The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(48)

The door clicked shut behind me, and I heard Uphilia’s voice as she spoke to my father about taxes and licence fees.

Bayan didn’t leave straight away; he lingered in a restless way, shifting from foot to foot like he knew he had to be somewhere but wasn’t sure where.

I made as if to pass him.

“Thank you,” he blurted out. “You didn’t have to come to my aid. It would have been better for you if you hadn’t.”

I gave him a considering look. “If I hadn’t, I would have had to watch Tirang wash the floors with your blood. Not my idea of dinnertime entertainment.”

Bayan barked out a short, nervous laugh. All the grace and cleverness had washed out of him. “You didn’t have to do it.” He pressed his lips together, and the wild look in his eyes faded, though sweat still beaded on his brow. “Thank you,” he said again.

“I should thank you for telling me to meditate,” I said. “It obviously helped.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t tell you to help you. I didn’t have good intentions.”

“I know.” But he didn’t hate me. Strangely enough, I was feeling grateful for that.

We both stared at one another for a moment, Bayan’s gaze considering, as though he were weighing something. Then he thrust his hands into his pocket and nodded at my hand. “The key. I know where it leads.”

I was still holding it, the metal cool in my grasp. “Where?”

“I’ll show you.”

I would have rather he just told me, but I didn’t want to risk losing this small kindness from a rival. So I followed him through the twists and turns of the palace. He never turned around even once to check if I was still there, not even as we passed servants and climbed stairs to the smaller third floor. We ended at a place I’d not passed through often near the back of the palace, where it nestled into the mountains. The door we stopped at was brown and small, so that Bayan would have to stoop to get through it. The wood was worn, the varnish peeling toward the bottom.

“Here?”

Bayan nodded.

Feeling a little odd, I fit the key into the lock and turned.

It opened to the sky. Walls on either side of the door sheltered the path from wind and intruders. These walls were better kept than the ones surrounding the palace, the plaster smooth and unbroken. Stairs led up a mountainside, the setting sun outlining each step in gold.

Bayan slipped in after me before I closed the door. I gave him a questioning look but he said nothing, only waiting until I’d locked the door. I brushed past him as I made for the stairs. He had the same sandalwood smell as Father did. I wondered if it was a thing done with calculation, like an orphaned pup trying to absorb an adult’s scent so the adult would claim it. Or perhaps he was more alike to my father than I was, even choosing the same perfumes.

The stairs were uneven, some so tall I had to brace myself against the wall to climb them. Others were barely the height of two of my fingers pressed together. I was more than a little jealous of Bayan’s long legs. But he didn’t stride past me. He waited as I struggled, though I heard him laugh more than once when I struggled with a particularly difficult step. I gritted my teeth. Once, I glanced back to see how far I’d come, squinting against the sun. The array of steps below was dizzying; the tiled rooftops of the palace buildings spread beneath me. I felt like I could land on them if only I jumped hard enough.

When I finally reached the top, I had more than the climb to take my breath away.

The stairs leveled out into a round courtyard, bound on all sides by the same wall. Mountains rose beyond the courtyard, jagged edges framing the stone. In the middle of the courtyard, its branches curling out over nearly the entire space, was a cloud juniper.

If I’d seen one before, I didn’t remember. All I did remember were paintings of them, or carvings. They grew mostly in the mountains, with enormous taproots that reached to the very depths of the islands. Most of the living cloud junipers were either inaccessible or walled off in monasteries, where they were cared for and worshiped. Their berries and their leaves and their bark were managed by the monks and doled out sparingly.

I took a few hesitant steps toward it, still unsure if it was real. And then I lifted a hand to cup a branch in my fingers. The sharp, evergreen scent of it filled my nostrils, the short needles pricking my palm. A few dark berries dotted the ends. I wanted to bury my face in it and breathe it all in.

“Be careful not to take anything,” Bayan said. “You can’t take any of it without the Emperor’s permission.”

“Who cares for it?”

“I do,” Bayan said, “though I expect your father will ask you to take on some of those duties as well.”

“Is that why you showed it to me?” I said, amused. “So you’d have someone else to help?” I peered into the branches and saw one of Ilith’s little spies, its tail curled around the needles. It squeaked when it saw me, climbed higher, and then turned to rebuke me again. How like Father to not even trust his own foster-son.

“Can you blame me?” Bayan said. “The Emperor has me learning all the commands – it’s like learning an entirely new language – putting together constructs, taking care of the cloud juniper and learning politics. I have hardly a moment to myself before he summons me again for one task or another.” Bayan looked to the spy construct. “Go on, report all that too. I don’t care.” It only twitched its tail and watched us. “At least he leaves you alone.”