Dark Life: Rip Tide (6 page)

Standing in the shadows beneath the stairs, I tried to catch my breath. I kept my back to the wall and looked out at the bustling walkway. Steady dripping from the deck above splashed onto everyone equally, though the Topsiders hid under their parasols. After a moment, I realized that from this vantage point, the crowd didn’t seem like such an indistinguishable mass. In fact, it was interesting to see how many different sorts of people went by—from fancy stack-city dwellers to seafloor ooze-diggers. And I’d thought the Trade Station attracted a wide variety. I’d been kidding myself.

Once I felt calmer, the sound of so many people talking at once didn’t seem like such an assault on my eardrums. And if I concentrated, I could even hear individual voices as people passed. Snippets of conversation—mostly side betting on the upcoming match. I found that I could tell the swabbies and tide-runners by their slang. Even easier to identify: the mainlanders. With their elaborate sentences stuffed with extra words, I didn’t even need to see
the speakers. Though I had to admit people-watching was more interesting than I would have ever guessed. Especially because the mainlanders with their filmy clothes and zinc-painted faces—some made up to look like animals and birds, others more fantastical—gave me the feeling of being awake in a dream.

And then there were the surfs. Their sun-baked skin was easy to spot, though none who passed were as leathery as the surfs on Drift. Their clothing came in a wide variety and apparently depended on their township’s trade. I saw salmon-skin ponchos, woven seaweed hats, and dresses of burlap and old fishing nets. But I didn’t know enough about surf culture to pick out the mollusk farmers from the bio-fuel harvesters. Several stared at me as they headed up the stairs to the sundeck. Probably because my skin stood out in the shadows. Still, with their sun blisters, elaborate tattoos, and missing limbs—a shine should be no big deal.

Now that I had my nerves under control again, it was time to find Mayor Fife. But when I stepped from my nook, I saw a familiar striped muumuu disappear into the next shop. The sign in front read:
SHAVES, SLATHER, AND ART.

Upon pushing through the swinging doors, I was relieved to see that the place wasn’t too crowded. A few customers reclined in the chairs while attendants in white jackets painted their exposed skin using brushes and putty knives. Dozens of photographs on the wall displayed a
variety of painted body parts—each design more intricate than the last.

I spotted Tupper in the back, seated next to a woman who was having yellow flowers painstakingly dabbed onto her bare arms. Heading for him, I passed another customer who was lying facedown on a padded table. His back glistened with a freshly painted seascape that was about as beautiful as I’d ever seen.

“Will that last?” I asked the attendant as he studied his artist’s pallet.

“I’ll spray it with a sweat-proof coating, but it’s ephemeral beauty. Long lived as a rose.”

Right. And ten times more expensive. Though when I heard Tupper tell his attendant, “Just a slather of white,” I felt a twinge of disappointment. With so many colors and designs to choose from, solid white seemed a little dull.

The attendant seemed disappointed as well. “Only white?”

“I’m a traditionalist.” As Tupper settled back in the chair, he spotted me and waved me closer. “Looking for me, I assume.”

I glanced at the attendant and lowered my voice. “You said something before…. Have other people been kidnapped by surfs?”

“Oh, yes. Seems like more every year. Even happened to the Pennsylvania rep.” Chuckling, Tupper closed his eyes. “I think it was Rawscale. Surfs snatched him right
off his yacht. Demanded an unbelievable amount in ransom. Wouldn’t even negotiate with his family.”

“But they got him back eventually.”

“Well, no, actually that one ended badly,” Tupper said as the attendant smeared white zinc-paste over his balding pate. “But I’m sure nothing so gruesome will happen to your parents. They know better than to get huffy with savages.”

“Drift hasn’t asked for a ransom. At least I don’t think so.”

“No?” He frowned without opening his eyes. “Well, I’m sure they’ll get around to it.”

I shot a look at the attendant, who was now brushing goop across Tupper’s lids and down his nose. The man seemed like he couldn’t care less about our discussion. “What if ransom isn’t the point?” I asked Tupper.

He snorted. “With surfs, money is always the point. Especially now.”

“What’s different about now?”

Though only a portion of his face was covered in zinc-paste, Tupper shooed the attendant aside and sat up. “Listen, Ty,” he said, emphasizing my first name as if to prove he remembered it. “You have nothing to worry about. I heard that Captain Selene Revas is on the case, and she’s the one Seaguard officer the surfs will deal with.”

“Why’s that?”

“They like her perfume.” His tone may as well have been an eye roll. “Who knows? Who cares? As long as they’ll negotiate with someone on our side.”

