Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(81)

She stared at him blankly. What was he even talking about? She had hoped to enter this arena on even playing ground, but everything Mercado said was tripping her and making her stumble.

“You’re…just trying to evade blame,” she said. “To pin your crimes on others, like you’ve always done.”

“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!”