19
Later that evening, I inspect the abandoned yachts with Santa Elena in tow. I didn’t ask the captain to tag along, but she followed me down to the docks when I announced my intentions to Fung, and it’s not like I can tell her that I’d rather do this on my own. So I tolerate her presence as I climb up the narrow gangway and begin circling the deck of the first ship in the line.
I look for anything that might cause permanent damage to Bao. His beak is strong enough to crush metal, but any jutting sharp surfaces pose a threat to the delicate tissue in his mouth. Back on shore, we’ve had Reckoners get severe infections from slow-healing wounds on the tongue or inside of their cheeks. I don’t want anything like that happening on a practice boat.
“Did you follow me here for a reason?” I finally ask once I’ve completed my check of the upper deck.
The captain smirks, leaning against the rail. She pulls a knife out of her sleeve and trails the blade over the varnish. “You’ve been wrapped up in the beast for a couple days. I figured it was time to check in.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How much you told Swift when she visited you that morning.” Of course. One of the other trainees must have ratted on us—I make a mental note to figure out which one later. Santa Elena twists the knife, skinning a chip off the rail. She cocks her head and flicks the knife again, carving off another slice.
“I didn’t tell her anything.”
“Don’t lie to me, Cas.”
“I didn’t. All I told her is we talked about her prospects. Didn’t say anything more than that.”
“You expect me to believe Swift let that go?”
“I got her off the subject.”
The captain’s knife gouges into the rail.
“Turns out Swift was more concerned about how much you knew about…” I make a vague hand gesture. Santa Elena cackles, her eyes still on her carving. “Wasn’t too hard to lead her away from asking the right questions,” I continue.
“You’re a work of art, Cas Leung,” Santa Elena says with a smile. “I don’t even know if I can take credit for it. I’ve seen the way you work with the monster. You’re an expert at baiting—you always have been, even before you set foot on this ship. It’ll serve you well in the future.”
There’s that word again. Future. Even the thought of it feels sour and stale. The captain believes in it, from the way she talks. Believes that I have one, believes that it’s tied to her boat. For all I know, she’s right.
The captain keeps carving. I approach the rail next to her. Part of me goes live with tension at the notion of getting within her reach when there’s a blade in her hand. The other part of me knows her reach has no bearing on my safety—if she can see me, I’m in range. Her expression remains blank, bored. I squint, trying to make out what the strokes of her blade have etched.
It’s her name. I shift my gaze to the waters below us, biting back a smirk. Of course she’d be carving her own name into Fung’s fancy boat. That’s what she does—she takes things and slices them up until they’re hers. She even inks her crew to mark them as her own, even if they might not stay that way forever. And suddenly, I don’t want her praise. I don’t want her to believe in me or my future. I don’t want her knife in me for another second, etching herself into who I am as a person. It isn’t enough that she’s noble and brave, that she’s fighting a good fight. I can’t accept that part of her and ignore the rest, not when she’s making me into her image. This isn’t how I want to survive these waters. But it might be the only way I can. I make my own marks in the railing as my fingernails dig into the varnish.
“What’s next?” I ask. I need the near future. The distant future’s too crippling to think about.
Santa Elena pauses, sawing the blade back and forth in the L’s path. “So far, none of the Salt have sighted any more of the Hellbeasts. Which doesn’t sit right with me. The Salt’s been reporting consistent encounters—a new one was surfacing practically every week. Now they’ve stopped. I don’t like it.”
It sounds like something’s changed. “Any word from fisheries?”
“The catch is worsening. It’s already begun.” She shrugs. “So the Hellbeasts are gone, but they keep eating. No idea what it means.”
“Means we’d better train fast. Something’s happening out there,” I say, nodding to the mouth of the bay. “I’ll push Bao.”
“Do. I’ll keep the channels open, keep asking questions. No rest until we know where we stand.” She makes a few more vicious cuts into the wood, then leans back to admire her work.
There’s one more question I want to ask. I can feel her waiting for it. “What was the favor?” I say at last, eyes fixed on the blade in her hand.
