Swift startles. She lifts her head, her half-there hair flopping over as she twists to look at me.
“You and the other lack—trainees,” I continue. “Only one of you is going to be captain in the end, right? Shouldn’t you all be at each others’ throats?”
For a moment I think she’s not going to respond, but then she rolls over to face me, and something seems to soften in her.
“We’ve been through a lot of shit together,” she says. “When you work like we do, when you hunt side by side—it’s something that bonds you. Sometimes the captain does stuff like this. She sets up situations where someone’s clearly getting special treatment, and yeah, it gets messy sometimes. But when you suffer with someone, you learn them. And it’s hard to kill a person you’ve learned.”
I nod. I’ve seen that kind of suffering-bond firsthand every time we have a pup in the stables—the caretakers of the newborn Reckoner become caretakers of each other. “But it can’t last, right?”
“It might have,” Swift sighs. “But then you came along.”
I don’t know what to say. Does she expect me to apologize for being dragged bodily aboard this ship to raise a beast I want to destroy more than anything?
“You still on those pain meds?” she asks. “You’re awfully talky today.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Reinhardt weaned me off them a week ago.” My ribs still twinge on occasion, but I don’t want Swift to know that—she’d probably jab them if she knew.
“Ah, so you’re just getting more comfortable.”
“Well I am sleeping in your bed,” I grumble.
She grins, and for a moment her eyes light up in the same way they do when she’s joking with the other lackeys. “Don’t get too chummy with me, Cas. I’ll eat you alive.”
I can’t help it. I snort, and it gains momentum until I’m cackling. “Was that a threat? God, you’re the least intimidating pirate I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.”
“Then clearly you haven’t spent enough time around Varma.”
It’s like Swift’s room is a whole other world, a subdimension of the Minnow where Swift isn’t a pirate and I’m not a prisoner. Here, away from the gaze of the rest of the crew, we’re talking and laughing together as if we’re something like normal. There’s something that unlocks in Swift when she’s sealed away from the rest of the ship, something honest. Something I actually can respect.
12
The next morning, the captain wants to oversee my training session with Bao. She paces along the trainer deck as I lure the pup back to the ship with the homing LEDs. There’s a spark of excitement in her eyes, and it’s keeping the tension in my muscles.
Bao’s blowholes flare as he approaches, blasting a fine mist into the air that hangs over the morning sea. A piece of fresh meat hangs out of the corner of his mouth, the twisted remnants of some fish he’s caught. At least he’s figured out how to feed himself on his own. That’s a weight off my shoulders, and the fact that he’s eaten recently makes me much less apprehensive about what’s about to happen.
I’m dressed in a brand-new wetsuit that Santa Elena furnished. It’s made of some of the most breathable fabric I’ve ever encountered, but it’s snug and warm around my torso. A new, top-of-the-line respirator hangs around my neck. If it weren’t for the circumstances, I’d feel utterly pampered.
Bao’s had a night to adjust to the ocean, which means today’s the day I start water work with him. If he’s going to be in my charge, I have to get him comfortable with having me in the sea at his side. Mom and Dad never let me do this stage of training. It always went to the most experienced, the bravest. I’ve only ever watched first contact from behind the glass of a tank.
But now that’s going to change, because I’m the only one on this ship who knows how to make a Reckoner comfortable with human presence. I haven’t told Santa Elena that I’ve never done this before, but I think she senses it somehow. She’s so intent on watching this part of the training process that she’s forgone her other duties on the ship just to be here.
She probably just wants to see me get eaten.
I toss Bao a few fish when he noses up to the beacon and then wipe my hands down on a towel. Reckoners have keen noses, and I don’t want him to mistake my fingers for anything they aren’t. With the beast pup distracted by the food, I slip into the water feet first.
I haven’t swum in so long that for a moment I hang beneath the surface in shock, the NeoPacific’s gentle rhythm cradling me back and forth. I blink, then slip the respirator up over my nose, my gaze fixed on the monster next to me. He’s still pointed toward where I threw the fish—the little idiot hasn’t noticed that anything’s changed.
This is the hardest part. I have to touch him to get his attention, but there’s a sweet spot I need to hit. If I go too fast, I might trigger him, but if he’s aware of me for too long, that gives him time to think, to plan a move that might rip my arm off. He’s at least five times heavier than me, and his personality is as changeable as the winds.
I kick forward and reach out, fingertips stretching toward his foreleg.
When I make contact, Bao’s muscles twitch underneath my hand. His eye flicks toward me, and I can see him calculating, deciding exactly what this means and exactly what he’s going to do about it. I hold my breath, the respirator whining, waiting for the air that I’m bound to expel.
He turns, his head looming toward me as I push myself backward, doing my best to avoid making sudden movements. Come on, I plead, releasing my breath in a slow hiss that fizzles out of the mask in tiny bubbles. Come on, little shit. You know me.
Bao puts his nose right up against my chest, and I’m acutely aware of the razor-sharp beak that nudges at my wetsuit. Cautiously, as slowly as I can manage, I bring my hands down and place them on top of his head. He snorts, a stream of bubbles blasting out of his blowholes, and I jerk my head back enough to startle him.
My breath’s caught in my throat again as Bao tenses, his mouth hanging open. All he needs to do is push forward and bite down, and he’ll have my guts decorating the ocean.
But he doesn’t.
The little monster—no, for the first time I think of him as my little monster—blinks at me, waiting. His eyes are huge, the crinkles at the edges of his eyelids making him look much more wizened than he has any right to be. He’s curious. He wants to know why I’ve joined him in the water.
I let my hands slip down around his head until I’m cradling his jaw, my grip snug on the bones that jut out there. I kick my feet once, twice, urging him to follow me upward. So long as I hold his jaw, he can’t bite me. So long as we’re connected, I’m safe.
And Bao follows my push until we break the surface. He blasts air out of his blowholes and squalls, tossing his head. I let him lift me just a bit, my respirator crackling as I laugh through it. I glance up at the trainer deck, where Santa Elena towers over us. There’s a flash of disappointment in her eyes that a savage grin quickly replaces.
That’s right, bitch, I think, my fingers crimped so tightly on Bao’s jaw that they’ve gone bone-white. If you want me dead, do it yourself.
Just beyond her, I catch the quick motion of Swift lifting her head, but the smile she wears is nothing like the captain’s. It’s the smile that cracks through right when you’re on the edge of tears, the smile that comes in the wake of sheer, numbing fear. I lived, and so Swift gets to live too. I see another flicker of movement, this time the flash of a middle finger that jabs up toward the captain’s turned back.
“Swift, put out an all-call for the rest of the crew. I think this’ll be good for them to see,” Santa Elena snaps, and Swift stows the gesture just as quickly as she whipped it out.