I took a lamp from the wall and entered the tunnels beneath the palace, pulled along as though by a rope. My father, occupied by some other task, hadn’t taken the time to repair the guard constructs I’d disabled. Neither of them bothered me as I passed.
The door in the tunnel was where I remembered it, small and nondescript. I pulled the key from my sash pocket and tried it in the lock. It slid in easily, as if it had been used a thousand times. I stepped inside.
The room beyond was dark, my breath echoing off distant walls. I took the time to light the lamps by the door, and only then did I get a decent look at the room. It was more a cave than a room, vast and rough-hewn. A thick vein of witstone ran through the ceiling. A pool filled half the room, and as I watched, water dripped from above, sending ripples across the surface. In the middle of the space, next to the pool, stood a number of strange machines, tools and tables. The whole place smelled earthy and warm, like freshly roasted chestnuts.
This. This was where he’d disappeared to all those long days.
I ran my hand over the metal tables, the instruments. Some I recognized – scissors, needles, knives of various shapes and sizes. Others, with grasping claws and serrated edges, I did not. I wondered if he’d used these tools to build both me and Bayan. A glint of gold caught my eye. I turned to see a small shelf lined with various objects. On one of the bottom shelves was a silk cloth. When I pulled it free and unfolded it, I felt recognition stir in my chest. It was painted with golden chrysanthemums.
A little awed and apprehensive, I brought it close to my face. The chrysanthemums hadn’t been on the ceiling. In the haze of my first awakening, I’d mistaken this cloth tented above me as something much farther away. When I put my nose to it, the soft floral scent sent me tumbling back through time, to a moment when I’d gasped awake, chrysanthemums in my vision and a chill at my back. He’d made me here. I laid it back on its shelf, my fingers lingering. Books with blank bindings lined the other shelves, and when I picked them up to leaf through them, the pages were filled with my father’s handwriting and sketches. Others were filled with handwriting that looked like my own.
I turned to examine the rest of my father’s laboratory. A low hum caught my ear. Among the tables, close to the pool, was a wooden chest. A contraption lay on top – a metal band with thin silver wires running from it and into the box. His memory machine.
The lid was heavy, and lifting with my one good arm proved almost too difficult for me to manage. Inside, gears worked and strange liquids bubbled. A brazier for witstone, covered in a glass dome, was nestled into one corner. The whole thing smelled of cloud juniper. I had no idea what all the parts did, how it worked. But with the books the Emperor had written, I could learn how to operate it. I could bring Bayan back. He would wake, a little confused, a lot annoyed. He might sneer, or roll his eyes, and wonder aloud how long it had taken me to bring him back to life. “I could have done it more quickly,” he’d claim. The thought made me smile, even as my eyes prickled with tears.
Glass and rubber tubes protruded from the side of the chest, snaking across the stone floor and into the pool.
I rose to my feet, wondering what purpose these tubes had and where they led. The water had a reddish hue, and was so dark I could barely make out anything in it. But there was a shape. For a moment, I thought it might just be a log, or some rock formation. I squinted.
It was a face.
He’s growing people. I heard Bayan’s voice in my mind again, his eyes wide, his flesh melting. Cautiously, I approached the edge.
The body in the water was not mine, and some small part of me felt relief. I had no other self to contend with. But as I grew closer, I recognized the full lips, the strong jaw, the high cheekbones. The face of the Emperor lay in stillness below the surface, eyes closed.
I remembered my father’s limp, the fresh wound on his foot one of my earliest memories. I remembered his words when he’d confronted me in my room. “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.” It had not, it seemed, been too late to use a piece of himself to grow a body.
Bayan, then, was an earlier experiment, something that could be used simply to spur my ambitions. I frowned. None of the tubes led to the body. It floated unattached, suspended in the pool.
Something else in the water moved.
