Scavenge the Stars

by Tara Sim

  “Am I?” he said softly. “Or are you choosing to ignore the truth? Whoever this person is, you must have been working with them for some time. You must have had some indication of what they were doing.”

  Even as she opened her mouth to insist she had no idea what he meant, she thought back to the barrels of gold in the Landless comm, the unexplainable wealth at Boon’s fingertips. She had never been able to figure out how such riches were possible for a Landless man with nothing else to his name, and though she’d asked, she had never been given a straight answer.

  Horror bloomed in her gut. Seeing it spread across her face, Mercado smiled coldly.

  It couldn’t be true…and yet, she realized, it must be. The last several months blurred together in her mind: Boon teaching her a move to take down an enemy, laughing at the extraordinary amount of frill on one of her dresses, betting her a handful of gold she couldn’t steal a woman’s parasol.

  Boon luring her to work for him, how easily he had manipulated her the same way he did all his victims.

  She had constantly told herself not to trust him, not to let her guard down so easily around him. And yet, she had. She had somehow convinced herself that this man, who had sat before a fire and told her the story of the siege of Gravaen, was more than just a drunken thief. He was a fellow countryman who had been scorned and spat on, who craved vengeance as much as she did.

  He was someone that an orphan like herself could latch on to for protection.

  But this…this was not protection. This was throwing her into a pit of vipers armed with nothing but lies.

  Knowledge comes with a price.

  She dropped the file, its papers spreading out in a fan. Mercado fashioned his expression into one of false sympathy.

  “I understand the difficult position you’ve been put in,” he said in that calm, measured voice. “As I said, if you just give me a name, I can help you. Not only for justice, but because I know my son cares for you.”

  Amaya felt her heartbeat in her jaw. She remained silent, although she couldn’t understand why. If Boon had tricked her, as she had always known he was capable of doing, then why did she continue to protect him?

  And why did she feel so hurt?

  She couldn’t answer him, didn’t know how. Instead she looked down at the scattered papers, moving her dry tongue until she could speak again. “These files…How did you know they were in this Vault? Is that why you hate the man who owned it?”

  He seemed surprised by the subject change. “One could say that. The man who owned this Vault was a villain. A criminal, and a thief, and a liar of the highest order who did his absolute best to slander my name and take down my family. He was the sort of man who wouldn’t hesitate to take his life and abandon his own family rather than face punishment for his crimes.”

  Boon’s words from the Brackish came creeping back: Every man carries his sins a different way.

  “He wasn’t a criminal!” she shouted before she could stop herself, her voice ringing off the metal of the Vault. “And he didn’t take his own life, you killed him!”

  The silence that fell was dense with shock. Amaya was unable to look away from Mercado, and likewise, he seemed morbidly fascinated by her, slowly putting together the puzzle pieces in his mind.

  “I see,” he said at last, soft and sneering. “Good luck proving that, ‘Countess.’ I may have had to do that eventually, just to shut him up. But in the end, I didn’t need to.” He approached her, his polished shoes stepping over the years’ worth of blackmail her father had curated. “You believe your father was murdered? You might want to double-check with whoever told you that was true, because they’re lying. In fact, they probably know how your father truly died.” He leaned in closer, his cologne smelling of ambergris, a weak imitation of the sea. “They’re probably the one who killed him.”

  Amaya couldn’t move. She was shaking, unable to withdraw the knife at her wrist. He was so close, all she had to do was thrust up…. But then Melchor’s face swam across her vision, the sickly sound of her blade in his flesh.

  She thought of what Cayo would say if he saw his father’s blood on her hands.

  Mercado was behind all of this—he had to be—but a quiet voice in her mind reminded her how much information Boon possessed, and how much he had not disclosed to her. He had orchestrated all of this. He had known her father, and Mercado, too.

  Everything she had done up till now had been at his direction, his insistence.

  Because he had been using her to play a long con.

  All the fury, all the resentment, all the hatred she felt for the man before her shifted like a sail in the wind toward Boon.

