“Regret what?” She’d lost the trail of their conversation. She picked it up again with a little effort. “Oh. Well neither do I. I mean, I never thought I would in the first place. Which is why I asked so many times.”

Ranami laughed and kissed the end of Phalue’s cold nose. “Thank you for that.” She sobered. “The Emperor. Should we accept her request? Do you want to?”

Phalue took her hand, marveling at the way their fingers intertwined, the way they fit together. “I’m not my father’s daughter,” she said. “What if Lin Sukai is not her father’s daughter either? I think we should at least hear her out.”

The greenery of the forest gradually faded into city streets and tiled roofs as they walked. “And the caro nut shipment?” Ranami asked as they stepped into the shadow of a covered street. Oil sizzled at a nearby food stall as the vendor placed a whole herbed fish into a pan.

“We hold it, as we agreed. We don’t know what this new Emperor is like, and maybe we do need to get her to abdicate as soon as possible. I’m not sure what’s right yet, and—”

A shape collided with Phalue, a dark, whirling, dirt-encrusted child. Phalue caught a glimpse of wide black eyes before the girl stumbled and then ran off. Instinctively, she looked for who the girl might have been running from but only saw the calm, easy traffic of an unremarkable street. No one even looked up.

“She took your belt pouch,” Ranami said. Phalue grasped at her belt and found the empty spot where her pouch had been.

The Emperor’s missive.

10

Lin

Imperial Island

Rain pounded on the deck above. I watched the servants and guards as they descended the stairs, water dripping from cloaks, eyebrows and beards. It wasn’t the most auspicious weather for our departure. Sea serpents grew bolder in the wet season, though there hadn’t been substantiated sightings of very large ones in years. Mostly they were the size of sharks, disturbing small fishing boats, making off with their catches and leaving shaken sailors with jagged bite wounds. No Mephisolous come to threaten a city, but the smaller ones could still be a nuisance to a ship like ours.

Part of me had wanted to rush to the north-eastern islands, to place myself between the encroaching construct army and my people. But I was the only one with bone shard magic, and there were too many for me to fight on my own. My father had kept a sparse army, relying mostly on war constructs. We’d need to start recruiting right away, but training an army took time. Every governor had their own guards; if I could persuade the most influential to send theirs, others would follow and I could stop the constructs before they got too far.