The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(105)

“You have no reason to trust me,” Ranami admitted. “But I have no reason to lie.”

Maila. I didn’t even know if I could make it past those reefs. I had to try.

“Wait,” Ranami said as I turned to leave. “I have another choice to offer you.”

I should have left; I should have told her to keep her words behind her lips. But maybe a part of me was tired and scared, and the thought of sailing all the way to Maila made my bones ache. I didn’t know what I’d find. I stopped.

“Help us. This island isn’t the end of things. We can’t just take back our freedoms here. We need to end the Empire if we’re ever to all be free. No more constructs, no more trepanning, no more fear of enemies that will never return.”

“It’s not my fight.”

“The woman you search for – how long has it been?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling anger rise within. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s been years, hasn’t it? If she was taken by that boat, she’s not coming back. No one comes back, Jovis.”

“And what would you have me do?” She didn’t hear the warning in my tone.

“Go to the heart of the Empire. Infiltrate the palace. If you have any hope of finding out what’s happened to her, you’ll find it there. That boat goes to Maila – it always ends there – but it goes to Imperial too.”

“So I help you overthrow an island’s governor, and now you want me to go to Imperial and spend whoever knows how long there so you can overthrow an Empire. What’s in it for me? Life satisfaction?” She started to speak, but I raised my voice to speak over her. “You’re no different from the Empire or the Ioph Carn. You all use people to get what you want. You might even think you have noble motives. But what I want, what I’ve always wanted, was just to find Emahla and bring her home. What care have you for that when you have your ideals?”

Ranami pursed her lips, her expression pained. “I’d care about it more if it were a thing that was possible. But you can’t bring the dead back home.”

“Don’t speak of her as though she is dead!” I brought my foot down on the floorboards. The tremor I hadn’t even realized had been building inside of me released. It radiated out from me like the ripple in a pond. It toppled everyone in the room to the floor.

Phalue rushed to Ranami’s side to help her up.

Easy enough for her to make these sorts of plans when she had the one she loved with her. She had a life to build here, a purpose. She didn’t know what it was like to exist with a hole where a person had once been.

I strode from the room and no one stopped me.

The city was changed from when I’d set out that morning. Word had traveled quickly, it seemed. Revelers filled the streets by light of lanterns; merchants passed out free cakes, even to the gutter orphans. I wondered how festive they would be when they realized that changing rulers didn’t mean the end to all problems. Not that I could fault them for it.

It was well into the night by the time I made it back to the rebels’ cave. I rushed through the opening, squeezing through so quickly that my shirt ripped. “Mephi!”

I thought he would still be in the main hall, stretched out by the fire. Instead, he came scampering up to me like he’d never been at death’s door. He pushed his head beneath my hand, twining around my legs, his tail wrapping around my waist. I dropped to my knees and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I thought you might die.”

He tolerated my hug for a moment before squirming away from me. “Good?” he said.

I gave him one last scratch around the ears. “We’re leaving.”





39





Sand


Maila Isle, at the edge of the Empire

The branches of the mango tree spread overhead like the canopy of an umbrella. Sand studied the leaves, the wan sunlight filtering through, the sound of rain pattering against their broad surfaces. She knew the exact juncture she’d fallen from. The rest was hazy. Somewhere along the way she’d cut her arm on a branch or on the bark. She walked around the perimeter of the tree. Something had changed here, and it hadn’t been just the cut. Sand had been hurt before, they all had. There was something else.

Dead leaves gathered at the base. She kicked at them and they stuck to her sandaled feet. A few steps away, a mango rotted on the ground.

A flash of white caught her eye. There, near the rotting mango. Sand went to it, knelt. It was wedged in a small puddle; it had been raining frequently these past days. She reached into the water and plucked it from the mud. It was the size of her thumbnail, though longer and narrower. It could have just been a piece of rock, but when she brought it up to her eyes and wiped away the mud with her shirt, there were markings on it. Scratches?

No. Writing.

Her fingers trembling a little, she held it up to the gash in her arm. They were the same length.

“Sand.” Shell stood several paces away, a spear in his hand. “Coral thinks she saw sails on the horizon. It’s time. Leaf is gathering the others.”

Sand rose to her feet, pocketing the shard. “Everyone knows the plan?”

“The net is in place. We’re ready.”

Not that it would matter if they were not. The boat was coming, and they didn’t know when it would come again, or if they would still be free of the fog that always threatened to cloud their minds. Sand felt for the knife at her belt. It wasn’t a spear, but it was all she had. “Let’s go.”