Somewhere in the Deep

by Tanvi Berwah

Genres: YA Dark Fantasy; YA Paranormal

Synopsis

From the author of Monsters Born and Made comes an action-packed South Asian inspired fantasy that will have your heart racing at every turn. Seventeen-year-old Krescent Dune is buried under the weight of her dead parents' debt and the ruinous legacy they left behind. The only way she can earn enough money to escape her unforgiving island is by battling monstrous creatures in an underground fighting pit.

After a fight goes terribly wrong, she's banned from the pits. Now hopeless, she is offered a deal: in exchange for the erasure of her debts, she must join and protect a hunting party for a rescue mission deep within the mining caves beneath the island. 

Krescent is determined to keep her head down and fulfill her role as the dutiful bodyguard, even though she is trapped underground with her childhood enemy and a company of people who would gladly kill her if they knew who her parents were. As they come across creatures she believed only existed in legends, it becomes clear they are in far more danger than she could have imagined.

But someone doesn't want her to make it out alive. And she'll have to figure out who before she's left alone…in the dark. 

 

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Release date: January 9, 2024

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Print pages: 376

Sample

ONE

Today, I heave, blood streaming down my face and dripping onto the packed ground below, is not the day I die.

The monster I’m fighting—a red stygic—has annoyingly similar thoughts.

It screeches madly, swiping a claw at me, and I leap back. Just not in time. Red warmth fountains out from my shoulder, a small gap between my armor and helm. I skid across its belly, knifing the skin as I go. And swear. The belly is hardened, protected by strong, natural armor. My knife does it no harm. I’ll have to go in for the kill if I don’t want to end up with its fangs through my spine.

The spectators around the pit roar in unison, enjoying the game of blood, and urge me and the stygic both to fight fight fight!

And this monster takes them a little too seriously.

A long claw swipes at me. I roll down onto the packed ground and avoid getting skewered. But the stygic kicks me hard. I spin backward. Slam against the wall of the pit arena. A brassy ringing tears through my head at the impact, and despite the armored protection, pain surges throughout my body. If I wasn’t wearing the helm, I’d be lying on the ground with my skull cracked open. What a sight that would be for these bloodthirsty leeches in the audience. I clutch my knives and push myself up, my vision unsteady. Up in the stands, deafening cheers echo across the space.

Dark Dancer! Dark Dancer!

I know what the crowd wants. They want me to kill it but not easily. That’s what this is. A playground of death. These people come here to bet on gore and ruin, and I can’t sabotage the show.

I throw my hands into the air, the blades gleaming gold from the flames in the braziers, and grin at them with bloodstained teeth. Give them a show, Krescent, Badger always says. And the moron is right; the stands explode with applause.

I grip my knives and face the stygic through the growing haze in my mind.

What a magnificently gross beast. It’s a bony amphibian, and its whole body is covered in deep red scales. Its large head accommodates four eyes, each blinking separately, and the mouth full of long, sharp teeth that are constantly grinding against a skinless jaw. A slender body is held up by six hardened-looking claws that double as limbs. And at the rear, there’s a scorpion-like tail that has a stinger.

The monster makes a horrible keening noise.

And suddenly charges to the left of the arena—away from me. I look around to see what it’s going for. The sudden spurt of venom from its tail cuts so close I hear the burning hiss of the substance as it eats away at the sand. Startled, I trip backward. From this vantage, I see the red-black venom creating a hole in the ground.

Damn it, Badger. How did you get this devil thing into the arena?

I haven’t given the creature a single scratch, and yet it has me soaked in blood. It rears its head, cries loudly, and charges at me. I take a stance. The dancer’s stance. I throw a knife. The stygic dodges cleanly and whips its tail, sweeping me off-balance. I land on my back against the ground. Two of the stygic’s claws land on either side of me, and it screams in my face. The razor-sharp fangs enclose a black hole so deep I could vanish inside.

Before I can move, it lunges.

