“Wait—” I start, but there’s no time for warning. I leap for Swift and wrap my arms around her waist. She shrieks as I haul her backward. Bao lunges.
He surges halfway out of the sea, his eyes bulging, his razor-sharp beak snapping shut with a wet crack. His body slams against the trainer deck, sending a tremor through the metal floor below us as we hit it. Bao bounces off the rim of the deck and slips back below the waves, bellowing once before the water closes over his head.
Swift lies paralyzed beneath me, the pulpy remains of the fish stuck to her hand. It’s fallen on the deck in two pieces, cracked in half by the sudden impact. But her hand’s still there, not down Bao’s throat, so at least something’s gone right for a change.
“I said toss,” I hiss through my teeth, my face pressed flat against the deck.
“Sorry,” she groans.
“Do you have to taunt every living being you come across?”
“I think you broke something.”
“At least you’ve still got your arm,” I spit. “Moron.”
Swift claps me on the back with her gut-soaked hand. I elbow her in the stomach and roll off her, landing flat on my back.
And then somehow we’re both cackling. Not the quiet chuckles at each other’s expense that we’ve shared from time to time, but the raucous laughter that comes from sheer relief and the adrenaline in our blood gradually slipping away. A flush fills my face.
Swift catches my gaze, and she laughs even harder. “You look like a tomato!” she crows, trying to wring the slime from her hands.
“At least I don’t snort when I laugh,” I wheeze between breaths.
This only makes her snort harder. She picks up half of the fish and throws it at me. It hits me in the shoulder with a wet slap. “You’re so good at it—why don’t you give him the fish?”
I sit up, ready to leap on her again, but then the second half of the fish comes flying at my face. “Jesus Christ, Swift!” I yelp, swatting it away.
“Yeah, that’s right, here’s your uncivilized pirate wench,” she cackles, rolling on her side and pushing herself to her feet.
A bellow from the water marks Bao’s impatience. I pull a fish from the bucket and pitch it out into the sea, not caring where it lands.
As I sit there, taking in the bright world around me and the damp deck beneath me and the blood that’s rushed to my face, I finally take stock of what’s just happened. I was in a situation where I was completely safe, where Bao couldn’t touch me. And I threw myself headlong into his path, just to save Swift from her own stupidity.
Swift, my captor. But Swift, the reason I’m still alive.
Swift, my guard. But Swift, my guardian.
She’s saved my life, and I’ve saved hers. Well, saved her arm, at least. Bao probably would have ripped it clean off if she’d left it there a microsecond longer. I acted without thinking. Maybe there’s some instinct deep inside me that wants to save people; maybe that’s why being a Reckoner trainer feels right, why I leapt for Swift the instant I realized she was in danger. Maybe I’m a good person at the core.
But in the back of my head there’s an insidious little voice telling me, “You’re part of the ship now.”
The laughter we shared sours in my memory, and I fight to keep my face straight.
Then the all-call crackles on.
“This is navigation,” an unfamiliar voice drawls. “We’ve picked up a bucket on our instruments three leagues to the North. Unescorted. The captain says we’re hitting it. Prepare accordingly.”
14
A change comes over Swift as soon as the all-call snaps off. The dog is gone; she’s all wolf now.
“Bao can’t keep up,” I tell her.
She doesn’t seem to care. She strides for the door into the Minnow, her shoulders squared, her right hand on her pistol as she cranks the hatch open with her left.
“Swift, wait—Bao can’t keep up.” I stagger to my feet and lunge after her, but she slams the hatch just as I hit it. There’s a click beneath my fingers, the click of the lock sliding into place.
She’s gone mad with power or fanaticism or something. She can’t possibly be thinking straight by locking me down here.
But it’s about to get worse. If the ship takes off without Bao and leaves him far behind, he won’t catch up. It’s a rule of Reckoner training. You don’t leave a pup unattended in open water. Without supervision, a Reckoner pup could wander off into the wild or submerge, never to be heard from again. We take careful precautions to ensure that none of our beasts go missing, installing tracking tags on all of them at the minimum. But Bao doesn’t have that luxury. If he’s gone, he’s gone.
Which means I have to act fast.
Swift didn’t leave me a radio, so I can’t hail the captain and tell her what’s happening. All I have at my disposal is what’s left on the trainer deck …
And the deck itself.
I know what I have to do. I swallow back the knot of fear building in my throat and step up to the deck’s edge. Above me I can hear the pounding of feet as the ship prepares for battle, and below the engines are starting to hum. I haul the beacon up over the deck’s lip and drag it backward until I’ve positioned it in the middle of the deck.
Bao lets out a confused bellow. He knows the engines are firing up, knows that he should be backing away to a safe distance, where the subthrust won’t scorch him, but we were right in the middle of training. His pattern’s been interrupted; he’s looking for guidance.
And so I give it to him, slamming my bare foot down on the LED beacon. The lights flare under my foot as the homing signal snaps on.
The pup groans, his beady eye peering up onto the trainer deck.
“C’mon, you little shit. I know you can do it,” I mutter under my breath, but Bao’s not having it. The engines are spinning up now, sending a deep rattle through the deck below my feet.
If I’m going to get him up on the deck, I’m going to have to do something really stupid. I thrust my hand in the bucket of fish and come up with a bundle. As the noise beneath my feet builds to a roar, I hold them out over the edge, right over Bao’s head.
His nostrils flare.
I’m ready for it this time, and I dive backward when he lunges, his powerful legs scrabbling against the deck. His claws leave dents in the floor as he heaves himself forward, his belly shrieking against the metal.
I stumble and fall, but I can’t let that slow me with a Reckoner pup the size of a Jeep bearing down on me. I toss the handful of fish at his snout, and he opens his jaws wide, catching two of them on his lolling tongue. Water seeps off him, nearly flooding the deck, and it strikes me that if the tank he hatched in were set up, he wouldn’t be able to swim in it. Bao’s eyes roll as he swallows, his legs kicking halfheartedly as he tries to slide himself closer to the beacon.
“You’re fine, you little idiot,” I huff, throwing another fish to distract him. I roll onto my belly and crawl over to the LEDs, hitting the off switch before Bao starts to confuse himself.
The all-call crackles on again and the voice declares, “Engines report ready. Brace for ignition in three.”
Shit.
“Two.”
I scramble to my feet and throw myself toward the switch that closes the bay doors.
“One.”
There’s a scream beneath my feet and a rattle from the mechanism. The Minnow leaps forward like a horse from the gate, the deck rearing up just as the rear bay doors slam shut. I wind my fingers tight around the nearest handhold, my muscles burning.
Bao slides backward, squalling the whole way until he crashes into the bay doors. The spray from the boat’s wake washes through the side ports as we accelerate, and after a few seconds I can loosen my grip without worrying about flying into Bao’s reach.