Chapter 31. Lin Imperial Island
Ibalanced on the palace roof, staring down into the courtyard and wishing I could see through the paving stones. Ilith’s lair lay somewhere beneath the very bowels of the palace. It had taken me a fair bit of time to puzzle things out. I’d gone to the courtyard first, watching the little spy constructs, one after another, leap into the little hole beneath the boulder. I went to that boulder, stared into the hole, listened at it, even shone a lamp down it at night when I could be sure no one watched me. Each of these exercises was fruitless. I couldn’t shrink myself to follow the spy constructs to their master. And Father wouldn’t let Ilith be completely inaccessible. There were times he disappeared, and even Bayan didn’t seem to know where he was. If I found out where he went during these times, I would find Ilith’s lair, I was certain of it.
So I’d sent out my own little spy.
It took five days to find out which door he went to, and another few days to find out which key he used in it. A few days after that, and I had the key in hand, and then heavy in my sash pocket. It was an ugly iron thing. I’d never have paired it with the cloud juniper door.
But my construct couldn’t lie.
I made my way around the courtyard toward the palace gates. Somewhere below me was Bayan’s room. I still wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive, and Father had said nothing. Each time I ran into Father in the halls, I wondered if I was next, if he’d drag me away and melt my flesh. The sooner I finished rewriting the constructs, the better. I bit my lip as I crept forward. The roofs were slippery, as they seemed to always be during the wet season. The way back, when I was tired, would be treacherous.
But I dropped into the city street outside without incident. Businesses were winding down, the people in the streets hurrying about, eager to get home. No one paid me any mind. I made my way to Numeen’s workshop as quickly as I could.
His shop was still open when I got there, and he was tending to a customer, writing down their order. Propriety bade me wait, but I had the key to Ilith’s lair and little time left. “I need a key,” I blurted out. The woman in front of me eyed me but continued her recitation of requirements.
“I’m sorry, can you come back tomorrow? I need to take this order,” Numeen said to her.
She frowned and left the shop in a huff.
“This key,” I said, pulling it out of my sash pocket. “Can you make a copy now, while I wait? How long will it take?”
He studied my face for a long moment until I felt as pinned beneath his gaze as I did my father’s. Just as I felt the heat rising to my face, he relented and plucked the key from my grasp. “I could, but how much time do you have? This shouldn’t take long. The key itself is quite simple.”
“Not much time. Maybe a little longer than usual.”
“I can do it.” He turned around and gathered his tools.
The last time I’d seen him, I’d dashed from his house. I wasn’t sure what to say about it. I couldn’t apologize for who I was or what I had to do. They’d seen me practicing bone shard magic. They’d realized who I was. But Father had said nothing to me. He hadn’t even looked at me differently. Whatever they’d said to one another after I’d left, they’d kept my secrets. So I tried something else instead. “Thank you,” I said as Numeen pulled a mold from one of his drawers, “for dinner, for the time I spent with your family. It’s not like that for me.” I wasn’t sure how to explain. Dinner with my family was like shutting myself in the palace icebox. Dinner at Numeen’s home was the hearth of a fire on a rainy day.
He gave me a long, inscrutable look. “You frightened them.”
I wanted to melt, to sink into the floor. “I didn’t have much choice.”
He turned his broad back to me. The back of his scalp folded as he pressed the key into the mold, like dough in the midst of kneading. “I know. It had to be done.” He worked in silence, and I waited, thinking about the mural of silent Alanga in the palace entrance hall, a reminder of what the Sukais had done to their enemies. I couldn’t imagine anymore what Father might do if he caught me. I’d thought before he would throw me out – and now, having moved among the citizens, having been to Numeen’s home for dinner, that prospect didn’t seem so frightening. But after seeing what had happened to Bayan, I wasn’t sure if that would be my sole punishment.
Whatever dark experiments my father worked on in the depths of the palace, I might find myself subject to them. The memory machine. I wondered if I’d been subject to them already.
Numeen worked the bellows, sparks flying from the fire like bright motes of dust. He poured the white-hot metal into the mold. He waited as it cooled, then removed the fresh key with a pair of tongs. The sizzle as it hit the water in his bucket nearly obscured his next words. Steam rose from his feet, making him look like a demon summoned to do someone’s bidding. “Did you find my bone shard?”
I’d known it was coming, yet there was a part of me that always hoped he’d forgotten. “I haven’t.” The words felt thick and heavy on my tongue. I swallowed past the hollow in my chest.
Numeen took the key between his fingers, examining it, comparing it to the original. “Try not to take my family’s fear to heart. Your father says he keeps us all safe, and maybe it takes an unkind person to keep us all safe. But my mother died when I was just a boy, drained by a construct under your father’s command. My cousin too died when he was still a young man. Some constructs burn their fuel faster than others. All of us –” He set the original key on the counter and touched the scar on his scalp. “ –we wonder when it will happen to us. If it will happen to us. If we will leave behind our families, our spouses, our children.
“Be better than him please, when you are Emperor.” He slid the new key next to the old one. “Could be a bit rough, but if you shift it a little as you turn, the tumblers should fall into place. Best I can do on such short notice.”
I took both keys and tucked them into my sash. I had to leave, had to get back to the palace before my father returned to his room. But my feet felt rooted to the stone floor of Numeen’s workshop. Father spoke often of what was necessary, what was needful. Everything he did he labeled as needful.
I was doing it too. I’d used a shard to power the command I’d placed in Uphilia. I’d left Numeen’s shard in Bayan’s keeping. I’d failed to do anything to help Bayan when he’d needed it the most. I hadn’t had a choice – or I’d thought I hadn’t. Numeen was risking everything to help me, including his family. And I hadn’t been willing to take Numeen’s shard from Bayan and risk discovery.
