by Tara Sim
She had looked desperately for Roach, but he hadn’t been on board. It had been too early for his seven years to be up, but the other Bugs claimed he’d just disappeared one day when they were docked outside a Ledese port.
Worry ate at her bones when she thought of Roach, but she wasn’t in a position to go looking for him. Whenever she could, Amaya sent up a quick prayer for him to be safe, and that she would see him again. That they would meet in Moray, like they’d planned.
The Landless had then converted the Brackish into a proper vessel, renovating its rotting interior and redesigning its hideous exterior. She had asked for purple sails. Blue sea mixed with red blood.
“I don’t want you anywhere near water again,” Amaya said, pointing a stern finger at Fera. “Not until you learn to swim.”
“I can teach her,” said Spider from where he was helping Cicada with the dishes. Not Spider—his real name was Nian.
“Great. Do that, then.” Amaya turned and rubbed her forehead. She had a headache after all the excitement.
Cicada flashed her a wide smile as she passed. “Did folks like the abalone cakes?”
“They were raving about them.”
“And let me guess: You haven’t had a bite.” As soon as he said it, her stomach made a desperate noise. Cicada laughed.
“I’ll fix you up a plate.”
“You’re beautiful.”
In the hallway, she looked into a mirror and realized she still wore her earrings. She pulled them from her ears, letting them clatter on the top of the decorative table. Her lobes were sore, unused to the weight. She rubbed them and thought back to the day Boon had brought her to a jewelry stall in the busy market quarter of the nearest Ledese city.
“Becoming a countess will be no small feat,” Boon had said. “Transforming you will be as complicated as alchemy. And alchemy is pretty damn complicated.”
She had eyed the gems and chains nervously, wondering how many pieces would have been the equivalent of her debt. Wondering if he was going to tell her to pick out some necklaces or a bracelet.
Instead, Boon had exchanged words with the proprietor before ushering her to sit on the stool in the corner. She had shifted uneasily for a minute until the proprietor, a hulking man with a ridiculous pelt of arm hair, had come toward her with a needle.
“No, no, no!” she had screeched, prevented from running away by Boon’s strong hands on her shoulders, keeping her on the stool.
“You’re honestly telling me,” Boon had said, “that you can withstand poisonous rockfish, a murderous ship captain shooting at you, and a lively jaunt with the riptide, but one little needle has you pissing yourself? Do you need me to hold your damn hand?”
Instead, she had sat as still as she could on the stool, refusing to even whimper as the needle went through, just to shut Boon up.
Later, her ears sore and bearing small silver hoops, she had moodily followed Boon through the rest of the market. He’d stopped by a stall selling sticky honey cakes and bought one for her.
“If you’re that squeamish about a needle, I doubt you’d be able to handle yourself with a knife.”
She’d licked up the honey running down her fingers. “I bet you’re wrong.”
Boon had lifted an eyebrow at her. “I’ll take you up on that bet.”
“If you lose, you have to pierce your ears.”
His laugh had been loud enough to draw stares from the crowd.
But, true to his word, he had begun teaching her how to handle a knife the next day. A proper knife—not a shucker, not a gutter.
She had stared at her reflection in its blade, and in that moment she saw herself in halves: the girl who was still finding her land legs meeting eyes with the one who had sworn vengeance on the man who had ruined her family.
She had vowed to become only the latter.
Boon had been easy on her at first, showing her the proper way to grip the hilt, how to position her legs, ways to slash and block. But as soon as he’d realized she was a quick learner, he hadn’t held back. He would come at her with that disarming grin and a barely perceivable restraint that prevented him from actually harming her. Instead he would make little nicks on her arms or legs, punishment for letting her defenses down or not moving the way he wanted her to.
The others had gradually come out to watch these sparring sessions, held in the patch of sparse grass behind the bungalow Liesl shared with her lover, Deadshot. After a month of losing to Boon, she had finally found an opening and swept the legs out from under him, pinning his arm and tipping his chin up with the point of her knife.