Forgetting my knives, I grab hold of its jaw. The serrated edges of the bones cut through my skin. The weight is too much. It pushes down. So close. I can see the veins running at the back of its mouth. The foul, fleshy smell is overwhelming

The fangs crack hard against my helm. The stygic is too strong. My arms buckle under the pressure, and the fangs clamp around the helm. Panic grabs me as I stare down the stygic’s throat again.

No—I can’t be swallowed whole. It’s the worst death I can think of. Darkness.

Screaming, I start punching the sides of the creature’s face. It howls, startled as it lets go of me, and scuttles back. I cough and cough, drinking in the stale, liquor-drenched air of the pit, my heart beating madly against my rib cage. Bile rises in my throat. The inside of my head turns into molasses.

The stygic thumps the ground with its front claws. It’s only now I notice how the walls have spatters of dried blood too. Did the last fighter not yield? Did they die?

Such a brutal death…and all just for fun.

I grasp for my knives but I only have one left. The rest are scattered across the pit, helpless.

My knees tremble.

The stygic shakes its head, whips its tail side to side, and then rushes at me.

I position myself, holding the knife out in front of me. Today’s not the day I die. I promised Rivan—

The stygic brings down both its front claws. I dart out of the way.

Frustrated, the large beast turns, graceless.

And I am a dancer. A swirl to the right, a swirl to the left. The dancer’s way. The stygic rushes after me, stumbles, and I launch myself at it and land on the back of its long neck. The soft area where I punched it in the head is still red. That’s its weakness.

I cling to the stygic. It bucks, raises its claws, and hits at the walls, but I refuse to let my grip slide. Instead, I stab at the top of its soft head. I stab and I stab. Blue blood spurts out—into my face and my mouth. I’m screaming and stabbing. Every muscle in my body lusting after the death of this creature.

Finally, the stygic collapses, and I roll off it unceremoniously.

A breath of relief mixed with regret tinged in blue blood as I rise, victorious.

Today is not the day I die.

Pain thunders through me. My knees buckle and drop to the ground with a thump, my knife still bloody and clutched so tight that my knuckles threaten to slice into the seams of my skin.

The crowd roars its approval. I gave them entertainment. A chill drips down my spine. How long will I have to keep doing this? How long can I keep cheating death?

“And look at this,” Badger booms above us. “The Dark Dancer triumphs once more. An unbeaten streak!” His voice is jubilant along with the crowd. But I see the coldness in his stark white features. I’ve destroyed his new toy.

The next moment, without warning, the ground shudders.

I lose my balance and slam against the wall, struggling for purchase. Above me, the world bursts into screams. The thundering of the ground roars like a dragon as it quakes

 with an oceanic might. The crowd jostles on the stands, uninhibited, and one of the railings around the arena gives way. I forget where I am. My home—my parents—no, they’re dead. Am I at the shoreline? Did a creature attack? Did I fall into the sea? But the wall—shaking but solid. The arena. I was fighting.

And then someone crashes into the arena from the stands above. A moment later, the quake subsides.

The crowd suddenly starts screaming again.

I whirl.

The stygic, crumpled on the ground and bleeding to death, manages to lift its trembling tail.

And as I try to shield the man on the ground, it shoots its venom straight at me.

 

TWO

I hold the compress softly against my eyes. Lot of good that does. The medic—although it’s generous to call the man who bandages us after fights that—says that I’m lucky the helm caught most of the venom from the dying stygic and only the fumes got in.

My burning eyes, however, tell a different story. Still a better one than the man who fell in the pits during the quake. I glance at his body in the corner, wrapped in white.

My help made no difference. He’d fallen headfirst on the packed ground.

Tears sting my eyes. Everything’s blurred. The medic doesn’t care as long as I’m still seeing color. He’s all I’ve got. No way I’ll be allowed into the hospital at the Collector’s compound. They don’t even let injured miners out of work hours in there.

