by Tara Sim
Amaya slipped the pack on with a nod. “Thank you.”
“More coming!” Deadshot shouted down.
They followed the other two up. Deadshot moved away from the window and used her gun to point to the open roof slat.
“It’s the only way out,” she said.
Cayo cursed under his breath as they raced up the stairs. When the front doors banged open below, he nearly stumbled into Amaya.
“Up, up, up!” Deadshot cradled her hands together. Liesl pushed Amaya forward first, so she placed her foot in Deadshot’s hold and let her hoist her up to the roof. Amaya grabbed the ledge and pulled her upper body through, arms shaking at the strain. Once she was secure, she reached down to help Cayo crawl up after her. Liesl came up next, Amaya and Cayo helping her through.
Amaya extended a hand down for Remy. He was reaching for her when a dark shape appeared behind him, snatching him away from her grasp.
“Remy!” Amaya made to jump back inside, but Liesl and Cayo held her back.
“Go!” Remy yelled as the guards wrestled him to the floor. Deadshot punched the guards coming at her and jumped for the opening, pulling herself through before closing the heavy roof slat down.
“No!” Amaya screamed, lunging at the slat and trying to hoist it up, tearing her fingernails against it. A bullet whizzed over her head, and Cayo pushed her down.
“We can’t help him if we get caught, too!” Liesl yelled.
Amaya sobbed and struggled against Cayo as he forced her away. He grunted as she elbowed him in the ribs, but he pulled her after Liesl and Deadshot with surprising strength. The guard on the opposite roof was taken out with a spray of blood at his shoulder, and Deadshot didn’t even bother to holster her pistol as she led them across the gap between the roofs.
But even as they hurried down the stairs and spilled back out onto the street, they were greeted with a new bevy of guards.
“Split up!” Liesl yelled.
Cayo pulled Amaya after him. He turned into a nearby alley, the sound of the guards right behind them. A bullet crashed into the wall on their right and Cayo stumbled. She nearly tore free of him, but his grip tightened.
“We can’t go back there!”
“They got Remy! Of course I have to go back!”
“And have the entirety of the Port’s Authority on our asses? Not a chance.”
Amaya was lost among the streets, but Cayo knew them better than she did. He turned right, left, crossed a main thoroughfare until they were out of the Business Sector, the guards falling away one by one until they’d lost them entirely.
Even then the two of them didn’t stop running until they found their way back to the inn. Gasping for breath, they hurried to their room, but Liesl and Deadshot weren’t there.
“Damn it,” Cayo panted, running his hands through his sweat-slicked hair.
As soon as Amaya caught her breath, she turned back to the door. Cayo blocked it with his body.
“I have to help Remy,” she insisted.
“Remy will be fine until we can figure out what to do. He’s part of the Rain Empire’s navy. The Port’s Authority won’t harm him.”
“What about your contact?” Amaya asked desperately. “She’s the one who gave us the blueprints, right? Can she help us get him back?”
Something in Cayo flinched, and he looked away from her. Amaya’s chest seized up, her lungs still on fire from running.
“Let’s wait for Liesl and Deadshot to return before we make any plans,” he said.
She was too tired, too stunned to argue. She took off the pack and opened it, running the fabric between her fingers.
Had this really been worth losing Remy?
The two of them waited in tense silence as the night crawled on. Amaya’s heartbeat wouldn’t slow despite forcing herself to take deeper, even breaths. She paced the room, glancing out the window every time she passed it.
Hours slid by. Still Liesl and Deadshot didn’t return.
“What happened to them?” Amaya whispered. “What if…”
Cayo sat on the bed with a hand over his mouth. He had changed out of the uniform into his normal clothing. He looked haggard and hollow, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion and a hint of stubble shadowing his upper lip and chin.
Amaya stood before him, forcing him to look up at her.
“We need to do something,” she said. “We can’t wait around any longer. Let’s go to your contact.”
