The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(59)

Past a short, narrow hallway, the home opened into a large room, the kitchen and dining area merged into one. Several people were in the kitchen, gossiping with one another as they chopped vegetables or fried fish in a pan. The sizzle of oil sounded as the man at the stove flipped a fish. He was built like an anvil – short and broad – just like Numeen. If I looked at them from the corner of my eye, I might have trouble telling them apart. I judged the rest of them. Two families in the one household, with a treasured grandparent between them all. That was why the house was larger than I’d expected.

Four children sat at the table, peeling garlic and shelling nuts. They looked up as I approached and stared, but said nothing, though I could nearly see them bursting with it.

Numeen stepped into the kitchen. “I brought a guest. She’s the daughter of a patron of mine, and their servants didn’t prepare for the rain. Their dining area is wet through and through. I offered her a dry place to eat.”

“Next you’ll be telling the birds to roost in your room with you and your wife,” Numeen’s brother said. “No offense meant.”

A smile tugged at the corner of my lips. “None taken. My name is Lin.”

Numeen’s brother only grunted and tilted the pan. The two men were more similar than probably either of them cared to admit.

I stepped into the kitchen. “Can I help?”

“Oh, of course not.” A woman turned from the vegetables she was chopping. She was slender and taller than Numeen, built like bamboo – all narrow and flat and graceful. By her fairer skin and curling hair, I guessed her to be half Poyer. The timing was right. The migration patterns of the Poyer isles only brought them close to the Empire’s curving archipelago once every thirty years or so. She aimed an affectionate gaze at Numeen. This must be the wife he spoke of.

“Please,” I said. “I prefer to keep myself busy.” It wasn’t a memory, not exactly, but I felt I knew this dance in my bones.

“You’re a guest,” Numeen’s wife said, now chopping onions. She wiped at her watering eyes with an elbow. “You should just sit down.”

So I went to her side, picked up another onion and began peeling it. The pungent scent stung my eyes and my nostrils.

She gave me an approving glance but said nothing.

When the meal was ready, we all sat at the table together. It was so different than dining in my father’s palace, with the constructs lined up on one side of the long table, the quiet servants, the wind whispering through the shutters and my father’s ever-present disapproval. Here, I couldn’t hear any wind at all. Perhaps it was because the building was nestled between two others. Or perhaps it was because, even if there had been wind, it would have been difficult to hear above the din.

Two children sat to my left and Numeen sat to my right. Numeen’s brother sat with another man I judged to be his husband. Everyone spoke, several conversations going on at once. The little girl to my left patted my arm. She couldn’t have been more than five.

“That’s Thrana,” Numeen said. “My youngest.”

“Look.” Thrana held up a folded paper bird. “I made this today.”

I took it from her, the paper soft beneath my fingertips, refolded and crinkled in a hundred different ways. Black ink marks slashed across its wings. Something about peas and peppers. A piece of scrap paper, handed down to her and remade into something new. I could see the hope in her eyes as she watched me. “It’s lovely.”

A smile burst across her face. “Lin says it’s pretty,” she said to her brother. “You can have it,” she said to me.

“Oh, I couldn’t take it.” I handed it back to her. “Surely such things should be treasured by the ones who’ve made them.”

Thrana smiled shyly as she took it back.

Numeen shrugged. “She’s been trying to make one for a few days,” he said, spooning rice onto his plate. He passed the bowl to me. “She’s a stubborn girl, just like her father.”

“Not a trait I’d brag about,” his wife said.

I took a heaping spoonful of rice, the steam caressing my hand. “How long have you been married?”

“Fifteen years,” Numeen said at the same time she said, “Too long.” And then they both laughed, and he kissed her cheek.

It made me wonder what sort of marriage I could look forward to. One of power and secrets, and possible love – like between my father and mother? The only man I knew close to my age was Bayan, and we’d been at one another’s throats since I’d recovered. I couldn’t imagine – or thought I couldn’t – what it would be like to hold the hand of someone like Bayan, to lean into his side, to have him kiss my cheek. I felt the heat of a blush traveling up my neck as I thought of his hands at my waist, the fullness of his lips against my skin.

I stuffed the thought away and focused on the meal in front of me.

“Lin.” The elderly woman who looked like Numeen’s mother called to me from the other side of the table. “We’re not poor. Take more rice. You’re too skinny.”

Again, I felt I knew this dance. I took another spoonful and settled it on my plate before passing it on. I was hungry. “Thank you, auntie,” I said to her. It was as if my old memories were pushing against a thin sheet, and though I could make out the shape of them, I could not grasp them completely. But I’d never grown up in a household like this. I knew my mother had died when I was young, and my father had few relatives. I must have at some point met my mother’s family. Now I couldn’t even remember enough to write to them, and my father hosted very few guests.