Scavenge the Stars

by Tara Sim

  The next day, the debt collector had come for her.

  Amaya opened her eyes. Her mother’s behavior had confused her, scared her, made her wonder what was wrong.

  Now she knew. That had been the day her mother had sold her to the Brackish.

  Slowly, Amaya got to her feet. She felt mechanical. Distant from her body.

  But she was no longer hollow. Cayo Mercado perhaps did not warrant her revenge, but she knew someone else who did.

  In Viariche, she had once found Boon in a decrepit tavern by the docks. He had been playing a game that involved throwing knives at a crudely drawn target on the wall, eliciting taunts and shouts of encouragement from the other patrons whenever he landed a hit.

  Amaya had watched at a distance, observing how he acted much drunker than he actually was. Manipulation; he always seemed to be in the midst of it.

  He’d finally noticed her as he paused to take a swig of his drink and rolled his eyes.

  “You wanna compete?” he asked, gesturing to the target embedded with knives and daggers.

  “No thanks.”

  Boon had squinted at her. “Couldn’t sleep?”

  She’d shifted uneasily on her feet. He read people entirely too well.

  “Boon,” she’d said under the cheers of the tavern dwellers and the thud of steel against wood, “how can you tell who to hurt and who to spare?”

  The man had recoiled a bit, as if the question were a fist aimed at his head. But he hadn’t dismissed it. Instead, he had taken long pulls of his drink as he blearily watched the next round of knife-tossing.

  “I think you know who to hurt when the hurt they’ve given you makes nothin’ else they do matter,” he said slowly, slurring his words. “When you can’t see them as a person, but just a vessel for your hatred, your pain. Then you know.”

  That’s how Amaya came to find the vessel of her pain pissing against the wall of an alleyway. Christano Melchor swayed as he did his business, his aim wide and sloppy. He chuckled to himself, as if pleased with his mess.

  When Liesl had done the work of finding all the debt collectors on Zharo’s list, she had used Avi to find their most frequented spots in the city to ensure that they all got the invitation from the countess. Unlike the others, who visited a wide array of dens, Melchor only went to an alehouse called the Rooster.

  Which was how Amaya came to be crouched on its roof in the middle of the night, gazing down at Melchor in disgust. The knife she had brought with her to the inlet was in hand, which she had used to split the tighter seams of her dress in order to climb up the building. She was still barefoot; her slippers wouldn’t have given her the right traction for the climb.

  And she couldn’t afford to lose her balance tonight.

  Keeping quiet in the shadows, Amaya swung off the ledge of the Rooster and plopped down into the alleyway. It stank of urine and old vomit, and she had to resist the urge to gag as the odor momentarily overwhelmed her.

  When Melchor turned to head back inside for another round, he started at the sight of her. She knew she had to look ragged and scraped, a haunting half-bathed in shadow. He didn’t seem too well off himself, his jaw carelessly stubbled and his eyes bruised from lack of sleep.

  “What’s this?” he slurred, his breath carrying the scent of cheap ale. “Little pigeon wants to steal my money?”

  “I don’t want your money,” she said, her voice low. He had only met her as Countess Yamaa, with her lighter, more enunciated way of speaking; she doubted he would recognize her with her hair curled from seawater and her dress frayed and dirty. “I want you to repent.”

  Melchor squinted at her, still swaying on his feet. “What’d you say? Repent? For what?”

  “For the lives you ruined,” she growled. “All those children you gleefully shipped off just to get some coin in your pocket. How does it feel, knowing that you likely sent them to their deaths? To torture and labor and trauma?”

  He stared at her, as if thinking it over. Then he let out a loud belch.

  “How’s it feel? Feels like nothin’,” he slurred. “Each of those soft little heads paid for a month’s worth of drinks. Best job I ever had.”

  Amaya breathed hard through her nose, trying not to shake. She again thought of her mother weeping as she held her, the day before this man came to shepherd her to seven years of torment.

  How could you sell me? she demanded of her mother’s ghost. How could you hand me over to this man?

