Scavenge the Stars

by Tara Sim

  Cayo took a deep breath and leaned forward in his chair. “I want to return to the tables.”

  Salvador laughed softly. “Has the itch finally come crawling back?”

  Cayo ignored that. “I need back in.”

  Fast as a bullet, a pocketknife flicked into the Slum King’s hand. Cayo flinched, but Salvador only reached into a drawer and pulled out a cigarillo, cutting off its tip with the knife and lighting it on the candle burning on his desk. He took a puff and leaned back with a deep exhalation. Smoke drifted through the study like fog, inching toward the brass chandelier above Cayo’s head. The murmur and laughter of the Arc’s usual crowd drifted through the closed door in the taut silence.

  “Not a chance,” he said at last.

  “What? Why?” Cayo scooted to the edge of his chair, all too aware that the Slum King hadn’t yet put his knife away. “I was one of your best winners at Scatterjack and Threefold. I know the dealers, I’ve networked within the casinos—”

  “You were one of the best until you started getting reckless.” Another drag of his cigarillo. His eyes never left Cayo’s. “Until the thrill of it made you think south of your brain.”

  Cayo clenched and unclenched his hands. Chasing the high of winning had urged him to the casinos, to the gambling dens, to the racetracks—anyplace he could drop a sum in the hopes of doubling or even tripling it. It had made him drunk without a drop of liquor, convincing him that he was unbeatable, unstoppable.

  “My time away from the dens has cleared my head,” he said stiffly. “I’m ready to play again.”

  The Slum King continued to survey him through his cigarillo smoke. “Why?”

  “I…I need the money.”

  “You’ll end up losing more than you gain. Desperation makes for poor decisions. You didn’t fold when you needed to, and you didn’t cheat when you had to. You’ve lost my trust, Cayo.”

  Once, these words would have devastated him. Now they just filled him with a sense of panic. His only chance was slipping away.

  “Please.” He couldn’t hide the urgency in his voice. Cayo was unwilling to draw Soria into this, but it was better to be truthful with the Slum King than get caught out in a lie. “I need medicine I can’t afford. For ash fever. Please, I’ll do anything.”

  The Slum King paused at this, cigarillo halfway to his lips. He toyed with his knife, spinning it in his fingers. Then, finally, he snapped it closed.

  “Anything,” Salvador repeated, the word slow and wicked on his tongue. It poured out like pomegranate syrup into a glass of Blood and Sand, a drink so sweet it disguised how strong the alcohol in it was until it came over you like a wave.

  Salvador rapped his knuckles on the desk. The door to the office opened, and one of his staff members leaned in.

  “Fetch my daughter.” When the man withdrew, the Slum King turned back to Cayo, a thin smile playing at his lips. There was no hiding the hint of cruelty in that smile, nor the hunger in his eyes.

  “It seems people are always coming to me to tell me what they want, not what they can offer me. I’ll give you the money you need, but it won’t be won at the tables.”

  “What do you mean?” Cayo asked, his shoulders tense. Whatever game the Slum King was playing, he didn’t know the rules.

  Before the Slum King could answer, Romara herself strutted in. She was dressed all in black today, her bodice low-cut and formfitting, with long tapered sleeves smudged with dust and glitter. Her skirt was plump with tulle and torn lace, her boot heels so sharp they could likely kill a man. In fact, Cayo was willing to bet they had.

  “I see the puppy is back,” she said, quickly readjusting her breasts and fanning out her skirt. She blinked lashes spidery and limp with mascara at him. He’d seen her do the same thing a million times before, but it sent a flicker of worry through him now. She was on full alert. “Is he going to play again?”

  “Hardly.” The Slum King sat back, crossing his arms with that same catlike smile on his marked face. “He’s just become your fiancé.”

  Romara’s smile froze in place.

  Cayo tried to laugh, but only a dry cough came out. “You can’t be serious.”

  The Slum King eyed him through a veil of smoke. “You’ll marry my daughter and give her—and by extension, me—the status we deserve in this wretched city.”