Everyone had held their breath as Boon looked up at her. His dark eyes had been difficult to read, but she had thought—or perhaps she only hoped—that she had seen an undercurrent of pride.
“Don’t worry,” she’d said. “You can hold my hand when you get your ears pierced.”
Boon had laughed while the others cheered. As she helped him up, satisfaction had curled in her chest, warm and hungry for more. To wear her victories like the hoops of silver dangling from her ears.
She knew, then, that she wouldn’t stop until they pulled this off. Taking down Mercado would be her greatest triumph.
Amaya returned to the main chamber. Walking through the estate still made her feel as if she were trespassing. She had no idea what to do with all this refinement, from the elaborately sculpted moldings on the ceiling to the black-and-amber polish of the marble floors. There were touches of gold everywhere, so much so that she had bitten a candleholder on her first day to make sure it was real. The estate had once belonged to an old duchess who died without any heirs, and it had been on the market for months until Amaya came along with Boon’s money in her pocket.
“Spend as much of it as you can,” he’d told her before she sailed to Moray, all the chests filled with coin stowed away in the hold. “It’s going to a good cause.”
He hadn’t come with her—he couldn’t, lest he violate his Landless sentence or was recognized by someone he’d once known—but he had sent three of his best crew members with her. She found them in the dining room, waiting to debrief now that the party was over. The room was just as absurdly elegant as the rest of the house, the walls a rich green and the table made of shining rosewood.
Liesl glanced up from her notes as she entered, a glass of red wine already before her. Avi, on her right, raised an amused eyebrow at Amaya. “Was the dunk refreshing?” he asked. She glared at him, but he just kept smirking.
“I bet it made quite an impression on the boy,” said Deadshot on Liesl’s left, her boots propped up on the tabletop. Another of the Landless Amaya had met on the atoll, she had gotten her name due to the pistols she always wore at either hip. She was of mixed race, Ledese and a nation from the Sun Empire, with dark copper skin and crimped hair that had been dyed red with henna. She wasn’t recognized as Landless in Moray—only in the Sun Empire, where she had committed enough robberies and heists to earn her an unsavory reputation.
Amaya turned away so Avi wouldn’t see her face redden at the reminder of her blunder with Cayo Mercado. Out of all the men in this cursed city, of course Cayo was the one who ended up being their mark. She thought back to all the things she had said about the Mercado family—about him—at the greenhouse party, how his father employed children and that his son was nothing but a rogue. It was no wonder he hated the countess, or at least, the idea of her.
Although Boon had told her the barest details about Cayo Mercado before she came to Moray, speaking to him in person was another matter entirely. She hadn’t anticipated the way he parried her thrusts, or that he would have the balls to insult Countess Yamaa. There was something almost thrilling about it.
She could still see his expression after she had fished Fera from the pool. It had been a look of surprise and something else, something softer, as if his wariness had been whittled down to mere curiosity.
Maybe this had worked in her favor after all. Perhaps she had changed his im
pression of her, if only a little.
Remembering from Boon’s notes that Cayo had a history of gambling, she said, “I think our next party should be game-themed.”
Avi, still dressed as a server, gave her an approving look. “Smart.”
“It would certainly help to lower his guard,” Liesl agreed, consulting her notes as she pushed her glasses farther up on her nose. “Particularly if we do only card games. Apparently, that’s his weakness.”
“I’m more of a roulette girl myself,” said Deadshot.
Cicada came in and put a plate of food before Amaya. She grinned up at him in thanks and began to scarf it down with her fingers, thankful she had put away the countess persona for the night and didn’t have to bother with manners.
Boon had forced her to use forks and knives with every meal. She had grown out of the practice on the Brackish, and as a result her hands had cramped as she clumsily navigated the utensils. Boon had constantly barked at her not to stab her food, not to scrape the tines against the plate, to take petite bites—What are you, an animal? Cut your damn meat!