Down in the pit, the crowd dances in a rain of blood. The quake is ended, but now the anger at one more thing out of their control has sent them all spiraling worse than usual. Already two bouts have been over after me. I don’t know the result of either. The medic sent me back to the fighters’ shared prep room to make space for the others. I should be grateful that I’m alive after what happened, but as I stumble back in the room, my arm outstretched to feel my way in, I hear giggles.

“Dark Dancer,” comes Ansh’s annoying voice. “Seeing dark?” He leans against the door with his twin sister, Yara. Both of them work days at the mines and fight nights here. They were orphaned at the same time as me, and even though I’ve known them longer than anyone else on this messed-up island, they hate me.

“An incredible improvement from seeing your face,” I call.

“You’ll get what you have coming, Krescent Dune,” Yara adds.

“You’re probably right.” I smile through the painful spasm across my face. As if I don’t know why she keeps using my full name here, unlike in the arena where I’m only announced as the Dark Dancer, hoping someone still angry enough will make the connection and come for me.

Someone bumps against my shoulder—purposefully. There’s enough space to avoid walking into anyone. Another one of the twins’ minions. They’ve made it a personal mission to make things as miserable for me as they can. I lose my balance, only stopping myself from pitching face-first onto the dusty floor by catching the arm of the person next to me in a death grip. They yelp.

“Watch where you’re going, matya!”

A monstrous fish that eats its own young. It’s a creative insult, I’ll give him that.

Rivan often suggests, gently if uselessly, that I make friends in the arena too—but that would be worth the effort if it could accomplish something. Something other than being ratted out or protested against, that is.

I step out of the room, before I break into a fight outside the pit, and head out into a narrow hallway. This network of tunnels beneath the hills was dug long before humans settled on the island of Kar Atish. We don’t know what was here before—who was here before. There were some who took shelter below ground before the Collector’s men found the mines on the island. Tunnels and caves go far underground, like giant worms slithered through them, and those closer to the surface are walled with an unknown black metal, the likes of which has never been found anywhere on the island.

The narrow hallway is walled similarly, strangely. Pitch-black and claustrophobic. It feels like I will die buried here, under the weight of the cruel, remorseless land above.

They say it wasn’t always without mercy.

The island had its terrors, but it also had beauty; when the hills above the ground of this warren

had been the home of sea farmers and smiths, when humans still had humanity intact.

Kar Atish sits high above the sea, surrounded by basalt columns like a prison, its surface jagged like the fangs of an ancient dragon. Our island’s mountains have been cut down by harsh winds and side-falling rain, revealing dark shades of blood and gray beneath the ashen surface of the rock. And below lie underground caverns filled with seawater. It’s a grim place, black stone and ruined coasts, rising from the stormwaters defiantly.

But it’s the deep underground that conceals something worse: the ore of zargunine. An alloy of an unknown substance mixed with gold. More valuable than the blood flowing in our veins.

It is zargunine that attracted our overlords.

The Collector and his men arrived from Sollonia, the biggest of the ten islands. They called themselves the Landers, an upper caste of rich, powerful people who seem to hold our world in their fists, and decided we need regulation, turning us all into prisoners in our own home. We were informed that anyone not a Lander was of a lower caste, a Renter, by birth. Our food, our clothes, our roofs—everything became the property of the Collector and his company. There was only one way to feed hungry mouths. Work in the mines, bring them zargunine, and earn the company’s scrips to exchange for food, water, and clothes.

Or die.

Death roams like a perpetually hungry beast on the island.

I shake my head.

The past is gone. The present is permanent. It is only my future that I care about…

Or I will, once the weekly installments end.

My parents may have died, but their debts have not. If I miss the installments, the Collector’s office will make a slave of me, my very body chained to this island of shadows forever. I can’t stop fighting in the pits any more than night beasts can stop hunting in the dark.

I walk through the door at the far end, into a cramped room the size of a rat’s hole.

