The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(89)

Fanatics were all alike, cut from the same cloth and dyed different colors. “I can’t. Not tonight. Not until Mephi is better.”

Gio pursed his lips, his brow shadowing his eyes. His gaze focused somewhere over my shoulder. And then he refocused, nodding his head. For a moment I thought he’d agreed with me. But then he spoke. “We go tonight or you’ll get nothing from us.”

I wanted to break his bones. “I’m not leaving him.” Not again.

“What good will you be to him here? He has a fever, Jovis, but he’s still eating. As far as I can tell, he’s in no danger of dying. But everyone here, him included, will be in danger if we don’t use this information now and overthrow the governor.”

“Not if I take him back to my ship. Or would you stop me?” I matched his glare and was surprised to find Gio stood taller than I did, his shoulders broad despite his age. Tension hummed in the air between us. He was old and missing an eye and my arm was torn, yet there was danger in what we were doing. It felt as though we both stood at a precipice. But I wouldn’t be bullied into leaving my friend.

A quick intake of breath from behind me, the scramble of feet against stone. “Catch it!” Ranami cried out. She brushed past me, hand outstretched. I followed the length of her arm and caught a glimpse of brown fur as something scampered around the corner.

All of the Shardless seemed to move at once, like ants after a foot has pressed into their anthill. Ranami’s shout echoed down the hall, vibrating off the walls. Even as I darted after the creature, I could hear others taking up the call.

A construct spy, here in the Shardless hideout. I’d not waited until that cart had gone out of view; I’d not checked behind me. I couldn’t be sure, but some deep part of me knew: I’d brought this ruin upon them. I didn’t have the speed or strength that my bond with Mephi gave me, but desperation made me quick. I surged past Ranami, following the construct into the dimly lit hall. It darted away from me, even as I strained to reach it.

I leapt for it, reaching. My hand grasped empty air.

And then the construct was squirming through the gap in the rocks, out of the cliff face, into the forest.

Gio and Ranami came up beside me, both of them breathless.

Gio raked me with his gaze. “You were supposed to take the long way. You’ve led them to us.”

I hadn’t done it intentionally, but saying so would be cold comfort at a time like this.

“We can’t wait until tonight anymore,” Gio said. “We have to leave now.”

Ranami proffered a hand to help me up. “I’ll watch Mephi. Make sure he gets some food in him and rests. I won’t let him come to harm. Please go. We will give you what we promised,” she said. She swallowed. “We all have people we care about who are in danger.”

I reached again for the thrum in my bones. Nothing. There was the matter of my skills – the ones they’d wanted me on board for in the first place – now vanished. But I thought of Emahla and my mother, and at the corners of these thoughts crept the faces of the shard-sick. I do not care about them. They are nothing to me. I’d opened my heart a crack for Mephi, and now it seemed the whole world came flooding in. And this was my fault. The guilt lay thick over my heart.

One breath in, one breath out. “I’ll go,” I said. And the weight of the words felt like an anchor into the Endless Sea.

“Get him bandaged,” Gio said to Ranami. “I’ll get the supplies and get everyone together.”

The medic cleaned the wound – did it look any less angry than it had a moment before? – and wrapped it tightly. “I’d tell you to rest it,” she said, “but you won’t. If you come back . . . when you come back, I’ll change the bandage.”

Now that I’d made the decision, calm had settled over me like a morning mist.

Gio arrived back at the entrance a moment later, my steel staff in his hands, a pack strapped to his back, knives strapped to his sides. “The Shardless will create a distraction at the gates,” he told me as we walked into the forest. Rain pattered against the leaves, my feet squelching with each step. “We’ll have to climb, but there’s a hidden entrance to the palace, built by the Alanga. The governor kept it in case he ever had need of a speedy escape. There are guards but we have their locations and when they rotate out. We take the governor while the Shardless are working the main gate.”

“How do they plan to take the main gate?” I hadn’t seen that many Shardless in the hideout – not enough to storm a palace.

Gio’s mouth settled into a grim line. “We start another riot. Conditions in the farms here have been getting worse. Even people living in the cities have family working the farms.”

“So no special weapon then?”

He halted in his tracks, turned and glared at me. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re holed up in an Alanga stronghold.”

Gio snorted and strode into the trees. “These rumors of old Alanga weapons are ridiculous. The place was empty when we arrived, except for bats, animals who’d made their dens in the caves and the odd cobweb.”

I thought of the book, still nestled among my things. “You didn’t find anything? Seems hard to believe.”

“It’s been hundreds of years. The only things standing from their time are the ruins.”