Cayo breathed out, defeated. “We… We can’t use my contact at the Port’s Authority. She’s been compromised. But there is someone who might be able to help us.”
Amaya’s hands curled into fists as she realized her suspicion had been right. “Cayo.”
“I had no other choice,” he hissed, standing so they were only a couple of inches apart. He glared down at her, as if daring her to admonish him again. “I told you, my contact in the Port’s Authority was compromised. We needed a way into the Vaults, and I found one. I did my part.”
“By going to Romara,” she spat back. “She’s dangerous, Cayo!”
“You think I don’t know that? You barely even know her!”
“I know her style well enough to guess she probably wanted something in exchange for those blueprints.”
Cayo hesitated, and something in her twisted. She had thought there would be no more secrets between them, that the last of their barriers were in the process of being demolished. Apparently she had thought wrong.
She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him in close. “What did you give her, Cayo? What did she want in exchange for the blueprints?”
The muscle at his jaw twitched. They stared at each other for a silent moment.
“She wanted Boon’s location,” he said at last, his voice hoarse. “She knows he was part of the counterfeit scheme. Now that she’s the Slum Queen, she wants to show her followers that she can deliver justice, unlike her father. And from what I saw, her justice is slow and thorough.”
Amaya let him go and backed away, her head pounding. “You… You told her where he was?”
“What else was I supposed to do?” he demanded. “Boon ruined our lives, Amaya! Yours most of all. I’m sorry you’re not going to be the one to kill him, but I’d think you would be glad he was finally getting the punishment he deserves.”
Amaya was going to be sick. She turned away from him, the horrors of the night building up inside her until it was all poisonous black bile. She gagged and caught herself against the wall as the room spun around her.
“Amaya—”
“Don’t touch me,” she growled before he could take another step toward her. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“What are you talking about?” His voice was rising, growing more and more agitated. “Have you forgotten what Boon has done? The city is like this partly because of him! You were just as ready as I was to make him pay. So why in the hells—”
“He’s my father!”
The words rang against the walls. Cayo took a step back as if they had physically shoved him.
“What?” he whispered.
“He’s my father. Arun Chandra.” Saying it out loud was like taking a hammer and chisel to her heart, breaking it open even more. She thought back to her family’s portrait, to the man he had been—the one she still wished was inside him. She blinked tears from her eyes as she stared Cayo down. “You told Romara where he is. You lied to me. Again.”
Cayo struggled for words. “You… You didn’t tell me. When did you find out?”
Guilt finally began to gnaw at her. “In Baleine. The night of the high-stakes tournament.”
His eyes widened before an incredulous laugh escaped him. “And you didn’t think this was important to share?”
Amaya shook her head, not to answer him but because she had no idea what she should have done. She wanted to blame Cayo, did blame Cayo, but this was her fault, too.
Maybe they would never learn what real trust was. Maybe this was their curse,
to forever fall back into their old ways.
Amaya snatched the pack from the bed and slung it over her shoulders.
“Where are you going?” Cayo demanded.
“To warn Boon. To find Liesl and Deadshot and save Remy.”
Cayo reached under the bed to retrieve his own pack. “I’ll go with you.”
“No.” She turned back to him, her heart twisting at the careful way he held his pack to his chest, the same way she had held her family’s portrait in her mother’s Vault.
“No?” he repeated, as if he’d never learned the word.
“There’s…” Her voice broke, and she forced herself to swallow. “There’s no way this can work, Cayo. How can we stand beside each other when we can’t even trust each other?”
He held his pack tighter, as if afraid she would snatch it away. She expected him to protest, to be angry, to plead, but he said nothing. He knew the truth of it, too—that there could be nothing good between them so long as they remained the merchant’s son and the girl with too many names.
With the last of her strength, Amaya turned away from him, leaving the inn and Cayo Mercado behind.
She scoured the Shanty Sector until she found a small crowd outside of a run-down hut.
