The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(70)

“I didn’t say that I believed it.”

Our words were combative, but they didn’t hold the bite they’d had before.

“Of course it doesn’t say,” Bayan said. “That knowledge is passed from Emperor to Emperor. They didn’t write it down.” He rose and put the book back on the shelf. His sleeve fell to his elbow, exposing bruises on his arm.

Four bruises, four straight dark lines. All the mirth went out of me. My father’s cane, marked across Bayan’s flesh. “How often does he hit you?” The words spilled out of me. I put a hand up to stop them, but it was too late.

Bayan stiffened. He was back to the old Bayan again – cold and distant, mocking and cruel. “Only when I make mistakes. Not often.”

“He shouldn’t hit you at all.”

Bayan pushed the book into the shelf until it knocked against the back of the bookcase. “I lied,” he said, holding my gaze with his. “He hits me more now. Ever since you started getting your memory back. You skulk around and feed spy constructs – oh yes, I’ve seen you doing that – and act as though you aren’t the favored one. As though you might be cast onto the streets at any moment.”

“He threw me out once four years ago—”

“And you didn’t even leave the palace walls before he called you back. You know how he is. He did it to scare you, to light a fire in your belly. He watched your face for what it did to you and knew it was working. But has he ever hit you?” His eyes searched mine, his chin out, head tilted, waiting for a response.

I didn’t know what to say. All the little diplomacies I’d learned fell away. I couldn’t give Bayan an answer that would satisfy him, that would make him my friend, that would soothe him. “I’m sorry.”

Bayan seized the ends of several books, pulling them onto the floor. “I don’t want your pity! He doesn’t hit you because you are the favorite. You are the one he wants to win. You think he doesn’t care, but if he didn’t care, he’d hit you twice as hard. You don’t need all your memories back to see what he’s doing.” He stood there for a moment, his chest heaving. And then he swept for the door, the dark blue hem of his flowing pants like a retreating wave.

He slammed it, and the dust rose from a few shelves by the door.

It was what I’d wanted, I supposed.

I took my time searching the shelves and finally pulled down a few more complex books on the bone shard language. One on building constructs that obeyed someone other than its maker, another on effective ways to write over existing commands and another simply on higher-level commands.

I’d have to rewrite Mauga’s commands at night when my father slept. Mauga spent much of his time in the palace, in a room he’d reshaped into a lair. I’d have to study quickly.

Bayan’s words wormed their way back into my mind. Was it true? Was I the favorite? Was I somehow playing into my father’s hands? I couldn’t imagine why he might want me to reprogram his constructs and to overthrow him. And what would I do with Bayan once I was Emperor? A cold trickle of guilt bled into my chest. I wondered if there was a way I could keep him here in the palace alive, or a way I could force his fealty to me. I didn’t want to kill him.

Other days for other problems.

First was the matter of rewriting Mauga’s commands in a way my father wouldn’t know.

And I had no guarantee I would live through that.





26





Sand


Maila Isle, at the edge of the Empire

A boat with blue sails. Every time Sand’s memory threatened to go hazy, she thought of the blue sails. They hadn’t all been here on Maila for ever; perhaps none of them had. A boat had brought them. It followed that a boat could take them away.

Sand worked at the problem the way a child might worry at a loose tooth with her tongue. Coral had arrived later, and there had been someone before Coral that Sand could not remember. So the next night, when everyone lined up to receive their bowl of food, Sand went to a nearby coconut palm and scratched out a tally. Two hundred and seventeen. That’s how many of them were here right now. If she’d had the time, she would have written out all the names she could remember, but a sense of urgency drove her forward. What if whatever happened to her during her fall from the mango tree just disappeared? What if she became like the rest of them again?

She searched for another person she couldn’t recall being here for ever. It came to her a little easier this time, like she was exercising a muscle she hadn’t known existed. “Leaf,” she said, approaching a frail-looking young man. He sat near one of the bonfires in the center of town, eating his stew, his glassy eyes reflecting the fire. He didn’t wear a shirt, and his ribs pressed against his skin like fingers across a taut piece of leather. He nearly dropped his spoon when she spoke to him.

“Yes?” he said.

Sand didn’t bother trying to coax the memories from him the way she had with Coral. She needed to push farther. “You came here on a dark, blue-sailed boat. You were placed in the hold. But when you came onto deck, when you arrived on this island, where on the island were you put ashore?”

“I’ve been here for ever,” Leaf said. He held his bowl tight to his chest as though it could protect him.

“No,” Sand said, and he trembled. She stalked closer. “You were somewhere else before you were here. Tell me where you disembarked.”