  Mercado bent down to pick up the fallen papers. Tucking the file under his arm, he gave her another thin, unfeeling smile, knowing he had won.

  Amaya took a step back, then another. She was being pulled apart, twisted in opposite directions.

  What was she supposed to do?

  She did the only thing she could do: She turned and ran.

  “My offer still stands,” he called after her. “A name for your clemency!”

  Liar, he was a liar; he had killed her father and sold her to Captain Zharo and destroyed her family.

  But she didn’t know him, and she didn’t know Boon, either. She didn’t know anything.

  She was at the bottom of the dark ocean, under the crushing weight of water, with no way to tell if she was swimming up or down.

  You could ask any man on the street what the sweetest things in life are, and he will surely respond in threes: wine, women, and winning. Little do they suspect these things come with bitter edges.

  —A HUNDRED AND ONE VICES FOR THE EVERYMAN

  Cayo never went home.

  A feverlike fear gripped him as soon as he left the Port’s Authority, leaving him shaking and sweating. The carriage driver had taken off, as Cayo had only enough money for the single trip, but the rain had lightened considerably during his couple of hours spent with Nawarak and the rest of the officers assigned to the case.

  They had asked him questions in a tone that made him feel as if he were the criminal mastermind. They had asked where he’d found the chest, when the gold coating had dissolved and by what means, if he knew of any other caches in the city.

  He had provided them what little information he could. He had done what was right. What Yamaa had given him courage to do.

  But now all that courage had drained out of him at the thought of returning to the manor, of facing his sister and his father, waiting for the Port’s Authority to come bang on their door and drag Kamon Mercado away.

  No. He couldn’t go home. Not yet.

  So he walked. The Business Sector faded away in muted blues and grays, the rare sparkle of gold winking in his eyes and refracted in raindrops. The district had never been his favorite; it was too foreign, too precise, a contributor to the misconception that Moray was all gilt and glamour.

  Before he was fully aware of it, his feet had led him to the outskirts of the Vice Sector. The gray clouds grew dark as night approached, like tea steeping in water, and glass lanterns were lit as excited patrons rushed to Diamond Street with their hoods pulled up or carrying umbrellas of colored silk.

  Cayo’s heart leaped, his fingertips buzzing. Although he was damp from the rain, his mouth was paper-dry, and the thought of sipping on something that would warm his chest and burn away his fear created a monstrous longing in him.

  It was a longing similar to the ache he’d felt before kissing Yamaa, like nothing else in the world mattered other than slaking that bone-crushing desire.

  He stumbled into the bowels of the Vice Sector, letting it clamp its vicious arms around him, welcoming him home.

  He had only meant to lie low, to grab a drink and nurse it slowly while he watched others play. He chose to go to the Lusty Kraken off Diamond Street, a den known for its lively band and lighthearted atmosphere. They played some of his least favorite games here: Midshipman, Tempest, Se
ven Fronds.

  Less temptation, he hoped.

  Ordering a drink of gin stained blue with a splash of butterfly pea tea, Cayo joined the onlookers at a table where the dealer was soundly beating the other players. He sipped and closed his eyes, letting the sounds of the den wash over him like a balm, the sting and velvet of the drink loosening his limbs.

  That is, until he heard his name called from across the room.

  He spun around and found Tomjen and the Akara twins coming at him, beaming. Tomjen wrapped him up in a hug of long, messy arms and pointy elbows, and Cayo grunted while trying not to spill his drink.

  “Stop making us think you’ve died!” his friend cried, gaining the attention of the nearest onlookers.

  Cayo’s face heated as he pulled the three of them toward a corner. So much for lying low. “And stop jumping to the assumption that everyone you haven’t heard from is dead.”

  “Well, can you blame us?” one of the twins, Chailai, said. “What with this awful sickness going around.”

  Cayo’s stomach clenched at the reminder that Soria was at home, waiting for him or his father to return. But Narin would be with her; he would make sure she took her dose of medicine before bed.

