Scavenge the Stars Page 19

  Romara sighed and gave an impatient wave of her lace-gloved hand. “My father comes back in about an hour, so I suggest you start talking.”

  “I was just…coming for this.” Cayo grabbed the jar and pulled it toward him. The eyeballs sloshed sickeningly within the liquid.

  “Two more chances,” she warned.

  He sighed and tilted his head back, closing his eyes. How much could he get away with telling her? He hadn’t come to the Vice Sector to gamble, but now Romara was forcing his hand.

  His only advantage was that he knew her loyalty to her father was stretched thin. The fact that she was beginning to cultivate her own followers was proof enough that there was a low chance of her repeating what he said to Salvador.

  So he met her hawklike gaze and said, “Your father is making and distributing counterfeit money.”

  He had the unique pleasure of catching her by surprise. Her thin eyebrows shot upward, stretching the wings of kohl at the corners of her eyes.

  “Counterfeit,” she repeated blandly.

  Cayo dug into his pocket and took out the black disc that had masqueraded as a sena. He extended it to her, and she picked it up with her long, filed fingernails as if it were a used napkin.

  “Sébastien figured it out,” he whispered. “He saw this coin dissolve in alcohol and realized what it was. Then the Slum King punished him to keep him quiet.” He glanced again at the jar and suppressed a shudder. “Think about it. Your father has a lot to gain by manufacturing his own coin. He has the resources and the connections for it.”

  Romara studied the black disc for a silent minute. Cayo realized then that she looked the most composed he had seen her in a while. There were no tears in her dress, and she didn’t smell like alcohol. Was she doing it for her new followers? Was she finally beginning to put away the messy, violent girl she wanted everyone to believe she was?

  Then she dropped the disc onto the desk between them. “It’s cute how you’re playing detective and all,” she said, “but my father isn’t involved in this.”

  Disappointment shot through him like a harpoon; maybe she was more loyal than he’d bet on. “How can you know for certain? You don’t know everything about your father or the business he does. Out of everyone in Moray, he’s the best equipped to get away with this.”

  She placed her hands flat on the desk and leaned in, a wry smile twisting her dark lips. “You think I don’t know everything about his business because I’m…what, younger? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m his precious only daughter?”

  “I never said that. I mean, hells, I don’t know everything about my father’s business!”

  “You might want to correct that,” she said with an earnestness he found not a little disturbing. “Unlike you, I’ve done everything in my power to make sure I know my father’s every move. His every. Single. Move.” She leaned in closer. “I know things that would make your delicate little self toss and turn at night. I know things that would make you hurl up your guts in the back alley. But there is nothing—nothing—about manufacturing counterfeit coins.”

  Cayo couldn’t find the words to reply. Just a couple of hours ago he had been full of light, but now that familiar darkness was stealing over him, disappointment and terror clasping hands.

  If he couldn’t bring any evidence in to Nawarak, how else was he going to fix things?

  “Normally intruders would be severely dealt with, but seeing as you’re my fiancé, I’ll let you go this once,” Romara said, straightening. She gestured to the door. “You better go before my father decides you’d look prettier without a finger or two.”

  Cayo clenched his hands into fists, but he was powerless again. Romara had the winning hand this time.

  On his way to the door, she lunged at him. He grunted as his back hit the wall, and it took him a moment to realize she had pinned his jacket to the wood with a knife; where she had hidden it until then, he had no idea.

  With her free hand, she rummaged in his pockets until she found her key. She held it before his eyes, smiling sweetly as his face heated. She kissed the warm metal and pressed it to his lips.

  “Don’t ever steal from me again,” she whispered. She yanked her knife out of the wall and stepped back. “By the way, do you like black lilies?”

  Cayo forced himself not to scramble for the doorknob as he turned to her in confusion. She was twirling her knife absently, watching him with a keenness that almost made him feel naked.

  “I’ve ordered about ten thousand for the wedding,” she explained. “They’re my favorite. I heard they were your mother’s too.”

