to know a little more of who you are.” What I wanted to know was how they found the Alanga stronghold, and what the book meant. Were there more hidden doors? How had I opened the one I’d found? But I couldn’t ask.

“I don’t even know who I am; how can you?”

He sounded so weary when he said it that my usual smart responses died on my lips. I held my injured arm close to my chest, put my head down and focused on following him through the forest. Rain splashed at the back of my neck and slicked my hair to my head. We’d both had stories told about us and we both knew these stories held only grains of truth.

We reached the hillside leading up to the palace near sunset. Gio studied the scroll again. “The entrance is hidden, on the southern side.” He pulled a couple of lightweight green cloaks from his bag. “We climb and we hide among the bushes. I’d planned to make this ascent at night, but the rain will provide cover, and it will be dark by the time we reach the top. That’s when the riot will begin.”

If I’d still had the thrum in my bones, I would have reached the top with daylight to spare. But I said nothing, only draped the cloak around my shoulders and followed him up the slope. We ducked beneath branches each time the guard on the walls looked our way, and grasped at rocks. It was slow going.

“So what happens next after you overthrow this governor?” I said when we were halfway up. I’d asked him this before, I knew, but I’d never been good at keeping silences.

For a while, he said nothing, and I thought he’d chosen to ignore me. “I’m not a fool, if that’s what you think. With the caro nuts, we can force some of the nobility over to our side. We’ll have Khalute and Nephilanu by then, and more are joining the Shardless Few every day. It will be the start of a true rebellion. We strengthen our foothold here, and then strike out at other islands.”

“And will the new governor be amenable to this plan?” I asked. I knew where this was going. A coup did not end with the usual line of succession.

“You don’t trust me,” Gio said, “and that’s fine. I wouldn’t trust me either. But I do care for the people of the Empire, and I do believe the Sukai Dynasty needs to come to an end. You don’t need to see me as a leader. You don’t need to believe the stories. But if you care at all for those children you’ve saved, if it was ever about more than the money, then you’d stay. I don’t know why you’re searching for that boat, or why it haunts you. But if you haven’t caught it yet – you never will. Better to stand with the Shardless Few. Time is waning, Jovis. It always is. You can spend your life chasing and running, living half a life.”

I waited, a dark, sick feeling writhing in my chest – because I knew it wasn’t him I was angry with. But he didn’t say anything more. “Or what?” I spat out the words, rain trickling into my eyes.

“That,” he said, finding his grip on another rock and pulling himself upward, “is entirely up to you.”

The gloom of the day had faded into the gloom of nightfall by the time we reached the top, and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. “Here,” Gio said. He drew aside some foliage to expose a door painted the same colors as the wall. He pulled a key from his bag. “We’ve been working on this plan for a long time.”

I adjusted my grip on my staff. I had to tell him I didn’t have my abilities. Now, before it was too late. I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t have a choice.

But then he was opening the door and it was too late. Beyond stood two guards in a small room, one facing us and one away, both looking bored. I stared at the one facing the door for a moment.

He moved first, drawing his sword. The other guard turned.

My injured arm throbbed and burned. This was it – the moment I couldn’t avoid.

“Jovis…” Gio’s voice.

I rushed into the room, my staff held at the ready. And then I reached again for the thrum in my bones.

Nothing.

Ah well. This seemed to be my luck lately. I swung my staff at the first soldier. I connected before he could bring his sword to bear. But then something happened with his legs. His face went wide with shock and his feet went out from under him. He tumbled down the hillside. It looked like he was being carried.

Gio appeared beside me, a dagger in hand. He engaged the second guard, spinning out of the way of a blow. The man’s blade caught in Gio’s cloak, and Gio used his momentum to spin the cloth around the weapon. He pulled, wrenching the blade from the guard. Before the man could do anything else, Gio struck him across the face with the hilt of his dagger.

The man fell to the floor.

“It appears the stories were true about you,” Gio said, his breathing heavy.

I opened my mouth. Shut it. I reached for the thrum, as though I could have done some magic without realizing it. My bones were silent. A prickle raised all the hairs on my arms.

Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been me.