Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(10)

“Don’t have to tell you my life story, do I?”

She scoffed. Hypocrite. “Well, the Port’s Authority is the reason I’m here. We never even saw any evidence. They were probably protecting one of their own.” She shrugged, although the injustice of it still pained her. “Or maybe it was a competition thing. Maybe Chandra’s Pearls was making too much profit and it spooked them.”

Boon had stared hard at the opposite wall of his cell. His head twitched a couple of times. Then he jumped to his feet so suddenly that Silverfish took a step back.

“Chandra,” he’d muttered. “Chandra, Chandra, Chandra.” His voice rose until he was practically shouting it, laughing with disbelief. “Chandra!”

He’d given a single loud yell and smacked his palm against the holding cell’s wall. Silverfish had flinched back, watching as Boon muttered to himself and leaned against the wall while holding his head, his laughter bleeding into snarls.

Then he had lunged for the bars, grabbing them with thick, scarred hands and pressing his forehead against them, dark eyes unnervingly wide. Silverfish had been frozen by that look.

“I see it now,” he whispered. “I see it.”

“See what?”

“Your father.” He had paused then, his grip slackening. He shook his head as if coming to his senses. “I knew him. Arun Chandra.”

Silverfish had closed her eyes for a moment, trying to will away the dizziness that was beginning to make the room spin. Arun Chandra. She hadn’t heard her father’s full name in years. Like Amaya, it felt like a dead thing suddenly resurrected.

For a moment, just a flash of a second, she’d almost imagined she could hear her father’s laugh, low and sonorous in his chest.

“You…You couldn’t have. He didn’t…” Consort with the likes of you, she wanted to say.

He stepped back and ran his hands through his hair. “Chandra. A pearl merchant in Moray, yeah. I knew him before…” Boon had looked at her again, hands still tangled in his hair. “You mentioned a gambling debt. Easy to gamble away a fortune in a place like Moray, no? Mayhap your dear dad wasn’t a smuggler, but every man carries his sins a different way.”

Sins? The man was a mess and had no idea what he was talking about. Silverfish had taken a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself enough to speak.

Finally, she’d said, “I can’t believe you thought that would work.”

He’d frowned. “What?”

“You didn’t know my father. You never met him—you have no idea what kind of man he was. You’re just trying to get me to help you escape.”

“Now hold on—”

“It was a nice try, but I don’t trust that easily. The only way I’d help you is if you had a fat diamond in your pocket. Even then, I’m not so sure.”

She’d thought Boon might get angry, but on the contrary, he just gave that harsh bark of laughter again. “Sounds to me like you don’t want to face the truth,” he had countered. “That your father maybe wasn’t the oh-so-perfect man you recall.”

Anger had spiked low in her gut, and Silverfish had grabbed the bars. “I don’t care what it sounds like to you, or even if you did know him. You say you’re wealthy? I say you’re riffraff. One of the Landless, if I had to guess.” There was a flash of indignation in his eyes. “I don’t expect someone like you to understand what loyalty is.”

“And you do?” he’d asked quietly.

She had stormed out after that. But his words continued to trail her in her shadow, written in the crinkles of her palms, murmured under the susurrus of the sea. They followed her down into the depths now, cold and dim and haunting.

“ Every man carries his sins a different way.”

Roach stopped swimming and pointed to an outcrop of rocky reefs below. It was crusted with coral, spindly stalks of pink and blue like small waterlogged trees. Silverfish swam toward it and eagerly reached for the nearest oyster, but Roach grabbed her wrist. He met her eyes and shook his head, pointing again. She followed his finger and accidentally let a few air bubbles escape.

The reef was crawling with cleverly camouflaged rockfish. One bite from them could send someone into shock. Under the waves, that was a death sentence.

Roach was already hauling her back up. Her lungs were starved, so she reluctantly followed until they broke the surface.

“Damn it.” Roach slicked back his wet hair, water sliding down his face. “Those rockfish weren’t there last time I dove.”

“So we just avoid them,” Silverfish said. “We can be careful.”

“It’s too risky.”

Silverfish closed her eyes tight. This was their last diving stop until they reached Moray; she couldn’t afford to let the opportunity go.

Protector and Punisher, she thought, beginning the familiar prayer to the Kharian gods her father had called upon his whole life, Trickster and Temptress, Lord of Earth and Lady of Sky, clear my eyes and clear my mind, for I know not what I do.

“Sil,” Roach warned. “I know that look. That’s your I’m-reckoning-with-the-gods look.”

She opened her eyes and grinned. “Last one down gets to shuck.”

And with that, she took another breath and plunged back into the water.