salt

thalassic series

book one

Liz Shipton

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination.

SALT

New Adult 2nd edition February 14, 2024.

Copyright © 2023, 2024 Liz Shipton.

Written by Liz Shipton.

Cover Art made with Canva and TextStudio by Liz Shipton

Tyrannosaurus Yes Media

contents

Content Warning

Salt

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

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Acknowledgments

About the Author

content warning

This book contains scenes depicting explicit sexual activity, scenes depicting underage alcohol abuse, some violence, and discussions of unresolved mental health issues.

It’s also the first book I ever wrote.

The rest of them are much better.

If you’re here because you saw my TikTok or Instagram videos, please be aware that this is

not a comedy series.

I wrote it quite a long time before I had

discovered my comedic voice.

If you’re looking for something funny, I recommend my short stories (Holiday Remixes)

or Dot Slash Magic.

salt

/SÔLT/

NOUN

1. the white crystalline substance that makes seawater undrinkable

2. an experienced sailor

3. the character of someone who is coarse, rude, or spiteful; a bad attitude; sass

chapter

one

“WATCH IT, HOWSLEY!”

I look up.

A small white sailboat is tearing through steel-blue water toward me, less than ten feet away, and closing the gap fast.

“Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.”

Grabbing the tiller, I bank hard to starboard. The boat skates by, missing me by inches, whips around, and comes right back at me. Through flecks of spray and shards of sunlight, I see Electra Nation—aka Miss Perfect, aka My Worst Nightmare—hanging backward over the high side of the boat like a windsurfer, perfectly balanced, and glowering at me.

“Get it together, Howsley!”

She ducks under her mainsail and tacks away from me, ponytail swinging like a gold medal as she carves a graceful arc toward the north end of the bay.

My biochip crackles to life and the sailing teacher’s voice buzzes through the radio in my head. “What’s going on out there, Howsley?”

I press a finger to the skin behind my left ear. “Nothing, Sargo, everything’s fine.”

“Excuse me?!” Electra’s outraged voice sizzles through static and I flinch and drag my finger down my neck to lower the volume. “Howsley almost hit me! She wasn’t even looking where she was going!”

“You almost hit me!”

“I had the right of way!”

“No, I—”

Wait. Did she have the right of way?

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to picture what was going on before it happened. But it’s like someone edited out that part of my memory. A gap in the tape. Must have spaced out for a second; didn’t see Electra coming.

Which is nothing new. When I was a kid my moms had a name for that: a blip. Electra’s probably right; she probably had the right of way. And even if she didn’t, I can’t pretend I was paying attention.

“Bird, watch out!”

I snap my head around in time to see another boat charging toward me, Polo Parker’s chubby, red, bespectacled face squinting at me from the stern. Jesus flogging Christ these assholes are really up my ass today. I snatch up the tiller again and veer out of the way.

“Okay, class.” Sargo’s voice is weary in my ear. “I think that’s enough for today. Everyone back to the dock please.”

“Oh come on!”

“Are you serious?!”

“Way to go, Howsley!”

“We’ve only been out here thirty minutes!”

Stabbing a finger behind my ear to shut out the assholes, I rip off my beanie and shake out my itchy hair. My heart is going super fast, although whether that’s because I almost just caused a shipwreck, or because of my fury at Electra and her stupid, perfect ponytail, I don’t know.

Deep breaths.

My counselor, Ms. Parley, told me to take deep breaths in moments like this. “Your breath is your anchor, Howsley.” Like I spent nineteen-and-a-half years on this flog-forsaken planet without learning how to breathe. Like oh, shit, is that what I’ve been doing wrong all these years? What do you call it again? Breathing? Never heard of it.

I do it anyway. As my lungs fill and the smell of salt and sailcloth pours into me, the hard edge of something in the inside pocket of my hoodie pokes me in the rib. I jolt and let out the air in a rush.

Grog flask.

Whoops. Definitely didn’t mean to bring that to class. Must have left it in there after last night.

I look around. The rest of the class is already turning downwind and heading back to the dock. I pull out the flask and give it a shake. Still something left in there. I tug my beanie back on and chew the inside of my cheek.

“What do we think about this, Bird?” I say to myself.

We think that would be a really bad idea, Howsley, my self replies.

Ignoring her, I flip open the cap and take a sip. The stuff is astringent; medicinal. It stings my eyes. But the hole it burns in the middle of my chest feels good. Familiar. I wipe the smell of spice and citrus onto the back of my hand.

Someone will smell it, says self.

So what? Everything else in my life is on fire, at this point I don’t really care if I light another one. Put it in the corner with the rest of the fire, thanks.

You do care. You care what Sargo thinks.

