The Bone Shard Daughter

Chapter 40. Lin Imperial Island

Something scratched at the shutters. I turned over in my bed, my eyes still bleary. I’d spent half the night on the floor by the door before dragging myself back to bed and crawling beneath the covers. Everything felt hopeless. My father had made me. He knew every aspect of who he wanted me to be.

My dead mother.

No, wait. She wasn’t my mother. And he wasn’t my father. He was the Emperor. I was Lin, but I was not the Emperor’s daughter. I burrowed beneath the covers. I didn’t know what I was.

The scratching sounded at the shutters again, followed by squeaking.

It was Hao, the spy construct I’d rewritten. I could see the shadow of it between the slats. Automatically, I reached for the drawer where I kept the nuts and pulled one out. Dragging myself from bed seemed easier when I was doing it for someone else. The little spy construct stopped scratching as I approached the windows. I slid the nut between the slats. Little claws tickled my fingertip as the construct took the nut.

My father would never love me in the way I wanted or needed him to. The grief of it filled me, overflowed. It felt like a wound that would never close. All my life I’d spent trying to earn his approval, and the only way I could have done so was by being someone else.

My construct outside squeaked again.

Dutifully, I retrieved another nut and fed it through the shutters. My freedom was so close. Sunlight shone through the gaps in the shutters, scattering barred light across my skin. If I could only just—

The door was locked.

Something jolted inside me. But when had I ever let that stop me? My father’s room had been locked. All the doors in the palace had been locked. I’d still found my way through them. What was I doing, moping in this room? There had to be a way out.

The only thing I had to look forward to now was the Emperor “fixing” my memories, making me into some pale facsimile of his late wife. I’d lose myself anyway.

I slammed a shoulder against the door. The wood had no give to it. I tried pulling at the handle; I tried throwing a chair at it. I only managed to scratch the wood. I tried the shutters next, pulling and pushing at them, trying to break them. I pried at the wood slats until my fingers ached.

There had to be a way. There was always a way. I sat back on the bed, trying to think of a solution. I was locked in here alone, without any means to escape.

A scratching sounded at the shutters again. The spy construct, asking for another nut.

It was still there, even after I’d been flinging chairs about the room. Hope surged in my breast.

“Wait right there,” I said to the spy construct.

I took another few nuts from the desk drawer. Hao would obey my commands without them, but the nuts had brought the construct back to me at this critical time. Perhaps they would provide extra incentive.

I held the nut so the construct could sniff it. “Hao, tell me how the shutters are locked.”

Hao sat on its haunches, whiskers twitching, clearly confused.

I tried again. “These shutters. What is on the outside?”

“Outside the shutters is the palace, and the palace grounds, and the city, and the island—”

“Yes, I know.” I squeezed my eyes shut. There had to be a better way to ask. Numeen and all his family had given their lives. They’d believed I would help them. The least I could do was to make sure they’d not died in vain. “Tell me, other than the corner furnishings and the hinges, is there anything else attached to the shutters in front of you?”

A long silence.

For a moment, I thought I’d confused the poor beast again, but then Hao spoke. “There is a bar.”

I pressed my nose to the slats, trying to see it. “Can you lift it?”

The construct’s shadow moved as it stretched up on its hind legs. A scratching, then a pause. “No.”

“Can you bring another construct here? I have more nuts.” I held my breath. My father could have ordered the constructs away from my room; he could have ordered them not to help me, but he’d never shown any construct consideration beyond issuing commands. To him, they had no free will at all.

But Hao had proven differently.

The construct didn’t respond; it scurried away. I leaned my forehead against the shutters, setting the nuts in a row on the windowsill.

Did my father think I had no free will either? He’d made me. Perhaps to him, I was just like a construct. He could put me in a room and expect I’d stay there.

“Back.” Hao’s nose nudged at the shutters. Another, larger shadow was next to it. I caught a glimpse of brown fur and black, shiny eyes through the slats in the shutters.

“Hello,” I said to the other construct. “Do you want a nut?” I held one just out of reach. Its little claws scrabbled at the wood, its whiskers twitching as it sniffed. “All you have to do is help Hao here lift the bar on the shutters.”

The creature sat back on its haunches.

But I’d done this before. “What harm can it do? You’ve not been commanded to leave the bar alone. Just this one task and I’ll give you five nuts. That’s a bargain, don’t you think?”

It didn’t move toward the bar, but it didn’t run away either.

“Six nuts?”

One more nut was all it took to tip the scales in my favor. Both constructs reached for the bar. The wood squeaked as they pushed it out of place, the shutters pushing inward briefly.

And then the bar was free and I opened the shutters. The cool, damp air had never felt so good against my face. My little spy construct leapt inside. I counted out six nuts for the other construct and watched as it stuffed them into its cheeks. There was power beyond that carved out by commands. Shiyen might have created me, but he didn’t know me.

I gathered my things, half-formed plans running through my head. I couldn’t take my father on alone. Even unlocking his doors I’d needed help. He had too many constructs – watching, guarding the walls, awaiting his orders. My father might not have truly known me, but I knew him. He’d had no doubt he could keep me in my room. He wouldn’t have moved right away to fix Mauga and Uphilia; they still worked after all, and he had Ilith to repair. And me. His broken wife. If I was right about him, I still had Mauga and Uphilia. I had my little spy. I tucked the engraving tool into my sash pocket. They wouldn’t be enough. But there was someone else who might help me.