  Cayo’s whole body went cold. Marry the Slum King’s daughter?

  Marry Romara?

  The thought was so absurd it didn’t seem plausible. It wasn’t just the way she drank to the point of becoming feral; as smart as she was, a sharp cruelty ran through her very being. He knew how she enjoyed letting her father’s men deal with those she didn’t favor. He had once seen a young man dragged out of a gambling den for accidentally spilling his drink on Romara’s favorite dress. His bloated body had been washed ashore two days later.

  “No,” Cayo said. “Absolutely not.” Romara looked as shocked as he felt. Cayo had spent enough time with Romara to know what was an act and what was real, how she determined what pawns to sacrifice in the ongoing game of power she played with her father. And she wasn’t acting now.

  “You want to marry one of my sons instead? I’ll warn you, they’re both dense as rocks.”

  “I’m not marrying anybody!”

  “Do you want the money, Cayo?” Salvador’s voice had gone soft, his eyes half-lidded. Cayo shuddered, knowing the first stage of the Slum King’s rage when he saw it.

  Of course he wanted the money. He needed it. Soria needed it.

  But Romara…

  “Ash fever isn’t cheap,” the Slum King continued, tapping stray embers off the end of his cigarillo. “And from what I hear, without medication the disease advances rather quickly.”

  Cayo was having trouble breathing. But the Slum King was right. Soria was dying. Every minute he wasted here was a minute she was suffering back at home.

  He needed the medicine.

  He had no choice.

  Cayo glanced at Romara again, and their eyes locked. Sometimes, when he wasn’t quite expecting it, he glimpsed a girl who wanted more than what her father had made of her. But she hid that girl under heavy makeup and a vicious grin, always playing the game she knew best, the one that was her family’s true inheritance: manipulation.

  She gave him a barely perceivable nod. Understanding that he had to follow whatever act she had in store, he inclined his head slightly.

  When he nodded in acceptance to the Slum King, Romara squealed and plopped down on his lap, nuzzling his head with hers. She smelled like sweat and dying roses.

  “I’ll be the best wife,” she purred, tracing circles over his chest. “I can’t cook or clean, but I’m good at other things.” She was enjoying this far too much for his comfort.

  “I…I’ll need time,” Cayo croaked. “To arrange it with my father. Romara needs to be properly introduced, a contract needs to be signed, a dowry secured….”

  Stall, was all he could think.

  “The money for medicine should be dowry enough.” Salvador adjusted the silk tie at the base of his neck. “But I’ll give you time to settle things with your father. Just as long as you don’t go back on your word.” His thumb moved almost lovingly across the hilt of his knife. “It would be a shame for a different fate to befall your sister, wouldn’t it, Cayo?”

  Cayo momentarily stopped breathing, the back of his neck damp with sweat. Keeping his eyes locked on the Slum King, he knew without a doubt that there would be no getting out of this. Money or no money, he had entangled himself too deep.

  Romara laughed softly near his ear, still sitting on Cayo’s lap like she owned him.

  “Yes, sir,” he whispered.

  “I’m glad you understand,” Salvador crooned. “Because you know what happens to those who try to cross me.”

  The Slum King nudged aside the candle on his desk, revealing a jar that had been half-concealed behind it. It was filled with a pale liquid, and in that liquid floated two eyeballs of
the most beautiful shade of bluish green.

  Cayo stared in horror at the jar.

  Sébastien’s eyes stared back.

  Court Ruling: The accused has been found guilty of the following—smuggling, robbery, arson, and minor treason. The court hereby rules that defendant shall be sentenced to Landless status immediately following prosecution.

  —COURT RECORD FROM JUDICIARY LEDGERS WITHIN THE REPUBLIC OF REHAN

  Silverfish slept in fits and starts, her dreams rarely drifting beyond the boundaries of her aching body. Every time her eyelids fluttered she caught brief flashes of light. The sound of waves rushed in the distance, and when she tried to move she could only twitch, sending pain along her limbs.

