Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(9)

“I might find enough pearls to pay off those additional weeks. It’s the only chance I have at getting home in time.”

“In time?”

Silverfish bit her lip. The waves were dark and tipped in gold as the sun sank. They pulled at her legs, urging her forward, pointing her north—to Moray.

“My mother’s birthday is at the end of the month,” she mumbled. “I wanted to be home for it.”

Roach let out a long sigh. He put a callused hand on her shoulder and shook it affectionately. “All right. Let’s find you some pearls, then.”

Silverfish waded farther out with him. Together they swam under the current, toward the shelf of spiky rocks on the island’s northwest shore where the fattest oysters were found. The water was choppy this time of day and desired nothing more than to keep her under. She broke the surface and latched on to the nearest rock shelf to collect her breath. She used to love the water in Moray, swimming through its blue, cradling warmth, but the water here was colder and less forgiving.

“Ready?” Roach said over the lapping of water against rock. Silverfish nodded, and they dived. She followed Roach as he swam determinedly down, down, farther from the light and into the inky blue of deep water. Her ears were already beginning to ache, her chest still sore from decompression after the dives she’d made earlier that week. On those dives, she’d managed to retrieve only a few tiny pearls, half of them misshapen.

Today’s dive would be different.

It had to be.

The man she’d rescued—he’d told her his name was Boon—might claim to be wealthy, but all Silverfish cared about was whether he could pay her way off the Brackish. He was just as Captain Zharo said: a useless waste of food and water.

“What’s your name?” he’d asked this morning after giving his own.

“Silverfish.”

The response earned her a slight tic of his mouth, almost a smile. “I meant your real name.”

“As if Boon is your real name? You call me Silverfish or nothing.”

That earned her a sharp bark of laughter as he leaned against the wall of the cell, scratching at the dark beard filling in around his jaw. There was a tremor in his left arm that seemed to come and go at random intervals. “Fair enough. Where you from, then?”

“Moray. You’re Kharian, I assume?” His accent hinted at it, though it was watered down, as if he hadn’t stepped foot in his home country in years.

“You assume correctly.” He’d folded his arms, his crusty, buttonless coat straining at his elbows. “How’d you end up here, then, Silverfish?”

“How does anyone end up on a debtor’s ship?” Instead of answering, he’d just stared at her, his gaze as dark as the pitch they used to waterproof the fish buckets. “What, are you looking for a bedtime story? Fine. The debt collectors came for my family after my father was accused of trafficking illegal goods to the Rain Empire in order to pay off gambling debts. Never mind that he was innocent, or that his lies were about as obvious as a whale in the desert. They hanged him for something he didn’t do, and all that debt was slapped onto our shoulders.”

She had to pause to take a breath, to fill herself with something other than rage and grief. “My mother couldn’t pay, so here I am.”

Boon had sat there, quietly listening, fingers laced over his stomach. Every so often he would jerk his head to one side, as if shooing away a fly or trying to get water out of his ear.

“Sounds like a real winner, your dad,” he said after a while.

“Don’t you dare mock my father,” she snapped. “Someone like you has no right to judge the type of man he was. And he was a good man—one of the best. Unlike some others I’ve met.”

He ignored the gibe. “So how’d this flawless father of yours come to be wrongly accused?” he asked. “How much shit did he have to step in to get it to stain his breeches?”

“He was a pearl merchant.” She could still remember riding on her father’s shoulders as he brought her to the docks, as he showed her around his ship and let her hold a few small, perfect pearls. She had called them moons, and he’d told her that was his secret—that the earth had many moons, and he knew where they hid under the waves. “He was loyal to the Port’s Authority. But they turned around and claimed he was a smuggler.”

Boon made a clucking noise with his tongue and jammed a pinkie finger in his ear, wriggling it around. “Doesn’t surprise me. The Port’s Authority are fickle bastards.”

“You have experience with them, do you?”

He examined his earwax-coated finger, even going so far as to smell it before rubbing it on his shirt. “Unfortunately.”

“Are you a merchant?” She had held her breath. It was the question she had wanted to ask since pulling him on board; if he was indeed a merchant from Moray, then he might have enough wealth waiting for him on shore that he could easily spare some for his rescuer.

But he had shaken his head, reading the disappointment on her face. “Not anymore. Not that kind, anyway.”

She didn’t know what that meant, and at that point was too afraid to ask. “Then why were you at sea? And…why were you covered in marigolds?” Marigolds were a symbol of death and remembrance in Khari, mostly used in shrines and for funerals.