  She bared her teeth and tightened her hand around her knife’s hilt. It glinted in the starlight, and Melchor’s eyes widened.

  “Whoa, now,” he said, hands raised before him. “Put that sticker away ’fore you take an eye out.”

  “It’s not your eyes I’m after.”

  She launched herself at him. She knocked him into the wall of the alley hard enough to wind him, but he was a grown man nearly twice her size and had no trouble shoving her off so that he could scramble for his own weapon. Melchor brandished a small boot knife at her, his hair beginning to fall out of its queue.

  “Just turn around and go home,” Melchor warned her. “I don’t want none of this tonight.”

  Amaya ignored him and rushed in again.

  Use surprise to your advantage, Boon had taught her. Speed, ducking and weaving, feinting—they’re all the friends you need in a fight.

  She ducked under Melchor’s wild swipe and slashed him on the thigh. He yelped and backed away, limping. Amaya faced him again, knife lifted before her to show off his blood along its edge.

  “The children you helped sell faced years of degradation,” she said. “Of hopelessness. They cried for their parents. They cried for someone to help them. Some died performing their work, and some—” Her voice broke. “Some chose to jump into the sea instead of facing one more day of it. You did that. You caused their suffering. My suffering.”

  He squinted at her again. “Your—”

  She didn’t give him time to finish—her nerves were screaming for action. She yelled and rushed in, blocking his arm and stabbing him between the ribs, angling up toward his heart, just as Boon had shown her.

  She wasn’t prepared for the jarringness of it, the way the blade glanced off bone and sank through muscle.

  He exhaled with a grunt, taking a few steps back. Amaya held on to his arm and walked with him, keeping her knife buried in his body, her grip turning slippery on the hilt.

  Her fingers wet and warm with his blood.

  She could feel his stuttering breaths on her face, his eyes wide and full of pain. Amaya flinched back, releasing her knife and scrambling away from him. Melchor uselessly pawed at the protruding hilt, the shirt around it dark and damp. The scent of his blood flooded the alley, metallic and rusty.

  “I hope you regret it,” she whispered. “The day you sold me to the Brackish.”

  He fell to his knees. His gaze was still on her, his mouth opening and closing uselessly.

  “Ah,” he sighed after a moment, sinking toward the ground. “Yeah, it’s you. I get it now. Should’ve just…done what I was told…”

  And then he fell over. Unmoving.

  Dead.

  Amaya stood there for what felt like hours, bathed in starlight and blood. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t look away from Melchor’s body. His eyes were still open, still looking at her, the flash of recognition now faded.

  His last words perched on her shoulders, echoing in her ears. Should’ve just done what I was told.

  What had he been told to do?

  A raucous sound from within the Rooster made her come back to herself. Amaya hurried forward and grabbed at the knife, trying to pull it out of his chest. It was slippery, and the body refused to give up the blade. She gritted her teeth and put her foot against his chest, yanking until it pulled free with a sickening squelch.

  She turned and threw up.

  She heaved until her stomach was sore and tears poured down her cheeks. She wiped her mouth against her wrist, shivering
despite the warmth of the night around her. Inside she was cold, frozen.

  Trust me, you don’t know what it means to kill a man—to have someone’s blood on your hands.

  Now she knew.

  She didn’t know how she got back to the estate. She just remembered staggering through the door and hearing someone gasp, and then the Water Bugs were there, asking if she was all right.

  “Did someone hurt you? Why were you in the city? What happened to your shoes?”

  Amaya saw Beetle—Fera—in the back, her eyes wide and fearful. She wanted to go over and hold the girl in her arms the way her mother had held her after she had sold Amaya to the debt collectors. She wanted to tell her that the man partly responsible for their suffering was gone.

  Then Liesl came and ushered her away, up to her room, where the knife was pried out of her tight fingers and her bloodied dress was shucked off of her. She was scrubbed clean and given a nightgown.

  She sat before the vanity as Liesl brushed out her hair, taking care of the tangles. Amaya couldn’t look at herself in the mirror. Her hands were buzzing, and it was silent in her mind, although she couldn’t stop smelling blood underneath the lavender of her soap.