  Eventually, she was able to open her eyes for longer than half a second. The sun was a vicious eye staring down at her, and she squinted at the brightness of the white sand around her. The world seemed washed out, the color leached like dye from a shirt laundered too many times.

  She tried to roll over and gasped in pain. Her arms were heavy and sore, her legs deadweight. And her head. It was pounding with a sickly beat, like a funerary march. She barely lifted herself on her elbows before vomiting.

  She had first thought she’d washed up onto an island, but when she lifted her head she realized it was a small atoll. It curved in an almost perfect semicircle around a shimmering blue lagoon, like a crescent moon fallen to earth. A handful of palms stood stubbornly along the south side, not too far from where she had been washed up on the atoll’s soft white sand.

  Silverfish rolled onto her back and groaned. Everything hurt.

  But she was alive. Once again, she had survived.

  She was hot and sticky, sea salt clinging to her skin and hair. Her tongue was swollen and dry in her mouth, the back of her throat burning with the need for water. A sickening shade of purple swam behind her eyelids—the blue of the sea mixed with the red of her blood.

  After a minute to gather her strength, she crawled to the edge of the sand, toward the lagoon. The water was clear, and she could see where the sand descended into a black pit toward the middle. She cupped some water in her hand and tasted it, then spat it right back out. Salt water.

  Damn it.

  The shore of the atoll was stubbled with rocks and remnants of coral. Clinging to those rocks and coral were strange scallop-like creatures. Silverfish moved closer to inspect them. Their flesh was a delicate pink, and they were soft and spongy to the touch.

  Brinies. Once considered a delicacy in Moray, they had been outlawed years ago after guests at a duke’s dinner party had been fed a bad batch. Most of the guests had died of the poison they had unknowingly ingested.

  She couldn’t risk eating them, then. But still, their discovery surprised her. She didn’t know much about them other than their reputation and that they were notoriously difficult to find. The fact that they would be here, on this little forgotten atoll, seemed like a terrible omen.

  “Ah, I see the monsters didn’t eat you.”

  Silverfish turned quickly, her head pounding with a violent protest.

  Boon. He was dripping wet, wearing a white shirt and a pair of cutoff trousers. “So you took my advice,” he said with a little salute that made no sense to her. “I knew you looked smart.”

  “Where did you come from?” she rasped, her throat raw from salt water.

  “I’m about to show you.” He tossed something to her; it landed on the sand between them. Her shucker. “I owe you again, Silverfish.”

  Anger and confusion fought inside her, but eventually anger won out. “You were supposed to wait until I’d left the ship to escape. The captain knew I helped you.”

  Boon shrugged. “I did warn you to jump ship. Not my fault you lingered.”

  “He tried to kill me,” she growled.

  “Looks as though he failed, huh?” he said, unfazed by her anger. If anything, he sounded cheerful. “’Less I’m talking to a ghost.”

  He took a step forward, and she tensed. He stopped, waiting wordlessly for her permission to come closer. Eventually, she nodded, and he knelt beside her.

  “The bullet grazed you, looks like.” He indicated a tear in her sleeve she hadn’t even noticed. Nor had she felt the thin red line on her skin underneath the tear, but now that she knew it was there it began to burn. “You never feel it in the heat of the moment, do you?”

  She pulled away. “This is your fault. If I hadn’t rescued you, I would have been able to walk off the Brackish and go home. I would have…”

  She was about to say I would have seen my mother, but Captain Zharo’s words came rushing back. Like the wound on her arm, the delayed pain suddenly came all at once, stealing the air from her lungs. She doubled over, whimpering.

  “Whoa, what’s gotten into you?” Boon demanded, but she ignored him.

  My mother is dead. She died three years ago, and that bastard never told me.

  She was too dehydrated to cry, but her eyes still stung, her throat tightening with the force of her grief. She pounded a fist into the sand.

  “I’m going to kill him,” she seethed.

  “Hold on, now. Before we go killing anybody, there’s something I gotta show you.”

  Silverfish looked around the blank shore of the atoll. “Show me?” she repeated. “What could you possibly have to show me?”