  He forced himself to take a deep breath. “I’m not planning on staying long. I just wanted to”—he gestured at the den, the band setting up their instruments for a long night of music and dancing—“get away for a bit.”

  “To piss with that!” Tomjen said. “What you need is a good, healthy dose of fun.”

  “We’re hopping around tonight,” said the other twin, Bero. “We have the whole night planned out.”

  “Join us,” Chailai pleaded, pulling on his arm.

  Cayo stared at them, stared at the smiles of the patrons around them. His heart was sore from longing, the buzzing at his fingertips traveling up his arms and gripping his shoulders possessively.

  Since he couldn’t go home anyway…

  He downed the rest of his drink in one go, and his friends raised a victorious cheer.

  “Where to next?” he asked.

  They visited the Ferrier, where Tomjen bought them three rounds of shots. Cayo barely thought as he flung his back, the routine having settled into muscle memory. The alcohol momentarily numbed his tongue and burned down his throat, and he laughed at the sensation of it, the giddiness of knowing that his belly would warm and his head would lighten. That his fear would dissolve like gold paint in a glass of wine.

  Everything was wrong. But here, in this moment, there was something that felt right.

  The twins urged him to get in on a game of Threefold, but Cayo hung back, still hesitant. The buzzing was everywhere now, rattling his bones and making his teeth ache.

  “Just one game,” they wheedled. “One!”

  Finally, he relented to more cheers and Tomjen squeezing his shoulders with an encouraging shake. Cayo slid onto a stool and grinned at the dealer, a young woman with black skin and a brilliant, flashing smile.

  “You look hungry,” she said in a rich alto voice.

  Cayo scooped up his cards with a practiced hand. “Starving.”

  Even while tipsy he knew which cards were throwaways and which would bring him fortune. They were imprinted onto his mind, scratched onto his skin like ink. Cayo dropped a hand that resulted in an effortless win, and Tomjen and the others screamed at his back, jumping up and down.

  “Next round on Cayo!”

  He gradually lost his sense of direction. He allowed them to pull him onward, into a wine bar where Tomjen nearly got into a fight with a man twice his size, through a street packed with half-dressed callers who whistled as he went by, and eventually into a casino that Cayo recognized as the Grand Mariner.

  “You’re back,” said the dealer with the curly hair, the one he’d always been sweet on. They sounded happy, and that made Cayo happy, because finally there was someone who was glad to see him, someone he hadn’t disappointed yet.

  “I’ve been away on business,” Cayo slurred, nearly falling in his attempt to sit at the Scatterjack table. “Top secret.” He put a finger to his lips, but it landed more on his nose.

  The dealer laughed and dealt the cards, only one other person joining them for the game. “Sounds exciting. Want to tell me about it?”

  Cayo made up a mess of a story about sailing the Southerly Sea, how he’d wrestled a squid and rode a whale to an underwater kingdom. The other player kept glancing at him in irritation. Then Cayo won, and the other player huffed before stalking off. Cayo ordered another drink.

  “Might want to take it easy,” the dealer warned him.

  “I’ve been taking it easy for forever,” Cayo mumbled as other bettors filled the seats beside him. “But nothing is easy. Nothing, nothing.”

  He won that round, and the next. Where were Tomjen and the twins? He took a drag of someone’s cigarillo, but he wasn’t sure whose. His mouth tasted of pomegranates and smoke.

  And then he lost, most of his winnings pushed to the far side of the table where a man had played his victorious hand.

  “Wait,” Cayo said, unsure what had happened. “That’s my money.”

  “That’s what you put on the table,” the dealer said, watching him with concern. “Maybe you should choose a different game? Or call it a night?”

  “No.” He pushed a handful of coins forward, wondering what would happen if he upended his drink over the tiny mound of gold. Would they turn black? “I’ll win it back.”

  The dealer sighed and kept going. Cayo lost the next round. And the next. His coins dwindled, and his glass was empty.