I froze, all the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. “Bing Tai.” He padded to my side and sat but seemed otherwise unperturbed. He’d likely been down here before with the Emperor or his wife. Marginally comforted by his lack of concern, I fixed my gaze on the widening ripples. A pale shape, like some cave fish, glided beneath the water’s dark and ruddy surface. As I watched, it rose.
It wasn’t a fish at all. A snout broke the surface, and then a head, and then a chin, large as a horse’s, came to rest on the stone next to the chest. One cerulean eye rolled from within the skull to look at me. A translucent eyelid blinked. The creature had some patches of thick hair, though most looked as though it had fallen out. It had a face like a cat’s, but with a longer snout, whiskers twitching as it exhaled. Two spiraling horns rose from its skull, just over its ears.
It let out a low moan. I leapt back. I couldn’t see the whole of it beneath the dark surface, but judging by the head alone, it would be as tall as my waist.
But it didn’t seem to have the strength to do any more than moan. Rubber tubes ran from the chest into the creature’s shoulders and neck. I couldn’t see the contents – whether they carried something into or away from it. Water pooled beneath its head. Its rough breathing sent a spray of water across my slippers.
Another moan, this time softer.
“My father did this to you.” My voice, low as it was, echoed from the cavern walls. My father’s memory machine. This creature had been hooked to it for at least the last five years. Something in it was the key to making the machine work. I’d not seen an animal like it before, but then, I’d not been to all the known islands.
The eye rolled back into the creature’s head, both eyelids sealing shut. It slid back into the water, its exhaled breath leaving bubbles in its wake.
I wasn’t a fool. I knew suffering when I saw it. My father had always been single-minded in his goals; everyone who stood in his way was expendable. Everyone who helped him was expendable.
This was different. I could learn to use the machine, restore Bayan, let the creature go.
Numeen’s shard still lay within my sash pocket. It was light as a piece of driftwood, yet I felt the weight of it, a weight I felt I could never unburden myself of.
I’d told him I wouldn’t be like my father. I’d told him I would make things better. Even as the creature suffered underwater, out of sight, I would know it was there.
I was Lin. I was the Emperor. And I could not let cruelty drive my actions.
I knelt and tore loose the tubing from the chest. Blood and some white, milky liquid seeped from the ends. I cast them onto the cave floor and watched the water.
For a while, I thought even this small kindness might have killed the creature. It was in a weak and sickly state; any change to its circumstances might be a shock to its body. But then the surface bubbled, and a pale shape rose from the darkness.
It bobbed to the surface and scrabbled at the stone. I went to help it, forgetting for a moment about the wounds on my shoulder and belly. I felt the wound in my shoulder open a little as I grasped the creature’s leg, as I pulled it out onto the stone. Before it could react, I tugged the tubes loose from its body. Each was a little thicker than my finger and left gaping holes in the beast’s flesh.
My instinct was to run, to back away, to stand at a distance to see what the creature would do. But its head came to rest on my shoulder in a strange sort of embrace.
Something shifted within me, the same sense of wonder and hope I’d felt upon unlocking the first of my father’s doors. Was it the trust she’d show
n in me? The simple touch of her chin to my collarbone? Whatever it was, it drained away all the bitterness I’d felt at never receiving my father’s affection, at never being enough. For this creature, I was more than enough. I was everything. I found myself putting a hand on her neck – I knew in my bones it was female – and whispering into her ear, “It’s all right. I’m here. You’re safe.”
She breathed out a shuddering sigh, like a terrified, exhausted lamb finally laying down to rest.
“Come on, you don’t need to be in the dark anymore.” She limped with me from the cavern, Bing Tai at our heels.
By the time we’d emerged into the palace proper, a few servants had begun to slink out from their hiding places, tiptoeing through the halls as though expecting to find monsters at every turn. They weren’t much wrong.