  It reminded her of being on the Brackish, the way the odor of a fish’s innards could cling to her for days and weeks at a time. The infuriating knowledge that she couldn’t escape it—that she just had to live with it, tolerate it, until it became a part of her.

  Finally, Liesl asked, “Who?”

  Amaya closed her eyes. “Melchor.”

  Liesl set the brush down, sighing. “Amaya.”

  “Don’t lecture me.”

  “If anything, this is my fault. Perhaps I should have let you kill Zharo after all. Then you would have seen what a horrible mess it makes. Not just on yourself, but here.” She tapped Amaya’s temple.

  She swallowed. “I wanted…He had…”

  “I know.” Liesl came around and rubbed some lotion onto Amaya’s hands. It was scented with lemon. “But you need to keep an eye on the bigger picture. Zharo was found dead, and now a former debt collector who sold to Zharo’s ship. It’s going to look suspicious, and we can’t afford any more obstacles.”

  Amaya nodded that she understood. Liesl moved away, then came back with a sealed envelope.

  “This came today,” Liesl said, handing it to her. “It’s from Boon.”

  Amaya hesitated, her heart beating sorely against her chest. She took the envelope from Liesl and broke it open, reading the short message inside.

  Heard about Zharo. Don’t get too cocky. Remember what you’re there for, and how you got there in the first place. If the countess is found out to be a fraud, it won’t only be your head on the line, as mine’ll be sitting on the pike next to yours.

  Our goal is Mercado. Focus on the son and getting him wrapped around your little finger.

  I can expose you at any time, Amaya Chandra. It’s up to you whether or not to make me.

  —B

  “What does he say?” Liesl asked.

  Amaya set the letter down, steadying her voice so as not to give away her rising panic. “As if you didn’t tamper with the seal.”

  Liesl smiled. “Guilty. He’s right, though. Mercado needs to be our only target from now on, and the young heir is the best way to get to him.”

  Amaya thought back to that afternoon, swimming with Cayo and feeling that strange, unexplainable connection. The way his eyes had lit up when she had won their race, the smile on his face at the sound of her laugh.

  She didn’t want him to become a casualty of her and Boon’s revenge. But what other way was there to strike Mercado where it hurt most?

  There was still a bit of Melchor’s blood under her thumbnail. Scraping at it, she turned to Liesl.

  “Get some paper,” she said. “We’re inviting Cayo Mercado to dinner.”

  Women with knives are sharper than any mind.

  —KHARIAN PROVERB

  The scrapes on his hands and feet throbbed, but Cayo barely noticed. He was still swept up in the dusk spell between him and the countess, the diamond shine of the water and the warm kiss of the air that dried him off as he climbed out of the rocky inlet. It made him feel the way that looking at her felt: as if possibilities were fruit he could pluck off trees, sweet and ripe and easily within his grasp.

  He carried that feeling with him as he walked deeper into the city, the key he’d lifted from Romara heavy in his pocket. The lantern light and the deep blue of the night sky kept his spirits lifted until he got closer to the Vice Sector. Then dread began to seep back into him like water into a porous rock, reminding him that most things in this world weren’t possible after all.

  Such as sneaking into the Slum King’s office without being noticed.

  Cayo leaned against a building on the outer fringes of the Vice Sector, chewing nervously on his lip. He could already hear the din of debauchery nearby, nipping at his blood and making his finger-tips buzz.

  That’s not why you’re here, he told himself. But his body so thoroughly remembered this place it was like muscle memory, phantom pangs and reflexes that had no place in the outside world.

  Sometimes he wondered if the real Cayo existed only in the Vice Sector. The Cayo who didn’t care what anyone thought, who wasn’t afraid to get his clothes dirty and his hair mussed, who always had someone eager on his arm. Perhaps more than the high of winning, he missed the sheer freedom of it, stripping off the gilded varnish of the merchant’s son and revealing the rusted foundation beneath.

