Ravage the Dark: 2 (Scavenge the Stars)

by Tara Sim

  “What? No.” Cayo crossed his arms, thinking of Soria. He was doing this for her, he reminded himself. “I was wondering if… if you knew where I could find a job.”

  All talk immediately ceased. Cayo flushed as everyone stared at him, hunching his shoulders as if that was all it took to disappear.

  “You,” Avi said. “Want to find a job.”

  “It’s the only way I can pay for Soria’s treatment,” Cayo mumbled. “Short of stealing. And I am not a thief.”

  “I am,” Jasper said, brightening. “Want to join me on a heist?”

  “Don’t rope him into your way of life,” Liesl said. “We’re on thin enough ice as it is.”

  “All right, all right. You all are no fun.” Jasper looked Cayo up and down. “Got any special skills or talents? Know any sort of trade?”

  “Just shuffling cards,” Cayo said. “And coin tricks.”

  “Oh!” Jasper snapped his fingers. “Then you should visit the Casino District. I’m sure they’re looking for young, attractive dealers.”

  The floor seemed to lurch beneath his feet. He had heard there was a small gambling district here in the city, but the thought of going there, of walking through some casino’s doors and returning to that world…

  His mouth dried again. He had tried to put distance between himself and that bygone version of Cayo Mercado, the one who didn’t care about consequences. The one who had savored the high of winning so much it became a drug in his system, slowly polluting his mind and body.

  He had vowed never again. He had promised Soria he’d stay out of that life.

  The word rose on Cayo’s tongue, as tart and vinegary as the wine smelled, when Amaya stepped away from the wall and said it first.

  “No.”

  The room fell silent again. Cayo stared at her, brows furrowed.

  “Excuse me?” His voice came out low.

  “I said no.” Her dark eyes bored into his, crackling and spitting like a flame in the wind. “You know what that will do to you. What it’s already done to you. If you go back to that life, you’ll probably lose yourself to it again. And we’ll be even worse off than we are now, with no chance of catching Boon or the Benefactor.”

  “Oh, so this is about assuaging your guilt.”

  The slightest wince told him his arrow had landed true. “No, it’s about all of us. You’re the only one who doesn’t get that. You’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself and focusing on your own problems when there are people dying in the streets!”

  Her voice rose to a shrill scream. She reeled back from him, as if startled by the force of her own rage.

  The blood drained from Cayo’s face. “My sister is dying.”

  Amaya sighed and rubbed her hands over her face, trying to calm herself down. “I didn’t mean… I’m sorry. What you’re doing for her… it’s admirable. It is.” She dropped her hands, the fury in her eyes now replaced with a fatigue that Cayo had never seen before. “But if you really want to help Soria, you won’t return to that life. You know that already.”

  Cayo clenched his jaw, trying to ignore the way the others were looking between them.

  “I do know that already,” he said quietly. “Which is why I was going to refuse.”

  She looked as if she didn’t believe him, and anger lit him up like a torch. “Is it really so hard for you to think that I can change? Do you really think so little of me, that I’m just a product of my lifestyle who can’t think or act for himself?”

  But could he really blame her skepticism? He had felt himself teetering between yes and no. One false move and he would be lost again.

  Amaya’s face turned ashen. “No, I…”

  He averted his gaze. The room was deathly quiet, no one daring to move as the two of them stood there, refusing to look at each other. Eventually Amaya turned away, going back into the bedroom she shared with Liesl and Deadshot.

  Jasper shifted on his feet once the bedroom door closed, clearing his throat. “Well,” he said, keeping his tone down as if afraid Amaya would storm back out, “in that case, I do know of a place that’s always hiring.”

  Early the next morning, Cayo stared in horror at the rows and rows of dead fish spread out before him.

  “Are you serious?” He turned to Jasper, who had buried his nose into his scarf to avoid the worst of the morning chill. “The fish market?”

  “What, don’t like fish?”

  “It’s not that, it’s just…” Cayo ran his fingers through his hair, eyes wide with panic. “What… What do I do with them?”