But it had only been the preface to a greater trial. Once the Brackish had been fully commissioned, they had left the Ledese Islands and sailed to the southern coast of the Rain Empire, to the cosmopolitan city of Viariche. Amaya had ogled it from the ship as they came into port, a city of beautiful white buildings and winding cobblestone streets lined with black iron streetlamps.
There, Liesl had been fully in her element, and her first order of business was to trade Amaya’s trousers for fanciful dresses. In the spacious apartments where they had stayed, paid for by Boon, Amaya had been awakened their second morning by an assertive tailor eager to put his measuring tape in places Amaya didn’t care to think about.
“That was one of the most reputable dressmakers in the city!” Liesl had yelled as the tailor, now sporting a black eye, stormed out of the apartment. “He’s supposed to measure you all over!”
“Find one who’s a woman, then!”
Liesl eventually did, though it barely made the procedure any easier; Amaya squirmed and fidgeted during the entire fitting, staying put only by the power of Liesl’s glare. Deadshot, standing next to her, had merely crossed her arms and grinned at Amaya’s discomfort.
It had taken a combined effort among the three of them to get Amaya into the first dress, a cobalt-blue ball gown with embroidered butterflies peeking through the ruffles of the skirt. Though Amaya had cursed and complained the entire time, when Liesl finally steered her toward the stand-up mirror, the grumbling had died on Amaya’s lips.
She hadn’t worn a dress since she was a little girl. Her mother had had a whole corner of her closet devoted to them, and would smile widely whenever she could wrestle Amaya into one. Her mother would brush her hair and pin it up, and even apply a bit of pink lipstick. Amaya had always fussed through the process, but once it was done, she would delight in how pretty she looked. She would spin around and make her skirts fly out until her mother reprimanded her for showing her legs.
Staring at a stand-up mirror hundreds of miles away from those memories, Amaya had run her hands over the expensive fabric of her first new dress in a decade and blinked back tears.
“Do you like it?” Liesl had asked. Amaya nodded. “Good. We’ll debut it tonight.”
For three months, Amaya had been expected to patronize ritzy establishments and attend extravagant parties. Walking through them was like walking through a fever dream. She hadn’t laid eyes on such finery since living in Moray, and the sight of massive chandeliers, ballrooms of white-and-black marble, and dazzling arrays of colorful foods had constantly driven her speechless.
In some ways, it had been even more difficult than her work on the Brackish. Walking in high heels was not unlike walking across a slippery deck in the rain, and sometimes the bodices and corsets of her dresses were so tight she became short of breath and needed to lie down. When she complained about her bruised ribs to Liesl, the girl had merely shrugged and said, “Such is the price of fashion.”
The worst of it, though, was the people. They asked her endless questions, their personalities were dull, and their compassion was nonexistent. Still, Amaya mirrored the nobles’ motions and practiced their cadences when she spoke. She wrapped herself in a new persona the way sails are furled before a storm, hiding Amaya away and making room for the only person who would be able to deftly infiltrate the Moray gentry.
Countess Yamaa.
On the night before their journey to Moray, Boon had pulled her aside and given her a gift: a set of four knives, their handles inlaid with silver and pearl.
“I’ve been teaching you how to fight with real knives,” he said, “so I figured you should have your own. Make sure you always have one hidden on your person.”
Amaya had held each of them in her hand, felt their weight and tested the edges of their blades. She had easily read the message in Boon’s gift: that she would never hold a shucker again.
“We will succeed,” he had whispered, and she had believed him.
As Liesl, Avi, and Deadshot continued to scheme down the table, Amaya licked the last of her late dinner from her fingers, only half listening. She was tired. She wanted only to fall into a dreamless sleep. But she had more to do tonight, more than they even knew.
When she heard her name, she looked up to find all their eyes turned toward her.
“You should call on the Mercado boy soon,” Liesl said. “Invite him to dine with you, or meet with him at a teahouse in the city somewhere. Get to know him better.”
