Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(89)

“I was hoping to avoid this, y’know,” he said. “If you’d followed the plan, we could’ve all made a profit. Now everything’s in pieces.”

“What are you talking about?”

He pointed the sword’s tip at her. “You betrayed me, girl. You let Mercado get into your father’s Vault. You let him burn all the evidence that would’ve put him away for good!”

She shook her head slowly, heart racing. “You knew what was in my father’s Vault? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’d’ve gone and tried to open it for yourself!” He rushed at her, and she blocked again, grunting under the impact. “Don’t lie and say you wouldn’t have.”

He was right, damn him.

“That doesn’t mean I betrayed you,” she growled, trembling under their locked blades. “He had information I didn’t!” She kicked the spot under his knee, but he seemed to have been anticipating it, for even as he stumbled he didn’t buckle completely. It was enough for her to worm away again, backing up toward the railing as moonlight striped the deck with silver fingers.

“And you’re one to talk,” she panted. “All those chests filled with counterfeit coins. You were using me to spread them.”

He barked a laugh, his head twitching a few times. “Surprised it took you this long to figure out.”

“Why do it?” she demanded. “Any of this? Why couldn’t you just leave Moray alone?”

“I told you,” he growled. “Mercado—this city—took everything from me. My life means nothing until I can pay them back in kind.”

“At what cost? At what point do we stop trading pain for more pain?”

“Don’t get philosophical on me, girl,” he said, twirling the sword again. “You won’t like where it leads.”

A sudden clatter made her turn her head. Her breath caught at the sight of the two people tied up on the far end of the deck, the rope around their middles pressing their backs together.

“Cayo!” she called. He was gagged and bound like his sister, but he had managed to knock over a barrel to grab Amaya’s attention. His eyes were wide and pleading, his eyebrows drawn low in confusion at the scene unfolding before him.

She made to rush over to free them, but Boon got in her way and pushed her back. She deflected with her knives, aiming high then low, spinning to try to nick his shins. Ducking, weaving, feinting—those were the techniques he had built her training on. But he guessed all her moves and blocked them easily, always meeting her advances with an air of almost boredom.

Of course. He had trained her—he knew these moves because they were his own.

“That all you got in you?” he taunted.

“What are you doing with them? They’re innocent, they’re not involved in Mercado’s schemes.”

“It’s called a ransom, girl. Mercado’ll get his children back once he clears my name and pays me back what he owes me. I won’t harm a hair on their pretty heads.”

“Unlike the Water Bugs, right?” she countered, her voice wavering under the grief that suddenly gripped her. Her knees were still damp with Nian’s blood. “You showed no hesitation killing them!”

His face shuttered into a darker expression. “The fellows I hired were a bit too eager, I’ll admit.” He cocked his head toward the continuous sounds of fighting, clicking his tongue. “Sounds like they’re getting their due.”

“That doesn’t absolve you of anything. Their deaths are still your fault. And my father…”

They probably know how your father truly died. They’re probably the one who killed him.

“Did you kill him?” she whispered. “Did you kill my father?”

Boon looked at her with a sobriety that she had never seen him show before. Even the tremor in his left hand seemed to grow still. His eyes were dark and unreadable, but there was something in the lines of his face that made her ache.

“In a sense,” he said quietly, “I suppose I did.”

Amaya’s chest shook under the swelling of her lungs, her jaw clenched hard enough to ache. She launched herself at him, barely planning her attacks before she made them, hoping to throw him off course. He cursed when she got his forearm, a line of red welling from under his torn coat. But he countered expertly, driving her back and showing off moves he hadn’t had time to teach her. He knocked one of her knives away and she reeled backward, falling over a crate and rolling into a crouch on the deck.

Boon approached her slowly, sword in hand. “Face it, girl,” he said. “You’re still too weak. You have too much of Silverfish in you.”

Amaya grimaced, hatred hardening her heart. “The day we rescued you from drowning. Why were you there? Why did you have marigolds?”

Marigolds were the symbol of death and funerals in Khari. Who had Boon been mourning? Her father?

Boon almost wavered, genuinely surprised by the question. She waited for him to draw closer, crouched and ready to spring.

She had practiced what she would do if Captain Zharo ever went too far. With only a shucker or her hands as weapons, she had gone through the movements until she memorized them, hoping never to resort to using them.

It was the one move Boon hadn’t yet seen.