Santa Elena slips the knife back up her sleeve. “Four years ago, Fung was a precocious eighteen-year-old Islander prince who wanted to try his hand at the hunt. Little has changed, save for the age. He bought a boat, put together a crew, and threw himself out into the NeoPacific. Fucker had no idea what he was doing. And the first boat he tried to take…”
She breaks off, shaking her head, fighting the laugh building inside her.
“First boat he tried to take was armed to the teeth. He didn’t realize that unescorted ships would be jacked up. Nearly got ripped to shreds. We were patrolling in that area and picked up the battle on our radar. Neither of the ships were responding on Salt frequencies, so I brought the Minnow in to investigate. What I found was a complete clusterfuck. It took me five minutes to figure out which ship was the pirate and which was the mark—I mean, you’ve seen the Crown Prince. The ship Fung was in wasn’t nearly as well equipped, though. By the time we started shooting, it was already starting to sink. We took down the mark for him, then scooped his crew out of the water. He offered me an exorbitant amount of money for his freedom. I turned him down. Money has its uses, but a man with his resources has far more. And you can milk a hanging favor for decades if you guilt them right.”
I nod, and try not to make it too obvious when I push off the rail and step around her. There are more ships in the line to inspect, and I don’t owe the captain any favors with my time. She lingers behind me, and as I make my way down the narrow ramp, I catch her putting some finishing touches on the name she’s carved.
Santa Elena is nothing if not proud of her work.
The training is slow, bitter work. The first time I taught Bao to take down a ship was a frantic affair. We had pursuit on our tail, and the captain wasn’t doing me any favors then. Now, even with the threat of the Hellbeasts on the horizon, there’s time to breathe. But the lack of danger nipping at my heels isn’t what’s keeping the training slow.
It’s the fact that Bao, who used to be one of the fastest learners I’d ever trained, who learned his charge and destroy signals in less than a day, has regressed to the awkward, unsure movements of an adolescent beast.
I start to wonder if the wound that took his eye also did some damage to his head. Bao’s main problem isn’t even anything to do with the boats he’s supposed to be wrecking. He keeps forgetting the Minnow. Reckoners are born with an innate need for a bond, which is supposed to be filled by their companion ship. But Bao’s been flighty since his reunion with the Minnow, more beholden to his signals than to the ship itself. Every time he wanders, I worry that he won’t come back.
He doesn’t savage the first boat I set him on. He chews on it. With one foreleg he presses down on it, the metal shrieking under his weight, and then locks his beak around the ship’s stern. He tests the ship’s hull, flexing his jaw against it. I tug the destroy signal again, trying to get the point through his big dumb turtle brain. His jaw snaps tighter, and the hull crumples. Bao shrinks back, loosening his hold on the ship, his eye widening as he takes stock of what he’s done.
The sight is so surprising that I end up doubling over laughing, which only confuses him more. He releases the boat, which immediately begins to sink, and noses his way over to the trainer deck. I wave him away with a flash of his stay pattern. This shouldn’t be as funny as it is. If we’re going to fight the Hellbeasts, we need to do it with a monster, not a wimp.
I call out the next boat and throw him after it the minute Fung’s tugs are clear of Bao’s radius.
This time, he does it right. His movements are still slow, calculated, hesitant, but he brings one foreleg down on the boat’s stern, snaps his jaws onto the hull, and twists so hard that the metal shrieks when he rips it free. Another slash of his forelegs and half of the yacht plummets to the depths. I change over his signals, calling him to back off. He takes a moment to think, then releases his hold on the other half of the boat, letting it sink.
“Bring in the reward tug,” I order through the radio.
The boat circles around, and I wrinkle my nose at the bloody carcass it drags in its wake, attached by ropes lanced through the tail flukes. It’s a necessity, but it’s a shitty necessity, having to hunt down neocetes to reward Bao for his good behavior. When I first trained him on aggressive signals in a single grueling afternoon, the promise of a reprieve was enough to power him. But with this slower, more consistent training, he needs food to drive his learning.
I considered trying to keep the bait alive, but I don’t have that kind of cruelty in me—Santa Elena hasn’t trained it into me yet. I told Fung’s crew to make sure the neocetes have a clean, easy death, and they followed orders. “Cut it loose,” I demand.
