The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(24)

I’d been here before.





9





Jovis


A small isle east of Deerhead

If anything can be said about the Ioph Carn, it is this: they are persistent. I was in my ship with the sails hoisted and my lines checked when Philine and her men ran skidding down the road toward the docks. I think Philine called out, “Stop!”

Waste of breath, that. Does anyone actually stop when they’re being chased? She’d just beaten me; what did she expect – for me to turn around and thank her for the kind request? No. I did what everyone else who’s ever been given that command does – I fled faster.

Mephi chirruped as I ran from one end of my ship to the other trying to get the sails filled with wind and my stern pointed in the right direction. The harbor here was small, the opening barely large enough to fit an Imperial caravel. I wouldn’t be scraping my sides against the breakers, but I certainly didn’t have the space I had back on Deerhead.

Mephi sat at my feet as I went to the tiller and pointed to the Ioph Carn, running down the docks toward us. “Those people are not good people.” He tilted his head to the side, his eyes fixed on mine. I was doing it again. I was talking to an animal. I could blame nerves. I’d always talked too much, too often – except when I was home in the kitchen, or out on the Endless Sea. Other places I was restless, always restless. Emahla had never taken me seriously until she’d seen me silent.

Philine didn’t go for any ship they’d sailed in on. She hurried her lackeys into a dinghy, untied it and urged them to row.

They had arms thick as posts and sinewy as salt-soaked ropes. I glanced at my own slender limbs, and then to the sails, billowing but not skipping me across the water. I’d not reach better winds until we left the harbor. There was still the handful of witstone. I could still outrun them. “Don’t get underfoot,” I said to Mephi, and then shook my head. I’d done it again. Oh, what did it matter if the talking made me feel better? And it did. Made me feel in control.

I lifted the storage hatch, lifted the loose board and felt around for the witstone.

Only smooth wooden boards. A dizzying sensation rushed over me, bringing bile to the back of my throat. The witstone was gone. I swiped my hand across the space. Perhaps a wave had hit my boat in the night and the stone had shifted, rolled into a corner. I tried a third time, my head stuffed with cotton.

It couldn’t just be gone.

Something cold patted my other arm. I pushed myself up and saw Mephi, watching me, clutching his paws like a worried auntie. When I looked over his head, I saw the Ioph Carn looming.

Would that I could control the wind or the sea. All I had aboard was a spear I used sometimes for fishing. I grabbed it anyways, set my boat toward the harbor entrance and stood on the port side with my spear. My bruised ribs ached as I breathed, waiting.

Philine’s expression was grim, her baton at the ready. She’d not let me get away a second time.

My heartbeat thudded against my ribs, steadier than I thought the situation merited. Sweat slicked my palms as the dinghy grew closer. I could see the veins on the Ioph Carn’s arms as they rowed, the tendons straining on Philine’s hand as her grip tightened around her baton.

The dinghy knocked against the side of my boat, and in that same moment, Philine grabbed at the side of my ship with one hand and seized the end of my spear with the other hand – just as I tried to jab her off my boat.

She used my spear to help haul herself up, nearly sending me tumbling overboard. I righted myself, barely, just in time for her to put the butt of her baton into my already-bruised ribs.

The pain took my breath away and I hissed it back in through my teeth, trying to focus on something, anything, else. The spear. I still had it. The end of it was still in her grip. I shoved with the spear, trying to put her off balance, trying to send her overboard.

She merely looked annoyed.

I needed her to get off my boat; I needed her to. I needed it with the panic of a drowning man. I couldn’t go to Kaphra, not now. I would have made any demon’s bargain, would have shaken hands with the greatest of the Alanga himself. Just to send Philine over the edge.

She smiled as though the desperation I exuded with every breath were a perfume. With her free hand, she pulled a blade free of her belt, cocking her arm to throw. By her gaze, she was aiming for my eye.

A ball of brown fur hurtled past my feet, launching itself at the woman. Philine’s expression shifted all at once, her jaw clenching. “Shit!” She dropped the knife and it tumbled into the ocean behind her.

Mephi locked his jaws around her ankle, a growl rumbling in his throat. She tried to shake him off. I remembered the sharp little teeth he’d used to eviscerate the fish I’d given him. They’d hurt, but they wouldn’t put her off for long. Damned woman still had her fingers tight around the end of the spear, and she was more than a match for me in strength.

And then something shifted inside me. It felt like an unlocking, a moving of tumblers, and then a soft and subtle click. I could feel myself quaking, a quiet roar sounding in my ears.

Philine kicked Mephi to the side. I took in another breath and the pain left my ribs. The air seemed to flow into my lungs and then dissipate into my limbs, bringing new strength. I felt it first in my bones, a subtle tremor of power. And then in my legs – now solid and as strong as the corner posts of a house. It flowed upward, into my back and arms, and in the next instance I was no longer grappling with Philine. It was still her in front of me, but it felt like wrestling with a child. I lifted the spear experimentally, and her feet nearly came free of the deck.