TO INHERIT THE SKY,
YOU MUST SCAVENGE THE STARS.
—REHANESE PROVERB
The most basic rule of water: Better to be above than below.
—THE VIEW FROM SOUTHERLY: A MARITIME HISTORY
The first thing Silverfish had learned on board the Brackish was how to hold a knife.
Not the useful kind that could gut a man, but something smaller, duller, and better suited for a child’s grip.
The second thing Silverfish had learned was just how much a fish’s innards could stink. How the odor clung to her hands for days after she’d worked the gutting deck, where offal and grime stubbornly adhered to the ship’s lacquered wood.
She had been forced to get used to these lessons over the last seven years, embittering and eroding her like salt on stone. Now as Silverfish worked, the wailing of seagulls above her as familiar as a lullaby, she ignored how the slime of a sturgeon stung her withered hands. Although she had once again been assigned to the foulest corner of the ship, she couldn’t help but smile.
In a few days’ time, she would never have to scrape fish guts again.
The Brackish creaked around her, as if in resentment. Out of habit, she scanned the deck for Roach. The Water Bugs—the other children—scurried about on the lower deck or climbed into the netting to fix loose ropes and retie knots. The younger Bugs were good for climbing and getting into small spaces, while the older ones like her were used for manual labor: stitching up sails, scrubbing the hull, hauling cannon fodder on the gun deck.
She finally spotted Roach up in the mainmast, his long, lanky body perched precariously above the riggings. He had gone up there plenty of times, but Silverfish still felt a swoop in her belly and the instinct to pray to her father’s gods. A dark stain lingered at the foot of the mizzenmast where Mantis had fallen only a few months before. Mantis had been the nimblest of them all, but when he’d lost his footing and tumbled down, there’d been nothing graceful about it. His bones had made a resounding crack, a sound that had followed Silverfish into dark and suffocating dreams for weeks afterward.
There hadn’t even been time for final rites. The Bugs had merely hauled his shattered body overboard, hardly daring to pause their work lest the captain decide to add the time they wasted to their debts.
Roach noticed her and gave a two-finger salute, a familiar gesture that meant I’m all right. It was their routine, a sort of call-and-response. Forcing down her worry, Silverfish saluted back before shooing away a seagull that descended low enough to see if it could steal a snack. It settled again on the railing at the end of the gutting line where Beetle worked.
Beetle was the smallest and youngest among them, barely eight years old. The girl didn’t even know how to swim yet. The hilt of her knife fit awkwardly in her tiny hand, her fingers constantly readjusting themselves as she struggled to open up a fangfish. Her wispy brown hair stuck to the sweat on her face, and blood splattered her thin forearms. The girl snuffled, trying not to cry.
Silverfish hesitated, debating whether to move toward her. As soon as she took a step, a roar came from the lower deck.
“Silverfish!”
Captain Zharo stood at the bottom of the stairs. She forced herself to meet his piercing gaze. She hated having to look at his face, red and blistered from the sun and half-concealed by a gnarled black beard. The rest of his hair was a tangled knot that Silverfish was certain he never washed.
“You take care of that sturgeon, or I’ll use you to remind the others how to slice open a belly,” he growled.
“Yes, Captain.” She bent her head and continued working, but her shoulders didn’t lose their tension, even when he stalked away. She watched him from under her lashes as he stomped past the wooden blackboard nailed under the foresail. On it were the names of every Water Bug on board—several crossed out, including Mantis’s—followed by a series of numbers. It was how the captain kept track of their debts, calculating how much time they all owed on his vessel.
Out of habit, Silverfish’s eyes went straight to her name and the small sum beside it. The price of only a few precious days.
As Zharo passed the board, a twelve-year-old Bug named Weevil waited for him to get out of earshot before fishing something from his pocket: a piece of hardtack.
Silverfish’s heart sank.
The hardtack was already halfway to Weevil’s mouth when the captain turned and spotted him. He was across the deck in a few strides. The boy dropped the hardtack and tried to back away, but the captain already had him by the collar. Some of the Bugs gasped as the captain pushed Weevil against the railing, half his body leaning precariously above the water.
“You do it again, you’re for the sharks,” Zharo growled. “I’d kill you now if it didn’t mean losing a pair of hands.”
Weevil was all too quick to nod his understanding, moaning in fear as he tried not to tumble overboard. With his shirt ridden up in the captain’s grip, Silverfish could plainly see the stark, hungry press of his ribs against his skin. Silverfish knew that hunger well, that clawing desperation that lurked between survival and suicide.
Silverfish shouldn’t have cared. Weevil knew better than to steal. They were all starving, after all.
Amaya would have cared.
But Silverfish hadn’t been Amaya in years. She had left Amaya behind, hundreds of miles away, buried at sea.
It was the first cruelty Captain Zharo had shown her. When she had set foot on the Brackish’s deck seven years ago, the man had looked her over, unimpressed, and said, “Who you are and where you came from don’t matter. Your name’s Silverfish now, and you’ll be thankful for it.”
She had once thought that beatings were the worst punishment the captain could dole out, but now she better understood what had happened that day, the same thing that happened whenever a new child was brought on board. The captain stripped them all of their names, their lives, everything that made them people.
Because to him, they weren’t people. They were bugs, easily squashed under his heel.
Captain Zharo let Weevil go at last, forcing the boy to scramble for a hold on the railing. As Weevil slumped with relief onto the deck, Zharo went back to the debt board. With a single motion, he erased Weevil’s sum with an aggressive swipe of his sleeve, the chalk screeching as he increased the amount by two weeks. Then he picked up the abandoned hardtack and shoved it in his own mouth, crumbs spilling onto his beard as he grinned at Weevil and continued on his patrol.
Silverfish lowered her head, puncturing the soft underbelly of the sturgeon she held. She scraped out the red globules of its insides and flung them into the metal pail before her, some of the warm ichor seeping into the open sores on her hands. In the water, the fish’s blood turned purple.
The Water Bugs were no better than the contents of that bucket: useless, repellent, easily dumped. She glanced at the end of the line at Beetle, who was still trying not to cry.
Silverfish knew better than to get involved. After a few more days of this, she would leave this festering ship for good.
Beetle whimpered loudly now. She hadn’t hardened yet, but she would. She would have to.
What’ll the captain do if he comes to shut her up?
Cursing again, Silverfish threw the sturgeon’s carcass into the bucket with the rest she’d gutted and moved down the line. Without a word, she crouched beside the girl and grabbed the next fangfish out of her still-full pail, swiping the knife up along its belly. Beetle’s whimpers died down to harsh little gasps as she caught her breath. They worked in silence for a while, and Silverfish was content to keep it that way.