15
I sleep like the dead in my own bunk, then rise with the sun. We’ve been underway all night, driving a frantic pace to reach the Kettle’s marker. Instead of the Slew, I make for the trainer deck. Exercise can wait. If the seas are favorable, I’ll have a Reckoner at my call tomorrow. I have to be ready.
The weight of the Otachi hangs heavy at my side as I stare out into the morning sea. The waves fly past beneath the edge of the trainer deck, kicking up a chilling spray that ghosts over my face. I try to relax, try to shift the device to rest comfortably, but it’s impossible when I don’t have the twin. My left arm feels empty and weightless. I’m an imbalanced, ungainly creature.
When I was ten years old and first learning to work the beacons, my father always warned me never to give a signal I didn’t intend for a monster to complete. There’s never a guarantee that a Reckoner will follow your next command. If you order a Reckoner to kill, you’d better not be surprised when that’s exactly what it does.
But even though part of me rebels, insisting on following the rules I grew up with, I twist the Otachi’s knobs to the setting that would summon Bao if he were in range. No other beast in these waters would respond to this call anyway. I tighten my fingers in the triggers, and a brilliant beam of light cuts through the waves. A low tone rings out, resonating in the hollow of my chest until my teeth rattle.
I swing my arm left, then right. Surprisingly enough, my Slew mornings have done me some good—I wield the weight of the device far better than I did a month ago. I take a step back from the deck’s edge and twist the dials again. It takes more than one try to get them onto the right setting.
When I lift my arm and pull the triggers, the charge signal blasts across the NeoPacific. I tense as if something’s bound to surge out of the water and pounce after it. Nothing does. There’s just spray and mist and the line of my beam disappearing into the clouded horizon.
I pull back again. Change the dial again. Lift my arm, pull the triggers, and let the destroy signal fly. The sound itches my skin and shakes my bones like I’m the monster meant to follow its call. My fingers still clenched, I lower my Otachi-clad arm until the laser shines against the deck beneath my feet.
Santa Elena thinks she’s doing what’s best for Swift. She thinks she can buy Swift’s attention, distract her from her family, that she can make herself Swift’s only option. She honestly thinks that even if Swift were to break free from piracy, it would come back to snare her in the end. That there’s no escape from this life. I don’t want to believe that’s true for Swift. I don’t want to believe that’s true for myself.
Santa Elena’s heart is the ship. And I’m going to scorch it.
“That can’t be good for the floor.”
I jump, instinctively squeezing my eyes shut as the Otachi beam slashes in an uncontrolled arc. I relinquish the triggers, take two seconds to breathe, then crack one eye open. “Jesus Christ, Swift,” I groan, slumping against the aft door’s track.
“Should’ve seen your face,” she replies.
Then there’s silence. A quiet moment where we regard each other. Her with her eyes still glazed from sleep, barefooted and dressed in nothing but a sports bra and sweatpants. Me in my wetsuit, caught burning holes in the trainer deck.
“Don’t tell the captain,” I blurt, just as she says, “I won’t tell the captain.” She chuckles before she can help herself, but then a pained expression flickers across her face. There isn’t room for amusement in the tense space between us. The captain’s secrets press against me like a knife to the throat. I try to see the good in keeping them. Like Santa Elena said, the world is Swift’s for the taking now that she thinks her family’s looked after. It could be the thing that makes her.
The silence settles again. My eyes flick to the tattoo on her chest, the wings of her namesake bird that curl down over her ribs. Its head is hidden now. It wasn’t, this time yesterday.
“You’re up early,” I note, turning my back on her. I have to raise my voice over the churn of the engines beneath us. Their rattle fills the deck, frothing the water in our wake. The seas, still and clouded, are cut by the white of our path.
Even with all the noise, I still notice when she starts forward. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“And so you decided to come to the trainer deck?” She’s right behind me. I duck my head, my breath caught in my chest as I wait for her reply.
“What did you and the captain talk about yesterday?”
Of course. I turn to find her staring me down, her eyes dark and intent. Swift folds her arms, and my fingers tense in the Otachi triggers. “None of your business,” I tell her.
