The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(63)

I herded the children through an alley and they went, docile as little lambs. Mephi scampered down from the roof, clinging to a gutter pipe. It protested at his weight. And then he was jaunting beside me, overtly pleased with himself. “Did a very good,” he said.

“No. You would say, ‘I did well.’”

“Did well?”

“I did well.” And then I sighed. Was I really teaching the basics of grammar to this creature? “And you didn’t. I asked you to stay out of it.”

Mephi let out a snort that told me exactly what he thought of that command.

“Aren’t pets supposed to do what their masters say?”

He gave me a long look, and despite the pain in my shoulder I laughed. So he wasn’t exactly a pet. A friend maybe. I hadn’t had a friend since I’d left home to search for Emahla, years ago. Even now I worried at my frayed focus. We’d lost the blue-sailed ship, much as I’d tried to convince myself that we hadn’t. I lied to myself each time I woke – Today I will find it again. It had been weeks.

Each time I confronted the truth, my loyalties clashed painfully. Didn’t I care about Emahla? Didn’t I want to help her? But Mephi couldn’t stand the smell of witstone, and he couldn’t explain why. I’d tried to burn it in his vicinity once, and he’d vomited until he could only heave up bile. I’d stolen things I shouldn’t have, had driven hard bargains, had ignored the pleas of those asking for help. But I couldn’t cross this line. I hated myself for it.

But I couldn’t hate him.

At the docks, the dockworker construct tried to stop me, with my five children huddled behind me. “Please state your goods.” I knocked it into the water with a sweep of my staff. I’d long since gone past elegance and lies.

It took half a day to sail around to the other end of the island, and the opium began to wear off almost as soon as we’d left the harbor. The children cried and huddled together like a mass of lost puppies. Mephi did his best to calm them, but they really wanted their mothers and fathers. I knew better than to even try. I never knew what to say to children. Instead, I sat away from them, worked the arrowhead loose from my flesh and stitched shut both my skin and my torn shirt.

I had to drop anchor in the shallows, and I urged the children into the water. It looked about to rain anyway and the rest of them would soon be wet. I waded to shore with them, my pants heavy with seawater. The wound in my shoulder was sore, but it had already begun to heal.

A woman sat on the sand, watching me. She was dressed simply, a rough-woven tunic and a wraparound skirt. Before Emahla, I might have said she was beautiful. Her long black hair was plaited behind her, framing a face with wide, expressive eyes and a pointed chin. She rose to her feet when I approached. “Jovis, I presume?” she said. “I was told that’s who would be bringing the children.”

I rubbed at my chin. “What? The face doesn’t look familiar? I’ve had a hundred portraits of myself scattered across the Empire. I’ve been paying gutter orphans to collect them for me.”

She gave me a sidelong look. “Nearly as vain as the Emperor. Will you clamor next to have your face stamped onto coins?”

“With as big a head I’m growing, it wouldn’t fit.”

She placed a hand over her heart in greeting, and I returned the gesture. “My name is Ranami. I’ve heard about you.”

“Good things, I hope.”

“It depends on who you’re asking.” She bent down to greet one of the children. They wandered up the beach like lost ghosts. “A friend of mine is coming to take you someplace warm where you can get washed up and put on dry clothes. We’ll let your parents know that you’re safe. And we’ve got food too. Would you like that?”

The girl nodded.

A man stepped out of the trees, grizzled, with a scar over his milky left eye. I felt my eyebrows lift. I knew the man. But then, damn well everyone in the Empire knew him, because he’d had more posters spread about than I had. Gio, the leader of the Shardless. The stories said he’d killed the governor of Khalute with his own two hands. He placed his hand over his heart to greet me, and then beckoned to the children.

They went, leaving me alone on the beach with Ranami, my boat anchored behind.

“So this is where the leader of the Shardless Few is hiding?”

Ranami’s mouth quirked. “And who would you tell?”

I lifted my hands, palms up in a helpless gesture. No one would ever believe me. I’d made sure of that. “Fair enough.”

Mephi had taken the chance to go for a swim. He rolled in the waves, chattering to himself. I could feel the pull of the Endless Sea from behind me. Somewhere out there were the answers I sought to Emahla’s disappearance. I turned to go.

“I have an offer to make you,” Ranami said.

I knew what she would say before I faced her. Everyone now thought they could buy me, even the Ioph Carn. They hadn’t cared much when I’d been a smuggler of goods, when they could have bought me. First people were afraid when they saw what I could do. And then, once the fear had passed, they started making me offers. The only ones I’d taken so far were to rescue the children.

“Join the Shardless Few,” she said. “Help us overthrow the Emperor.”

I shook my head. “No. And you’re not the first to offer me some sort of loose employment. Oh. Except you wouldn’t pay me, would you?”