“You.” I beckoned to the first servant I saw. She bowed low, her head nearly level with her waist. Despite her obeisance, I could see the tension and fear in every line of her body. Doubtless she expected I might decide to kill the witnesses to my apparent patricide. Let them spread their gossip. I needed a fearsome reputation if I was to hold the Empire. “Fetch me parchment and pen and bring it to my room.” I had proclamations to write.
My beast – I’d already begun to think of her as mine – leaned against me. I wanted a bath.
“Thrana.” Her name. She needed a name.
Thrana chirruped and nudged my arm with her nose. I scratched the base of her horns.
“Bing Tai, follow.”
I’d have to find another servant and ask them to accompany me to the bath house, to fill the one remaining working bath there. The proclamations would be next. I’d have to find a way to clean the dining hall, to dispose of the bodies. No matter how tired I was, how heartbroken, I’d get little sleep tonight. I made my way toward the entrance hall and froze, dread rising in my breast.
I could see the edge of the faded mural, the Alanga hand-inhand stretched across the wall.
Their eyes were open. They’d been closed the last time I’d seen them, only a day ago. No one would have had the chance to paint them open, and there was no discernible fresh paint. What could it mean?
Someone stepped into the hallway. He wasn’t dressed in servant’s clothes. Blood dripped from his limbs and onto the floor. My hand tightened around Thrana’s neck. And then a creature appeared beside him. I blinked, trying to believe what I saw. It was smaller than Thrana, with much more fur, but it was the same sort of creature. How could I never have seen one before and now had encountered two in one day?
Without intending to, I called out. “Who are you?”
45
Ranami
Nephilanu Island
Ranami watched Phalue settle into her role as governor with the ease of an otter learning to swim. She seemed born to the role, a brash and honest leader with enough humility to ask for help when she needed it. She asked Ranami for help often, sending missives to her apartment by the docks, asking her respectfully to make the trek to the palace to offer her counsel.
The distance between them was more than physical.
This was what Ranami had been working toward with the rebellion, yet she’d told Phalue more than once that she did not want to be a governor’s wife. And she knew, every time she went to the palace and offered her counsel, that Phalue wondered where that left them.
Ranami crumpled the latest missive in her hand as she strode up the path to the palace. She wasn’t sure herself where that left them. The words Jovis has spoken to her before leaving still echoed in her mind, drumming against the inside of her skull as surely as the rain drummed against the hood of her cloak. She couldn’t trust Gio. Gio wanted Phalue dead. However inadvertently, she’d brought this danger upon Phalue, had even encouraged it. Although the rebels now seemed content with Phalue’s governorship, guilt still tugged at Ranami’s heart. She’d pushed Phalue to this, to imprisoning her own father. It didn’t sit lightly with Phalue, and Ranami could see the strain each time she looked at her.
She stuffed the missive back into her pocket. “Please come to the palace. I need your advice.” That was all it said. No mention of the matter. No playful, loving sign-off at the end. Just those words and the official governor’s seal on the outside. Half-disbelieving, she’d turned it over, expecting to see more words. Nothing. Not that she deserved any more.
The guards at the palace gates recognized her without her having to explain what she was doing there. They waved her in. In the courtyard, a retinue of workers and guards were dismantling the fountain. One of the guards smiled at her. Tythus, Phalue’s sparring partner.
“It’s good to see you back here,” he said. He left his work at the fountain.
She glanced at the stone being broken apart and hauled away. “The fountain?”
His expression sobered. “Opened its eyes again. Phalue asked me to take it apart and remove it. She’s not superstitious but, well . . .” He shrugged, as though that explained it. “What brings you back?”
“She wants my advice,” Ranami said, flashing the crumpled missive. “Nothing more.” The people would whisper about the fountain again, but its destruction would hopefully put rumors to rest. Still, Ranami wasn’t quite sure what to make of it herself.
Tythus fell into step beside her. “I doubt that. She talks a lot when she spars. Lets off steam in more than one way, I suppose.”
Ranami felt a trickle of curiosity. “She talks about me?”
