11
“They told me I might find you around h—,” Swift starts, before the emotional train wreck I’ve turned into stuns her into silence. Before I have a chance to turn and run, Swift’s hands shoot out and lock around my elbows. She peers down at my splotchy face.
Santa Elena’s trained me well enough that I’m able to stare right back at her, but it’s something I can only hold for so long before another sob rises out of me. I flinch, shrugging out of her grip to wipe uselessly at the steady stream of snot and tears flowing down my face. I should be furious with her, furious that she’s seeing me like this, but all I can think is that I’m glad. I’m so glad that I don’t have to ride this thing out on my own.
I don’t resist when she pulls me into a hug, the two of us sagging against the wall. The heat of the sunbaked, corrugated metal bites into my side, but I ignore it, pressing my face into her jacket so that no one else can see the mess I’ve become.
“What happened?” she asks, her voice low in a way that makes her chest resonate against mine.
“Family,” I croak, and her fingers tighten on the back of my shirt.
“Hey, let’s not do this here,” Swift mutters against the side of my head. “Come on. I know a place.”
We keep our heads low as she guides me up through the Flotilla’s wandering streets. Even so, some of the people we pass recognize Swift. They wave or call out, and Swift deflects them with apologetic grins or tips of the hand that isn’t glued to my shoulder. She’s probably doing it to shield me from prying eyes, but part of me suspects that she’s trying even harder to avoid setting me off. I don’t bother telling her I’m too torn up to put any effort into hating her.
The city grows beneath us as we spiral upward into the towers. I know the paths she’s leading me down, but I don’t start to balk until we’re halfway down the familiar walkways that lead to her house. Seeing her smiling father, her pack of loving siblings, or even her ornery grandmother is the last thing I need right now.
“It’s okay,” Swift says when she feels me tense up. “They aren’t there.” There’s an edge of a smile in it, something she’s holding back, something she knows this isn’t the time for. Instead she steers me around the building and out onto another familiar path. “After you.”
The last time we did this, we were chained together. This time, I pick my way down the rooftops carefully, my shoes slipping on the metal. My eyes sting and burn from the tears, and I have to squint to make sure I don’t slip off the wrong side and plunge to the city’s base. I can feel Swift’s hand hovering inches from my back, ready to grab me if I misstep. It goads me forward, and I make the last jump a little faster than planned, stumbling as I land in the little alcove.
There’s no better place to break down on the entire Flotilla. No windows. No people. Just the back ends of shipping container houses, a little plastic bucket, and Swift Kent standing over me like a guard dog.
I slump back against one of the walls, pressing my hands into my face. “I don’t know why you’re even bothering…” I start, but I can’t even finish that bullshit sentence. Swift cares about me, no matter how much I shove her away. The question isn’t why she’s bothering. The question is why I let her bother.
Swift crouches next to me, her eyes fixed on the horizon. We’ve managed to avoid eye contact for the entire climb up here, and I take a moment to appreciate it, appreciate her while it’s my turn to look. Her hair continues to grow out in a mess, the shaggy, formerly shaved side now long enough to curl around her ears. Her eyes match the color of the sea. Have they always done that? My gaze drops to the jacket sleeve that covers up the three slashes of ink on her forearm. We haven’t spoken since she got them.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” Swift starts, rocking back on her heels until she topples onto her ass. She rolls backward, folding her arms behind her head as she stares up at the dappled clouds above us. “Whatever helps, I’m here. And if me being here doesn’t help—”
“Quiet,” I tell her, and she follows orders. I roll my head back, trying to pull shapes out of these clouds the way I did with the icebergs back in the NeoAntarctic. I can all but feel the moment when her eyes shift to me and she starts to drink me in.
It must be a bitter drink. My face is splotchy and red, and even though my tears have tapered off, my eyes are still swimming in them. There’s a thick line of snot trailing down over my lips.
Good. I want her to be repulsed by me. I want her to see me for the pathetic, sniveling creature that I am. A traitor to my family and everything they stand for. Uncertain, in the running for a job that requires absolute certainty. A Reckoner trainer and a pirate trainee that can’t stand existing in the same body.
But when I drop my gaze to her, she stares back with no disgust, no condescension, no superiority. There’s only concern and something else, something I don’t dare name.