Perhaps it wasn’t Bayan who was so like Father, but me.
“I was afraid,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “Your shard. It’s in the keeping of my father’s foster-son. If he found I’d taken it, he could tell my father.”
Numeen looked at me in the way he might a child who’d disappointed him. “But you know where it is.”
“Yes.” I dropped my gaze to the floor and felt my heart follow. What would he do to me now?
He didn’t admonish me or shout. His sandaled feet shifted on the floor of his workshop. “You should go before your father finds his key missing.”
My father, whom they all feared. It kept me in line. It kept Bayan in line. It kept all the citizens of the Empire in line.
I remembered the fear I saw in his eyes each time we sat alone in the dining room together and he questioned me. All the time he spent on his experiments, isolated from the other islands. The servants he constantly watched.
He ruled by fear, and was ruled by it.
As desperately as I yearned for his approval, as desperately as I yearned for a kind word from him, I didn’t want to be like him. I wouldn’t be ruled by fear.
“The lie I told you… it’s something my father would have done.” I shook my head as though I could shake myself free of the guilt. But guilt was there to remind me of when I misstepped. The only thing I could do now was to make amends. I met Numeen’s gaze. “I won’t be like him. The next time I come here, I will bring your shard, and the shards of all your family – no matter the risk to myself. I’ll find other ways to protect the people of the Empire. I swear it, upon the sky, the stars and the Endless Sea itself.”
Behind him, the fire crackled, as if sealing my promise with its heat. Numeen only put a hand to his chest and then bowed. “Wind in your sails, Emperor.”
I ran back to the walls of the palace, my feet as light as my heart.
I’d made it back in time. Bing Tai only glanced at me from his spot on my father’s rug, and I was able to slip out the door without anyone noticing. I took the long way back to my room, walking by Bayan’s room as I’d done several times over the past days.
Father wouldn’t answer questions about Bayan except to say he was resting. But there were no signs of Bayan in the palace, and his door remained locked.
I could hear Mauga in his room, grunting as he settled down for the night. A few doors down, I stopped outside of Bayan’s room. I stepped softly to the door and pressed my ear to it, just to check one more time.
Nothing.
“Are you spying on me?”
My heart leapt into my throat. I whirled to see Bayan – whole and well, standing outside his room with arms crossed.
He wasn’t dead, and somehow this surprised me. I threw my arms around his neck, relief making me reckless. “You’ve recovered!”
Bayan stiffened. He held his arms out to the side as if unsure what to do with them. “I had a fever,” he said. “It was hardly the bog cough. What’s wrong with you?”
I drew back, all the hairs on my arms prickling. “I thought you were dead. Bayan…” I trailed off, unsure if I should keep calling him that. Was this even still Bayan?
He rolled his eyes. “A little bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
Well, he still had the attitude. “It wasn’t just a fever, and you can’t convince me that it was. You were practically melting. Bayan; your skin was peeling away from your eyes!”
He stared at me, eyes narrowed. “Is this some sort of trick? Are you trying to spy on me or not?”
I stared back at him. It was like seeing a ghost – because this wasn’t the Bayan I knew from a few days earlier. That Bayan had softened to me, had come to me for help. This was the Bayan where nothing had changed between us. “You don’t remember.”
He huffed out a derisive breath. “I’m not the one who can’t remember, remember? I recovered my memories. You’re the one still bereft.”
“I’ve remembered some things. I earned another key. Do you remember that?”
Bayan merely rolled his eyes. Part of me remembered why I’d hated him for so long, but another part knew that this was merely the crust of Bayan, a brittle shell that covered dark insecurities. “One more key – such an accomplishment! Will you move? You’re in my way.”
“What did he do to you?” I wasn’t sure what else to say. “Was it… was it the memory machine?”
For the first time since I’d seen him again, Bayan’s sneer faded away. “What do you mean?”
I wasn’t sure how much to tell him or what to say. If this was Bayan from earlier – I couldn’t trust him. He’d take whatever I said to Father, just to curry more favor. But he couldn’t be that different from the Bayan who had shown me the cloud juniper. I took a chance. “You came to my room a few nights ago. You were… sick. Very sick. You wanted me to hide you, but my father came and took you away. I haven’t seen you since.”
He frowned as though searching for a tree through a thick fog. His lips pressed together; his black hair shadowed his face. But he snapped out of the mood as quickly as it had fallen. He might not remember, and I might be smarter, but Bayan was not stupid. His eyes locked to mine. “What day is it?”
“We’re three weeks into the wet season. It’s Sing’s Day.”
A flash of fear made his face pale. Bayan had always stridden about the palace, clothed in arrogance. He’d not truly known what I knew – what it felt like to not trust your own mind. “I think Father did something to you. I don’t know what, or why.” The earliest memory I had, that I was sure about, was the chrysanthemum ceiling. A hazy blur from when I’d woken up. Later, I’d woken again in my bed, and Father had explained what had happened, I thought perhaps I’d dreamt the ceiling. Only as time went on, instead of the dream fading, I grew more and more certain it had been real.
I hesitated but forged forward. “Have you seen a ceiling? Painted in golden chrysanthemum blossoms?”
His face, already pale, went blank. It was the sort of stillness I’d seen in rabbits when predators were close – hoping they hadn’t been seen. And then he moved again, shouldering past me and into his room.
The door shut in my face.
I didn’t need to ask again to know: he’d seen it.