  Jasper peered at him over his scarf. “You’ve really never worked a day in your life, have you?” He gestured for Cayo to follow him. “No one’s expecting you to do anything with the fish other than haul them around and maybe sell them. No one’s gonna ask you to start juggling.”

  “Why couldn’t I do more, I don’t know, skilled labor? I can read and write, I know arithmetic—”

  “In Rehanese, yes, but not Soléne. And besides, who says this isn’t skilled labor?”

  Cayo couldn’t help the nervous energy that writhed in his gut as they approached a fish vendor near the docks. The sun had only just begun to climb into the sky, a crescent of orange along the horizon. It streaked across the dark water and limned the furled sails and polished railings, fingers of light poking and prodding into dark corners. The smell of salt and fish was everywhere, and gulls crying out in hunger wheeled overhead.

  He spared the ships a long glance, wondering what would happen if he simply commandeered one and took off with Soria. To… somewhere. Anywhere he could start over. It was a fantasy he’d often had as a child, but now it seemed like madness.

  The vendor Jasper led him to was a large, balding man in a blood-stained apron, with more muscles than Cayo thought any human had a right to possess. He rubbed his own arms self-consciously.

  “Victor!” Jasper called cheerily, switching to Soléne to ask him a question. The hulking man, Victor, grunted out a reply. Jasper laughed and shook Cayo’s shoulder, switching back to Rehanese.

  “We have a mutt who needs a home,” Jasper explained. “If I remember right, your last errand boy slipped off the docks and drowned. You’ll be needing a new one, yes?”

  Cayo tensed. “Drowned?”

  Victor looked him up and down. When he spoke, his Rehanese was muddled. “You be into a job, then?” Cayo nodded. “Start today. I see what you do. You good, is two niera for a day.” The niera was a quarter of the price of a solsta, Cayo remembered. His panic grew, wondering if that would be enough for the treatment.

  “Wonderful!” Jasper shook his shoulder again, making Cayo’s teeth click together. “Glad I could be of help. Have fun.”

  “Wait—”

  But Jasper was already skipping off, claiming he had somewhere else to be. The young man seemed to always have someplace he needed to be; did he even sleep?

  “Name?” Victor grunted.

  Cayo hesitated, touching the forged identification paper through his pocket. “Cayo Lin.” They had already given his first name to the hospital, and Liesl didn’t trust him to memorize a new first name.

  “Rehan?”

  “Moray.”

  Victor shrugged like he didn’t particularly care and pointed to the stall behind him. It was a large wooden crate slanted on an angle, the better to show off his wares, Cayo guessed. “People here soon. Ice, then fish.”

  “All right.” Cayo stood there, waiting for more instruction, but apparently that was all he was getting out of Victor. “Oh. Um… right. Ice.”

  He looked around desperately, a hot flush working through him even as the cool wind off the sea ruffled his hair. As Victor checked his business ledger, Cayo walked around the side of the stall. There was an empty bucket, but no sign of ice. Typical—his first task at his first job, and he was already failing.

  A noise made him look to the right. A girl a few years younger than him was leaning against her own stall, her dark hair in pigtails and
brown skin dotted with freckles. She met his eye and nodded toward the other side of the docks, where the market stretched on and on. Cayo saw a line of workers assembled before a large bin, all carrying buckets.

  Cayo thanked her and grabbed the bucket beside the stall. As he joined the line, a group of sailors came in from the harbor, their weary expressions telling of a long voyage finally come to an end. They all wore scraps of green cloth pinned to their coats, but it was clearly not a part of their uniform.

  They’re doubling down on who enters the city, Cayo realized, remembering the yellow cloth they had pinned to Soria’s cloak, marking her as infected. It was only thanks to Remy’s involvement in the navy that she hadn’t been carted off to some quarantine bay.

  Once he got to the front of the line, Cayo shoved his bucket into the cold, slushy mess of ice. It got all over his hands and soaked the ends of his sleeves, making him curse and shudder. Why did Baleine have to be so cold? He missed Moray’s warmth, the balmy breezes and the sweet dampness of the air.

