The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(93)

Ilith’s back was turned. I could make it there and start working with her shards before I was given away. I took a few rapid steps forward while they spy construct droned on. Just a little farther.

“Another servant spoke about the rebellion, and wondered how long it would take them to get to Imperial . . .”

Another few steps. I caught a foot on the sticky web and had to bend to extricate it. Despite the cold of the cavern, sweat trickled down my scalp and behind my ears. I didn’t dare wipe it away. I was close to Ilith now, so close I could touch her. She smelled earthy and faintly of mold. Her carapace was thick and shiny. I hovered a hand over it. Would it give the way the other constructs’ flesh had? Or would my fingers just bounce against it?

“And on my way here, I saw Lin Sukai in the passages.”

Ilith stopped writing. She set down her pens and rose, her body rising from the floor. “Lin Sukai? How far into the passages?”

I didn’t wait for the spy construct’s answer. I reached for Ilith’s body. Her slick carapace met my fingertips. I pushed against it and found no give.

Ilith screeched – a sound halfway between man and beast. She whirled, her abdomen knocking me to the ground, the nails from her eight hands clicking against the stone floor. I tried to rise but couldn’t; I’d fallen on a piece of web and it clung to my tunic. She was over me in a flash, her old woman’s face next to mine, her body blocking the light. “Lin Sukai,” she said. Her breath smelled of old blood. “Did you think to sneak up on the master of spies in her own lair?”

“I nearly did,” I spat back at her.

She grabbed me by the front of my tunic with two of her arms. Another two seized my ankles. “I could tear you limb from limb right here.”

“Is that what my father commanded you do?”

She laughed. “You have no idea what sort of commands live inside my flesh. You think you can move about this palace and maybe even use bone shard magic, but there are complexities you could never understand.”

In answer, I wriggled free of one of her hands and pushed my fingers into her face. She stiffened. The carapace hadn’t given when I’d tried, but flesh was flesh. The sight of my hand submerged into her face made me feel a bit ill, but I had to rewrite her commands. I felt around for the shards.

I was elbow-deep in Ilith’s face before I found them. They weren’t in a thin column like in Mauga or even Uphilia. They were crowded into clusters. They felt like pine cones. I pulled one at random, trying to imprint in my memory where I’d pulled it from.

When I pulled it out and held it to the light, my courage failed. Ilith was right. I didn’t understand what was written there. There were some formulas, a few words I didn’t know. Frightened, I pushed it back inside and pulled another one. This one had a few words I knew: “when”, “never” and “look out”. I blinked, hoping I just wasn’t seeing the words correctly. I’d read so many books in the library – had I thought those would be enough? I must have just gotten lucky with Mauga and Uphilia. Ilith was a strange, solitary creature, and Father trusted her counsel. He’d made a construct that was nearly as complex as he was.

I pulled shard after shard from Ilith, examining them, trying to discern a pattern to the commands. Of the ones I could decipher, I could see that my father had given her much of her own judgment, marked by parameters I didn’t understand.

At last, I found a shard that spoke of obedience to Shiyen.

“Obey Shiyen unless it runs counter to your wisdom and intelligence.” Both “wisdom” and “intelligence” had numbers written above them. I searched for the reference shards and only found shards that each held at least five more references.

I wanted to tear out my own hair. How could I rewrite something I didn’t fully understand? This would be an even messier job than I’d done on Mauga and Uphilia. But while both of those had been sloppy, they seemed to have held up. My father had called them both to the dining room since I’d rewritten their commands, and he hadn’t seemed to notice a difference.

I puzzled out the obedience command again. I bit my lip. I could still change this in a way to work to my advantage. The number “11” was written next to wisdom. I could change that. I held the shard against my breast and went over the “11” with an engraving tool, molding it into a identification star. Ilith would now obey my father unless it ran counter to me and her intelligence. And I could give her another command. I reached inside her and removed the original intelligence reference shards. This would work. It would have to.

The last construct I had to rewrite was the Construct of War. His lair wasn’t difficult to find. It was a suite of rooms across from my father’s.

I pocketed the reference shards and stepped away from Ilith. She’d awaken soon, and I’d need to get away. Like the other constructs, she wouldn’t remember the moments just before I’d rewritten her.

I stepped carefully over the floor, avoiding the webs. The lighting here was dim, and the webs were difficult to see. My foot caught in a web despite my best efforts. I pulled and shook my foot, trying to dislodge it. A scraping sounded from behind me, and I glanced back to see if Ilith was awake yet.

She writhed on the floor, her eight limbs kicking out to the sides as though she’d fallen onto a patch of ice and could not rise from it. A moan emerged from her mouth. “What happened?” she said. I shrank back, wishing there was something I could hide behind. Ilith managed to get two of her feet beneath her. She pulled herself toward me, dragging her abdomen across the floor. “You. You did something to me.”