I started to second-guess my plan when I was clinging to the roof tiles, a light drizzle beading on my eyelashes. Ahead of me, the spy construct sprang to the peak of the roof as though it were merely out for an afternoon stroll. I’d sent Hao through the halls of the palace, but there were simply too many servants and constructs this time of day to make my journey safely. Not that this was any safer.

When at last I slid off the roof and onto a balcony, my arms were ready to give way. This was the right room. I just had to hope he was here.

I rapped on the door lightly. It swung open.

Bayan’s handsome face greeted me. Although, by his sour expression, “greeted” was a stretch of the word. “What are you doing here? Are you here to rifle through my things again?” He wrinkled his nose and glanced up. “Did you climb here?”

“No, idiot, I flew.” I pushed past him into his room. Did I have to rebuild that fragile foundation we’d begun to form together?

He stared at me for a moment, but then closed the door.

“What do you remember?” I asked him.

“More than you.”

I clenched my fists in frustration. “No. You don’t get to do that. Not right now. I just spent the whole morning convincing constructs to act against their nature, and trying to figure out what it is the Emperor has done to me.”

“You… what?”

“Do you remember the library? The Emperor striking you in the dining hall? The cloud juniper?”

His face, which had been a mask of contempt, crumpled. “Yes.”

I closed my eyes, relief making me weak. I sank onto a nearby chair. “And after that?” The agony on his face told me all I needed to know. “You can tell me,” I said, my voice low and soft. “We’re not enemies, I promise.”

He gave me a hopeless look. “There’s a gap. I don’t know what happened that night. I thought – maybe the sickness is coming back. Maybe I never really beat it.”

“It’s not the sickness. It never was.” I couldn’t think of how else to explain it to him, so I rose to my feet. I put a hand to his chest and felt his heartbeat below my palm, rapid and strong. “Try to relax. I’m not going to hurt you.” Slowly, I pushed my fingers inside.

He went still, but by the way his panicked eyes held mine, I knew he could push past the stillness if he really tried. “How are you doing this?” He choked out the words.

I stepped away, hands held up, palms toward him. “Because we weren’t born, Bayan. We were made. He made us. The night you don’t remember? I found you in my room.” The skin peeling away from his eyes, the sagging, lumpy flesh. “You were falling apart. He’d tried to change something in you, but he’d done it wrong.”

“What’s wrong with you? That’s madness. A person can’t fall apart.” Despite his words, his face was still pale.

“A construct can.”

He scoffed. “I’m not a construct.” But he didn’t sound sure when he said it. He waited for me to say something else. When I didn’t, he waved a dismissive hand at me. “And what? You’re a construct too?”

I met his gaze and held it. “He said he grew me. I don’t know what that means.”

He peered into my face. “You’re serious.”

“Why would I lie about something like that? You told me he was growing people, that night you came to my room for help. You think I want to be something he’s made? The Emperor wants me to replace his dead wife. He made me for that purpose. If I wanted to lie, I’d come up with a better lie, one I’d actually want to be true. Like my father named me his one true heir only a moment ago. I’ve come climbing over the rooftops to tell you.” Perhaps it was a trifle sharper than I’d intended, but there simply wasn’t time.

“If you’re so clever, why’d he make me?”

I threw up my hands. “That’s your business, not mine. Don’t you have any clues? Has he said anything to you?”

Bayan stared at me, and I could see the panic lurking in his widened eyes, the tremor at the corner of his lips. “Only that I could be the heir if I tried hard enough. That I might one day replace him.”

More pieces clicked together in my mind. “No,” I said. “That’s terrible.” But I’d thought him and Bayan so alike. And now I could see the similarities in their faces – the high cheekbones, full lips, large, dark eyes. Oh, he had meant what he’d said. A replacement.

He bristled. “My ruling as Emperor would be terrible? For you, perhaps.”

He didn’t remember. “Bayan, he has a machine. It puts memories into your head. It must have worked better for you than for me. But he didn’t give you his own memories, not yet. He gave you someone else’s. He doesn’t want you to rule as Emperor. He wants to rule as Emperor, for ever, in the body he’s made for this purpose.”

Bayan whirled away from me, pacing the length of his room and then back. “This is a trick meant to distract me from my goals.”

I stuffed down my own panic. I had to convince him. “If I was trying to trick you, don’t you think I would tell you something a little more believable? Think about the gaps in your memories. You know I’m telling the truth.”

He collapsed onto his bed, his shoulders slumped, his fingers pressed to his temples.

Shiyen would have pressed harder, would have demanded that Bayan face the truth. But I wasn’t the Emperor. “I laid in bed, useless, after I figured it out,” I said softly. “I know I’m asking a lot of you, more than I asked of myself.”

I watched him breathe, the rest of him unmoving, hoping he wouldn’t turn against me. And then he glanced at me from beneath the curtain of his hair, giving me a weak smile. “But how high a standard is that really?” To his credit, he straightened – absorbing the information and standing against it. “What do we do to stop him?”

I wanted to weep with relief. I wouldn’t do this alone. “I’ve taken two of his constructs. I think we can take the last two if we work together.”

My spy construct sat on the bed next to me, alert, awaiting my instructions. I’d not told it to wait there. A made thing could grow and change beyond its original purposes.

I would show the Emperor: I’d grown beyond mine.