The crew on the reward tug loosens the lines, setting the carcass adrift. The animal’s lungs are still inflated, keeping it floating even with no life in it. I swallow back my revulsion and set Bao onto it with a quick burst from the Otachi. He downs the wretched thing in one bite, throwing his head back to force it down his gullet.
Then it’s back to work.
By the end of the afternoon, I’m dripping with sweat and half-tempted to dive straight off the trainer deck and into the open sea. I turn Bao loose and restrain myself until the Minnow has docked safely back in Fung’s harbor and I’ve had a chance to put away my equipment. I strip from my wetsuit down to my swimsuit and leap headfirst off the back of the ship, letting out a bubbled moan as the cool water sinks into my skin. I roll onto my back and float, keeping my eyes squeezed shut. With my ears under the water, I can block out the rest of the world. I can relax. I listen to the muffled rumblings of ship’s motors, to the distant churn of the waves against the island’s beaches, and let it drown out the constant noise inside my head.
But I can’t keep my thoughts down. Now that training is over, now that I’m no longer distracted by a simple task, my head runs wild with a constant chant—What next? What next? What next?
The future’s out to get me.
It’s simpler with my eyes closed. With only white noise and the rocking of the waves, I can see my path. Train Bao. Solve the Hellbeasts. Unveil Murphy as the man who nearly killed an entire ocean. And then a gaping black hole after, where I’m swallowed into Santa Elena’s world, carved up in her image, and set against the innocents in the seas I’ve been working since birth to save. The salt on my lips has never tasted so bitter.
“How’s the water?”
My eyes snap open, and I let my legs drop. I squint against the sudden, blinding sunlight and find Swift leaning against the edge of the trainer deck with a beer in her hand. “What do you want?” I ask, wary. We haven’t been alone together since that morning on the trainer deck. I’ve been too consumed by training Bao, and she’s been… Has she been avoiding me? I have no idea where we stand—I don’t even know what I feel beyond the way my heart starts racing.
She takes a swig of her drink before answering. “You weren’t answering your radio.” Swift nods to the lump of my discarded wetsuit, the radio still belted to it. “Captain told me to go down and check on you.”
“Shouldn’t you be radioing her back?”
“I did. Two minutes ago.” She tips the bottle back again, smirking around the glass at her lips. When she swallows, she crouches and holds out the bottle so that I can see the label. “Fancy stuff. Craft. Fung brought a whole crate of ’em onboard after we docked. If you want one, you should go now—they’re going fast.”
I shake my head. “Not worth getting out. Water’s too nice.”
Those words shouldn’t be dangerous, but they are. I see the flicker of Swift’s intentions in her eyes, in the way her grip on the bottle tightens. I see her restraint, her confusion. Something in me hitches. I don’t think I want her restrained or confused.
With two kicks, I glide to the trainer deck’s edge. Swift rocks back into a sitting position and throws her legs out over the water, and I wind my fingers around a handhold beneath the deck’s platform. A familiar sensation prickles over the back of my neck. We’re teetering toward the cliff’s edge, the crumbling precipice over Santa Elena’s sea of secrets.
I step up willingly. “What’s the captain trying to do to us?” I ask, keeping my voice low. Beneath my feet, the waters still glow warm from the ship’s engines.
Swift leans out over her knees, her hair falling around her face. “It’s always some sort of test. Not sure what it is this time—she couldn’t possibly have known what the… situation is.”
“I talked to her last night.”
Swift’s fingers tighten on the bottle. “What did you say?”
“Nothing more than what she wanted to hear.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
My exasperation sharpens to a point. “Look at me.” I wait until she’s looking, until her eyes are fixed on mine. “She’s playing us against each other—it’s all part of this stupid power game she’s created. No matter what, we lose, she wins, and the game goes on. The only way we stand a chance is if we’re honest with each other.”
Swift’s brow furrows. “So be honest with me. What did you and the captain talk about?”
I freeze. I know it’s bad. I know I can’t take back my moment of hesitation, so I commit to it, lengthening the silence as I carefully consider the next words that come out of my mouth. No matter how tempting it is to unburden myself, I know the consequences for making this particular dive. The captain will skin me if I breathe a word about the way she’s arranged Swift’s future.
