The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(114)

“What now?” Bayan said.

“What else?” I sounded braver than I felt. “We fight.”

I strode toward my erstwhile father, my engraving tool held at the ready. Even though I’d studied hard, I knew his library of knowledge was greater than mine. But he was weaker and sick, and I had the strength of youth.

Tirang dropped Uphilia and turned to me, a growl in his throat. Before he could swipe at me, Uphilia sprang from the ground and seized his calf in her teeth.

I grabbed Shiyen’s hand and yanked it from Mauga’s body. He’d already closed his fingers around a shard. The bones of Shiyen’s wrist squeezed together, frail as a songbird’s legs. He grunted as I wrested the shard from his fingers, glanced at it and pushed it back into Mauga where it belonged. Mauga shook his head and bared his teeth.

“Lin!” Bayan called from behind me.

I looked to find Bayan trying to hold the door shut against a tide of constructs. He lost the battle as I watched and war constructs flooded into the room – wide-eyed creatures of teeth and claws. “Turn them!” I cried out. “The way I showed you.”

He thrust his hand into a nearby construct, but he could only handle so much at a time. I threw my father to the floor and ran back to the doorway, my free hand held in front of me. The first war construct I encountered, I pushed my fingers inside its chest. When it froze, I crouched in it shadow, using its body as cover as I plucked the shard from inside of it and rewrote its contents. Behind me, I heard the tap of my father’s iron-tipped cane as he pushed himself to his feet.

Something snarled, close to my ear. I whipped my head up. The golden eyes of some giant cat met my gaze. The construct’s heavy jaw and long teeth sent a jolt through my veins, my heart kicking at my ribs. It stalked one step closer and I slammed the shard back into the construct I crouched beneath.

“Protect me,” I commanded it.

It met the cat-thing with its teeth bared and I rolled away. I grabbed another construct’s hairy leg. As soon as it stopped to growl at me, I pushed my hand into its chest to pull the correct shard out. I heard yowling as the other two constructs tussled. Two others had stopped in their rush and were approaching me.

I had to keep ahead of it, to keep turning enough so I had protection to turn more. And there was my father to worry about, with his own power to contend with.

Teeth sank into my arm as I finished carving the new command into the shard. A smaller war construct with the face of some sharp-toothed fish. I pulled my arm away and felt flesh tear. Pain flared, a burning sensation, the warmth of blood trickling toward my hand. I shoved the shard back into the construct above me. “Protect me,” I commanded.

I dared a glance at Bayan. He was still near to the door, but he was holding his own – one construct in his control and another he was working on. He wasn’t as quick as I was, but he seemed to be managing.

Too many constructs stood between us – at least twenty of varying sizes. Behind me, my father had risen to his feet. If I kept trying to go to Bayan to help, I’d be giving Shiyen time to wreak more havoc. I didn’t know what else he had in store. Ending this quickly was the best way to protect us both.

I pivoted toward the Emperor.

He had Mauga in hand again. Tirang was still standing, although blood flowed from a wound on his shoulder. A gift from Mauga’s jaws. One of the constructs I’d turned disappeared beneath the onslaught of three others. I couldn’t make it there with only one construct protecting me. I grabbed for another one, my breath tight in my throat, pain running up my arm.

I turned it quickly.

“Lin, help!” Bayan cried out.

He was pinned beneath a construct. Both the constructs he’d turned were lying on the floor, blood pouring from their throats. He was pushing his hand into the chest of the construct holding him down, but his fingers didn’t move past the skin. He was panicking, unable to keep up with the pace.

I couldn’t turn back, not without losing everything we’d come here to do. And I wouldn’t make it in time.

“Protect Bayan,” I said to the construct I’d just turned. I didn’t have time to see if its help sufficed. I’d left myself vulnerable. A war construct that was mostly wolf stalked toward me from the right. The remaining construct I’d turned was occupied keeping two others away from me to my left.

I put my hand out at the ready, hoping I could react quickly enough to plunge my hand inside the wolf construct before it could attack me. I didn’t have surprise on my side; this construct looked me straight in the eyes.

It leapt.

A squeak cut through the air. Hao dropped from the ceiling beams and landed on the wolf construct’s head. The wolf construct snapped its jaw shut on empty air as the spy construct clawed at its eyes.

My heart leapt into my throat. I hadn’t told the spy construct to help me. I’d forgotten it was there at all – it was too small. No one, it seemed, was too small to turn the tide.

Father was finishing an engraving. Uphilia, bleeding, darted at Tirang’s feet. She was no match for him. She wouldn’t last much longer. And then Shiyen pushed his engraving into Mauga’s flesh.

Mauga turned. I could feel the difference in the air as he awoke. He seized Uphilia, and his clawed hands that I’d thought so slow and lazy tore her neatly in two. Blood and bone shards spilled from the halves of her broken body. My mouth went dry. It was what would happen to me if I lost this fight. I leapt to the side to dodge a bite, grabbed the dog-snout of the attacking construct and thrust my hand into its body.