  Heat stole through his chest and stomach as he yanked the door open. “Fuck you.”

  “Wait.” She caught his wrist. Stabbing the knife into the wall again, she used her free hand to draw something out of her own pocket: a vial of cloudy liquid. She pressed it into his hand.

  “For your sister,” she said.

  Cayo stared at her. The amount of medicine in his hand likely cost a thousand senas, at least.

  She shifted uncomfortably at the look in his eyes, turning her head away. “It’s my dowry, remember?” she muttered. “Now go.”

  He hesitated, wondering how to thank her. Wondering if she even deserved thanks. In the end, he only shook his head and hurried down the hall, eager to remove himself from this crimson nightmare.

  Narin tried to stop him as he crossed the threshold of the house.

  “My lord, you received correspondence from Countess Yamaa,” the footman said as he trotted after him. “She’s invited you to dinner at her estate tomorr—”

  “I’ll get to it later,” Cayo threw over his shoulder, bounding up the stairs two at a time. Although the countess’s name sent a thrill of excitement through him, he couldn’t think about her now, not when his sister needed him.

  Soria was laid up in bed, the lantern at her bedside making her a playground for restless shadows. She looked sallow today, her breaths struggling in her lungs, the skin beneath her closed eyes bruised.

  Cayo poured the necessary amount of medicine into a small tumbler, careful not to spill a drop. Then he came to sit beside her.

  “Soria,” he called, gently brushing hair away from her face. Her skin was feverish under his touch. The spot of gray behind her ear had grown larger, spreading down to her neck like a splotchy rash.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She tried to smile when she saw him, but even that seemed to cost her energy she didn’t have. Cayo didn’t have the experience of a doctor or Miss Lawan, but he tried his best to sit her up and make her take the medicine, even watering down the last of it to make sure she drank it all.

  When she was done, she leaned back on the pillows with a somewhat deeper breath. He held her hand, wanting to simply be with her, grateful for this fleeting moment of relief. A moment made possible by Romara, of all people.

  Cayo took out the counterfeit coin and restlessly walked it over his knuckles. How could the Slum King not be part of this? Romara may have known plenty about her father’s business, but surely there were some things even she didn’t know.

  “Where did you get that?”

  Soria’s eyes were half-open, watching him fiddle with the black disc.

  “A…friend gave it to me,” he said.

  “It looks like something I’ve seen before,” she whispered, her voice cracking from disuse.

  “You’ve seen something like this?” His heart gave a violent thud. “Where? How?”

  “It was…” She stopped to suppress a cough. “Downstairs, in the cellar, where Father keeps his wine. It was where he put my chest containing my dowry for the Hizons. I would go down there and run my hands through the coins sometimes. It felt nice. Then a couple of the wine barrels broke, so I went down to check on it. Father must have moved the dowry, because it wasn’t there anymore. Instead there was a trunk full of those.” Soria weakly pointed at the counterfeit coin. “Just a bunch of worthless black discs.”

  The last word broke
apart as the suppressed coughs ripped through her, tearing up her throat. She convulsed with each rattling cough, curling onto her side as tears streamed down her face. Cayo hurried to fetch her water, but she couldn’t even come up for air, let alone drink anything.

  Finally, what felt like a thousand years later, she stopped. She lay there, exhausted and bathed in sweat, as Cayo stared numbly at the blood that speckled the pillow under her.

  He collapsed to his knees, grasping her thin wrist as he leaned his head against the side of her bed. The world had gone spinning around him, forcing him to look at the truth, to bear the burden of its terrible weight.

  The truth that the Slum King was not behind the counterfeit after all.

  Kamon Mercado, his father, was.

  There are some who are lured to the Vice Sector not by greed, but by love. Yes, there are those who lust for these streets, for the desire to slip into the murk, into the same shadows that line their hearts.

  —A COMPLETE GUIDE TO MORAY’S SECTORS

  As a fresh wave of pain swept over her, Amaya ground her teeth and glared at the ceiling of her canopy bed. She grabbed a fistful of the expensive maroon silk sheets and waited for the worst of it to pass before relaxing back into the pillows, panting.