Before today, I would have bristled at “our side.” We were all Commonwealth citizens, after all. But now, the surfs on Drift had sunk so low in my estimation, they didn’t even rank as human.

A bell gonged in the distance.

“Finish up, will you?” Tupper snapped at the attendant while lying back on the chair. “I haven’t placed my bet yet.”

“That was the one-hour bell, sir. You have plenty of time. The bookies don’t close until the match starts.”

“Thank you for your help,” I told Tupper.

“Anytime,” he called out. “Always happy to assist my constituents….”

When I stepped out of the slather shop, sunlight flooded my eyes, coming from the town’s open center. I crossed the walkway and looked over the railing. The drill well was filled with ocean, and a heavy-duty raft bobbed in the middle of the pool. Three floors up, the tower’s girders did nothing to block the UV rays.

“The poor child looks lost,” said a familiar voice behind me.

I turned to see a guy not much older than me sitting on the railing with his back to the four-story drop. His dark hair looked as if it rarely met up with a comb, and two gold teeth glistened among his pearly whites
as he grinned at me. Eel. One of the outlaws in Shade’s gang.

“Good,” his companion said coldly. “Let’s leave him lost, since he wasn’t on the sundeck like he was supposed to be.” There was no missing Pretty, who never seemed particularly pretty to me. He just looked cruel with his sharp cheekbones and ice blue eyes. His hair was as long as ever. Loose, it hung over his shoulder like an infirmary curtain he could slip behind when needed.

“Now, you know we can’t,” Eel said to Pretty as if I weren’t within earshot. “Not when we promised Gem o’ the ocean that we’d see if he was still down here.”

I hated the casual way Eel said it. Like he used that phrase for Gemma all the time. Which he probably did since that’s how Shade had addressed letters to her when she was younger. I knuckled down my resentment. I didn’t have time to let outlaws get me riled.

“Dark Life”—Pretty swung a leg over the rail to the open side with the pool far below—“keep up or stay lost, ’cause we’re not coming back for you.” With that he grasped the rungs of a ladder that ran up the length of the drill well and climbed out of sight.

Eel shot me a grin. “Ain’t he a charmer?” He, too, swung his legs to the other side of the rail. “Come on.”

“No,” I said, which made him glance back in surprise. “I’m not here to visit Shade or see his boxing match. I need to find Mayor Fife.”

“We
know.
Probably why Shade sent for him. But if you don’t want to come …”

I was at his side in a flash. “Gemma told you what happened?”

“What do you think?”

Now I saw that several ladders were mounted on the interior walls of the drill well, all climbing to the top of the tower. “Where are we going?”

“The meat locker.” Eel leapt onto the ladder as easily as a floater stringing rigging between masts. It made me wonder where he had lived before he was sent to Seablite.

Avoiding the workers setting up three-tiered bleachers for the match, I swung my legs over the railing and stepped onto the ladder with a smidge more caution. I didn’t share Gemma’s fear of heights, but I had no intention of amusing a pair of outlaws by taking a long spill into the pool below.

When we reached the top deck, Eel jumped off. The sunlight beat down so hard, it took me a moment to see where he had gone. Especially since the bleachers were already in position on this deck and starting to fill up. Finally, I spotted him by a large fuel tank near the base of the crane. He waved and then disappeared through a door in its side. As I approached, I saw that someone had retrofitted the fuel tank with a hatch, probably taken from an old submarine. With a spin of the wheel, I opened it and peered into the shadowy interior. Cold air greeted
me and I entered with a sense of relief. It was the closest I’d come all afternoon to the feel of the deep.

I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light and narrowly avoided slamming into a carcass hanging from a hook. Stepping around it, I cut a path through several more. From the white-striped flippers, I knew that I was walking past pieces of a minke whale. As sickened as I was by the sight, it wasn’t the greasy smell of blubber making me dizzy. The fuel tank may have been empty for over a century, but I could swear the air still carried oil fumes.

I followed the sound of meaty punches and rounded another hunk of whale—to see a great white shark sailing toward me, jaws wide. My heart jerked, and I spun out of the way. But when the massive blue-gray body swung back the way it came, I realized that it was just another carcass on a hook. One that was standing in for a punching bag.

A couple of sledgehammer blows sent the great white flying again. Its gaping mouth, spilling over with teeth, arced even higher this time, forcing me to dart aside or get knocked off my feet.

“See, he found his way,” I heard Eel say as I stumbled into an area where there were no carcasses, only searing light.