She doesn’t buy it. Swift takes another step forward, her shoulders squaring, and I find myself pressing back against the door’s edge. My hair ruffles back and forth, caught in the strange winds that suck back into the trainer deck from the Minnow’s slipstream.
A familiar sensation creeps over me, but it takes another breathless moment before I’m able to put my finger on exactly what it is. I’m afraid of her. Not in the fluttery, happy way of a girl with a crush. No, this is the fear that consumed me that August day, when she marched me onto the Minnow with a gun aimed at my back. Swift is dangerous. Swift is a pirate. Swift is not a good person.
But neither am I. If the captain’s taught me anything, it’s that. So I let my cruelness edge out into the open with the curl of my lips and tell her, “We talked about your prospects.”
She studies my face, but I’ve spent far too much time around Santa Elena to let anything slip there. I’m a blank page, and Swift has never been very good at reading. “Did you, uh…” she starts, and breaks off as a hint of color creeps into her cheeks. “Did you guys talk about…”
It takes me a moment to catch her drift. “No, we didn’t talk about how you and I spent New Year’s Eve. Though I don’t doubt she’s guessed something by now.”
“Ah. Good to, uh, good to know.” She cracks a nervous grin that banishes all the menace from her, but I’ve spent enough time around Reckoners to know that monsters sometimes lurk beneath stilled seas. “Look, about yesterday—I don’t want to let that lie. We need to talk, to come to an understanding.”
I push off the wall, crossing to the counter on the other side of the trainer deck. “I think I understand it well enough.” My fingers shake as I fumble with the Otachi straps.
Her hand slips onto my shoulder. I fight the urge to tense, turning my head so she can’t see the emotions battling for control of my face. It’s even more of a struggle to steady my hands enough to pull the Otachi off and set it gently on the counter. “Cas, I don’t want to lie to you about who I am. What I am. What I want to be.”
“You weren’t lying,” I mutter. “I just wasn’t seeing—I was using a vision I had of you that wasn’t complete.”
“No, hey.” Her grip tightens as if she’s about to pull me around, but she seems to think better of it. “This is on me—don’t you dare shoulder it.” Swift lets out a long sigh, and the back of my neck prickles. “Look, I got pissed because you don’t seem to understand. I want this life. There’s no way out of it, so I might as well want it.”
“But your family’s taken care of now. You have a way out.” Not true, strictly speaking, but I need to hear that if it were, it would change something.
“To do what, Cas? Look at me.” And this time she does spin me around, catching me by the shoulder with one hand as she uses the other to tilt my chin up with a touch. Her voice is low, urgent, as if she has a knife at my chin instead of her fist. “I’ve been raised for this. I can shoot a gun, but I can barely read or write. I can drive a ship, but I can’t even cook my own meals. Maybe if things had gone another way when I was younger… I don’t know. Piracy’s the only thing that suits me.”
I blink. “That’s not true. That can’t be true—there have to be other—”
She covers her face with her hands. “No, see, you don’t get it! You’re shore-raised! You’re born from this stupid idea that you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up because your world doesn’t have these limitations. And now you just waltz in and decide to play at being a fucking pirate captain, and the worst part is it’s working for you. I’ve fought my whole life to stand on the ground that you just walked onto—”
“So did I,” I mutter. “Just on the wrong side.”
Swift goes still. Her wrath breaks down as she processes my words. She reaches up and runs a hand through the longer side of her hair. “Look, even if I could—” Her voice cracks. “—could make a clean break, I don’t want to be trapped on the Flotilla, or on some other raft, or in some dead-end island colony. And I don’t have citizenship with any state. And I want to be able to see my family, and…” Her eyes flicker to mine, but don’t stay long. “The future’s fucked, huh?”
I nod, pushing myself up to sit on the counter. The weight of all of it lays heavy on my shoulders. I can see the way the paths fork out from where we are. It seems so certain that Swift will inherit the Minnow, and then what’s left for me? To be traded to Captain Kurosaki or one of the other Salt crews? To get trapped in the same vicious cycle that has Swift bound forever to this life?