Tythus laughed. “Constantly.” He fell silent for a moment as they strode into the palace. “I don’t agree with her all the time, and until recently I wouldn’t have even said she was a friend. But Phalue tries very hard to do the right thing.”
Rain dripped from her hood onto her collarbone. She threw back the hood of her cloak and shook her hair loose. “I know.”
“You know the way from here?”
“Is she in the governor’s suites?”
“Yes.”
Ranami strode past Tythus and made her way to the stairs. She’d give whatever advice Phalue wanted, and she wouldn’t cry. These things so often ran their course, didn’t they? People grew apart, decided they were no longer meant for one another. It had happened for Phalue’s mother and father. It had happened for Ranami’s mother and father, long before she’d even been born. And Phalue had always moved from one woman to the next until Ranami. Perhaps she’d go back to that. Perhaps she missed it. As the governor, she’d have her pick. There would be women lined up to court her. The thought made Ranami more miserable than she’d thought possible.
She supposed, in the end, they’d had a good run together. They’d toppled a corrupt governor, and that was more than most could say.
She knocked at Phalue’s door with the ghost of a smile on her lips.
Phalue’s voice emanated from within. “Enter.”
Ranami drew herself up, took in a deep breath and turned the doorknob. She’d give her opinion with all the impartiality she could muster. She owed Phalue that much at least. But when she opened the door, she had to blink several times to adjust to the dim light.
Lanterns had been placed on the floor, their flames low and inviting, casting everything in gold. Bowls had been placed at intervals, filled with water, white lilies floating atop their surfaces. Phalue sat by the window, the soft light from a cloud-covered sun limning her outline. She had a stack of books on the bench beside her, piled in a tower that reached her chest. She wore her leather armor, the set that Ranami so often admired her in.
It couldn’t have been comfortable.
Phalue set her palm on the stack of books, her expression solemn. “I read them. All of them. I would have called for you sooner, but it took me some time.”
Hope blossomed in Ranami’s chest, unfolding gently as a flower in a wet season rain. “I never expected you to.”
“But you asked me to. That should have been enough. I always thought you asked too much of me, but I’m beginning to understand: you never asked enoug
h.”
Ranami tried to gather herself. The flowers, the lanterns – they could be for someone else. Phalue had summoned her here for advice, not a reconciliation. She would have said she wanted to reconcile in her missive, wouldn’t she? But the tears had already gathered in her eyes. She wiped them away with the flat of her hand, embarrassed. “I’m not sure what to say.”
Phalue rose and strode between the lanterns to Ranami. Each step made Ranami’s heart leap. Hesitantly, Phalue lifted a hand and touched Ranami’s cheek. “I wasn’t sure if you would come if I asked you for more.” Her breath gusted warm across Ranami’s cheek. “It’s hard to remake one’s view of the world, to admit to complacency. I thought remaking myself for you was hard enough, but doing that was something I wanted. I didn’t want to realize how much I’ve hurt the people around me, and that’s what confronting my beliefs meant. We all tell ourselves stories of who we are, and in my mind, I was always the hero. But I wasn’t. Not in all the ways I should have been. Can you forgive me?”
Ranami laughed through her tears. “Can you forgive me? I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
Phalue brought her other hand up, cupped Ranami’s cheeks. Ranami felt her pulse pounding at her neck, the way it had the first time they’d ever kissed. She’d known then that things would come between them, but she couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried. She closed her eyes, her chest aching. She heard the creak of Phalue’s armor as she bent, a sweetness rising in her throat to burst like honey on her tongue. When her lips brushed against Ranami’s, it was like the sealing of a letter – a promise that could not be unwritten. She wrapped her arms around Phalue’s broad shoulders, tangled her fingers in her hair. She sank into Phalue’s embrace, her legs weak beneath her. This was home.
The Bone Shard Daughter: The Drowning Empire Book One Page 37