Squinting, I retreated back into the shadows. Sunlight streamed through a windowed hatch in the ceiling, also
retrofitted, creating a tight circle of illumination in the center of the fuel tank. I spotted Gemma off to one side by a table loaded with food. Behind it, Eel busied himself heaping charred tentacles onto a plate. Gemma beckoned me over but another volley of punches drew my attention to Shade.

Head shaved and tattoos writhing, he was as menacing as ever, pounding away at the shark. When he finally straightened, his eyes found me in the dimness beyond the circle’s edge. “Knew we’d meet up again.”

I’d forgotten how low his voice was and the chilling way it reverberated down my spine.

Dust motes shimmered in the air around him. Or maybe they were denticles from the shark’s skin. A grin spread over Shade’s face. “Just never thought you’d be stupid enough to set foot on Rip Tide.”

On the far side of the fuel tank, someone clapped loudly. “Talk about showmanship!” said a dark-skinned man as he strolled into the open area. The buttons on his long linen cassock gleamed in the sunlight while the fringed sash around his waist made me think he was someone official. Hopefully Mayor Fife.

Taking off his flat, wide-brimmed hat, the man used it to gesture at the swinging shark. “Deliver that in the ring,” he told Shade, “and I’ll make you a star.”

“I agreed to one fight.” Shade’s reply sounded more like a warning than a reminder. “Even that might not be worth the risk.”

The man waved aside Shade’s concern. “When you hear the cheers, you’ll forget you’re taking a gamble. Win, and you can make a bargeload of money doing the circuit. With your unique talents, you’ll have followers in no time—fans who will travel to any off-coast town to see you fight.”

“Just what I need,” Shade scoffed as he unwrapped shredded strips of cloth from his hands. “A spotlight on
me. May as well paint a bull’s-eye on my back.” His knuckles were bloody from contact with the shark’s sandpaper skin. Scowling, he turned to Pretty. “Who thought this was a good idea?”

“You.” Pretty thunked a bucket down on a metal drum. “And Fife,” he added, shooting a droll look at the other man.

So Eel hadn’t been lying. Shade really had sent for Mayor Fife. I never would have predicted that a day would come when I’d be grateful to have outlaws as allies.

Settling on top of a different drum, Pretty tied back his long hair. “I still don’t see how this is a better life.”

“It’s honest work,” protested Mayor Fife.

Eel laughed, despite having food in his mouth. “Is that supposed to be a sales pitch, Fife?”

“Brine,” Pretty told Shade, pointing at the bucket.

Throwing aside the last of his hand wrappings, Shade plunged his fists into the bucket and winced. I knew that sailors soaked their hands in seawater to toughen them up. I supposed it made sense for a boxer to do the same.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Gemma gesturing me forward. She was right. I wasn’t going to find answers among the dangling carcasses. I moved into the light but clearly not fast enough for her. She cut across the open area to join me.

“Well, now. Aren’t
you
something?” Mayor Fife exclaimed. “You’ve been holding out on me, Shade.”

I glanced at the outlaw, wondering how he’d react to a middle-aged man fawning over Gemma. But Shade remained impassive as he shook the seawater off his hands.

“What’s your name, son?”

With a start, I realized that Fife had been talking about
me,
not Gemma. A rush of heat swept up my neck and into my face. “Ty,” I said, suddenly wary.

“Would you look at that? He’s glowing,” Fife crowed. “And good-looking to boot. Why haven’t we met?” he demanded jovially, thrusting out his hand. “Gideon Fife. Mayor to the residents of Rip Tide. Surf agent to the townships. And impresario extraordinaire when an opportunity presents itself.”

Was I supposed to know what that meant? I shook his hand while hating the calculating gleam in his eyes.

“And I thought these boys had shines.” Fife shook his head in mock amazement. “They dim in comparison. I know. Let’s make him your cornerman,” he called back to Shade.

With a stretch, Shade cracked each shoulder. “Eel and Pretty have it covered.”

“You think people who came to see a fight care about a shine?” Pretty asked skeptically.

“Might be as common as cod where you’re from,” Fife
replied, “but I guarantee these trifling tower folk have never seen the likes of him. No offense,” he said to me. “I’m just trying to do right by my boxers. And that means whatever draws the tourists and their money. Bare-knuckle, no rules … a little local color … or, in this case, local
shine.”
His eyes gleamed. “How about water boy?”

“Wasting your time,” Shade told Fife. “Just tell him what you know about Drift.”

The mayor’s good humor vanished in a blink. “You’re the boy whose parents were kidnapped?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t tell me he was pioneer,” Fife said to Shade, sounding appalled. “Well, this changes things.”