I sigh. God dammit. I do care what Sargo thinks. If he finds out I was drinking in his class, he’ll be pissed.

No, not pissed: concerned. Which is worse. Plus, I'd never forgive myself if he got in trouble because of me. He’s just a student teacher; he only graduated last year. It’s not like he’s got job security.

I flip the cap closed and tuck the flask back into my hoodie. I reach over the side to scoop salt water into my mouth. The sting of salt is like a razor under my fingernails, I hold my hand in front of my face, crooking my knuckles to examine them while I swish the water around in my mouth.

Chewed to oblivion. Ragged edges. Ugly little bloated corpses at the ends of my fingers. I don’t remember when I started chewing them off again. They were starting to grow.

Spitting out the water, I breathe into my palm and sniff—smells…fine—then push the tiller of the boat away from me and turn back toward the harbor.

The wind cooperates, for once. It’s a perfect day out on the bay—brisk, sunny, the cobalt water of the Salt just starting to whitecap and the sun burning white in the cerulean sky. Sporty, as Sargo would say. I’m sure my classmates were dying to get out here and show off for each other; it’s the first sunny day we’ve had in months. That's the downside of living in the only place on the New California Coast with water: that water is fog, and it's always in the air.

I make it back to the harbor and pull up next to the dock, misjudging the distance and slamming the hull of my boat hard against the wood.

“Easy, Howsley!”

Sargo rolls up the sleeves of his blue, school-issued button-down and braces both hands on the side of my boat to shove me off the dock. He admonishes my carelessness with a stern lift of a single, dark eyebrow, then holds out an olive-brown hand for a dock line.

Other students are shooting scathing looks like arrows in my direction as they tie up their own boats. Studiously ignoring them, I toss Sargo a line and jump onto the dock with a second line in my hand.

“Bird Howsley!”

I turn my gaze over my shoulder as I kneel to tie it off. Electra is striding past Sargo, her eyes flashing, her ponytail bouncing, the fiber of her expensive waterproof sailing pants swish-swishing with every pompous step. Shaking the dock below my knee. Around her neck, an enormous silver-white pendant flashes in the late afternoon sun.

I turn my attention back to the knot I’m trying to tie. Wonderful.

She draws level and stands over me with her hands on her hips, casting me in shadow. Kneeling on the dock in my leggings, ratty gray beanie, too-short shirt, and the hoodie I’ve worn so much it has holes in the elbows, I try not to feel like the jester prostrated in front of the queen. I forgot my sailing uniform. Again.

“What is your problem?” she demands.

I ignore her and focus on the knot. Is it right over left or left over right? My nails are so chewed down it hurts to use my fingers.

“You’re doing that wrong,” she says. “Is that supposed to be a cleat hitch?”

Gritting my teeth, I haphazardly sling the line around the cleat, then stand to meet her glare. “What’s your problem?”

“My problem is that you still don’t understand the basic rules of sailing! And on top of that, you weren’t even paying attention!”

“I understand the rules! You could have turned. You were coming right at me on purpose!”

“I promise you, I was not.”

“Ladies.” Sargo steps between us. The movement brings the crisp scent of fogwood trees, sand, and the Salt. In the pit of my stomach, something flickers around the edges of my anger. Nerves, I think. Definitely shouldn’t have been drinking in class. That was dumb.

“Can we take a breath?” he says. “Please?”

Electra tosses her brassy mane and redirects her glare out over the water. A metallic glimmer betrays the augmentation in her pin-straight hair, which is actually black, not blonde. No one’s really sure why she started augmenting it, but it suits her. Of course it does; everything does. Juxtaposed against the hooded eyes, eggshell skin, and delicate features of a person from Zhīliú, blonde hair makes Electra Nation the kind of unexpected beautiful that makes most people do a double take.

“Bird—” Sargo turns to me. “I was watching you out there, and Electra’s right. In this case, she did have the right of way.”

Electra shoots me a triumphant look and turns her million-watt smile toward Sargo. The ponytail bounces. The pendant flashes. My teeth clench.

“But—”

“Electra,” Sargo turns to her, “perhaps it would be a good idea to allow Bird a little more room for error out there.”

“I’m sorry—” Electra scoffs. “You want me to leave her more room for error? How about I stop leaving her room for error? Maybe then she’ll stop making errors.”

“How about we stop leaving you room to act like a bitch?” I mutter. “Maybe then you’ll stop acting like a bitch.”

She rounds on me. “What did you say?”

I force myself not to step backward. “I said, How about you listen to Sargo, since he’s the teacher? Or is it hard for you to hear him over the sound of your own ego?”

