I focused on the construct, planted my feet, cocked my elbow and heaved the oyster shell at it. Should have kept running, looking for something else to throw, but I watched, my breath held.

The oyster shell went wide and the construct flew over the docks and out to sea. Escaped.

3

Lin

Imperial Island

I landed on the roof shoulder first, the feathers still grasped between my fingers. The fall jolted the breath from me and I rolled down the tiles, throwing out an arm to catch something, anything, that would stop my momentum. My fingers jammed into the gutter before I could fall off the edge, though I nearly tumbled over my own arm.

I lay there, breathless, watching as Jovis threw an oyster shell at the construct, missing by a wide margin. Some folk hero. The man they’d written a song about would have struck true, hair whipping in the wind, shoulders squared.

Jovis leaned over his knees, winded as an old man. They certainly never wrote about being tired in the stories.

The spy construct was gone, flying off to report to its master – whoever that might be. I tried to untangle the knot that seemed to be growing, by the moment, in my belly. I wasn’t sure what it had seen down there in the caverns. Had it gone through any of the notes while I’d been fighting my father’s hidden construct? Had it seen Shiyen’s replica? Either one might undo me – expose me for what I was.

Had Jovis seen?

I could speak prettily of working together, of needing his help, but my insides twisted like a pile of snakes. My rule looked fragile to those outside it, but the truth was even more delicate than they knew.

I climbed down the side of the building. Someone inside had woken up and lit a lamp, disturbed by my footsteps. We needed to go back to the palace before anyone could see us. The guards at the wall might already have questions running through their heads that I had no easy answers for. I’d felt a thrumming in my bones, strength rushing through my limbs – and I’d used both without questioning them.

Without questioning how it might look to others.

I was the Emperor, and I was throwing myself from rooftop to rooftop like I was Jovis come to save a group of children from the Tithing Festival. I needed to hold myself in check, to be discreet.

My wounds from my battle with my father had healed quickly, and at the time I hadn’t thought much of it. But now the pieces were falling together, making sense in the way I wished I could make sense of my father’s notes.