“Because surfs hate the subsea pioneers,” I said. “I heard.”

“It means that I don’t know how to help you,” he explained. “No point in offering to act as go-between or making Rip Tide the exchange location if these surfs aren’t after ransom money.”

“Why else take Ty’s parents?” Gemma asked.

“Could be political,” Fife said. “Could be revenge.”

“Well, I’m not waiting around for them to explain themselves to me,” I said. “They pick up their rations from Rip Tide, right?” At his nod, I went on, “So, when are they coming next?”

“Not for another two weeks. All the townships collect their rations at the start of the month.”

My heart sank. “Do you know where Drift could be now? Where they fish?”

“No idea,” he said, sounding genuinely sorry. “This is as far off coast as I go.”

“What about other surfs?” Gemma asked him. “Can’t you ask if any of them passed Drift on their way here?”

“They aren’t going to tell me chum,” Fife said. “I’m the man who gives them less than they need each month. They don’t understand that I don’t fill the orders, I just distribute what I’m sent.” Sighing deeply, he glanced at Shade. “You should start getting oiled up.”

“Already?” Eel complained. “The stink is going to kill my appetite.”

“Nothing kills your appetite.” Pretty picked up a second bucket. Tipping it, he drizzled oil across Shade’s broad shoulders, which Shade then smeared down his arms and over his bare chest. Fish oil. The stench filled the fuel tank as fast as Pretty poured.

I wasn’t ready to let the last topic drop. “Representative Tupper says the surfs will talk to Captain Revas. Is that true?” I asked Fife.

He snorted. “The Assembly likes to think they have a point person in the Seaguard. A happy delusion. Frankly,
you’d
have a better chance getting answers out of them. And with that shine of yours broadcasting that you’re a subsea pioneer, that’s saying something.”

I had a sinking feeling that he was right. I’d had a sample of Captain Revas’s charm that afternoon and couldn’t see any reason why the surfs would want to deal with her, despite what Tupper thought.

Just then Ratter pushed past the hanging carcasses. “Sorry to interrupt, boss.” Then he caught sight of me and scowled.

Tipping up her chin, Gemma glared back at him.

“What’s up, Ratter?” Fife prompted.

“Couple of peeved surfs outside want to talk to you. Should I take care of them?”

“No,” Fife said. “They have the right to complain. And I get paid to listen. Tell them I’ll be right out.”

I wondered if Mayor Fife’s answer would have been different if we weren’t here.

Ratter sent one more evil look my way and left. He was burly and no doubt violent, but I just didn’t care that he hated me. All my worry was going toward getting my family reunited.

“That man didn’t want to let Ty onto Rip Tide,” Gemma told Fife angrily. “Does he have a problem with the pioneers, too?”

“Ratter has a problem with anyone who isn’t like him,” Fife replied. “Lucky for us, that’s everybody. The world only needs one Ratter.”

“If that,” I muttered.

“Don’t like him much, huh?” Fife asked. “Excellent. That’s what I pay him for. To be nasty, so I don’t have to.”

“He’s very good at it,” Gemma said tartly, which made Fife laugh.

“Know what a ratter is?” he asked her.

When she shook her head, he explained, “A dog bred to kill vermin. The kind you can throw into a rat pit and he won’t jump out until every last rodent is dead. Shakes them till their necks break. You can make money off a dog like that. When I became mayor, I made it my job to keep this town free of vermin—the two-legged kind. Ratter is the dog that helps me do that.” Fife’s grin was broad and sparkling. “He takes pride in his name.”

Outside, a gong sounded. “Half an hour till show-time,” he told Shade. “See you all ringside.” He paused by me. “Sorry I wasn’t more help. But stick around with your ears open. If a surf knows anything about Drift kidnapping a couple of pioneers, it’ll be the talk of Rip Tide before the match is over. You might overhear something useful.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

“Being that you’re Dark Life, I expect you know what a real riptide is.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Good. Then you’ll be careful out there.” After putting on his wide-brimmed hat, Fife looked back at Shade
and frowned. “Don’t forget his head,” he called to Pretty. “Gabion is known for ripping off ears.”

As the others made their way down to the drill well, Gemma and I paused by the outside railing. The sun was starting to sink in the sky, which worried me. If the surfs on Drift hadn’t demanded a ransom by now, I doubted they ever would, despite what Tupper had said.

“What is a riptide?” Gemma asked me.

Fife probably used that line a lot. Not that it wasn’t fitting. “A patch of water where different currents meet up. It’s turbulent. Hard to navigate. Treacherous, even.”