“Bird, I don’t need—”

“Ego?” Electra’s eyebrows shoot into her hairline. “I’m not the one so far up her own ass that she can’t see a flogging boat coming at her.”

“Well maybe if someone wasn’t pointing a flogging boat at me—”

“I was not pointing my boat at you!”

A crowd has formed around us as students stop to eavesdrop. Sargo moves to shoo them away.

Electra, apparently seeing her window, swiftly closes the gap between us. She’s in my face so suddenly I have to fight the impulse to step backward again. She lowers her voice to a flinty growl.

“Listen, Howsely. You might have Sargo wrapped around your disgusting chewed-up finger somehow, but I’m not going to make exceptions for you anymore. You need to start taking responsibility for your shit, or—”

A sudden frown clouds her face. She leans closer to me and sniffs.

“Have you been drinking?”

The last word rings into the still air, and in the corner of my eye, I see Sargo turn. I send up a half-hearted prayer to whatever alleged gods might still be floating around up there that he didn’t actually hear that word, but as his eyes meet mine, his face crumples with disappointment, and I know he did.

Electra’s eyes gleam. “Are you kidding me, Howsley? You’re drunk? In class? You’re nineteen! That’s not even close to legal on so many levels.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Whatever you say.” She folds her arms. “Wow, you really are just like your brother.”

Anger flares like a struck match in the middle of my chest, and I shove her hard by the shoulders. Her face twists into a very satisfying Oh! of surprise, and a spike of pure, malevolent glee goes through me as she stumbles backward toward the tied-up boats.

But she’s graceful. She regains her balance quickly and lunges back at me, ripping the beanie from my head and fisting a chunk of my hair. Her grip is like iron. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how strong she is. She’s got a year on me and her arms are ripped with muscle from afternoons spent raising sails and pulling lines out on the Salt. The stinging in my scalp makes my eyes water. I can hear hairs tearing out of my head.

As she wrenches my head sideways, I glimpse the pendant swinging around her neck, flashing in the sun, and with my free hand, I grab for it. Electra utters a sharp cry as the chain breaks, scattering fine silver links all over the dock. I make a fist around the stone and prepare to swing.

“Bird! Electra! That is enough!”

Someone’s hands are around my shoulders. Electra releases her grip and we stumble away from each other. The sudden scent of salt and fogwood tells me it must be Sargo’s hands pinning my arms to my sides. Polo Parker has Electra by the arm.

“El, it’s not worth it. This bitch is so stray, just let it go.”

Electra bats her away and clutches at her throat for the pendant. Pinpricks of blood bead along the side of her neck where the chain serrated her skin before it broke.

She glares at me. “Give me my necklace.”

The sudden urge to fling the necklace off the dock and into the water seizes me, but Sargo's hands are too tight around my biceps.

I twist, furious. “Or what?”

Sargo’s grip around my arms tightens. “Keep. Still. Howsley,” he growls in my ear. When I stop struggling, he says, “Electra, come and get your necklace.”

A look of hesitation crosses Electra’s face. It’s out of place on her; a crack in the visage betraying a chasm of vulnerabilities that might, in fact, comprise a person. But it’s a momentary slip; she exhales sharply through her nose and the look vanishes, replaced by her usual carefully-composed smugness.

She tosses her ponytail, marches over in three quick strides, and wrangles the stone from my fist. With one final glare, she snatches up her pack and stomps off down the dock, Polo trotting after her like an obedient little puppy.

Sargo’s hands loosen and I pull free, wheeling around to lay into him with all the angry words I didn’t get to yell at Electra. But my vitriol evaporates at the look on his face: fury, obviously, disbelief, disappointment, but also…yep. Concern.

That look gets right inside me; I drop my eyes and study my nails.

He sighs. “Shall we take a walk?”

chapter

two

SARGO’S only two years older than me, but I feel so small walking next to him, waiting to be reprimanded like a child.

He walks with his hands behind his back and his tawny face drawn as we round the corner from the Azimuth school dock and step onto Pier Two. His little thirty-five-foot sailboat is tied up at the end, corn-yellow fiberglass hull cheerfully juxtaposed against the dark blue water. Her mainsail is neatly flaked along a sea-green aluminum boom and on the side of the hull, toward the stern, green letters spell the name Panga.

We stop on the dock beside the boat, and Sargo turns to me as though expecting me to talk first. I impulsively tuck a rogue clump of mousy frizz up inside my beanie.

He clears his throat. “Coming to class intoxicated? Nearly causing a wreck? Picking a fight with Electra? That’s beyond reckless, even for you.”

“I didn’t come to class intoxicated,” I mumble.

“Oh, so you were drinking in my class.” His voice is so sharp I flinch like it actually cut me. “Did you think being drunk would make you less likely to wreck two other boats?”