  He returned to Victor’s stall and poured the ice into the crate. Two men were in the process of setting down nets full of fish, and he watched as Victor handed them each some money. When the fishermen left, Victor scowled at him.

  “Go.” Victor gestured to the nets of fish. “Put on.”

  Cayo pointed from the nets to the ice. “There?” Victor lifted his hands impatiently, and Cayo rushed to the nearest net. “All right, all right!”

  He pulled open the net and tried not to gag. He didn’t recognize this type of fish, but their scales were gray and blue and shimmered in the oncoming morning light. They would have looked pretty if they weren’t all piled together in an obscene mound.

  Cayo steeled himself, then reached in to grab one. The body was cold and slippery, and he yelped as it shot out of his hand and plopped back among its brethren.

  “Fast!” Victor snapped at him. Cayo looked over his shoulder and saw that customers were beginning to flock into the market.

  Cayo held his breath and grabbed the fish again, this time by the tail. He carefully stood and positioned it on the ice, where its round, yellow eye stared at him accusingly. Victor clapped at him to keep going, so Cayo moved as quickly as he could, cursing as the fish began to slip down the ice and Victor yelled at him while showing him how to position the bodies just so. To Cayo’s ever-mounting distress, a couple of the fish were still alive, and Victor taught him how to smack their heads against the cobblestone.

  “God and her stars,” Cayo groaned as he placed his new kill upon the ice. “I’m sorry.” The fish stared back at him, mouth agape as if it too were stunned by this betrayal.

  When he was finally done, his hands were numb and he desperately wanted a cup of tea. He sat behind the stall on a short stool, taking a break while Victor sold his fish and the sun climbed higher into the sky. The girl at the stall beside theirs flashed him a smirk.

  “You’ll get used to it,” she said.

  Cayo thought his work for the day might be done, but Victor rounded the stall and shoved a piece of paper at Cayo. An address.

  “You, go to delivery. Here.” He pointed at a bag nearby. “Restaurant, need fish. Go!”

  “I—I don’t know where—”

  But Victor was already turning to a new customer, putting on a smile that transformed his face from a craggy mountainside to a sunny hill. Cayo sighed and hauled the bag over his shoulder, staring at the address he’d been given.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Cayo got lost multiple times, but eventually he made the delivery to an irritated cook before trudging back to the fish market. Victor wasn’t shy to tell Cayo how displeased he was with how long it’d taken, but in the late afternoon when the fish had all been sold and the pinkish slush left from the ice was dumped into the harbor, Victor gave him the promised two niera.

  “Not good, but you get better,” Victor told him. “Come tomorrow.”

  Cayo staggered away from the market, staring at the coins in his hand. He had earned them. Not through gambling and trickery, but through physical labor and effort.

  It felt… strangely good. He hadn’t felt pride in so long that at first he couldn’t recognize the emotion, but eventually he gave himself permission to smile, to congratulate himself on achieving something he’d never done before. And what was more, he could give the hospital administrator the first payment for Soria’s treatment.

  Maybe everything was going to be all right.

  “Hey, hey, what’s that you got there?”

  Cayo froze. He had wandered down a narrow street that would lead him to the hospital, but the late afternoon light formed pools of shadow across the street. From those shadows emerged three figures, two boys and a girl. Their clothes were ragged, their faces streaked with dirt.

  “He’s pretty,” said the girl, sniffing as if she had a cold. “Too bad you can’t sell faces.”

  “I know a guy,” said the taller of the boys.

  Cayo took a step back, fisting his hand around the niera. His surroundings blurred as he desperately reached for the memory of being taught what to do in this situation, how he had to toss away his wallet or his purse and then make a run for it.

  But he had no wallet, no purse, not even his pocket watch anymore. Nothing but the couple of coins in his hand, and he wasn’t about to toss them away.

  “Leave me alone,” he said, hating the way his voice shook.

