The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(23)

I shut the drawer. I wasn’t sure when I’d begun to realize my father’s rule was failing. It might have even begun before I’d fallen ill. But what I did remember was watching my father’s hand shake as he turned the pages of a trade agreement, squinting at the pages until he gave up in frustration. “Review it,” he’d said, tossing it the Construct of Trade. And then he’d gone into one of his secret rooms and had shut himself away.

His soul might have held strength enough to power ten constructs, but his body was weakening.

I lifted the lamp and walked along the rows of drawers until I found Imperial and the year 1508. The shards within were all labeled with letters and numbers. There had to be a catalog somewhere. The drawers went up to nearly the ceiling, ladders placed at intervals along the wall. They went to the floor as well, and when I knelt, I saw the drawers at the bottom were longer and taller. I set the lamp aside and pulled one open.

A book lay within. The cover was of some scaly leather – either green or blue in the dim lamplight. I brushed it, almost expecting dust but finding none. Yellowed pages smelling of ink and old glue ruffled when I opened the book. So many pages, and so many names. The span of the Phoenix Empire never ceased to surprise me whenever I was confronted with evidence of it. I could trace my lineage back to the beginning, to the people who had finally fought and defeated the Alanga.

The pages toward the back were crisper. I found year 1508, and then – Numeen, in the neat handwriting of a bureaucracy construct. 03-M-4. I closed the book and adjusted it until it looked undisturbed. And then I searched for 03-M-4.

There was an empty space in the drawer where his shard would have been. Relief flooded my limbs, and then shame for feeling relief at all. There was something written in tiny letters beneath the label. I peered closer, swinging the lamp over the drawer. B – for practice. Bayan. He was using Numeen’s shard in his practice constructs.

Better than being in regular use in one of my father’s constructs, but not by much. The shard would be in Bayan’s room. And judging by the meticulously kept notes, he would notice if I took it. He’d notice, and he’d tell Father, and then I’d have to find a way to explain. I’d sneaked into Bayan’s room a couple years ago, just out of spite, and he’d noticed each thing I’d moved and touched. He even kept his shutters locked now. I’d checked. If my father had a key to Bayan’s room, I didn’t know which one it was.

Numeen might not know his shard was being used, not for quite some time. But then he would start to feel it in the mornings and late at night, a weakening of his limbs, an unnatural exhaustion about his shoulders heavy as a sodden blanket. Weariness would become his constant companion. Eventually, he would die, a little too soon and a little too young.

But the constructs kept us all safe. They were as numerous as any army. My father always said the Alanga would one day come back, and when they did, they’d try to reclaim the Empire. All the Alanga had powers, but their rulers had more than most. When one island’s ruler fought with another, the clash of their magics had killed so many hapless bystanders. Enormous walls of water, windstorms that flattened cities. The greatest of them, Dione, could drown a city while saving all the flies, but most Alanga didn’t have that level of control.

What could mere mortals do against such power?

I picked up another shard, turning it over in my fingers, noting the identifying numbers and letters inked onto its surface. My ancestors had found a weakness, a way to kill the Alanga – a way my father hadn’t yet shared with me. Did he really care about the well-being of the Empire? I wasn’t sure.

We need an Emperor who cares about us. I did care. But I couldn’t take back Numeen’s shard without getting caught.

I set the shard back down and closed the drawer, feeling as though I were trying to hide the shame in my heart.

The lantern swung from my hand as I whirled about. There was more room to explore, and I might find something other than bone shards and catalogs. I went to another column and tested a few more drawers. Just shards.

At the very back of the room, the wall was free of drawers. I pressed a palm against the smooth plaster, wondering what lay on the other side. A dark shape caught my gaze. Another door, wedged nearly into the corner. I hurried to it, my excitement mounting with each step.

This brass knob was cool to the touch, and I tried to turn it before I saw the keyhole beneath. The doorknob rattled in my grip.

Locked. Of course.

I pushed away from the door, frustrated, and then seized the key in my sash pocket. It slid easily enough into the lock, but the tumblers wouldn’t turn. I tried pushing on the door, I tried pulling it. I tried jiggling the key in the lock as I turned, hoping that this was the right key, even as I knew it wasn’t. It wouldn’t be like Father.

He just couldn’t make things easy for me, not even once in my life. I jerked the key from the lock. My breathing seemed to echo off the cabinets, off the walls.

The door. I’d been so focused on the lock, I hadn’t looked at the door. Something seemed to seize my heart, squeezing hard enough to make me gasp. Two bronze panels were fastened to the door. Engravings of cloud junipers rooting themselves at the bottom, curling upward, their branches filling the top.

The beauty of the engravings weren’t what had startled me, though the door was beautiful. I’d not seen this door, not in the five years since I’d been sick. But I knew it, the way I knew the feel of my teeth beneath my tongue. I grasped at a feeling, a smell, an image of this door lit by multiple lanterns. It wisped away from me, never substantial enough to grasp.