1
By the third week in the ice, I’ve decided I like it down here. The bottom of the world is vicious. Merciless. Cold.
It’s everything I need to become.
It’s summer in the NeoAntarctic, but I wouldn’t be able to tell from the feel of it. My breath fogs in front of me as I stand watch in the Minnow’s navigation tower, bundled in one of Varma’s coats. It reaches past my knees. Over at the instrumentation panel, Lemon’s curled into a ball, staring drearily at the readouts.
It’s been three weeks since the night I turned my back on the world that raised me and gave my allegiance to Santa Elena. Three weeks since we abandoned Bao, the pirate-born Reckoner I reared, and fled for colder waters, where neither he nor the Southern Republic of California’s ships would chase us. Three weeks since the ship’s inker branded me with the captain’s mark. Three weeks since I could look Swift in the eye without an unforgiving fury burning through me.
I know she was under orders from the captain when she snuck into my family’s stable and pumped a lethal dose of cull serum into my favorite Reckoner. I know she didn’t know me then. She had no idea what I would come to mean to her. But every time I start to let the idea of Swift into my skull, I see the ragged holes in Durga’s skin where her keratin plates tore off. I smell her rotten flesh. I remember being five years old, pretending I was a Reckoner pup as I tussled with her in a kiddie pool barely big enough for the two of us.
Finding out the truth of what happened to Durga didn’t just hurt—it tore through the way I’d already grieved her. Suddenly every night I’d spent curled up and crying in a nest of towels on the Minnow’s trainer deck felt insufficient. The truth made it hollow. The truth forced me to start over. Durga died in agony, and Swift was the one who made sure of it, and I know, deep as marrow, there’s no going back to the way things were.
I haven’t said a word to Swift since I came back aboard the Minnow. It’s been surprisingly easy, mostly because the captain’s been keeping me too busy to have time for anything else. I knew it would take a lot of work to turn a Reckoner trainer into a pirate trainee, and Santa Elena hasn’t skimped. She’s been running me three times as ragged as the other four kids she’s taken into her “talent development program.” Every conscious moment is another chance for her to shape me into someone worthy of succeeding her.
Today, that means iceberg watch. Eight straight hours of iceberg watch.
It’s working, though. I’m getting stronger every day. Nothing will ever compare to the power of a Reckoner beneath my feet, but there’s firmness in my muscles that wasn’t there a month ago.
Lemon stirs. A slender hand reaches out of her parka to pull up a piece of data. Her eyebrows furrow, and she purses her lips, leaning closer.
“What’s up?” I ask, but Lemon, as usual, says nothing. I turn my gaze back out to the sea, to the ridges of ice that crest out of the waves. The waters are calm enough that we’ve dropped anchor, so all I have to do is make sure nothing wanders too close.
The closest berg is a hundred yards away. Bullet holes pock its side. The captain stopped objecting to ammo wastage a week ago, and since then, nearly everyone has taken a few potshots at the ice to pass the time. There isn’t much else for the crew to do while we wait out the aftermath of…the incident.
I don’t know what else to call it.
I pull Varma’s jacket tighter around me, hissing through my teeth as I press my hips against the railing. One hour until my watch ends. One hour until I can descend into the ship’s warmth and join the other trainees in the mess.
Well, most of the trainees. Swift takes her meals in her room these days.
I flinch. This is the problem with iceberg watch—it’s too quiet, and it’s giving me too much time for my thoughts to wander in dangerous directions. I rap my knuckles against the instrumentation panel to get Lemon’s attention.
“Hey, how about that one on the northeastern horizon? What do you think it looks like?” I ask, raising one sleeve to gesture toward a towering iceberg.
She keeps her eyes fixed on the data.
“C’mon…” I squint, trying to make out the berg’s contours against the pearly sky. It splits at the top like a great jaw unhinging, and a ridge creates an ellipse of shade that could pass for an eye. Wind and water have sculpted the ice, making it narrow and sinuous.
My stomach clenches. I try to forget what I’ve imagined, try to see something else, anything else. But there’s only one thing my mind jumps to, one thing I’ve been hardwired to see when I look out at the ocean.
“I see a serpentoid Reckoner,” I say, praying that Lemon doesn’t notice the slight hitch in my voice or the way my spine’s gone stiff.
There’s a beat of emptiness, filled only by the creaking of distant ice and the low whisper of sea wind.
Then Lemon says, “Cetoid.”
A short laugh bursts out of me. I’ve been trying to get her to play this game for days, but Lemon saves her voice for only the most important things. “It’s too narrow to be a cetoid,” I say, shading my eyes with a hand and peering closer to try seeing what she sees. “Maybe if it were rounder, but—”
A tug on my sleeve stops me midsentence. I look down and find Lemon’s petulant black eyes still fixed on the monitors.
“Cetoid,” she repeats. She points.
Impossible. I move around behind her to get a good look at the screen. My fists clench in my oversized pockets. Lemon edges away from me as I lean closer. Her fingers fidget over the keyboards. She hones the output until I can see it clearly.
A massive, plated body. Furiously pumping flukes. There’s no question about it. There’s a cetoid Reckoner in these waters. A cetoid Reckoner with no companion ship in sight.
And it’s headed straight for us.