  Of course, of course her cycle had to come now. She had only bled on board Brackish a few times, her body usually too malnourished for it, and it seemed now her body was trying to make up for lost time.

  “I don’t see why I can’t just cut it out of me,” she mumbled.

  Liesl snorted and set a fresh cup of tea beside her. “Is violence your solution to everything?”

  “The best way to retaliate against pain is pain.”

  Amaya couldn’t quite remember where she’d heard those words before. That is, until Liesl raised her brows and readjusted her glasses.

  “You really are Boon’s pupil,” the girl said.

  The statement made her clench her fists into the sheets again. As if Amaya could not belong simply to herself—she had to be Arun Chandra’s daughter, Captain Zharo’s prisoner, Boon’s pupil. Silverfish. Countess Yamaa.

  The best way to retaliate against pain is pain, Boon had muttered into the mouth of a wine bottle one night, his eyes bloodshot and faraway. Pay them back everything they gave to you.

  She had thought then that it was only the ramblings of a drunken fool, someone so embittered toward the world that compassion was a distant memory. Amaya had felt sorry for him.

  But then she had come here, home to Moray, to the seat of her rage and loss. She had unpacked the truth like a fragile artifact from a crate, and now all she wanted to do was smash it to pieces. Pain—it made up the whole of her, driving her to inflict it on others, to almost revel in it.

  Captain Zharo’s last breath rattled through her. Melchor’s lifeless face burned like a brand in her mind. She could still smell their blood on her, layering her dreams with copper and steel.

  Everything smelled like blood—theirs, hers. She even lifted shaking fingers to her wet temple only to find that it was just sweat. Her body was a crossroads, her hands remembering the blood of death, her womb remembering the blood of life.

  What would Roach say, if he knew what she had done?

  Panic flared within her, a stray ember from a growing fire. She again tried to convince herself that she had done the right thing, that the lives of two terrible men meant nothing when weighed against the consequences of their actions. But perhaps that was only a rationalization given to her by a bitter man who had nothing else to live for.

  When she looked at the wreck that was Boon, was she seeing her future?

  She didn’t want that future. But what else was possible for someone like her, after the choices she had made?

  Her lower abdomen clenched with a pain that was both sharp and dull, spreading its fingers possessively over her hips. Amaya groaned into the pillow as she writhed.

  “Drink the tea,” Liesl advised. “It’ll help.”

  She managed to wrangle Amaya into a sitting position. While Amaya alternated taking sips and making faces at the bitter drink, the door opened and Fera peeked in.

  “Has there been word?” Amaya demanded, lurching forward so suddenly that some of her tea spilled.

  Fera shuffled in carrying a plate that Cicada had sent up for Amaya. Fera placed it on the bedside table and stepped back, twisting her fingers together. “N-no, not yet. I’m sorry, Si—Amaya.”

  Amaya fell back so hard she nearly rapped her skull on the headboard. Disappointment threaded through her, disguised as hot anger.

  “Don’t you dare throw that cup,” Liesl warned her, folding laundry at the foot of the bed.

  “Wasn’t he raised to be the perfect merchant’s son? Isn’t he supposed to be a gentleman and respond to a lady’s invitation for dinner?”

  “Perhaps something came up. We can try again.”

  But Amaya remained piqued, her cheeks flushed and her breathing too fast. She thought back to swimming in the inlet with Cayo Mercado, to wondering what would happen if she truly let her guard down. There had been something about the way his eyes caught hers that made her feel stripped, torn open, her ribs bared and ready to be snapped.

  The fact that he would so easily dismiss an invitation from her after that…

  Amaya knocked back the rest of the awful tea and slammed the cup down on the bedside table. She told herself that her disappointment was due to prolonging the next stage of her revenge.

  Fera took the cup and held it carefully between her hands, as if it were a newborn bird. Amaya forced herself to relax her face, to give the girl a tight smile of thanks.