  But he only gave her a funny little smile. “Think you can dive once more?”

  She didn’t want to dive. She needed to get off this atoll, to find Zharo and plunge a knife in his heart. Breathing heavily, she hauled herself to her feet, ready to swim to Moray if she had to.

  At the sight of what awaited her, she froze. There were whirlpools surrounding the atoll, the waves churning in slow, spinning cyclones.

  I see the monsters didn’t eat you. Boon had been talking about Usaad and Broma, the twin sea serpents said to lurk to the southeast of Moray. They were fabled to cause devastating maelstroms that sank countless ships. The riptide was connected to the whirlpools, which must have spat her out on the atoll.

  She was trapped.

  Slowly, she turned and stared at Boon, who grinned at her knowingly. She suddenly saw the situation for what it was: She belonged to him now, much in the same way he’d belonged to her on the Brackish. He was the only one who knew how to escape. She had to follow him.

  Silverfish grabbed her shucker and tucked it into her pocket. At least she had a weapon, however puny, in case this all went belly-up. As she finally approached the lagoon, Boon handed her a water skin. She greedily began to guzzle the freshwater, but he yanked it away before she could get more than three sips.

  “It’ll make you sick,” he admonished. “You ought to know that. You can have more when we get there.”

  “Where is there?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She followed him toward the middle of the lagoon, sucking the residue of water off her lips. The sand eventually fell away, and she swam slowly behind Boon, her arms leaden as she tried to keep up.

  “Ready?” he asked once they had made it to the middle of the lagoon. “Take a deep breath.”

  “I know how to dive,” she muttered, but he had already plunged into the water. She gulped a breath and followed.

  It almost felt like when she had jumped off the Brackish into the orange water, swimming down as far as she could go just because Boon had told her to. And now here she was, doing it again.

  Down and down, through layers of aquamarine water. They swam past a ring of coral, a reef naturally formed from whatever island had once occupied this lonely spot on the sea.

  Suddenly, a hole appeared in the reef, forming a natural corridor. Boon pressed on until he reached the end, where carved into the lava bed that had originally birthed this atoll was…

  A door?

  Boon pushed at a hatch-shaped hunk of rock, revealing a dark hole as it slid away. He beckoned her through first.

  Silverfish’s instincts told her to swim up instead of down. But B
oon insistently gestured again, so she quickly swam through the hole and waited for him to do the same. He led her through the dark until he tugged on her arm and pulled her up.

  They broke the surface of a pool. Silverfish, stunned, saw they’d surfaced inside a cave of blackish stone.

  “What in Trickster’s name is this place?” she demanded.

  Boon hauled himself onto a lip of dark rock and helped her stand. “Back on the ship, you called me Landless. You weren’t entirely wrong.”

  When a person committed crimes against their country or people, they were sometimes sentenced to become Landless, exiled from their homes and blacklisted in other empires. Some of them were also escapees of debtor ships. Their only resort was to either roam the seas or find a hidden community of other Landless.

  “This is a Landless comm,” she guessed.

  “For simplicity’s sake, yeah, it is.” Boon wrung out his shirt. “Come on. The others will wanna meet you.”

  She once again followed him. She felt as if she were half-asleep, and there was a small part of her that didn’t particularly care what happened to her now.

  Her mother was dead. There was no one left in the world to love her.

  There was only the promise of retribution.

  The caverns they walked through were cramped and impossibly dark, the rock columns on either side damp and made of a black stonelike material. Boon kept clicking his tongue, and Silverfish was reminded of how a bat used sound to map out its surroundings. She wondered how much time he’d spent in darkness, alone.

  The columns eventually opened up to a larger cavern with a lantern swinging from an unseen rope, water dripping down the walls like miniature waterfalls, glittering hunks of fluorite embedded in the rock. Stalactites branched downward in varying lengths, a few stalagmites reaching up toward them as if seeking to become one.

  Beyond the forest of stalagmites, a series of wide natural arches in the rock walls led into caverns—rooms—filled with makeshift furniture and hammocks.