“She told me about how she saved Fung’s ass four years ago. Funny story.”
“You’re shitting me,” Swift growls.
“No, seriously—”
“Not the story, you jackass. I was there. I know what went down. You literally said we needed to be honest with each other and then dodged the question. I need to know what the captain has on me.” She sets the bottle down on the edge of the deck, then clutches her head in her hands as she sinks her elbows against her knees. “Please, just… tell me what won’t get you killed.”
At least she understands what I’m up against. I nod, taking another second to compose myself. “The captain knows we’re… involved. I didn’t have to tell her, but I did sort of confirm it. Vaguely. She knows something happened on the morning after we set out to get Bao.” I shift my grip on the handhold, twisting to face out into the harbor. My breath hitches, and I push off the ship, sinking onto my back again as I point my toes toward the mouth of the bay. There’s a slight tug at my feet that I have to counterbalance with my arms to keep the current from dragging me away from the Minnow’s side.
When I slide my eyes open, I catch Swift staring. She blushes when she looks away, and I can’t help the little scoff that rises out of me. She’s seen me in so many other lights. She’s seen me naked. She’s seen me as a sobbing wreck. She’s seen me beaten down, broken in pieces, and she’s never been embarrassed to look at me. What makes now so special?
When her gaze returns, it comes with a wry smile attached. “There’s no way out of this,” she says.
“No way out of what?”
“You. Me. The vicious cycle where Santa Elena pits us against each other and makes us lie until our lips bleed.”
“Right. Better ways of making lips bleed.”
She grimaces, running a hand over the back of her neck.
“Do you wish there were a way out?” I peer up at her, my arms jellyfishing, the churning sensation in my stomach growing as I realize just how much her answer matters to me.
Swift’s lips go taut. “There used to be other girls on this boat.”
“And there aren’t anymore?”
“Oh, they’re still there,” she chuckles. “And it’d be a far safer thing to go back to them. Captain never tried to use any of them against me. But… fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. If I’m really safe and free to go my own way…”
I like the way hope sounds in her voice, no matter how false it is in reality. But before I can get too comfortable, she opens her mouth again.
“I’m supposed to choose myself first. That’s what the captain teaches. She wants me to be ruthless. That’s supposed to be the smart choice. And I don’t know if I can make smart choices when I’m around you. So I don’t know if we’re ever going to make this work.”
The water around me does its best, but nothing can combat the sinking sensation at my core. I know what this means, what she’s trying to say. I close my eyes, swallowing before I dare say anything back. But keeping still, keeping silent when she’s around—that’s just as unbearable. “Swift?” I ask.
“Yeah?”
“You kind of deserve this.” My eyes snap open as I throw up my arms and lock my grip around her ankles. She shrieks and thrashes, but not before I’ve yanked hard enough to topple her forward. Swift drops into the harbor waters with all the grace of a beached neocete. I push off her legs, trying and failing to keep my breath in my lungs as I dodge her flailing fists. The water mutes Swift’s indignant shouts, and I swim deeper, enjoying—maybe a little too much—the distant sound of her calling for my blood.
When I surface, I barely get a chance to suck in a breath before she’s raining down on me with a torrent of splashes and vicious curses. Swift seethes as I dodge her onslaught and backpedal with a few short kicks. “You little twerp,” she finally hisses once she’s calm enough to use her words in a less brute-force manner.
“Hey, equal footing,” I shoot back at her as I spit out a mouthful of salt water. She shakes her head and swims for the trainer deck’s edge with ungainly strokes brought on by her baggy clothes. When she hauls herself up and turns out toward me, I catch the outline of the tattoo on her chest through her drenched shirt, and in that moment I’m thankful for the chill of the water.
“I should probably… I don’t want to answer the questions if the captain catches me in wet clothes,” she mutters, scooping up her bottle. Swift turns her back and retreats. No pauses, no hesitations, no glancing over her shoulder. I’m tempted to get the last word in, but I don’t know what it should be. So I just watch her go, waiting until I hear the trainer deck door close behind her.