I pulled back, keeping an ear out for footsteps. Playing cards while guarding the Emperor’s room wasn’t very professional, despite Jovis’s insistences that he needed to protect me. I supposed I’d done this to myself, hiring a former member of the Ioph Carn and a notorious smuggler as Captain of the Imperial Guard. But he’d saved hordes of children from the Tithing Festival and earned a great deal of goodwill from the people.

And goodwill was something I had in short supply.

I made my way to the shard storeroom, ducking down side passages or behind pillars whenever I saw a guard or a servant. Swiftly, I unlocked the door and slipped inside. I moved through muscle memory, taking down the lamp by the lintel, lighting it, striding to the back of the room. There was another door there, carved with a cloud juniper.

Another lock, another key.

I descended into the darkness of the old mining tunnels below the palace, my lamp casting the sharp edges of the walls into stark relief. The constructs my father had placed to guard the way were dead, disassembled by my hand once I’d had the strength. The constructs still scattered across the Empire were another matter. All were commanded to obey Shiyen. And now that he was gone, their command structure had fallen to pieces. Some had gone mad. Others had gone into hiding. There were only two constructs I’d considered mine. Hao, a little spy construct I’d rewritten to obey me, and Bing Tai. Hao had died defending me from my father. Only Bing Tai remained.

At the fork in the tunnels, I veered left, unlocking the door that blocked the way. I’d often wondered what my father was doing when he disappeared behind his locked doors. I still didn’t exactly know.

The tunnel opened up into a cavern and I lit the lamps scattered throughout. A pool filled part of the cavern; a workstation was set up next to it. There were bookshelves, a metal table, baskets of tools I didn’t recognize. And the chest that held my father’s memory machine. It was here I’d found Thrana, submerged in the pool, connected to that machine. As I did every time I entered this cavern, I checked the water. My lamp reflected off the dark surface; I had to squint past that to see into the water below. The replica of my father still lay in the pool, his eyes closed. After the first rush of relief came that familiar pang. He looked so much like Bayan – or, I supposed, Bayan looked so much like him.