I hold the look until my swollen eyes won’t allow it anymore. With the heel of my palm, I swipe the welling tears away, scoffing. I switch my gaze to the horizon, guilt seeping into my bloodstream. There are Hellbeasts swimming these seas, attacking innocents, devouring the biosystem until there’s nothing left. We’re facing bigger problems than my own inconsistent heart—and yet here it is, demanding attention it doesn’t deserve. “I did something kind of dumb,” I start.
She nods, like that’s to be expected.
“I never should have looked—it wasn’t going to do anything but this.” I gesture to my messy face, then make another attempt to clean it off. My hand won’t do—instead, I lift the hem of my shirt and bury my nose in it. As I try my best to rein in the snot and tears, I explain what I found in my inbox through stuttered sentences, fighting back against myself until I’m worn down and talking through what just happened in a flat, emotionless voice.
The whole time she nods. Offers prompting when I need it. Waits when I’m too overwhelmed to speak. She’s being exactly what I need, and it makes me want to shove her off the roof.
Finally there’s no more story left to tell, and we’re left with the silence between us, punctuated only by the empty noise of sea winds whispering through the Flotilla’s sublevels and the groan of the floating city’s structure. For a moment, it’s nice. Me and her, the city beneath, a star of humanity in the endless blue around us. For a moment, I let myself forget what’s happening, what’s happened, what might happen.
“I’m sorry,” Swift says finally. She sits up and folds in on herself, first with her arms, then with her spine, until she’s just a curled-up ball of girl. “I wish I knew something to say that could help,” she mutters into her elbows.
I nod, squeezing my eyes shut. This shouldn’t be allowed, my own useless pain passing along its favors to her. I want to get away from it, not wallow in it, and I can feel her dragging me down. There has to be some way to change tack. “You know, it was my birthday a month ago,” I blurt.
“You’re shitting me.”
That gets a laugh—a small one, but I can’t take it back. “December 1st. Five days after I officially turned pirate. No one knew. No one wished me anything.”
“And you turned…”
“Eighteen, jackass. You can’t spell my name; you don’t know how old I am—”
Swift swipes a handful of dust at me, a wry smile twisting her lips. “You absolutely can’t talk when you didn’t even know my last name until a week ago.”
“Fine. When’s your birthday?”
“April 7th. You throwing me a party?”
I snort to mask my lack of a comeback. I don’t even know for sure if I’ll be alive come April 7th. I don’t know if I’ll still be on the Minnow. I don’t know if I’ll hate Swift or if by then I’ll finally—
“So my family’s moved out,” she says, mercifully interrupting that line of thought. “Turns out when you save an entire raft full of people, especially on Christmas, they want to do you all kinds of favors. Got them set up in a home—an actual apartment, not one of these shipping container shitholes—on the lower levels, courtesy of… well, everyone.”
“You didn’t save an entire raft.”
Swift grins. “Don’t tell them that. The apartment isn’t even the best part.” But even as she says it, her eyes flick to the ground. “There’s kind of been an arrangement made. People with money were on that ferry. Enough money to be charitable. Enough money to make it so that my family’s set. For the rest of their lives, they’re looked after.”
Oh. Oh. Now I understand her fidgetiness. I get why she sought me out in the first place after days of not talking. Swift’s life is one long exercise in self-sacrifice. She signed herself away to Santa Elena at thirteen to put food on the table for her family when her sisters’ mother walked out. Every note she’s earned in the past five years went to supporting her father, grandmother, and four half-siblings.
But not anymore. If they’re truly taken care of, Swift’s life just got a whole lot simpler. In the span of a couple days, everything’s changed. And now she has no reason to be a pirate anymore.
She’s free. And it’s scaring the shit out of her.
“This should be the best damn thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says, scoffing. Her gaze fixes on the distant horizon, on the span of the ocean that’s now open to her. “It feels too easy, too fast—it feels like it’s all going to go away if I blink. I can’t just… disappear. If I walk out on them, my grandmother’s going to be right, going to say that she knew all along I was just another rotten egg like my mother.”
“You’re not,” I mumble, before I can think better of it. But she doesn’t give me a second to regret it—that dazzling smile flashes out so bright that I want to avert my eyes. It’s not even a full grin. It shouldn’t have this effect. But somehow the wry tilt of her lips shines like the sun. “Oh fuck off,” I groan.
That brings out the dopey grin. “You got any plans for tomorrow night?” Swift asks.
“Are you seriously asking me o—”
“It’s gonna be New Year’s Eve, Cas. Let me show you how we do it on the Flotilla.”