Muscling her way past them, she burst through the door and knew immediately she was too late.
There were signs of struggle everywhere, from the overturned table to the broken wine bottle on the floor. A splash of dark blood had puddled near the door, cold and dry. The smell of old sweat and sea water permeated the room, familiar and unmistakable.
Romara had already gotten her hands on Boon.
Amaya sank to the floor as the curious citizens began to meander away. Remy was taken. Liesl and Deadshot were gone. Cayo had lied to her. Their mission had crumpled all around them.
And all she had to show for it was a bundle of cloth.
She opened the pack and stared at the tan fabric, wondering what to do. How she could fix this.
But maybe this was how it was always supposed to be: her alone, abandoned by her own city, just like her father. Loveless and betrayed, hatred hardening her until she became the worst version of herself.
When her tears came again, she let them run freely, her chest shaking with sobs. She had no one left to hide them from.
SOLAS: You cannot deny you owe me more than you can pay.
BRAEGAN: What, then, would you have from me?
SOLAS: Your blood, sir.
—THE MERCHANT’S WORTH, A PLAY FROM THE RAIN EMPIRE
As Cayo climbed the hill to Mercado Manor, his nose began to bleed.
“Damn it.” He held his sleeve to his nose, catching the thin trickle. His head had been fuzzy since they’d returned to Moray, a pressure in his ears and in his chest that threatened to turn into a headache.
If Soria were with him, she would tell him it had something to do with the weather. That his body was simply acclimating to the humidity of Moray again. She would have taken a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it to his nose, fussing even while she teased him.
But Soria wasn’t here, and Cayo’s sleeve now bore a red stain. Sniffing, his mouth and throat tasting of copper, he continued on to the manor.
It was dark still, the sky a couple of hours from lightening to dawn. It was difficult to believe he had been involved in a heist tonight, that just a few hours ago they had been running for their lives. His legs prickled with an unpleasant ache as he climbed the hill on sore feet, the only thing he had to show for what they had gone through.
Remy had been taken, and Liesl and Deadshot had either been caught as well or gone off to secure a safe place to hide. Amaya’s mother’s Vault had led to nothing but another dead end, more questions without answers.
And Amaya had left him for good.
Cayo’s hands tightened around the straps of his pack. He couldn’t say what he felt more, anger or shame. He’d had his role to play in this, same as her. Again they had arrived in the place they always found themselves: bitter, scorned, uncertain.
He tried to tell himself it was a good thing, cutting himself away from her. But Soria’s ghost shook her head and sighed at him, told him he would never learn.
At the crest of the hill, he paused to catch his breath. The manor was dark and silent. He’d expected to feel something more, looking at it—to be flooded with memories, to have his heart swell with all the things that were no longer his.
He didn’t expect to feel nothing at all. To gaze upon his childhood home with a blankness that terrified him, as if it were a thing already long dead.
Cayo wasn’t entirely sure why he had come here. When Amaya had left him in that inn, he’d spent a long time contemplating what to do. He could go back to Romara, but what was the point? She had what she’d wanted from him; he had nothing left to offer.
If only Amaya had told him about Boon, he could have understood why she hadn’t shown up to the high-stakes game. He could have talked to her about what it was like to have a father who wasn’t who you thought they were. He could have…
Cayo sighed and closed his eyes, let the night breeze play with his hair. He was so tired. There were too many things he could have done, and hadn’t. What was the point of brooding over them?
When he opened his eyes, he knew what he should do: He should scatter Soria’s ashes into the sea, like he had intended.
But the manor called to him like a grave marker with a name he couldn’t make out. He approached the front doors, taking in the white marble columns, the unlit iron chandelier hanging crookedly above his head. He expected the doors to be locked, but they opened easily.
As soon as he stepped inside, his foot connected with the bottom of a cracked vase. It rolled away from him, curling an arc across a floor littered with debris.
