“Nothing, now,” I huff as Bao shies underwater. Reckoners get testy when they feel crowded, and five new people on the deck is more than enough to make him retreat.
Swift leans hard on the control panel, and the back door rattles up. She flips her hair out of her face and stretches her arms out over her head, a smirk teasing over her lips, and for one shining moment, she’s the leader that the captain sees her becoming. Then the moment passes; she slouches her shoulders and pads over to where Code and Lemon are tying down lines to the deck’s handholds.
I retreat to my counter while Varma helps Chuck into the straps that bind the wakeboard to her feet. Lemon tosses a buoyancy vest over her shoulders, then clips a bungee line to it. Clutching Varma for support, Chuck waddles over to the edge of the deck, where Code waits with a set of handlebars attached to a rope. The whole operation is smooth—they’ve obviously done this hundreds of times before.
“All set?” Chuck asks as she takes the handle from Code.
He replies with a tug on the lines and a curt nod.
Chuck screams and launches herself off the back of the boat. She turns over once in the air, her mane of wild black hair whipping behind her, and plunges into the waves three feet below the deck’s lip. The lines on the deck snap tight, and a moment later, her head bobs out of the froth. She cuts through the water as she heaves against the handlebars. A breathless second passes, and then the board is under her.
Varma’s fists are the first in the air. He whoops and howls like a wild dog, and the rest of the lackeys join in. The sun cuts through the spray the board kicks up, silhouetting the four of them against the bright afternoon. They’re wild, they’re dangerous, they’re reckless.
But they’re free, and that’s what matters. That’s what sends a little twinge of jealousy vibrating through my muscles as I press harder against the wall behind the counter, fingers crimped on the edge.
“Hey, pet project. You want a ride?” Code shouts back over his shoulder. He comes up and leans against the counter, peering out between his dark bangs. “It’ll be fun, I swear. On my honor as a pirate.”
I glance at Swift before answering, unsure if it’s even my place to be talking to him. She doesn’t seem to object—her attention is fixed on Chuck. “Ribs are still healing,” I tell Code, which is only half true. It’s been long enough that I only get the occasional twinge when I stretch myself a little bit too far. I’m less worried about what the strain of wakeboarding would do to the healing process and more worried about who’s offering. It would be so easy for something to conveniently break in the harness, for something to go horribly wrong in a way so innocent that anyone on this deck could be implicated.
“Code, quit bothering the shoregirl,” Varma says as he approaches us. “Doubt you’re even her type.”
He’s not wrong.
“Just seeing if she wanted to have a bit of fun, yeah?” the other lackey replies.
I glance down at the measuring tape, at the other training accessories scattered across the counter. They’ve all been chosen so carefully, but it’s more than that. They’ve been chosen with specific knowledge of what it takes to raise a Reckoner pup, knowledge beyond what they’d pick up from rumors, research, or observation. Santa Elena has a source in the industry—that much I know for sure.
I wonder how much these guys know.
As the captain’s lackeys, they must be privy to her dealings. Maybe even present for them. And even if they have good reason to want me dead, they’re friendly and happy right now. There’s a chance that if I ask about this, they’d answer.
And I almost do.
Before the words escape my lips, I catch myself. There’s a lot I can gain from this information, but there’s so much more I can lose. If they get an inkling of the plan that’s curdling in the back of my head, my chances of enacting it will plummet. I need them to continue underestimating me. I can’t draw attention to myself by asking questions.
But Varma has noticed that I nearly said something. His eyes sparkle expectantly, waiting.
“Why do you call him Code?” I blurt. A harmless question, one that gets me nowhere.
Varma chuckles. “It’s ’cause that’s what he thinks in. He gets to sit up in the navigation tower with Lemon all day, whispering to the little machines while the rest of us are out here busting our asses.”
Code’s lips twist into something that’s not quite a smile, but not quite a scowl either. He tolerates Varma’s easy grin for a second, then crosses back over to where Lemon and Swift are hauling Chuck back in by the bungee lines.
“You don’t gotta act so skittish around us, shoregirl,” Varma says, giving me a playful shove on the shoulder.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I kind of do.”
He shrugs as if it’s my loss and jogs over to the edge of the deck, stooping to offer a hand to Chuck as she crawls out of the churning water. She’s doing most of the grunt work herself, but she takes it to humor him. He pulls, yanks, and tugs until she rolls onto the deck, cackling like a lunatic. Swift and Code are already at her feet, prying the board off while Lemon unclips the bungee lines.
“My turn,” Swift declares, wrenching the board out of Code’s hands. There it is again—that little note of authority, like she might actually be cut out for leadership. The rest of the lackeys get her suited up in seconds flat, and something else strikes me. From the way Swift talked before, it seems like they shouldn’t trust each other with this. Anything could go wrong. Something should go wrong. But the five of them ignore the fact that they’re supposed to be cutthroats in competition.
They’re just here to have a good time.
Swift leaps off the deck, and when she lands on her feet, that stupid hair whipping in the wind as the bungee lines snap tight, it’s really no surprise.
11
Weeks pass. I become practiced in the art of quick naps, stealing sleep whenever Bao will let me. I forget what the rest of the Minnow looks like. All I know is the trainer deck, every inch of it. Bao eats voraciously, and it’s not long until he’s the size of the leatherback turtles that make up part of his genetics. He’s finally big enough to swim alongside the ship.
Santa Elena claps me on the back when I tell her.
We flush him in the morning, just after the sun rises. Two pirates haul down the partitions separating Bao’s tank from the channel that washes out into the sea, and out with the bathwater goes a seven-hundred-pound, monstrous baby, squalling almost as loudly as the day he came into the world. He plunges into the NeoPacific and bobs up immediately, his blowholes flaring as he takes in his new environment.
I toss a fish at him, hitting him in the side of the head. Bao blinks, snaps it up, then looks to see where it came from as I scoop another one out of the bucket at my side. When he spots me, fish in hand, he gives an impatient thrash of his tail. At his current size, a single fish is enough to get his attention, but that will soon change.
“Give it to him,” Swift mutters from behind me, but Swift doesn’t know shit. Now that the trainer deck is vacant, she’s been assigned to full-time guard duty, and she’s probably pissed because tonight she’ll have to share her bed with me again.
Santa Elena’s somehow furnished a working beacon for me to train her beast on—no surprises there. It takes some fiddling to get its signals off the factory defaults and on to something unique. There’s one signal set I know by heart, one that no other beast on the NeoPacific is going to respond to, so I futz with the dials until the device communicates in those low tones and pulsing blues that make my heart ache with loss.