I let my head roll forward. All of this, because when Santa Elena let me go, I turned my back and came running right back to the Minnow. I could have gone home. Could have kept my head down about Fabian Murphy, could have let him play the industry and pirates alike, could have had a shoregirl future where anything was possible. I could have lied. Telling them that Santa Elena forced me to bring down the quadcopters would have been child’s play after three months of playing Santa Elena’s mind games. Maybe my family would have taken me back.
Now my future is washed red with the weight of the things I’ve done for this boat. Any future I have is colored by the past months, by the choices I’ve made and the traps I’ve stumbled into. And, I realize, as Swift’s shadow falls across me, by the way my heart’s been torn. Torn and healed and torn again.
Her hand slips onto my shoulder again, and my heartbeat quickens. “What future do we have? What’s left for us at the end of this?” I ask. The three lines on the inside of her arm hurt to look at, but I do it anyway, because the alternative is looking in her eyes, and that feels so dangerous right now.
“I don’t know,” she replies. There’s something about that truth that lightens the space between us. Maybe all we’ll ever have is the moment when we’re certain, the places where it works out, and all that’s up to us is whether we move forward.
Swift leans in, her hips against my knees.
Is this the part where I’m supposed to reach for her, supposed to pull her gently by the back of the neck or else slide my hand up the wide curve of her hips? I don’t know if I want to do that. I’m not sure if I should be doing that.
But if all of this is so fragile, I have to take what I can get. So I meet her gaze and lift my eyebrows, waiting for her move.
Swift crashes into me like a wave—rough, rolling, her fingers digging into my sides as she yanks me against her. I gasp, but the noise barely makes it out of my mouth before her lips are on mine. I try to kiss her back, but this isn’t the kind of kiss that allows for that. Her teeth dig into my lower lip, and I bite back a groan. I like this. I probably shouldn’t like this as much as I do. If we’re going to fight, it might as well be like this, with just enough pleasure to balance out the pain.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to lose. I snare her by the waist, her skin searing my chilled fingertips, and squeeze until she yelps. Her cruel smile presses into my neck. I think she likes this game as much as I do.
Just as her pinch finds the zipper of my wetsuit, a crash and the clatter of footsteps rings out from the ship’s interior. “Never a dull moment,” Swift growls. She shoves me back, too rough to be playful, too gentle to be hateful. Before I know it, she’s ten paces across the trainer deck, trying to pretend like she isn’t responsible for the heat on my skin or the swelling in my lips.
There’s room for three breaths, three chances to force my heartbeat slower, and then Chuck, Varma, and Lemon race through the trainer deck door. “I told you it’d be open!” Chuck shrieks, holding a familiar object over her head—the cobbled-together wakeboard she keeps stashed in a corner of the engine room.
Varma spins, throwing his arms out, and catches sight of Swift lurking in the corner. He stumbles over his own feet, and for a moment he looks like he’s about to say something that’s going to get his ass kicked. I can all but see the gears in his brain turning, but in the end all he manages is, “Oh good, you’re here too!”
Lemon’s already throwing down the bungee lines at the edge of the deck. She works with feverish intent as she ties them to the handholds. There’s a slight hitch in the routine, a pause where she looks for the trainee who’s supposed to be tying down the other lines.
I jump off the counter and step up to take his place. It takes a little fumbling to mimic Lemon’s practiced knots, but eventually I get her slight nod of approval. Chuck tosses down the makeshift wakeboard. Before she can slip her foot into the bindings, I blurt, “First ride’s mine.”
Chuck blinks. “Have you ever…”
“I’m here to learn, remember?” I say with a shrug. “And besides, the trainer deck’s my turf. I call the shots down here, right?”
She looks baffled, but then Varma claps his hands down on her shoulders, beaming. “Strap in, shoregirl,” he says, resting his chin on top of Chuck’s head. “We ain’t reeling you in until you’re limp in the waves.”
As I strap my feet to the board, I catch Swift’s glare, a contemptuous look twisted with a hint of amusement, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Too late I realize I’ve done it again. I’ve slid effortlessly into a place she’s fought her whole life to claim. My heart sinks. As Lemon hoists the buoyancy vest over my shoulders, I turn to the sea and peer over the edge of the trainer deck. The froth beneath us looks vicious, cold.
Whatever punishment it has to offer, I hope it’s enough.