Oshen, tattooist and friend to us fighters, looks up and breaks into a grin. Behind the dirty goggles and beneath his mop of hair, he still looks like a child when he smiles, despite being well over fifty.

“Heard you were in the arena when the quake happened?”

“The ocean hates me.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about the ocean down here,” he chuckles. “New tattoo?”

I nod. The chain mail across my torso is too cumbersome to remove here, so I only take off the steel sleeve. Most of my arm is already marked anyway. There’s space for one near my wrist, where it won’t obscure the others. Only a pinprick of a tattoo. To mark my seventy-eighth kill tonight.

“It was a red stygic, one of a kind,” I tell him, as is our little ritual every time I come here. “A deep maroon creature. In the sun, its damp scales would shine.”

But I killed it. Whatever brute monster they bring to the pits is no different from any other. They’re all still made of flesh and bone and blood, and I still have to deal

 out death to them.

Before the pits, I would go down to the shoreline as a child, watch those creatures from afar, delighting in the way they moved and lived. Now I watch them bloody and beaten.

By my own hands.

“Everyone has to eat, Kress,” Oshen says, noticing my expression. He brings out the needle and antiseptic, wipes the skin near my wrist, and begins his work.

“I’d rather get off this island to die than stay in this hell and continue eating. At least I won’t have to watch people fall to their deaths anymore.”

“How you come to terms with what you have to do to live is your business,” he says, concentrating on my wrist. “But don’t take on the burden of this man’s death. If you do, it will be very hard to shake it off, child.”

Oshen is one of the only people who still sees me as a child. Would he be this kind and forgiving of my acts if he knew who my parents were? For him, I’m only one of the many orphans of Kar Atish with dead parents and their living debts.

He continues, “Where do you wish to go?”

I usually only share that with people I’m close to. But I’m not close to anyone on this island. Except Rivan, who I’ve shared everything with for a long while now. Well, almost everything. But my mother is dead and the truth of my blood gone with her.

“Chandrabad,” I tell him finally.

Oshen laughs heartily. “Big dreams, eh?”

“Never settle for anything less than your worth.” I wink.

“How’s Rivan?” he asks just as the needle breaks skin. The pain erupts like an exploding star. But thinking of Rivan is easier—I know why Oshen brought him up. It distracts me, draws my mind to that soft smell of rebru soap that Rivan buys at the weekly bazaar at the harbor.

“As he always is,” I grit out. “Hates that I’m here fighting creatures and throwing away my life.”

“He’s a good one,” Oshen says.

“No disagreement there.” It’s not Rivan’s friendship I question—it’s his inane need to pretend that I can continue living on this island like everything’s fine.

The door at the back slams open, so close the wind whooshes inside and stings my eyes.

One of Badger’s men stands there. “Here you are. Been looking for you all over. Badger wants to talk.”

I take off the compress I’m still holding to my eye, blinking rapidly as tears stream down my face. “What? Why? My fight is done.”

“Only passing instructions, Dark Dancer. Go talk to the boss.”

“One minute,” Oshen cuts in. “Let me clean this up.” He gives me a meaningful look, and I could drop to my knees in gratitude. He’s bought me several precious minutes to collect myself before I leave.

Badger only sees fighters after the bouts to dismiss them—reprimand them. What did I do? He can’t pin the man’s death on me. And I had to kill the beast, or it would have taken me out. Badger can’t hold my wages for that—the fighters won’t

stand for it. Even if it’s just me.

I get to my feet, heading toward the guard, but hesitate at the turn of the hallway.

My eyes fall on a mural of the mythical Naag dragon that covers both sides of the wall. In the stories, the dragon is a serpentine creature with scales and spikes and fins and fangs. It guards a treasure in the ocean obsessively. Even in the mural, the ferocity in the creature’s large black eyes is cruel.

Maybe it’s a sign.

If Badger wants to reprimand me, I shouldn’t give him the chance to.

That’s what Rivan would say if he were here.

