He’d nodded to the guards. “Think things over, sweet. Just not here.”
And now she was sitting in the bowels of the palace, just a left turn from the wine cellar, bored and angry with herself. She wasn’t even sure what she was angry with herself about – whether it was for falling in with the rebels and Ranami’s schemes, or if it was for getting caught, or if it was for just being who she was. She’d never asked to be heir. Phalue wondered if her mother had heard. Her mother would be furious with her father, but after the divorce she was only a commoner. There wouldn’t be much she could do.
Footsteps sounded from beyond the cell. There weren’t any windows down here; just the dim light of a lantern hanging by the door, so Phalue couldn’t be sure of the time. Time for breakfast? Or was it lunch? It didn’t really matter, she supposed.
Tythus opened the door, carrying with him a large, steaming bowl.
Phalue sat up. “Breakfast?” she hazarded a guess.
“Lunch,” Tythus said. He eyed the tiny slot at the bottom of the cell door, sighed and pulled the ring of keys from his belt. He unlocked the cell and handed the bowl to Phalue.
Noodles swimming in a seafood broth topped with steamed vegetables. The smell brought back aching memories of being a child, drinking soup with her mother while the rain pattered on the roof. She’d forgotten what a wet season was like. “What, no ginger?” Phalue said, her expression wry.
Tythus snorted out a short laugh, but his face quickly sobered. The air down here was oppressive. Phalue studied his face as he left the cell and locked the bars behind him again. No. It wasn’t the damp and the chill. Scratches marked the stone beneath the slot at the bottom of the cell door as though someone had slid food along that path over and over. “I’m not the first prisoner you’ve attended to, am I?”
“You’re the most lavishly treated,” he said. And then he shook his head. “Forget I said that. You’re the heir. It’s your right.”
The soup no longer smelled appetizing. Of course the cell wasn’t as bad as Ranami had feared – because this cell wasn’t for Ranami. Phalue glanced around and noticed things she hadn’t before. The straw on the floor of the cell was freshly laid. The sheets on the cot were soft beneath her fingers. Even the cot itself felt like someone had added an extra layer of padding. She had the odd, dizzying feel of being back in that warehouse of people, beds fastened one on top of the other, the smells of human bodies packed too closely. The cell was spacious in comparison. Always, always – things were better for her. Even when she’d been born. Her mother had been a commoner, but no matter how fiercely she’d held to that part of her origins, she’d still been born to nobility. Her sparring, her relationship with Ranami, her jaunts into the city had all fooled her into thinking she was worldly, that she was not like her father.
Yet here she sat, accused of thievery, upon fine linen sheets and with a bowl of soup from the palace kitchens. It was as though she were playacting at being a prisoner. And wasn’t she? What would her father do to her, his only heir? This was merely a thing meant to frighten her, to bring her in line. When he felt she’d spent enough time here, he would bring her back into the light with an admonishment not to do it again.
Tythus had turned to the door.
“Wait,” Phalue said. She set the bowl on the floor.
Even this command, from a prisoner, he obeyed.
“Tell me about the others you’ve attended. Who were they?” No, that wasn’t the right question. They hadn’t wandered into these cells of their own accord. She tried again before Tythus could answer. “What did my father do to them?”
“Mostly they tried to steal from him. Like you.” He leaned against the wall, putting a cheek to the bars. He let out a sigh. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Please.”
So he told her about the ragged men and women brought here and kept in these cells. People who thought the governor’s rules over land ownership were unfair. People who’d tried to make things a little more fair for themselves and their families. Of course they weren’t given linens; they weren’t given cots at all. They slept on the straw and were given small trays of old, cracking rice. It didn’t matter what they ate really, because if their families couldn’t pay restitution, they were hanged. Tythus had helped to throw the bodies into a ditch in the forest at night, so as not to disturb her father’s guests.
“How often does this happen?” Phalue asked. It must have been raining again outside, because behind her the ceiling had begun to drip.
“Often enough. Very few of them can pay. That’s why they stole in the first place.”
Phalue shifted in her seat, feeling her bones creak as she moved. The soup on the floor still steamed. It felt like an age had passed, not little enough time that her food would still be warm. “You don’t agree with the way my father does things, but you still carry out his orders.”
“I’m not proud of myself,” Tythus said, and Phalue had never seen his expression so strained. “I have family too though. If I stopped doing my job, they would suffer. My father was a caro nut farmer, and I told myself I wouldn’t follow that path. So I worked hard and became a palace guard instead. There aren’t a lot of choices for those of us not lucky enough to be born into other families. Yes, sometimes the merchants and craftsmen are without children and adopt others to carry on their trade. But this is such a slim chance. The guard seemed a more sure thing for me.”
It startled Phalue to realize that she’d never known about Tythus’s father. In fact, she knew nothing about Tythus’s family. She searched her memories. Despite all the times they’d sparred, Tythus had always been the one to ask after her relationships, what new woman she was chasing, the troubles she was having with Ranami. She’d not thought to ask him the same questions in return. Her stomach turned. This was his job – sparring with her, listening to her. “I didn’t know,” Phalue said, her voice quiet. “About your father. Or your family.”
