The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(103)

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.



I dropped the secret note. I knew the name, though I knew it in conjunction with another. Nisong. Nisong Sukai.

My mother.

Bile mixed into the taste of my tears. I remembered the sad condition of my father’s room, how he wouldn’t let the servants touch any of her things. He never wanted to talk to me about my mother. He’d had all the portraits of her destroyed. I’d thought him fueled by grief, but now I could glean other motives. They explained his experiments, the way he’d shut out human advisers and most of his staff.

He hadn’t discussed the making of me with his wife; he was trying to make me into his wife. He must have used that memory machine on me, hoping somehow to instill me with my mother’s memories. I wasn’t his daughter. She’d died, just as the records said. Of course he’d never loved me. I was a vessel for someone else – a secret, an experiment.

I curled into a ball and wept.





38





Jovis


Nephilanu Island

I’d never thought this would be my end: confined on all four sides by wood and stone. I’d always thought my end would come to me on the open ocean, by a storm, the arrows of Imperial soldiers or a knife between the shoulder-blades from the Ioph Carn. But I suppose death, like life, often doesn’t meet expectations.

I couldn’t seem to stop staring at the governor’s face, feeling that there was something familiar about it. His broad cheekbones, generous lips, even his deep-set eyes. He looked bleary and worn, his chin dappled with stubble. And then I wondered if his face would be the last thing I saw before I died. Gio wasn’t much better – glaring at me as though I’d somehow betrayed him. I looked to the floorboards. Even the grain of wood was a more welcome sight. The guard holding me shifted as he drew a dagger from his belt.

And then I felt a tremor within my bones.

It was like being slapped in the chest with the force of a storm gale. My limbs vibrated with the energy. A moment ago I’d felt weak, helpless. Now I knew I could throw off this man as easily as I might discard a cloak.

And again, I felt a sharp awareness of all the water in the room, down to the sweat on the guards’ faces.

Mephi – he must have awoken.

I ducked forward, and the hands holding me ripped away. I heard a thunk as his dagger dropped, embedding itself into the floorboards behind me. In one fluid movement, I bent a knee, sweeping my staff up from the floor. I didn’t stop, turning the staff in my hands, smashing an end of it into the guard that was holding Gio. I used more force than I’d intended. Her feet lifted from the ground, and Gio went with her.

No time to worry about him.

I felt the air move as the third guard rushed to stop me. I ducked beneath his swing and heard the blade sink into the wood pillar behind me. He yanked at the hilt, trying to pull it free. He’d swung hard enough to part my head from my shoulders. My head was stubborn. He was right to think freeing it would take a good deal of force.

As soon as the guard who’d been holding me recovered, he drew his sword. I sidestepped his slash, stepped within his guard and took his blade from his hand. Just a strike to the wrist with one hand – a tap, really – and his fingers opened. It was like plucking overripe fruit from a branch.

I kicked at the guard still trying to get his sword free, sending him flying to the other side of the room. He went down and didn’t get up.

The governor still stood in the doorway, his fingers tight around the doorknob. The whites of his eyes shown clear around his irises. His chest heaved, straining against the ties of his robe. “What are you?”

“A smuggler,” I said. “The Empire made posters of me.”

Apparently my answer set him not at all at ease because he opened the door to run.

I hesitated, feeling like a dog who’d caught the cart he’d been barking after. I must have looked to him like some avenging monster, my trimmed hair still curling in the heat and humidity, frizzing about my face. “Don’t move,” I said to him. What did Gio want me to do with the man? He’d said we were to assassinate the governor’s guards. He hadn’t said what came after that. Gio was still lying on the ground, struggling to free himself from the unconscious embrace of the guard. He straightened, and I watched as he picked up one of his daggers.

The governor froze.

Of course. No coup was bloodless. In the silence, I heard one of the governor’s personal guards groan. One, at least, was still alive. And then there were footsteps, fast approaching.

A woman appeared in the doorway, alone. I recognized her by the broadness of her shoulders if nothing else. Ranami’s lover. What was she doing here?

Her gaze lowered to the governor. Before I could say anything, she was rushing forward. I thought at first that she meant to kill him, but she knelt at his side. “Father, are you hurt?”

Father? Ranami’s lover was the governor’s daughter? Now what Ranami had said earlier about having heard the governor’s heir was a good woman made sense. She hadn’t heard such – she’d felt such. Whether or not her feelings were a reflection of the truth remained to be seen.