Because his father was laughing softly, incredulously, while swinging his head side to side. “That didn’t take long, did it?”
“What do you mean?”
Kamon pressed his lips together, white with suppressed fury. “What happened to your month’s allowance, Cayo?”
Cayo hesitated. “I gave it to a friend. He—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Kamon snarled. “I should have known that as soon as you had a few drinas in your pocket you’d go back to the tables.”
Cayo flushed hot all over, his headache returning with a vengeance. “I haven’t gone to any of the gambling halls in months! You can go to the Vice Sector yourself and ask around.”
“Even if that’s true, how am I supposed to know you won’t eventually go back to your old habits?”
“I’ve been clean for six months,” Cayo said through clenched teeth. “When are you going to trust me?”
“Respectability doesn’t come quick, Cayo.” Kamon straightened his dining jacket. “As you’ve seen with Duchess Hizon. No, respectability is earned, and you have not yet proven yourself.”
Cayo was about to retort when there was a loud thump from the dining room followed by a scream. Cayo exchanged a startled look with his father before they ran inside.
“Soria!”
She had collapsed to the floor beside her chair, her hair spread about her like a pool of blood. She must have tried to excuse herself from the table before falling. Cayo dropped to his knees beside her and turned her over. She was unconscious, her eyelids fluttering while she struggled to breathe. Gen had gotten out of his chair to try to help, but he just stood there with his hands extended uselessly. The duke stood as well, pale and wide-eyed, while the duchess covered her mouth in shock.
“Soria,” Cayo said, cupping her face with his hand. She was burning up. “Soria!”
Then some of her hair fell away beneath a sweep of his fingers, revealing a spot of gray behind her ear.
Ash fever.
The sea gives and takes, alternating like the tide. Be careful lest you take too much. The waves remember what you owe.
—PROVERB FROM THE RAIN EMPIRE
The man, as it turned out, was not rich.
He was delusional.
The next morning, Silverfish brought water and a bit of hardtack down to his holding cell. There were three cells in total on the Brackish, all used for isolation and starvation to punish the Water Bugs who got on Captain Zharo’s bad side. Silverfish had once been locked up for three days without food or water, nearly dying of dehydration only because the captain had forgotten she was down here.
After long minutes of deep, racking coughs, the man she’d rescued just yesterday looked straight at her. Though his face was weathered by long hours between sun and sea, she guessed he was somewhere in his early midyears—though there was something ageless and off-putting about his eyes. A shiver ran down her spine at the intensity of them, how they mapped out her face, her matted black hair, her ragged clothing stained with fish blood and crusted with salt.
“You saved me, huh?” he said, his voice rough and low.
Silverfish crouched before the bars. His dark eyes followed her down.
“And now you owe me,” she said.
Several hours later and standing in the surf of the small island that was one of their usual harvesting spots, Silverfish tried not to grind her teeth. She and Roach were diving for pearls today, their last stop before they reached the waters outside of Moray. They only had about an hour and a half of light left, but still she lingered in the shallows, unable to take a deep enough breath to submerge.
Roach stood beside her, limbering up for the dive. The tattoo of a briar patch on the tawny skin of his chest was visible. One of the older Bugs had given it to him a few years ago before their seven years had ended. The same Bug had inked a tiny knife on the inside of Silverfish’s left wrist, a reminder to her that she had to be sharp and ruthless. No matter what, she had to survive.
“You look ready to spit rocks,” he remarked. “Did your new pet piss on the carpet?”
“He pissed on something, all right,” she muttered. “My hopes and dreams.” She angrily pulled her shirt off, leaving her in only her underthings and the pouch she wore for collecting oysters. She had long ago forsaken modesty, as had Roach, who had once admitted to her that the sight did nothing for him anyway; physical attraction was about as foreign to him as currency from the Sun Empire.
“Such dramatics!” Roach put a hand against his chest, over his heart.
She threw her clothes down, frustration welling in her. “Don’t start.”
Roach dropped his hand, sobering. “I’m sorry, Sil. What happened?”
She took a shaking breath, staring out over the waves to where the Brackish was anchored. The smaller Bugs were on the shore nearby, others finding tide pools to collect mussels, all supervised by Captain Zharo as he stalked the beach with a hand near the whip he kept coiled at his belt.
“I thought…” She shook her head, laughing bitterly at herself. “I thought that if I saved that man, he would repay me. That I could pay off my indenture early and finally go home. He had gold buttons.”
Roach frowned as he listened, nodding that he had seen them, too. She felt suddenly grateful that he was here with her—the familiar strong line of his jaw and the warmth of his green eyes made her feel significantly less alone. “And let me guess,” he said. “Turns out he’s just broke?”
“He claims,” she said, her voice dripping sarcasm, “to be the wealthiest man in the world.”
Roach’s thick eyebrows shot up. “Oh,” he said lightly. “Well, then.”
“He’s lying, Roach. Or he’s delusional.” Silverfish ran her fingers through her long, tangled hair, sighing. “He won’t say who he is or where he came from, of course. He carries no money with him. He just wants me to bust him out before the captain decides to kill him.”
“I’m sorry, Sil. But you were the one who decided to haul him up like a bundle of fangfish.”
“If I’d known it would come to this, I would have let him drown.” Somewhere inside her, she thought she felt Amaya flinch.
“Is that why you volunteered to dive?”
“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.