The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(33)

I had ill luck. Soon after I’d told Mephi to stop blowing into the sail, the wind died down completely. We rocked in the waves, gentle as a baby’s cradle, the sun baking the deck hot beneath my bare feet. Mephi lay in the shade at the bow of the ship, curled on a blanket I’d laid out for him. Once in a while he turned over in his sleep, murmuring. If I laid a hand on his back, he quieted.

I sifted through my navigational charts and watched him, a hand at my sore ribs. I really had no idea what sort of creature he was. No one truly knew the depths of the Endless Sea or what lived in it. The islands all had a short, shallow shelf before they dropped off, vertical, into the depths. They all moved through the Endless Sea, so there must have been a bottom to each of them. My brother and I had often bragged of diving far enough to feel where the island had begun to narrow again. Every child did.

Mephi looked almost like several creatures. Almost like a kitten. Almost like an otter. Almost like a monkey with his webbed, dexterous paws. What would he look like if the nubs on his head sprouted into horns? Almost an antelope? And what sort of creature could create its own wind and could talk besides?

I rubbed at my forehead and tried to force my scattered thoughts into some sort of order. What I knew was this: I’d given up a chance at finding out more about Emahla’s disappearance in order to keep this creature from harm.

My heart pulled me in two different directions. I wanted to care about Mephi. He murmured in his sleep again, and I felt the frown I hadn’t known was there dissolving. No, that was a lie I was telling myself. I already cared about him. But Emahla . . .

We’d been children when we’d met, so young that my brother, Onyu, had still been alive, before the Tithing Festival that had taken his life. I’d been digging for clams at the beach, my mother a short distance away, her skirts hiked up and tied about her thighs.

I wish I could say I remembered the first words she spoke to me. I wish I had a grander story, one where I saw her and was struck dumb, or one where I knew that she was special. Her father brought her with him as he went stilt-fishing close to shore, and she watched me for a while. I braced for the usual comments: “Are you from here?” “Do you speak Empirean?” “What are you?” But Emahla only found a stick and began to dig with me too. “Bet you I can find more clams,” she said. From then on, we were friends. To me, she was just a girl – all black bushy hair, gangly limbs, fingers and toes that always seemed to be sticky. Sometimes I couldn’t wait to see her. Sometimes I hated her with the passion only a child can gather. And after Onyu died, she became my best friend.

I hoped she knew I was looking for her.

Something knocked against the side of the boat. I peered over to see a few loose pieces of wood. Although they were weathered, they looked like broken boards and not driftwood. Either remnants of a shipwreck or remains from Deerhead Island. The horror seemed to wash over me anew, thinking of all those people left on the island, sucked down into a watery grave on what should have been dry land. I wrapped my fingers around my right wrist, the bandage I’d tied about it rough beneath my fingertips. There would be no tattoos on most of their bodies; there would be few bodies to find, if any.

I focused on the charts again. At the end of the dry season, the isles of the Monkey’s Tail moved closer together. And they moved north-west this time of year. I made a few quick calculations to find the position of the next isle, adjusting our direction to match.

The wind finally picked up that evening, and Mephi woke up. He chirruped from his spot on the blanket but didn’t get up, so I found myself feeding him pieces of a fish I’d caught. His whiskers tickled my fingers as he ate. He smacked his lips, sharp white teeth flashing, his head bobbing. I stroked his forehead absently.

“My mother would tell you to eat quietly,” I said. “She would say that people all the way on Imperial could hear you chewing.” I waited, holding my breath, hoping he’d speak again.

Mephi looked up at me. “Not . . . good?” His voice creaked out of him like a rusty door hinge.

I laughed. So perhaps he was like a parrot. “Not good,” I confirmed. “Not good at all.”

He took the next piece of fish from me with his cold paws and ate it as delicately as any governor’s son.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I said, peering into his black eyes.

Mephi only looked back at me until I again felt foolish for talking to an animal. When I really thought about it, I couldn’t believe I’d let the boat go over this. I’d worked my fingers to the bone, I’d stolen from the Ioph Carn, but as soon as this little creature seemed to be in pain, I’d thrown it all away.

There was still time. If I stopped at the next island and sold the melons, I could use the profit from that to buy more goods to sell at a markup. I could save the money to buy more witstone. I’d find the blue-sailed boat again.

That night, Mephi crawled beneath the blanket to curl at my side as I slept. I felt him lean his body against mine, his little heartbeat a thrum against my ribs. Strange, that I’d let him out into the ocean only a few nights before, telling him to find his own kind. I shifted, hoping I wouldn’t somehow inadvertently crush him at night. “Don’t expect this every night,” I muttered to him. “It’s just because you’re not feeling well.”

He only sighed and laid his head on my shoulder.

I woke to a cold, whiskered snout in my ear.