  “Has Spi—I mean, Nian been giving you swimming lessons?” she asked, idly picking at the food that Cicada had sent up: dried bananas, coconut cookies, and taro cakes.

  The girl’s face lit up. “He’s been taking me down to the beach. I didn’t really like it at first, and it hurts when I get the water in my eyes, but I like kicking while he pulls me around.”

  Amaya’s mouth softened into a true smile. “I’m glad.”

  “I can’t wait to go home and show Mama and Papa,” Fera continued, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “They’ll be so surprised!”

  Amaya’s smile fell, and guilt tightened her chest. Her belly tightened as well, and she weathered another stabbing cramp, screwing her eyes up tight.

  All of the Water Bugs were waiting for the money she promised them—that Boon promised them. But she hadn’t gotten to Mercado yet. She was still keeping them from their families, these children who were too young to travel on their own, who had no idea how to reunite with the parents who had sold them in the first place.

  If only Cayo had come to dinner, or even responded to her invitation…

  Amaya took a deep breath. It was her own fault. She had been too engrossed in her personal vendettas, and the truth about her mother was a weight pressing on her chest, deterring her from moving on.

  Maybe when Cayo looked at her, he could see the truth of what she was and all she had done. Maybe that was why he avoided her.

  “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled,” she made herself say. Fera beamed and scurried out to return the teacup to the kitchens.

  Liesl came to sit beside her. “I think I know what you can do. If the Mercado boy isn’t responding to your missives, try to run into him in the city. Make him see you. Corner him, if you have to.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  Liesl nibbled on one of the coconut cookies. “According to my notes, there are a few places he likes to frequent. Or rather, he used to. Apparently, he visited the Vice Sector several times a week, then stopped going.”

  Amaya thought back to the dexterity of Cayo’s hands. She had thought them the hands of a would-be tailor, but they were the hands of a gambler, too. “I’ll visit tonight and see if I can get any more information on him.”

  “Would you like me to come with you? Or I can send Deadshot or Avi.”

  “No,”
Amaya said, harder than she intended to. “I want to do it alone. I’ll attract less attention that way.”

  “Suit yourself.” Liesl stood and grabbed another cookie. “I’ll make you more tea.”

  Right on cue, Amaya’s next cramp tore through her. She held her stomach with a small sob. “Are you sure I can’t cut this horrible thing out of me?”

  Liesl gestured to the door where Fera had gone. “Don’t you want a sweet child like that someday?”

  Horror descended on her. “Absolutely not!”

  “Well, then, I guess I can’t stop you.” Liesl made a resigned motion with her hand as she left. “Just try not to get too much blood on the sheets.”

  While the sun was setting, Amaya dragged herself out of bed to get dressed, the tea reducing the sharp spikes of pain into a duller ache. She chose soft trousers and a dark green bodice, and opted not to tie her hair back, as she wanted the ability to hide her face if she needed to.

  When she went downstairs to return the plate of mostly uneaten food, she found some of the older Water Bugs at the scoured wooden table in the kitchens. They were all listening to Cicada, one of the few of them who could read and write, as he read out loud from a broadsheet.

  “‘It is with greatest sorrow that we report the advisor to the Prince of Moray, Sir Carden Behlor, has passed due to the affliction known as ash fever. According to local sources, Sir Carden was diagnosed a mere two months ago, but the fever progressed too quickly for any remedy to take effect. The funerary rites for Sir Carden are as yet undisclosed.’”

  The Bugs murmured among themselves, and Amaya frowned, remembering the man who had passed out at Laelia’s. Ash fever again. If even the richest citizens of Moray were dying despite being able to afford the medicine, the lower classes wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “Seems like a good thing if the nobs are getting axed,” Weevil said, rubbing the island of a birthmark on his jaw. “Who needs ’em?”

  A fifteen-year-old girl named Cricket scoffed. “Don’t you know anything? They’re the only thing that holds the empires back.”