Amaya bit the inside of her cheek, still smarting over the way she had fumbled both interactions with him. But what choice did she have?
“I’ll write an invitation tomorrow,” she agreed, standing up. “Liesl, I need you for something.”
The girl met her out in the entryway. “Do you need help getting ready for bed?”
“I think I can handle it,” Amaya said dryly. “No, I wanted to ask…”
She had rehearsed the words, oddly nervous at the thought of speaking them out loud. But Liesl just looked at her calmly, patiently.
Amaya took a deep breath. “If you have a spare moment, I was wondering if you could look into a person for me. Find files on him, public records, that sort of thing.”
“Of course,” Liesl said. “That’s why I’m here. Who do you need research on?”
Amaya’s throat worked, but no words came out. She swallowed, tried again.
“Arun Chandra,” she said, almost too soft to hear.
But Liesl heard, and her face shifted slightly to sympathy. She thought about it—after all, it was a request that wasn’t a part of Boon’s overall plan—until eventually she nodded.
“I’ll see what I can find,” Liesl said.
She breathed out in relief. “Thank you.”
Amaya excused herself and retired to her bedroom. Her work as Countess Yamaa was done for the night, and she had plans elsewhere.
At a specific address, in fact, that she had written on a small piece of paper tucked in a jewelry box in her room.
She walked by the expansive canopy bed, the broad windows open to a view of Crescent Bay in the distance. Lifting the lid of the jewelry box on her dresser, she thumbed the note open and took a deep breath, reciting the address for the hundredth time before she tore up the paper and threw it in the bin.
The knives Boon had given her were laid out on the bed. She tucked them away one by one: the longest at her hip, two more in the hidden sheaths in her boots, and the smallest at the bracer under her left sleeve.
Briefly she brushed her thumb against the tattoo on her wrist, the knife pointing outward. It had once meant survival to her, a reminder that she had to fight for every single day. But now it meant some-thing else.
It meant revenge.
Turning down the lanterns in her room, she climbed out the window onto the balcony. Moray was spread out before her, its lights a pale imitation of the stars overhead. So
mewhere in that sprawl was her destination, the address that had been spinning in her mind for days.
The address where the retired Captain Zharo now lived.
She had been patient long enough. Now it was time to see if there was any difference between gutting a fish and gutting a man.
Light is the greatest tool in an artist’s arsenal. It sheds truth that would otherwise be buried by the dark.
—THE PAINTER’S PRACTICE
Cayo knew that, shaken as he was, he should have gone straight home to his waiting bed. But his mind was a viper’s nest—every thought he grabbed at turned out to be venomous.
The countess was a contradiction. He was engaged to Romara and had not yet told his father. And Bas…
There had to be something he could do. Cayo was so tired of being useless, of being able to do nothing while Soria’s life drained out of her a day at a time.
Then he remembered seeing Philip at the party, how he hadn’t gotten the chance to speak to him.
Cayo pounded on the roof of the carriage. “Take me to the lighthouse,” he told the driver. “Please.”
They arrived ten minutes later, and when the driver opened the door for Cayo, he was greeted with a fresh, cool ocean breeze. The lighthouse was stationed on the edge of a tall cliff face overlooking the bay, the short, squat tower made of light brick and limestone. Night had blanketed Moray in navy and demure purple, but here, the lighthouse drove back a bit of the dark in flashes like dying stars.
It was one of Bas’s favorite places. Cayo had often come here with him, as had Philip, and he hoped to find one of them—if not both—at the top. As Cayo walked the gentle incline of the road leading to the lighthouse, he remembered a night when he had stolen a cake from a duchess’s party and how he and Sébastien had eaten the whole thing with their hands under the watchful light. Cayo absently licked at his lips, as if he could still taste the sugar.
When he reached the courtyard surrounding the lighthouse, he saw his gamble had paid off. A lone figure stood at the railing, gazing out at the ocean as he smoked a long, thin cigarillo. As Cayo approached, he made sure to clear his throat so as not to startle him.