“Hard to navigate” sure described my situation. I turned to look across the open sundeck, with its scattering of café tables. Unlike Rip Tide’s other levels, this one had only a few enclosed buildings and the drill tower in the center, so I had an unobstructed view of the surfs crowding along the railing that overlooked the drill well.

“One of them must know something,” I said, frustrated. “But they’re not going to talk to me.”

“You haven’t even tried,” Gemma pointed out. “Maybe they don’t all hate settlers.”

“That’s the only thing I’ve heard today that I don’t doubt.” I glanced at her. “What about you? Did you ask Shade if you can live on the
Specter
?”

“I couldn’t tell him that I’m homeless right before
his match,” she said lightly. “It might have messed up his concentration.”

I nodded, though who knew what kind of shape Shade would be in after the match. Hopefully he’d still have both his ears.

Suddenly the image of Shade smearing fish oil over his skin put an idea in my head. “You’re right. I have to at least try talking to the surfs. But not as a pioneer.”

“How—”

“I have to cover up my shine so I can pass as something else … like a fisherman.”

She smiled, understanding my plan. “Pick a pretty color.”

Fishing boats bought zinc-paste by the barrel, usually in the color of their company logo. I just picked the color I liked best: the blue of the ocean on a sunny day at twenty feet down. With that, I stripped off my shirt and got the fastest zinc-paste body job on the ocean.

The slather shop attendant had agreed to hold on to my shirt and bandana until the end of the match. Now, smeared from hairline to hip bone in blue, I crossed the sundeck, confident that I looked like the fishermen forming blocks of color in the bleachers.

Holding my breath, I hurried past the food carts. On the fifth level, I’d passed many a Topsider clutching a
paper cone of crispy fried seaweed. But up here, I didn’t see a single surf nibbling on samphire, the salty tangle of fried greens. Unlike most Topsiders, the surfs were meat eaters. Raw, cooked, or smoked—and often washed down with liquid whale blubber.

I liked eating fish, no question, but the big seller on the sundeck was fermented seal flipper, which smelled even fouler than it looked. Worse, the flipper came with dipping sauce, which was made from the contents of the seal’s intestines—partly digested clams and greens. At one point Ma had explained that the surfs didn’t have enough room on their townships to grow vegetables, so this was their solution—eating the seaweed out of sea mammals’ stomachs. Made mine turn over just thinking about it.

I passed the bleachers and felt the hair on my body prickle under the zinc-paste as I noticed all the gut-skin garments—ponchos, rain shirts, and sleeveless hooded coats—and thought of Raj’s charming theory: that the surfs made their waterproof outerwear out of human guts. I angled toward the nearest surf for a better look at the strips of translucent material that had been stitched together to make his anorak. Definitely an organic membrane of some sort, as sheer as a Topsider’s veil. Probably scraped-out intestines or maybe a stomach lining, though who knew from what?

I decided to push aside the unsettling thought, because
it was now or never. Once the boxing match began, no one would be talking about Drift. Even if they were, I’d never hear it over the cheers and yells. Mustering my courage, I slipped into the crowd.

As soon as I’d gone two feet, the throng closed behind me and suddenly I felt like I’d plunged into the deep without inhaling Liquigen first. The water pressure in Coldsleep Canyon couldn’t have squeezed the air out of my lungs any faster. I forced myself to think of Gemma—how she navigated through packed-tight bodies—and did the same. Elbowing my way to the railing, I leaned over it to breathe in air that someone else hadn’t just exhaled.

If I stayed next to the drill well, I wasn’t completely immersed and I could manage it. Then I noticed that the surfs around me were all armed with tridents, daggers, bows, and sheaths of arrows tipped with shark teeth and sharpened spiral shells. Clearly prepared for trouble. Their primitive weapons made me wonder again how Hadal had acquired a state-of-the-art submarine.

Speakers around Rip Tide crackled and then blared the Commonwealth national anthem. On the decks below, voices rose, singing along with gusto. But surrounding me—silence. I stole a look at the surfs along the railing. If I hadn’t had an urgent reason to stay on the sundeck, I would have made a hasty exit. The surfs’ expressions were nothing short of murderous, with their jaws clenched
shut. Considering that they had no representative in the Assembly to speak or vote on their behalf, I could understand why they might not feel very patriotic.

When the anthem finished, talk on the sundeck started up again immediately, so I inched along the railing with my ears open. Long minutes went by and all I overheard were people making side bets on “first blood” and “first splash.”