Cayo reached for Jazelle. He held his breath and listened, but the manor was silent. Even the tall clock against the right wall was quiet, its glass shattered and its gears left unwound.
Who had done this? Enraged citizens? Romara? His father?
He carefully picked his way across the antechamber, stepping between piles of broken pottery. It was as if someone had taken all the plates from the kitchen and smashed them here, where they would make the most noise. The art on the walls was crooked, a couple of the lower pieces thrown to the floor and snapped down the middle. He spotted Soria’s favorite: a painting of a mermaid curled on a rock, calling to a distant ship.
Cayo crept up the stairs, his footfalls muffled by the green carpet runner. The hallway above was dark and quiet. He went to the left first, his body automatically taking him to his bedroom as if he were merely sneaking in after a night in the Vice Sector. He eased the door open, and his chest clenched at the familiar sight of his bed, his wardrobe, his bookcase. Empty.
The last time he had been here, Boon had taken him and Soria hostage. Frowning, Cayo closed the door behind him and backtracked down the hall.
Just the idea of returning to Soria’s room was enough to weaken his knees. Cayo took a deep breath and walked in that direction anyway, wondering if there was anything left of hers.
He slowed to a stop. A faint light flickered from under the closed door of his father’s office.
Heart hammering, Cayo turned the knob while his other hand rested on Jazelle.
The lanterns were lit, casting an erratic glow over the room. The light gleamed against the bottle of alcohol on his father’s desk, already mostly empty.
And in the chair behind the desk, Kamon Mercado sat staring at the opposite wall, not even bothering to look up as his son stood before him.
His father was far from the man Cayo remembered and had respected, the one who was always put together, pristine, powerful. Now Kamon’s hair was in disarray, his clothes stained and torn. His face was harder, leaner, and there was even a smudge of dirt on his cheek.
He looked… broken. Pitiful.
Cayo waited to be acknowledged. Waited to know what to say to him. His hand neve
r left the gun, the pack he wore suddenly twice as heavy.
“Soria is dead,” Cayo said at last.
Kamon gave the slightest flinch, closed his eyes. But still he said nothing. Hatred boiled in Cayo’s chest, burning up his throat.
“You killed her,” Cayo whispered, blinking back sudden tears. “Your counterfeits are what did this. Did you know?”
Kamon reached halfheartedly for the bottle on his desk, dragging it closer. “Not until it was too late.”
Cayo’s teeth chattered, and he clenched his jaw so tight he thought something might crack.
Murderer. Monster.
“You really have nothing else to say?” Cayo demanded, his voice hoarse. “Your daughter is ash, and all you can do is sit there and ignore me?”
Kamon raised the bottle as if to drink, then lowered it again, not even having the energy for that simple action. A tear fell down his cheek. “What is there to say?”
Cayo’s vision flared crimson. His mind went blank, and when he came back to himself he was grabbing his father by the collar and punching him in the eye.
Kamon toppled over along with his chair. The bottle fell from his hand, spilling its contents onto the floor. Cayo grabbed him again and drove his fist into his temple and then his jaw. His knuckles barked with pain, splitting open and leaving smears of blood on his father’s face.
When Cayo released him, Kamon slumped to the floor, hair hanging in his face. Cayo staggered to his feet, panting.
“Now do you have anything to say?” Cayo growled.
Kamon spat out blood and finally looked at him. One of his eyes was already swelling, the other dark and bloodshot. If there was remorse in his expression, Cayo couldn’t see it. All he saw was a broken man who had already accepted his fate.
Cayo grabbed Jazelle and pointed the barrel at his father. He cocked the hammer back with his thumb, marginally satisfied by the widening of Kamon’s uninjured eye.
Then Kamon laughed, a low, faltering sound.
“Go ahead, then,” his father whispered. “Finish it.”
Cayo breathed hard, trying to still the tremor in his hand. He sighted the barrel on his father’s chest, wanting nothing so much as to strike his heart and be done with it, give Soria the vengeance she was due.