  “Mm, nah,” said the girl, stalking closer. They all had knives in their grubby hands, their yellowed teeth gleaming in identical grins. “How ’bout you hand over that money, and we don’t kill ya?”

  He held his fist to his chest, ignoring all his former lessons on how to deal with thieves. This was his money that he had earned. He needed it for Soria.

  “Go bother someone else,” Cayo said as they began to circle him like vultures. “This is all I have.”

  “Such drama with this one,” the tall boy muttered. “Think he’s gonna cry?”

  “Bet you I can make ’im cry,” said the short boy.

  Before Cayo could even try to make a run for it, they pounced. He went down under their fists, trying to curl into a ball while protecting his head from their blows. The girl laughed as she got him pinned, and the tall boy nearly broke his fingers getting him to unclench his fist.

  The coins fell out, ringing against the cobblestone.

  “No!” Cayo fought back, but one of the boys stomped his boot into Cayo’s chest, winding him. The other grabbed his hair and banged his head against the street. The world went spinning as pain exploded through his skull.

  “See? Got ’im to cry.”

  “Psh, I wanted real tears.”

  Cayo curled up on his side, wanting to cough but unable to get a full breath in. He kept his eyes closed, teeth gritted as the ground beneath him tilted. He lay there for a stunned moment, wondering if he was dead or likely to die, before determining the only thing that had expired was the last of his pride.

  He eventually got to all fours, his joints sore, his rib cage bruised. “Shit.” He took in his scraped skin, the blood on his hand, his torn and dirty clothing.

  Good thing I’m going to a hospital.

  The thought was so absurd that he let out a small, hysterical laugh, resting his forehead against the cool ground as he caught his breath. At least Amaya hadn’t been here to see his complete and utter uselessness.

  He heard someone murmuring in Soléne as they helped him up. It was a middle-aged man, his face lined with worry. He repeated his question, which Cayo thought was Are you all right? Cayo held his stomach as he looked around, but he knew the pickpockets had long run off with the money.

  “No,” he rasped. “I’m not all right.”

  Things couldn’t go on this way. He couldn’t continue to be the weakest link in the group.

  It was time he asked Amaya and the others for help.

  There came a great thundering noise from the cellar, and Lady Trianh nearl
y fainted from the insistent pounding and the sweetly malicious voice emanating from within.

  “Open the door and I will set you free,” sang the voice. “I will give you what you desire.”

  But Lady Trianh merely stood with her hand upon the knob, terror in her heart and uncertainty in her eyes.

  —THE BEAST BELOW, A HORROR NOVEL FROM REHAN

  When she was seven years old, Amaya had gotten stuck at the top of the mast of her father’s ship.

  Admittedly, it was her fault—her father had warned her not to climb anything without him there to watch her. “A ship is a dangerous place for anyone,” he’d said, “including little girls.”

  It was the ship he used for his business, a long, narrow skipjack with sails that reminded her of a shark’s fin. He had asked her to name it for him, and she had chosen Papaya, because it was what she had named the doll her mother had sewn for her. He regularly took it out for pearl diving, he and his small team of divers.

  That day, though, it had just been the two of them. He had promised her a picnic on the sea a whole week ago, and she had pouted and whined until he had laughed and given in.

  “How could I possibly say no to that face?” he’d said as he cupped her cheeks in his large, callused hands, playfully tilting her head back and forth. “What should we have for our picnic?”

  “Dumplings!” she’d screamed. “And cake!”

  “A girl after my own heart.”

  “And sweet tooth,” her mother had muttered from the corner where she sewed, smiling when her father winked at her.

  So they had bought mushroom-and-leek dumplings and a slice of lemon cake and taken to the sea, Amaya watching in fascination as Arun untied the ship from the docks and positioned the sails just so. Her father looked strong and sure as he worked, his broad shoulders straining at his shirt and the sunlight highlighting threads of brown and red in his black hair. Her mother often called him a handsome demon, able to charm just about anybody with a flash of his crooked grin.

  “Will you teach me to sail one day?” Amaya had asked.