  “What did you do to these cards?” Cayo demanded, the bite of anger in his voice.

  “I can assure you, they’re not tampered with.”

  “I’m not supposed to lose!” He lumbered to his feet, swaying. “Don’t you know the constellation I was born under? Luck! I’m the king of luck! I’m unstoppable!”

  “Sir—”

  “There you are!” The twins took him by the arms, they and Tomjen steering him out of the casino. “C’mon, let’s go somewhere less crowded.”

  Cayo lifted his face to the drizzle of rain outside, laughing in delight at the simple pleasure of it, his anger forgotten. Who cared about money? He was feeling good, and he wanted to keep feeling good, because once he stopped then the bad things would come and devour him again.

  “Don’t let them eat me,” he murmured to his friends, but they didn’t hear him over their own chatter.

  He didn’t know where they went next. It was dark, cast only in a dim red light that reflected in the liquor bottles along the back wall and shone weakly through the haze of jaaga smoke. The people dancing in the center were a shadowy mass of limbs, and the air carried the tang of sweat and fermented things.

  One of the twins danced with him, then he was getting another drink. The room was spinning funnily, his feet on backward. The entire world had shrunk to this one spot where he stood, laughing at nothing and everything.

  Then he was leaning against the wall, a young man before him. He was handsome, with light brown hair and jet-colored eyes. When he smiled, it plucked a chord in Cayo’s stomach.

  The young man said something, and Cayo responded, but he could barely hear or understand the words. The young man’s arm rested beside him against the wall, trapping him.

  Lips found his. The young man kissed him, swiping his tongue through his mouth. Cayo hummed in surprise, his lips mostly numb but still feeling how they reacted, how he kissed him back because that was what he was supposed to do, wasn’t it?

  And then something was in his mouth. The young man pressed a tablet to his cheek using his tongue, and Cayo felt the scythe of his smile against him.

  Cayo mumbled a question, panic only a thin trickle in his bloodstream. The young man laughed and patted his cheek.

  The tablet dissolved quickly, even as he doubled over and tried to spit it out, only making a mess as saliva dribbled down his chin. It left a medicinal ta
ste in his mouth, his tongue tingling as it already began to take effect.

  Tomjen. He had to find Tomjen. Colors surrounded him, noises he couldn’t discern. Someone swept him up into a dance. There was a mouth at his neck, biting. Hands rummaging through his pockets. Laughter in his ear and rumbling in his chest.

  He couldn’t feel his body. He couldn’t maintain a single thought.

  It was oblivion. It was peace.

  He was woken with a swift kick to the sternum.

  Choking, Cayo turned over and vomited, all the excess of the night rushing out of him at once.

  “Attractive,” drawled a familiar voice above him.

  His stomach sore from contracting, Cayo pushed himself away from his sick and coughed, face screwed up in disgust. There was a terrible ringing in his head that sent an ache down his neck and shoulders, and he was fairly certain the taste crouched on the back of his tongue was that of death.

  “No, by all means, take your time. I’ve got all day to watch you writhe around like a worm.”

  “Shut up,” he mumbled around coughs. He could barely open his eyes without sending a stabbing pain through his skull. Moaning, he felt around for something to grab hold of and encountered a wall. He shifted backward until he could lean against it, wanting nothing so much as to curl up and die.

  When he could finally keep his eyes open longer than a second, he blinked as they watered and tried to make sense of his surroundings. He was in a kennel, in the back of an empty dog pen. The sounds of scratching and whining and barking surrounded him, and the strong odor of wet fur and dried urine almost made him vomit again.

  Before him stood Romara, hands on her hips and a glare leveled down at him.

  “What in the hells,” he groaned, rubbing his face.

  “I should be asking you that. What happened to you last night, puppy?”

  “I…Shit. I don’t know.” It was all fragmented, like light off a crystal. He could only remember certain images, certain words. “I was drinking.”

  “That’s apparent,” Romara said with an indelicate snort. “Probably more than just drinking, too.”