I start to turn back just as the wage distributors enter the hallway. The messenger’s eyebrows rise. “Fumes got your brain? It’s that way.”

Gritting my teeth, I stalk forward, passing the pointed gaze of the Naag dragon. Badger went all out when he began earning steady profits down in the pits thirty years ago. Building a whole network of offices and even residences for himself and his close people, safe from the storms around the sea and the ashen air.

At Badger’s office door, flanked by two guards, I hesitate again.

His guards do not.

They open the door and shove me in.

 

THREE

I trip on the rug before steadying myself. I always trip over this thing. Any kind of negotiations fall flat when you’re already starting from a humiliated position.

Badger, lounging on a stuffed armchair, one leg on the table, doesn’t look up from whatever he’s reading. It’s probably nothing. He likes to make—or fake—an impression. Although it’s redundant. On an island full of miners greased with grime, orphans running around in the dust, beasts warring, he stands out with his fine-boned pale face. His deep red tunic is tailored to fit, and a single gold chain holds back his hair, the only sign of his caves full of silver.

Silver that keeps the Collector’s men in his pocket. Silver that he’s made from our blood.

My blood.

My burning eye.

I finally take off my helm. Of all the armor, the dragon helm is my one distinguishing feature. Sharp spikes rise at the top, the spine of the Naag dragon, sleek and reptilian in look; it’s wicked when it cuts. It is painted the deep oiliness of tar—perfect for the Dark Dancer. A gift from Badger when I won my tenth bout at twelve and earned the name, and a reminder that any status I have in here is his generosity.

How has it already been five years?

“Badger,” I say finally. “You wanted to talk?”

He lifts a finger—wait.

Damn him.

Now I can’t move until he tells me to. I can’t speak until he lets me. I’m held hostage without even doing anything. Stupid Krescent, so stupid.

I continue fidgeting.

The room is lit with chandeliers. On the walls on either side of me, Badger has stuffed heads of a bixtor and a byotor—both flying amphibians—hanging like decorations. Beneath each are two rifles. Only Badger could afford Lander weaponry such as this, and only he would treat them so lightly.

“Darling,” he says at last, putting the paper away, “have a seat.”

I sit, one hand still holding the compress softly and the other clenched tight in my lap. My back doesn’t touch the chair. My right foot refuses to stop bouncing. Badger, on the contrary, sits calm and collected. He leans back in his chair, hands locked behind his head. A picture of assurance, control. Badger must be almost fifty, but he doesn’t look any older than late thirties. Whether that’s due more to his wealth or the fact that everyone else on the island is constantly fighting to live—I can’t say.

He smiles. But the coldness from the fight is concentrated in his eyes.

“At this rate, you won’t have space on your body to keep the count.” He glances at my wrist. The new puncture on my skin to remind myself what I’m doing here, what my freedom costs.

“You’ve come a long way from the day you stumbled in here for the first time.” Neither of us could forget that day, when I, a skinny eleven-year-old, refused to leave his door even when his henchmen threatened me.

Those days, I was always hungry, looking for ways to earn something—anything. I heard you could get not just the scrips that only work on this island but actual silver at Badger’s pits. Money that’s used on other places. The nine other Islands of Ophir that could mean freedom. If I had enough silver, I could escape this forsaken, ugly prison and find a life elsewhere.

A life where no one knows who I am and what my parents did.

The sound of Chandrabad was sugar sweet. Most people on that island are academics, and even the Renters, the lower-caste people like the miners here, have a better life than anywhere else. I could live an anonymous life, where no one would pry into my past.

But Chandrabad is not easy

to get to.

I would need silver that only these pits could give me.

Nobody thought I’d survive my first match.

Everyone underestimated me. Most of them are out of a lot of scrips now. And I’m still here.

“Not long enough,” I say finally.

“Still dreaming of leaving the island?” Badger raises a brow. “Your boy will go with you?”

