The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(22)

So I’d taken a servant’s tunic from the laundry and disguised myself.

The creature stared at me as I reached out a hand and plucked a piece of witstone from the loose pile. Its nose twitched but the rest of it moved not a bit. I drew the witstone to my breast, and then made a show of stuffing it into my sash pocket.

For a moment, I thought I’d misjudged. The construct sat on its perch on the witstone box, watching me like it was waiting for another nut. Then an ear twitched, its nose twitched, its head twitched. It dashed past me, slipping beneath the gap in the door. It would be making its way to the palace now, to the tunnel in the courtyard that was just big enough to accommodate its little body. It would disappear into that tunnel, making its way to Ilith’s lair and reporting to its master on the theft by a servant.

Once I was sure it had gone, I put most of the witstone back, reserving a little in case I ever needed it. Father had never forbade me access to the witstone. If he tried to punish any of the servants, I could tell him I’d asked them to bring me a little for an experiment.

I checked between the slats of the shutters, peered around the crates, looking for any other spy constructs. I found I was well and truly alone.

The key I’d retrieved from the blacksmith two nights ago felt heavy in my sash. The bow was different from the original, but I had the feeling that my father would know if he saw it. Just the knowledge that I carried it made me walk differently, I was certain of it.

The servants performed their work in the mornings and in the early evenings before dinner. Father had taken Bayan behind one of his locked doors so they could practice. The palace was mine.

When I strode back in through the entrance, the whole place felt different. The sunlight streaming in looked brighter and the everything seemed to vibrate with my reflected excitement. There was a key in my pocket, and it opened one of the many doors I’d been denied.

I strode up the left set of stairs of the entrance hall. The mural at the top was faded, the only remnant here of the Alanga. My ancestors had built the palace around this wall – a reminder of what we’d fought against.

A row of men and women stood, shoulder to shoulder, their hands clasped and their eyes closed. The Alanga. I wasn’t sure which was which – who was Dione and who was Arrimus. I must have known before I’d lost my memories. Despite the fading paint, the richness of their robes was still visible. The cloth still looked soft. I resisted the urge to run my fingers across the mural as I passed.

I started with the largest, most ornate doors first. On two of them, my key hung loose from the door, swallowed by the enormity of the locks. And then I grew a little less ambitious, testing the key on doors that seemed they might fit. The quicker I found it, the more time I would have to explore it. Father and Bayan’s training sessions often lasted until dinner, but I couldn’t trust it would always be that way. My heartbeat quickened with each new failure.

What if I’d somehow been mistaken? What if this key opened no doors? What if Father had placed it there as a trap? What if he just needed a good excuse to cast me out and to raise Bayan in my place?

I was Lin. I was the Emperor’s daughter. I would learn his bone shard magic and would prove to him I was worthy of taking his place. I would prove to him I was not broken. I repeated it to myself in my head like a litany. It was the only thing that mattered.

When the lock turned, it took me a moment to notice. It was a small, nondescript door near the end of a hallway on the first floor, the varnish faded and on the edge of peeling. Sunlight had warmed the brass doorknob. I took one last glance up and down the hallway, and then stepped inside. The door closed behind me with a soft click.

Darkness surrounded me; there were no windows in this room. I should have thought to bring a lamp, but in my flurry of planning it hadn’t occurred to me. My imagination supplied beasts in the darkness, perhaps even Ilith, just waiting for me to step closer before claiming me as prey. I swallowed and kept my breathing quiet as my eyes adjusted. A thin bar of light shone at the bottom of the door, and it rendered the room in colorless shapes.

But it was enough for me to find the lamp hanging beneath the lintel, and the tinder below that. I lit the lamp with trembling fingers, unsure if what I felt was excitement or terror. When I turned the light on the room beyond, I found walls lined with drawers – and no constructs waiting to eat me.

The drawers were labeled. Tiny drawers, like ones meant to store rings or earrings. Several to my right had small pieces of paper with handwritten notes sticking out. I went to them, my footsteps creaking across the floorboards. When I peered closer, I made out Bayan’s handwriting.

A-122 – Deceased

83-B-4 – Alive

720-H – Alive



It continued like that, scratches across papers. My hand cramped in sympathy. But when I looked to the labels on the drawers, horror clawed its way up the back of my throat. Thuy Port – Deerhead – Year 1510. I knew what I would find when I opened the drawer. I opened it anyway.

Little shards of bone lay inside, cushioned by velvet, white against red – the way they must have looked when they’d been chiseled away from their owners’ bodies. Bayan had been here, testing the shards from Deerhead Island, seeing which owners still lived and which ones were dead, and thus had no life with which to power a construct. Their bone shards would be inert.

It had been five days since the news about the island, and this was what my father worked on? No matter how complex his four tier-one constructs were, they couldn’t run an Empire. The Empire needed him, and he was cataloging the remains of a disaster, seeing which ones were still useful.