the bone shard emperor by andrea stewart

One filled with paintings, another with trinkets – gifts from other islands. Some of the rooms I’d discovered in the aftermath of my father’s death were pointlessly locked. Sweat stuck my hair to the back of my neck. I sat on the peak of the roof for a moment, taking in the damp air, the smell of the ocean. How could I give that order without appearing to be the same? My father had been known to be ill-tempered, eccentric, reclusive. And how could I blame him when I’d tasked him with my safety? I couldn’t very well order him and his guards to leave me in peace without sufficient reason. Always he wanted to know where I was, what I was doing. Having someone stationed outside my door at all hours made me grind my teeth. He’d insisted on taking on this duty himself, and though he did sleep at some point, he only did so after he’d had another guard relieve him. Somewhere below me, Jovis, my Captain of the Imperial Guard, paced the hallway outside my room, his beast, Mephi, beside him.

Reinstating some of my father’s commitments and abolishing others.Īnd always there were people watching me, wondering what I would do, trying to take my measure. Repairing and cleaning out the buildings on the palace grounds. There had been administrative matters to deal with first – hiring servants, guards and workers.

It seemed a lifetime ago since I’d last climbed up here, and though it had in fact been a few short months, my muscles felt the lack of activity. I wiped the moisture from a rain-slicked tile with my sleeve and pulled myself onto the peak of the roof. Still, I hadn’t counted on having to sneak around my own palace. I wanted to be a different kind of Emperor. It probably helped that he kept more constructs than servants, and the servants he did keep regarded him with terror. My father had strolled the hallways of his own palace at all hours with impunity no one had dared to question him, not even me. Servants and guards walked the hallways even at night there was always someone awake. There was little privacy in the palace of an Emperor. I clung to the ceramic tiles of the rooftop, ignoring the soft whimper from Thrana below. It was so like my father not to leave me an easy task. But setting things right meant weeding a garden gone wild, and with each new weed pulled, two sprouted in its place. I’d thought I could set things right in the Empire if only I’d had the means.

The bone shard emperor by andrea stewart