I choke, something kicking my stomach from the insides with full force. “Rivan’s not my boy. We’re friends.”

“Pity. I hoped he might be enough to keep you here.” He shrugs. “You could make a fortune, you know. One day, someday, the pit will need someone else at its head.”

For a moment, I gape at him. He can’t be suggesting what I think he is. I’ve had enough dealings with him to know this is bait. If I’m aiming for his fortune, I’m a danger that needs to be eliminated.

“Getting away from this place is all I want,” I repeat calmly.

“But you need to get out of your debts first.”

“Yes.” Or I will never find any peace. I will always be a fugitive, hiding wherever I go.

“Well, killing my expensive new investment wasn’t the best way to clear your debts now, was it?”

A claw ticks down my spine. “What else was I supposed to do during a fight, Badger?”

I can read his mind now. He probably expected the stygic to finish me off once and for all. No more payment in silver that I ask for, unlike the others who are happy with scrips. No more people betting on me, and Badger forced to give away a larger share every time I fight. And no more hatred toward Badger’s men from those who remember my parents for employing me.

“Of course, darling, I’m merely saying that things around here cost.” He inhales deeply. “I’d hate

for something to go wrong with money. You know what people can do over a single scrip. Would hate to see you in the mines or worse.”

My toes curl in my boots. If I don’t appease him right now, he could very well act on his threat. Throw me out so I have nowhere else to go but the mines, where one slip could mean I’m hounded and killed. Or get me jailed—the Collector’s jail is simply renamed enslavement.

“I don’t want to work in the mines, Badger,” I say, as softly as I can. Being down there in the darkness, no way out, would ruin me before anyone even remembered whose daughter I was.

Badger puts his feet down and leans forward, hands locked. There’s a glint in his cold eyes. My stomach churns at the sight of it.

Two floors below, an after-hours battle between creatures only has the late crowd roaring with frenzy. Badger’s smile at the sound is imperceptible. But I know the power that courses through his veins at the reminder that within these walls, he owns blood and flesh of not just us pathetic humans but the beasts whose primal powers rule the giant seas.

It gives him the illusion that he could take on the whole Council of Ophir, the Lander leaders who decided our fate centuries ago.

Despite myself, I wince.

“You’re tense,” he chuckles. “What is it? The man who died? Don’t take his death personally, darling. After all, you didn’t plan it, unlike your parents.”

Blood rushes to my head so fast I lose my remaining vision for a moment. Fuck him. Fuck him. I force myself to stay steady. Take a deep breath and swallow my words. He will not get the reaction he wants so badly.

“I have an offer for you, to make up for the loss tonight faster.”

I wait for him to continue, my knuckles tight.

“Lose the next match.”

I blink.

“After today, even I’d bet on you.”

So when I lose the next match, all the money the spectators bet on me will go to Badger. That’s how this works. Why should it matter to me how Badger gets his money? My only concern is my wages. No—not the only.

“They will hate me if I’m the one who makes them lose the money…”

“It will certainly help me cover my losses faster. Plus, instead of the fight money, you can get a cut. A small one, but more than enough.”

It’s a fair offer coming from him. Which is why a shiver scuttles through my body. I’ve fought in Badger’s pits for far too long to not know he’s saying one thing and thinking another.

“Badger, thank you for the offer,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to upset the audience.”

“No trust in some good faith, then?”

Goose bumps prick my arms. “You let me fight here when I had nowhere to go. I trust you.” Never. Badger has no one’s interest at heart save himself. Only reason he let me fight was because he’d seen how I fought a night beast outside his doors, how entertained his men seemed. How could he let a show go on for free? He deals in blood and tears, and they have a cost.

“I just think it’s a bad time right after the stygic and the quake. Maybe there will be something else I can do to cover the loss.”

Badger sighs. He leans back in the chair, hands placed at the edge of the table. “Sleep on it, sweetheart. And don’t forget to take your wages for tonight before you leave. ...