The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(27)

“We’ll figure something out, won’t we?” This talking to Mephi was starting to becoming a habit. He followed at my heels as I paced the length of the ship. I had a small club on board I used to dispatch fish I’d caught. That would help a little. And back there, when I’d been fighting Philine, I’d gotten something of a second wind. Perhaps I’d get a third wind?

It didn’t matter. The answers I’d been looking for were aboard that ship, and I would let the Ioph Carn beat me every day of my life before I’d let this chance pass me by. I went to the prow of the ship, fish club in hand, hoping the bruises and the blood made me look intimidating rather than pathetic. And it was there, in the prow of the ship, that I watched the other ship start to pull away. It felt like I was on the beach again, looking for Emahla, realizing that everything I did was useless. My fingers tightened around the fish club until I felt splinters beneath my fingernails. “I can’t . . . I can’t keep doing this.” I wasn’t even sure what I meant by it.

Mephi murmured at my feet and then rose to his haunches and patted my knee. Before I could look down at him, he’d scampered to the sail and climbed the brazier’s legs, his tail wrapping around the metal. He tumbled into the bowl itself, ashes dusting his fur.

“I don’t have any witstone left,” I said. “It’s all been burned.”

But Mephi wasn’t looking for witstone. He sat in the brazier, faced the sail and breathed. Smoke curled from his mouth, wispy as the smoke from burning witstone. The smoke brought a wind with it, and then a full breeze. It caught the sail and filled it, spreading across the surface like oil across water. My boat lurched forward.

“Mephi! Mephisolou!” Giddiness filled me, swimming up my neck and making me dizzy. “What are you? What are you doing?” I didn’t know what I was saying. Was this a dream? And if so, when had I started dreaming? Before I could question what I’d seen, Mephi breathed in and out again, more smoke wisping from his mouth and wind filling the sail.

I checked the horizon. The ship was still there, and we were moving quickly, skimming across the waves as though borne on wings. I checked through the spyglass again. It could have been my imagination but I thought I saw even more witstone smoke rising into the blue sails. How much witstone did they have? The boat was not marked with any of the Empire’s sigils, and even smugglers and thieves never got their hands on much witstone. I’d only been able to the once, and that had been through careful manipulation of the Empire’s constructs and its soldiers. Did it matter though? I’d bludgeon the whole Empire with my fish cudgel just to get her back. I stood at the very edge of the bow, the wind and sea spray in my face, ready to leap as soon as we were remotely close enough.

The blue-sailed boat pulled away again, the wind in my face going slack. No. Not now, not when I hadn’t seen this ship in years, not when I was so close to getting answers. We’d slowed, and the other ship had sped up. When I glanced back, I saw Mephi in the bowl, breathing out ragged little gasps.

“We have to keep going!” I called to him, and I didn’t care that he was an animal. He might not have understood my words, but he had to understand my tone. “We can still catch them.” So close, so close. I was a starving man with honey held just beyond his lips.

Mephi blew again, the sails filled and the ship jolted and skipped. He crouched in the brazier, ashes trembling on his whiskers. “Not good,” he croaked out.

The shock I felt this time at his words was different. I couldn’t care about this creature I’d plucked from the sea. I couldn’t care about Alon, or the other children I’d left behind. Emahla might, even now, be on that boat. Some part of me knew it couldn’t be true, not after so many years, but there was a good deal of me that was still standing on that beach the morning she’d disappeared, hoping that somehow things could be right again. And that part of me needed to catch that boat.

Mephi took in another shaky breath. He hadn’t lifted himself to his feet; he still crouched in the brazier like a wounded animal protecting its belly. I remembered the way he’d sighed and laid his head in my lap, completely trusting. The way he’d thrown himself at Philine, buying me much-needed time. Guilt and desperation tangled in my chest. How many more breaths would it take for us to reach the other ship? Too many. He’d be dead before we reached it.

I knew this – I knew it! – yet I still wanted to at least try. Too many lies I was telling myself, one on top of the other.

“Stop,” I said.

Quiet though the command was, Mephi collapsed into the bowl, his breath unspent. The sails calmed; the water beneath us lapped at the wood.

And the ship I wanted so badly to board disappeared over the horizon and into the Endless Sea.





10





Lin


Imperial Island

The cobblestones of the street were slick with rain from the afternoon, lanterns reflecting from its surface. I knew this way now, the way I knew the other parts of this routine. Wait until Father had finished questioning me and sat down to tea, break into his room, take a key. He didn’t question me every night, so I’d only stolen two more keys so far.

But it mattered to me, because when I got the copy back, I’d have two more keys than Bayan did.

A few people still lingered on the streets, speaking to neighbors in the lilting accent of Imperial Island. They glanced at me as I passed – I never had time to change out of my embroidered silk tunics – but returned to their gossip. Father rarely let me out of the palace on my own, so no one really knew my face. I’d gone twice in a palanquin, with servants to reach past the curtains to take my coin to the vendors. I never set my slippers on the stones of the street, never felt the air of the city against my skin.