He gave her a lopsided, rueful smile. “It’s not your place to know.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could go back, that she could do things differently. “I don’t care what my place is. I’m supposed to be your friend. Friends know these things about each other. I just didn’t care enough to find out. I mean, I cared. I just didn’t care enough.”
“I know you help the orphans when you go out into the city. You’re a good woman. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
Phalue curled her fingers into the soft linens of her cot. “If I’m not hard on myself, who will be? You? My father?”
Tythus shrugged, his lips pursed, his gaze on the leaking ceiling. “Ranami.”
She laughed. Yes, Ranami had been pushing the issue for almost as long as they’d been together. Urging her to see the others around her, to open her eyes to the suffering of the farmers here. “Yes, well there’s her if no one else.”
“Did you patch things up with her?” Tythus asked, as though they were still sparring in the courtyard.
“Not enough. I was good enough to get her. I don’t know if I’m good enough yet to keep her. I’m trying, but the way she wants me to go is muddy and full of thorns. I’m not used to it.” It would be easier to go back to the way she’d been, to forget what she’d seen at the farms, to use all the same justifications her father did. She’d told herself that her life had been hard. That she’d worked for what she had. That she’d earned it. But this would be the hardest thing she’d ever done. She swung her legs around on the edge of the bed to face Tythus. She forced down the voice in the back of her mind that screamed at her to leave everything be, to continue on as if nothing had happened. She took the way of thorns. “If it came down to me and my father, which of us would you choose?”
“You.” He said it seriously, with no hesitation.
“And the others?”
“I can’t say with one hundred per cent certainty, but I’d wager you as well, Phalue.”
She would start making things right – with
Ranami, with the world. “Unlock the door.”
37
Lin
Imperial Island
My room was a prison. The balcony doors were locked. The door: locked. A little light shone in between cracks in the shutters and the doors, but for the most part the room was dark. Only two lamps, burning low. I lay in bed, my gaze on the ceiling. Something had happened down there in Ilith’s lair. The last thing I knew was Ilith’s face melting, and me trying to fix her. I strained to remember, but it was like trying to get a fishing line free from the rocks. Each tug only served to lodge the memory deeper from my reach.
No. There had been more. I looked to my hand, still clenched, hoping somehow that it had been a dream. But when I opened my fingers, Thrana’s bloody crane stared back at me. I didn’t know what hurt more – the guilt or the loss. Father had killed them, but I’d led him there.
And then the gasping realization returned to me: I was something he’d made.
It explained so much: how I didn’t remember before five years ago, my memories of the chrysanthemum-ceilinged room upon waking. I lifted my hands in front of my eyes, wondering how he’d accomplished this. Bayan had said he was growing people. Not just a person. Was I not the first?
I pressed my palm into my forehead. Bayan was a construct. My father had tried to change something within him the way I’d tried to change something in Ilith. Only it had gone all wrong. And then Bayan had shown up in my room, begging me to help him and to hide him.
We were both my father’s creations.
But up in Uphilia’s nest, there was a record of my birth. Then again, there was also a record of my death. If I was not Lin Sukai, if I was not the Emperor’s daughter, then what was I? I curled in on myself in the blankets, my belly a dark, rotting hollow. Did I have a will of my own? My father had made me for some purpose. Whatever his purpose was for me, I knew this: I did not wish to know it. I needed to get out.
I rose from the bed, though it was an effort. A heaviness lay in my chest as if I’d been weighed down with stones. Perhaps I had – what did I know of what I was? A mad laughter bubbled within me. I shoved it down, took a few deep breaths in and out. Think. Father might have made me, but I was not some halfwit. I went to the door, tried the handle again.
It was locked.
For the first time in my memory, I wished Bayan were here. We were more similar than I would have ever guessed. We could have helped one another. Perhaps I could have pried away at the shards inside of him, released him from my father’s service, found a way to unlock the memories my father had erased.
The memory machine. The growing people. I needed to know the rest.
I went to the balcony door, to the shutters. Locked. All of them. And each time I touched my hand to a door or a shutter, I could feel the weight of failure pressing in on me. I sat back on the bed, tempted to shrug off the jacket, the slippers, and to lie down again.
Maybe I’d already done this once before. I couldn’t be sure.
My heel touched something. I reached down and pulled the green-bound journal from beneath the bed. I’d hidden it carelessly, but my father rarely came to my room. Unsure of what to do and too frightened to try and fix myself, I flipped through it again.
This time, new details seemed to jump out at me. The trip to the lake in the mountains. The weather had been unseasonably good, I’d written. But if I’d been sixteen, then it would have been the dry season. The weather was nearly always good in the dry season. The sea snake that had bitten me. I’d written that I’d been swimming in the bay. The first time I’d read it, I’d assumed I’d meant the harbor – but why would I write the bay when everyone referred to Imperial harbor as a harbor? And I’d made some reference to the fish my mother cooked. Why would my mother, the Emperor’s consort, cook fish when she had servants to do it? I’d thought when I’d first read it that perhaps my mother enjoyed cooking and so went to the kitchen sometimes to indulge herself. All these assumptions I’d made because I’d read this journal wanting it to be some record of past memories. There hadn’t been a sickness; I hadn’t lost my memories. I’d only begun to form them five years ago, which was when my father must have made me.
