The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(19)

“They did a good likeness of you in the posters. Clever, paying orphans to take them down. But it seems the Empire truly wants to make an example of you.”

A hat. I’d wrapped my tattoo, and had changed from the soldier’s uniform, but I had not worn a hat. I felt the way a rabbit must when it feels the noose about its neck. And like a rabbit, I’d keep kicking. “The eyes,” I said, turning to face the speaker, my melons in hand. “They never get those right.”

Philine leaned against the wall of a building, one foot crossed in front of the other, perfectly relaxed. She wore a sleeveless quilted tunic, showing off the muscled tone of her arms. A short wooden baton hung from her belt, though I knew she hid knives on the rest of her. “I think they made you look more handsome in the posters,” she said.

“Truly? I’ve heard the opposite from most people when I asked.”

She had the most interesting way of rolling her eyes without ever seeming to take them away from me. “Yes. They told me you thought you were funny.”

It wasn’t a good sign that they’d sent Philine after me. She wasn’t flashy; I thought if I looked away from her I might mistake her for a piece of the wall. But her ability to track down the people the Ioph Carn were looking for was the sort of thing you saved for drunken fireside storytelling – when your audience might believe you. I held up my free hand, palm facing her. “I was on my way to see Kaphra.” I glanced around and leaned in. “I have two full boxes of witstone. That should cover my debt for the boat and then some.”

Her hand reached for her baton. “You never should have incurred a debt at all. You were supposed to finish paying it off before you sailed away on it. It’s not a debt; it’s a theft, and you know how Kaphra feels about those who steal from him.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw a man and a woman watching us a little farther down the alleyway, both in quilted tunics, weapons at their sides. More of the Ioph Carn. They weren’t as subtle as Philine was. “He always had another task for me. It would have taken half a lifetime to pay that boat off.” I wasn’t sure why I was arguing with Philine; she had no power to grant me clemency, but it seemed to be buying me time. The woman I’d just purchased the melons from had backed away from the front of her stall at mention of Kaphra, doing her best to blend in with her merchandise. Most merchants paid some dues to the Ioph Carn; perhaps this one didn’t. It was a small isle after all.

“Yes,” Philine said. “And you agreed to those terms.”

“I have my boat moored at the docks,” I told her. “This should only take a moment.”

She considered. Two full boxes of witstone was a fortune, and no matter how angry Kaphra might be with me, he’d welcome the extra supply. Ioph Carn smugglers used a good deal of it when they had to outrun Imperial ships. She turned to beckon to the other two Ioph Carn, and I took the opportunity to run.

I might not have been as bulky as any of the three of them, but I was quick on my feet and knew how to work around a crowd. The two boxes of melons swayed at my side, the twine digging into my fingers. I’d lost the witstone; I couldn’t lose the melons too. The refugees shuffled through the alleyway like ghosts, silent and morose. No one was lively enough to stop me or to mind too much as I wove around them.

Philine would be following, unburdened. And even if she hadn’t seen where I’d gone, she would find me.

The way I saw it, I hadn’t had much choice. Seven years ago, on the morning Emahla had gone missing, I’d seen in the distance – so faint I’d thought it a dream – the dark boat with the blue sails. A blink and it was gone.

I’d tried to find some semblance of a life without her, but no one had wanted to hire a half-Poyer navigator who came without Academy recommendations. When the Ioph Carn had approached me with their offer, it had seemed the best way to get away, to leave my grief behind.

And then, two years ago, I’d seen the boat with the blue sails again, clearer, but fading into the distance faster than I’d thought possible. I’d failed her for five long years, not knowing where to go or what to look for, instead of trusting my own eyes. So I stopped responding to Kaphra and struck out on my own. Two years I’d spent chasing rumors on my stolen boat, both evading the Ioph Carn and sending them what money I could to pay my debt. And now I was closer than I’d ever been and they wanted to stop me?

No. Not this time. I kept my promises.

I wove through the streets, my breath ragged in my throat, my boxes of melons banging against my thigh with each step. Faces flashed by me – old, young, weathered and smooth, but all of them weary. Some faces were still covered in dust from the collapsing buildings, tear tracks cutting their way from eyes to chins. The docks were just a turn around the corner.

A shout went up behind me, and I glanced back before I could help myself. Philine’s lackeys made their way through the crowd far less gracefully than I had. One of them had overturned a bucket of fish, sending a silvered stream into the street.

But where was Philine?

I turned around just in time to see her hurtling out of the corner of my eye. Her shoulder struck mine with an impact that knocked my breath halfway out. The twine around the melon boxes tore from my grasp. It felt like I was watching myself fall from a distance. I struck the ground shoulder first, my hands still trying to get a hold of the melons.