  He couldn’t be that Cayo again. He couldn’t afford to be. Soria needed him, and his father needed him. They both preferred this Cayo: shining and bland and obedient.

  Countess Yamaa didn’t seem to prefer that Cayo. She’d seemed to prefer who he was in the inlet: messy and flawed and honest.

  Gritting his teeth, he pushed off the building and followed the familiar path to Diamond Street. The crush of people strangely calmed him, and he let them push him down the street like a school of fish, passing jugglers and musicians and even a Kharian fire swallower.

  The Scarlet Arc was on a side street the locals called the Gauntlet—tourists only knew it by its original name, Malachite Street—as the dens there were infamous for their abysmally low chance at payout. Everyone knew it was because the owners and their dealers cheated, but that was part of the fun: Could a cheater cheat another cheater?

  In a sense, Cayo thought, that was exactly what he was trying to do with the Slum King. At the sight of the red sign hanging above the Arc, fear swooped low in his belly at the idea of even catching a glimpse of him.

  But he had to do this. For Bas. For Soria. For himself.

  He waited until a group of drunken toughs walked out the door to slip in past them. He was immediately assaulted by the crimson walls and dripping red chandeliers, pressing in against him like the walls of a bleeding heart.

  His own heart pounded in his chest as he kept to the shadows, staying out of eyesight. It was probably pointless, given how loud and distracted everyone was as they tried their best at the card and roulette tables. Still, he hugged the far wall and followed it to the back, the smell of strong, cheap alcohol burning in his nose.

  Cayo hurried into the hallway leading to Salvador’s office. He pressed his ear against the door; nothing. The Slum King was usually out this early in the night and likely wouldn’t return until midnight or later. He only had a short window in which to do this.

  Fumbling with the key, he breathed out in relief as the lock clicked under his hand and he could push inside. As he closed the door soundlessly behind him, he regarded the office as a soldier would survey a battlefield, calculating his best chance at survival.

  The only thing that would help him now was haste. So he began to pore over the bookshelf, pulling out tomes and flipping through their pages. He found secret compartments containing drugs, and even a volume on alchemy, which he eagerly skimmed through—but there was nothing in its contents about th
e manufacture of counterfeit coins.

  He turned to the desk and froze. The jar with Sébastien’s eyes was still there.

  The Slum King was using it as a paperweight.

  The breath shuddered in Cayo’s chest. He thought back to Bas on the dock, the bandage around his eyes and the fury in the set of his mouth. The softness of his cheek under Cayo’s lips.

  His hand hovered above the jar. He wanted to smash it, or take it with him—he wasn’t sure which. After a moment of painful deliberation, he turned instead to the desk drawers and began to pull them open. His chest was tight and hot, his eyes stinging, but he had to put that aside and focus. Once he got the evidence he needed, the Slum King would get what he deserved. But all he found were invoices for the Arc, shipment supplies, signed transactions with other dens—

  “Is the puppy sniffing for a treat?”

  Cayo jumped and slammed the desk drawer shut, banging his finger in the process. He cursed and shook it out as Romara looked on from the doorway, unimpressed.

  “I knew you had to be the one who took my key,” she said as she closed the door behind her, the words menacing on her black-painted lips. “I think I underestimated you, my dear fiancé.”

  Cayo held his throbbing finger, watching her cautiously as she approached the desk. He had entertained the notion of the Slum King catching him, but Romara was a whole other species of threat.

  Salvador was somewhat predictable. His daughter was not.

  Romara stopped on the other side of her father’s desk and crossed her arms. She wore a sleeveless red dress with a scalloped hem and a low neckline. An opal pendant sat in the hollow of her throat, and he wondered if she had received it from a recent admirer.

  “I’m feeling generous today,” she drawled, “so I’ll give you three chances to explain yourself.” Then she sniffed and furrowed her brow. “Did you just crawl out of the ocean?”

  “I…” Cayo’s mind was still trying to make sense of the situation he had stumbled into. His thoughts were jumbled like a rat’s nest: Countess Yamaa counterfeit Soria the taste of seawater medicine Romara Bas’s eyes Countess Yamaa—