“Lower your guns,” I shout, using the partition to haul myself to my feet.
The crew doesn’t obey me—of course they don’t—but after a nod from Santa Elena, they stand down. The baby Reckoner runs up against the tank’s barrier and bounces off, still squalling. His stumpy tail thrashes against the water.
I lunge for the bellows and the thermometer. I’ve got mere seconds to get this done before the pup locks onto me again. There’s some part of me that’s gone raw and wild and animal, and I let it loose as I rush toward the beast. The Reckoner wheels, but I hook my fingertips under his keratin plating and swing myself around onto his back before his jaws can reach me. He bucks and screams, his eyes rolling. I drive the bellows into his primary blowhole and squeeze them, forcing the noise back down his throat and then sucking it right back out.
I toss the device to the side, not caring where it lands. But before I can get the thermometer placed, the pup rolls on his back, plunging me underwater. I choke on the putrid mix of saltwater and amniotic fluid, and the baby’s weight slams me against the bottom of the pool.
For a moment, stars dot my vision.
Then he rolls right back over, and I’m up—I’m free just long enough to rip the adhesive off with my teeth and slap the thermometer down on the beast’s neck, where neither his jaws nor his stubby arms can reach it.
The Reckoner lunges predictably when I let go, but I dance out of the way and run for the opposite end of the tank, crawling over the barrier as I try to catch the breath I lost. To my surprise, there are hands there to meet me, hands that guide me out of the dangerous pool and onto the damp deck. Santa Elena passes me an approving nod from the other side of the tank, and my stomach twists.
I don’t want her approval. I want to get out of here. My head throbs—I raise a hand to it, and it comes away bloody.
Oh. Right.
Now that I’m safe from the pup’s temper tantrum, I can finally take stock of what he’s done to me. About half of my hair is missing or shorn. I probe carefully at my scalp until I can be sure of it. I drop my blood-soaked hand to my chest and press carefully against each rib. I’ve seen trainers with their chests crushed get right out of the tank like nothing’s wrong, fueled by the adrenaline that comes from being in the water with a killer beast. For all I know, I could be dying right now, so I’m not taking any chances.
I press on my sternum, and three sharp pains cut through my sides.
They all must see it in my face. The captain strides over to me, Swift on her tail. “Get Reinhardt down here,” she barks to one of the cabin boys on the back wall. I cough, and her attention snaps back to me. “Sit down. Stay as still as possible.”
“Looks worse than it is,” I gasp.
Her eyes flash. “Don’t lie to me, Cassandra. It doesn’t benefit either of us. Now sit.”
And I guess I’m still just a dog on her leash, because I sink down onto the damp floor.
Swift crouches next to me, her brow furrowed. “Why’d you go back in there?” she mutters. “After it got hold of you—why’d you go back?”
It’s starting to hurt to breathe. The adrenaline is wearing off. “Had to—” I hiss. “Had to make sure the airways were clear … and get the thermometer on. Temperature has to be … monitored.”
“Right, but that thing was about to kill you.”
“If that thing dies, I’m dead anyway,” I shoot back, as loud as I can manage. “And you are too, so you’d better be thanking me.”
“Not on your life,” she says, but there’s a smile teasing on the edge of it, and a little spark of hope flutters through me, hope that she might actually be on my side.
At the very least, I hope I’ve convinced her I’m no longer suicidal.
Reinhardt turns out to be the ship’s medic, a weasely looking man who prods at my ribs with long, bony fingers and comes to exactly the same conclusion I made ten minutes ago. Three breaks, but nothing horrible enough to put me out of commission. “I can medicate you, but I can’t fix fractures like this,” he says, pulling a bottle of pills out of the satchel on his hip. “Two of these a day, no more. And watch them carefully. We got a lot of addicts on this crew.”
I nod, taking the pills from him and immediately popping one. There’s no instant relief, but the fact that I have something to manage my pain is more than I expected. My gaze shifts to the tank, to the Reckoner pup who’s poking his snout up over the barrier and warbling. I’ve been taken care of enough—now it’s time to see to him.
I check the thermometer’s reading on the companion device. He’s running a little hot. No surprises there. I’ve never seen a birth this violent, but the pup’s temperature isn’t high enough to get me worried. I wave to get Santa Elena’s attention, cringing as my ribs twinge. “He needs to be fed,” I say.
“How much?”
I frown, trying to remember the conversion chart Mom keeps pinned to the wall of the nursery. “For a pup this size, twenty pounds of meat should do it,” I tell her, trying to keep the uncertainty out of my voice. “And we’ll need to swap out the water in the tank.” Over her shoulder, I spy two of her crew reaching for the empty purse floating in the pool. “Watch it!” I yelp, just as the Reckoner lunges.
His jaws snap shut, missing them by inches. He’s the most aggressive newborn I’ve ever seen, though admittedly I’ve never seen a pup get nicked by a knife during a birth. Most terrapoids are sluggish out of the purse. I was swimming in Durga’s pool mere hours after we hatched her. But this one’s already a monster without the training.
And I hate him.
He’s my charge, and he’s the reason I’m being used by a bunch of pirates. My life is tied to a beast that’s already done his best to end it, and for a moment I find myself wishing that they’d just killed me on the Nereid.
But that wouldn’t have done any good, because the pirates would still have this pup, this equipment, and no one on shore would be the wiser. It’s on me to survive. It’s on me to get this information back home, even if there’s no place for me there anymore.
And then something comes to me, something I can use. These pirates don’t know what Reckoner pups are like. They’ve only been on the bad side of the fully-grown beasts.
I could play this to my advantage.
And the idea is so deliciously present that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. Anything this pup does will be blamed on his nature before my training. One little slip of the knife made it so that they see him as a wild beast that I’m taming rather than a blank slate that I’m programming. They gave me a shield when Santa Elena tied me to Swift. Now they’ve given me the sword. They want me to teach him to hunt.
But they also gave me the power to turn them into the prey.
9
That night, Santa Elena locks me on the trainer deck. I roll down the three massive doors to keep the sea winds from ripping through the space and make a small nest out of towels on the counter where I keep my tools. The pup watches curiously as I hop up on the ledge and curl up. “Go to sleep, you little shit,” I tell him.
If I’m not careful, he’ll start thinking that’s his name. I’ve already called him that at least twenty times today. I do actually need to name him, need to give him something that identifies and differentiates him. I’ve never gotten to name a Reckoner before. Usually that’s up to the shipping company that commissions them. The Nereid ’s owners were Hindu; they named their beast after a goddess famous for killing demons. But what do you name a creature meant to rip the NeoPacific apart, to upset the equilibrium we’ve worked so hard to establish?
My thoughts jump to villains, to demons and devils, to ancient monsters and evils that never sleep. That’s the kind of name this Reckoner deserves.