This journal, though in my handwriting, wasn’t mine. I wanted it to be mine; I wished for it with all the fierce longing of a thwarted child. Without it, I had even less an idea of who I was. But then my father had been pleased when I’d responded with the answers I’d found inside the journal. Who had written it? Who was it that my father hoped I’d be? I wanted to find out . . . but the door was locked.
I hugged the journal to my chest, hunching over the edge of the bed. My slippers and jacket felt suddenly pointless. I wasn’t going anywhere.
A knock sounded at the door and then it creaked open. I shoved the journal back beneath the bed. Father hobbled into the room on his cane, a bowl of steamed rice with chicken and mustard greens in his other hand. I watched him as he went to the desk and set the food upon it. And then he looked at me and sighed. “I’m sorry it must be this way.”
I kept my expression carefully neutral. “What way?”
“You must understand, by the time I figured out what to do, my wife – she was too long gone. I’d burned her body, sent her soul to the heavens. So I had to make do with what I could find. I’ll find a way to fix it,” he said, as though I’d said nothing at all. “My memory machine will fix you.”
I wanted to scream at him. What was he talking about? Was making me something he’d discussed with his late wife? The only thing that needed fixing was what he’d broken within me back in Imperial’s streets. I tried another question. “Why won’t you let me go?”
A flicker passed across his face like the shadowy wings of a moth. “You shouldn’t have done that – rewriting my constructs. You did well. I didn’t notice until after Uphilia. That was when I knew you’d go for Ilith. But Ilith is complicated. You still almost managed it. It will take me some time to fix her properly.” He looked me in the eye and even in that moment I couldn’t hate him.
He’d broken other things in me before he’d killed Numeen and his family. This time I didn’t care if he saw the sorrow on my face. “I wanted you to be proud of me. The way a father would be proud of his daughter. I have done everything you’ve asked. I’ve done more than you’ve asked. And still you favored Bayan over me.”
He turned my desk chair around and lowered himself into it. The woven reeds of the seat creaked at his weight. He waved a dismissive hand as though all my years of grief were a thing to be wafted away like smoke. “You always did better with competition. And you see, I was right. You found a way to steal from me. You found a way to learn the things I’d forbidden you. You learned them better than Bayan.”
He’d known. All the times I’d thought I’d been clever, that I’d found a way around his rules, he had been watching me, silently approving. My stomach dropped.
He was watching me, nodding as though he knew what I was thinking. “You, I can forgive, as long as we get your memories fixed and get the proper ones in there. You’ve gotten better, but you’re not quite there yet. But those who helped you had to pay the price.”
My head ached and my eyes burned. All of my resolve to give him nothing, to show him none of my feelings, drowned in the tide of my anger. “And Bayan? Have you killed him too?”
“Why would I do that? He’s not the final version, but he’s useful.” He rose abruptly and strode over to me, his cane tapping against the floor.
I clenched my hands into fists. I should have punched him, I should have wrapped my small hands around his neck. But I couldn’t. I sat on the bed and just watched him, hoping he read the anger in my eyes.
“Lin,” he said, and he reached out a hand to touch my cheek.
I hated myself for leaning into his touch. All I’d wanted was his approval, his love. I’d wanted to feel like a daughter, like part of a family. But there was something strange in his touch, the way his fingers trailed across my cheek.
“Why did you have to kill them? They never hurt you.” I thought of Numeen’s hesitation to help me, his quick hands at the forge, the way he’d brought me into his home and let me eat dinner with the people he cared about the most. All of that was gone because of me. Because of my father. “I hate you.” The words were like fire on my tongue, roiling out from the furnace that was my belly.
“No, you don’t, little one.” The tenderness in his voice confused me, extinguishing the other words I might have said and leaving my tongue only tasting ash.
He turned to leave, and I let him. I couldn’t reconcile my feelings with my inability to move, to do anything. I was like a doll who laments the way a child moved her limbs. And then the door shut, and I was up from the bed. I was running to the door; I was pounding my fists against it. The skin on my hands numbed and the bones beneath ached. I should have hit him. I should have killed him.
At last I sagged, cradling my fists in my lap. The right memories? What to my father were the right memories?
The journal. The memories in there from what I’d thought was my younger self. Someone had hidden the journal in the library, and it hadn’t been my father. Not many people would have had access to the library. My father, Bayan, the constructs. I thought back farther to a time before I existed.
I went for the journal again, my fingers trembling so hard I could barely open it. Somewhere, there had to be another clue; I just hadn’t bothered to look closely enough. I peeled through every page. And then I noticed, on the back cover, the edge of paper glued to it. The corner was curled up a little, loose. I tugged at it, peering beneath.
Someone had tucked another piece of paper there. I pulled it free and unfolded it.
They look at me and all they see is a young girl of unremarkable beauty. But they’re all wrong about me. Someday I will be more than this. Someday, the world will know me. Nisong will rise.
The Bone Shard Daughter: The Drowning Empire Book One Page 31