So I’ll play Swift’s game until the time is right.
“I don’t exactly have a choice,” I tell her, making another attempt to break her grip. She lets me go this time, but her hand immediately drifts down to the gun on her belt. The imprint of her fingers lingers on my flesh, and I cringe.
“Right. Fine. Basics of the Minnow. Follow me.”
I wait for her to grab me again, but it doesn’t happen. Swift stalks away, and I realize this is the first time she’s turned her back to me. She seems smaller. My gaze flicks to the nape of her neck, to the place where a guillotine’s blade would fall, and I spy a little smudge of ink. Her Minnow. Santa Elena’s words come back to me all at once, and in that moment I understand a little bit more about Swift.
If a brand on the back of her neck is how she sees the ship, we have a lot more in common than I first thought.
7
Swift’s introduction to the ship is about as half-hearted as I expected. First she leads me up a ladder to the main deck and breezes through the ship’s arsenal, including the two massive guns at the fore and aft. Phobos and Diemos, she calls them, then warns me never to call them that around the captain. I stare up at them, fighting to keep my expression unchanged as I remember their fury, the blaze of the guns pumping as they drove round after round into Durga’s hide. My eyes burn, and I squeeze them shut before anything escapes.
Then it’s on to the Splinters, the needle-like gunboats tucked against the Minnow’s hull by a set of pneumatic braces. Swift introduces them like a tour guide at an art museum, but her boorish accent keeps the impression half-baked.
I lean over the railing to get a good look at the Splinters. I’ve seen ships like this escorting vessels too small to have Reckoners. They’re tiny and terrifyingly fast, and Santa Elena didn’t need to deploy them to take down the Nereid.
I lean a little farther, letting the railing take my full weight as my gaze shifts to the night-dark ocean flying by beneath us. For a moment, I feel weightless. For a moment, I forget.
Then Swift yanks me back by the collar and gives me a warning look.
There’s a beat of awkward silence. She glances around the deck, the wind whipping her hair as she searches for something else to point out to me, then shrugs. “There’s more, I guess,” she says. “But I’m starving, so who cares?”
She leads me back down the ladder and through the maze of lower levels, nodding here and there to indicate heads, bunks, and supply closets. I could complain about how fast she’s breezing through the ship’s layout, but my stomach has other matters on its mind. The promise of food has it grumbling and growling, reminding me that it’s been nearly an entire day since I last ate. Back home, I miss meals left and right when I get caught up with work in the Reckoner pens—I guess I’ve gotten good at suppressing hunger. The idea of a hunger strike flickers into mind, but I brush it aside. If I’m going to survive on this ship, I’ll need all the strength I can get, and something tells me if I refuse to eat, Swift will simply cram the food down my throat.
We finally arrive at a hatch in the fore, which Swift opens with a rough twist of the wheel. The smell of food and spices hits me like a freight train, and my eyes and mouth begin to water simultaneously. Swift steps through the hatch, and a welcoming roar rises from the crew gathered inside. Rather than climbing down the short ladder, she leaps forward, her boots slamming into the wooden floor with a heavy thud. She turns, that familiar feral grin on her lips as she beckons me.
I clamber down after her, and it’s like descending into the lions’ den.
In Santa Elena’s lair, I knew my value, knew that the sway she held over her crew protected me from them. But here I’m nothing but meat. I forget my own hunger in the hungry eyes that follow me as I dart to Swift’s side.
“Quit acting so skittish,” she hisses. “They can’t do shit to you. Not while I’m around.” There’s something uncannily warm about the way she says it.
Off to the side of the mess there’s a table with a jumbled assortment of food. Most of it looks far too fresh to be anything prepared on this ship. Spoils from the Nereid ’s kitchens, most likely. There’s a stack of plastic trays next to it, and Swift grabs two. “Load up,” she says, pushing the second into my hands. “This is the best meal we’ve had in weeks, and it ain’t lasting.”
I grab the fresh fruit first—it’s probably my last chance to get it until this ship restocks, whether by trade or by force. There’s what’s left of a pork roast too, though it looks like wild dogs have ripped it apart. I shovel some of the rich meat onto my tray, and add a few of the wilting greens that the pirates have dumped onto a silver platter.
As an afterthought, I carve off a slice of the rapidly disintegrating cake that teeters near the edge of the table. The words Welcome to Paradise are scrawled atop it in elegant handwriting. It was supposed to commemorate our first island stop—I remember sneaking a peek in the kitchen the night before Dur—
I rein in my thoughts before they get out of hand and follow Swift to a small table where the four other lackeys sit. She shoves Varma across the bench, and I slide in after her.
“Gonna introduce us?” he asks. He flashes me an easy smile. At this range I can finally tell that the smear of ink on his cheekbone makes the shape of a small fish.
“God’s sake, Varma—you’ve already met. Cassandra, these other losers are Code, Lemon, and Chuck,” Swift says through a mouthful of food.
I recognize Code as the boy who spoke out when I wouldn’t. Chuck’s a heavyset Islander girl with what looks like engine grease patterning her bare arms. Lemon’s all skin and bones in contrast. She twitches when Code leans over her to swipe a slice of bread off Swift’s tray.
Swift catches his hand, and I notice the Minnow tattoo across his index finger. “Son of a bitch,” she growls. “I can’t even sit down for two seconds with you people.” She squeezes hard, and Code yelps while the rest of the table collapses into raucous laughter.
They’re a lot friendlier than I thought they’d be, and for a moment I catch myself hoping that their camaraderie will win out over their ambition. Swift’s relaxed around them—she still postures and pushes, but there’s a genuine spark in her eyes as she ribs at the other lackeys. Could it be that she actually trusts them? Only one of them can captain the ship someday, and these five are in the running for some reason or another. There’s something in each of them that Santa Elena finds valuable.
Which means there’s something in each of them that’s dangerous.
But it’s so hard to see them as a threat when they’re like this. They’re just a bunch of teenagers joking around, tossing food back and forth like they’re in a high school cafeteria instead of the galley of a pirate ship.
On the shore, we measure pirate lives in the percentages posted every time a Reckoner takes down a ship. Seventy-six percent dead. Forty-three percent dead. The gauge of a beast’s effectiveness. Durga died with an eighty-three percent average. Or something slightly less, since in her last fight she batted a solid zero. But on this ship, the monsters we created our Reckoners to fight against have faces and smiles and souls—and that makes them even worse.
And these five are the same age as me. I wonder where they all came from, what choices and circumstances drove them to a pirate ship. For most of them, I have no clue. There’s some sort of inside joke circulating the table about Chuck being a runaway princess, the daughter of an Islander millionaire, but there’s no way of confirming if it’s based on fact without inserting myself into the conversation. And if two Reckoners are interacting, you never get between them.