The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(34)

It took me shrugging off the blankets and shoving him away with my free arm to notice that the aches from the Ioph Carn beatings were gone. I froze. I stretched to the side, expecting a sharp lance of pain from my ribs. Nothing. And then I was pushing the last of the blankets away, lifting my shirt, checking for bruises. Oh, they were still there. I pushed at one experimentally, just in case. Aye, that hurt. But they didn’t look as angry as they had the day before.

A splash sounded behind me. “Mephi!” I was calling out for him before I remembered he knew how to swim. My breath caught in my throat as my mind conjured all the beasts I’d seen during my years smuggling – sharks, giant squids, sea serpents, toothed whales. All of whom would see Mephi as a delicious morsel. But I heard him chittering before I even leaned over the side.

He was abreast of the boat, swimming in the water as though born to it, making pleased little noises as he ducked and dove and turned over onto his back.

“No, Mephi. Not good!” I said.

As much as he’d seemed to understand me before, now it truly was like I spoke to a cat. He ran his paws over his whiskers and then dove again, deep, out of sight. I sucked in a breath and held it, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Part of me worried about him being eaten. Another part of me wondered if he’d seen others of his kind, or if he’d decided we’d journeyed far enough together. Maybe that would be best – I wasn’t even sure if he was supposed to eat fish, or if he was supposed to be getting milk from his mother.

His head popped up again, near the bow, a fish nearly as big as he was in his mouth.

Relieved, I put the net out to help him back into the boat. I deposited his sopping wet body on my deck, and he deposited the fish at my feet. “Don’t do that again,” I scolded him. “You’re still too small.” How big would he grow anyway? He watched me and chirruped.

I looked at the fish and then back at him. “You can have it.” Maybe he didn’t understand my words, but he took my meaning well enough. At least he was recovered.

We reached the next isle that afternoon. I left the melon boxes on the deck as I tied up my boat, a wary eye on the construct at the docks. It had a hawk’s head on an ape’s body, with the clawed feet of a small bear. I wished I could say it was grotesque, but the Emperor did good work.

I did better work, though, when it came to pitting my wits against theirs.

Constructs weren’t people, even if a few bore human parts. The lives of the shards in their bodies powered them, and the commands written on them gave them purpose. But depending on how tightly those commands were written, well, they could be subverted. And despite the smooth work on this construct, it was a dockworker and would be lower-tier. Fewer commands, more loopholes.

And I could sail through a loophole the way I might a gap in the rocks.

As soon as the construct saw me tying my boat, it hobbled over to me. “State your goods,” it said. Its voice was like the buzzing of insects against a lamp.

“I am a soldier of the Empire. Stand aside.” I wished I’d held on to the jacket for more authenticity, but I’d fooled these constructs before without.

The construct tilted its head to the side, examining me like prey. “You are not,” it said.

“I am, and you are instructed to obey the Emperor’s men.” I looked down at my clothes. “Oh, it’s the lack of uniform, isn’t it?” I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m afraid I lost it.”

With a duck of its head, the construct peered at my chin as though it could make sense of me from a different angle. “Lost it?”

“In the shipwreck,” I said.

“There are no records of recent Imperial shipwrecks.”

“But you know what happened with Deerhead Island?” I said. “Allow me to be the first one to report it. We were there for the island’s Tithing Festival, but we were caught in the current of the sinking island.” It was best to sprinkle in as much truth as possible into lies. “I was able to swim free, but I had to lose everything except my underclothes to do it. I’m the only survivor.”

The feathers on its neck ruffled before it shook its head and they smoothed again. “Your Imperial pin—”

“Lost that too,” I said. “But I am a soldier, and you must obey the Emperor’s men. Step aside and let me pass.”

I could almost see the gears working in the creature’s head, and I tried not to sweat. Mephi, still on the ship, stayed thankfully silent. I’d run into a couple of upgraded constructs, who had been instructed not to obey anyone without an Imperial pin. This was a small isle though, and a lower priority. And there was only one Emperor. I hoped this was an older, original construct.

It didn’t press me for the pin. It stamped in place, its claws clicking against the wood of the dock, its fingers winding about one another.

I didn’t wait for further questions. I reached back into the boat, grabbed the melon boxes and swept past the dockworker. When I turned my head to glance back, I found Mephi bounding at my heels. “You shouldn’t be here,” I hissed at him. “You need to stay on the boat.”

Again, his ability to understand me seemed to slip. Instead of turning around, he leapt to my waist, his feet scrabbling for purchase on my belt. Before I could swat him away, he had settled onto my shoulders, his long body draped around my neck. I expected him to feel too warm, like the scarves my father’s people wore. But his fur was as cool as mist against my skin.