The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(64)

She pursed her lips.

“I’m not a hero. I never set out to be a hero in the first place. Those children? Their parents paid me to rescue them.”

“But you can do things others can’t. Unless people exaggerate, you have the strength of ten men and can even make the ground tremble. Think of all the good you could do with that. You could give the people their voices back.”

I looked to the sky and sighed. “The Empire was established to save those people from the Alanga. The Shardless Few is trying to save those people from the Empire. Who, after, will save the people from the Shardless?”

“The Alanga are not coming back, no matter what the Emperor might say. His constructs are more like toys than an army. He’s a tinkerer, not some benevolent protector. And ours are the lives he’s tinkering with.”

I was young, but she was a little younger by my guess. She still had the vigor to believe in ideals. “What does the rebellion plan to do with the people once it’s saved them? If there is no Emperor, who will rule us?”

She lifted her chin. “We will rule ourselves. A Council, formed from island representatives.”

I didn’t ask any further questions. I knew an invitation to proselytization when I heard one. I ran a hand over my face. Endless Sea, I was tired! The dry clothes and hot food promised to the children sounded like heaven to me now. My feet squelched in my shoes each time I shifted my weight, my wet pants clinging to my thighs, my shoulder a dull ache. “Sounds like a messy process.” I strode toward the water. “I’m not what you’re looking for.”

“Wait!” she called after me. “I know what you are looking for.”

I stopped.

“A boat of dark wood and blue sails, heading toward the greater islands. I know where it’s going.”

I had no idea where the boat was anymore, and I’d never known its destination. “What do you know about it?”

She wasn’t going to tell me just because I’d asked. Of course she wasn’t. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you must help us first.”

I pivoted back to her, helpless as a puppet being jerked about by its strings. Emahla – always for her.

“What would you have me do?”





23





Jovis


Nephilanu Island

“And that’s all you want from me, I suppose?”

When a shark offers up a pearl, be wary of its teeth. My father liked to tell me that when we were sailing, though I found this lesson most often applied on land.

Ranami uncrossed her arms. “Ten days of your time is not much to ask.”

“And I expect I can just sit myself down here, wait for ten days and you’ll give me the information I want.” Internally, I was screaming. Ten days. Ten days of letting that boat get farther and farther away, grasping for answers that were slipping through my fingers.

“No,” Ranami admitted.

“Tell me what it is exactly that you want me to do, and then we’ll talk.”

“Come back with me; let Gio and the others explain.”

“The others,” I said flatly. How many of the Shardless Few were gathered on this island? If the Emperor had his spies out and about, they’d find out soon enough. And who needed to trust people when you had constructs as small as squirrels who could do your work? Yet the promise she dangled in front of me – of knowing where that boat was going – flashed like a fishing lure on a sunny day. I was guessing at this point, following a trail that had long since grown cold. If I knew its end destination, I could find the quickest route there, catch the boat while it was still docked. I thought of Emahla’s wine-dark eyes, what it would be like to see them again, and I felt like my throat was being pressed by the weight of all the islands atop one another. “Do you know if she’s still alive?” I said in a low voice.

Ranami’s eyelashes fluttered, her gaze going to the sand. “I’m sorry,” she said and she sounded genuinely remorseful. “All I know is that you were looking for the blue-sailed boat. I didn’t know—”

I swept past her and heard Mephi splashing out of the sea to follow me. Of course she didn’t know. No one seemed to know what happened to these young men and women, why they were taken. But she knew where they went, and that was something. “It doesn’t matter.” I had to take this chance. I had to stop lying to myself, telling myself I’d find it again on my own. I wasn’t a child, hoping for glimpses of sea serpents from shore.

She hurried to keep up with me and I didn’t wait. “You don’t know where you’re going,” she said in a firm voice before stepping in front of me. And she was right: I didn’t. Where did one hide the rebellion’s leader from the Empire?

The forest floor was damp beneath my feet. Most people were glad to see the rains come after seven years of a dry season. Yes, the winds picked up and made the sailing quicker. But the rain made the sailing a fair bit more miserable, and the ever-present moisture in the air made me feel like my fingertips had grown permanently wrinkled. Mephi scampered ahead and around us both, pouncing on dew, snapping at a butterfly, clambering halfway up a tree before jumping down again. He didn’t say anything, for which I was eternally grateful. All I needed now was to be explaining to this woman why my pet talked.