“I didn’t almost wreck those boats because I was drunk. I almost wrecked them because I wasn’t paying attention.”

Perhaps a bit of a fine hair to split. But I feel it should be on the record.

He stares at me as though he can’t quite believe a person as dumb as I am made it this far without dying in a horrible accident. “Do you understand the danger you put your classmates in today? Do you understand the seriousness of this situation? As your instructor, I have to report this to the school officials.” He pauses. “But frankly, as your friend…I’m—”

“Concerned?”

His jaw ticks. “Yes. Concerned.”

I shift, picking at my thumbnail. “Sorry. It was just a blip. It won’t happen again.”

“A blip? This is not a joke, Bird! I’m aware that you had a fight with your folks, but this is not a good way of dealing with that. Have you spoken to your moms yet?”

The ember of anger lights in my chest again. It glows with a dull heat. “No.”

“Okay.” He observes me quietly. “Will you be staying at our place again tonight?”

“Is…that alright?” I peek into his face to see if I can discern what he’s thinking, but he’s recovered some of his usual composure and become inscrutable.

“Of course,” he sighs, and shrugs his wide shoulders. “Blenny says you can stay as long as you want.”

I haven’t told Sargo why I’m fighting with my moms. Why I’ve been crashing at his uncle Blenny’s house for the last three days. And he hasn’t asked. That’s why I like Sargo: he doesn’t pry. You could call us friends, but at the end of the day, he’s more like a counselor. A concerned counselor, but not a prying one.

A gust of wind rips through the harbor, setting carelessly untied lines clanging against their masts. Sargo looks up instinctively to check the lines running up Panga’s mast, but of course, they’re all neatly secured and make no sound at all. That’s the kind of sailor Sargo is: tidy. Methodical. Everything in its place.

His gaze sticks on the mast and he contemplates it for a long moment as though lost in thought.

“Something on your mind?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He stands for a while with his thoughtful gaze still skyward. “Today is the anniversary of the day my folks died.”

My gut twists. Right. I follow his gaze to Panga’s mast. She was their boat. I’m sure everything about her reminds him of them.

“I forgot.”

“It’s okay. It’s not your job to remember.”

“Yeah, but we’ve just been going on about me—”

“Truly, Bird. It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

I sigh, feeling small and selfish and stupid. “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.”

“You’re not an asshole.” He touches his palm to Panga’s hull. “You’re salty. But I do think you should talk to your folks. You may regret it if you don’t.”

A flicker of irritation. Is he really using his dead moms to guilt-trip me? “Yeah. Maybe.”

“And I think you should give Electra a break.”

“Give her a break? How about she gives me a break?”

Sargo eyes me silently.

I fold my arms. “Not gonna happen. She’s intolerable.”

“Intolerable?” He lifts an eyebrow. “If by that you mean she’s headstrong and intelligent, then yes, I suppose she is intolerable. Like you.”

“I’m not like her.”

“Actually, you’re right.” He smirks. “She knows how to sail.”

I curl my lip. “Very funny. She’s also entitled and rude.”

“You’re rude.”

“Yeah—wait, no…” I scowl. “I’m not rude. I’m salty, remember?”

“Mm.”

“Anyway, she is entitled. Did you see the size of the stone in that necklace?”

He sighs. “She’s not entitled. Her family has coin. Those are different things.”

I roll my eyes. “Has coin is a massive understatement.”

“Well they’ve worked hard for it. Her parents built that company up from nothing.”

“Yeah, and used it to take over the world.”

“Zenith brought us back from the brink of collapse when they ended the last pandemic. You should be grateful they took over the world. And you have them to thank for that chip in your head, without which, Howsley, I’m pretty sure you’d be completely unable to function.”

I glare. “That’s not true.”

“Oh yeah? When was the last time you went somewhere in the city without relying on your biochip for a map?”

“I come here every day.”

“Uh-huh.” He folds his arms, eyeing me. “Axioma Nation is a genius and a hero, and Electra is probably going to take over the company from her some day, so you may want to stay on her good side if you ever want to get a job in this town.”

I scowl at him. “I just don’t know how you can be friends with her.”

He shrugs. “Our families go back a long way. My family owes Axioma a lot. And Electra and I have a lot in common. Brume is in our blood.”

“Then I don’t know how you can be friends with me.”

“Brume is in your blood too,” he sighs, pulling the key to Panga’s main hatch from his pocket.

“Sure as Salt doesn’t feel like it.” I stoop to pick up my pack. “Hey—why did you trap me on the dock and make Electra take the necklace out of my hand? Why didn’t you just let me give it back to her?”

“Because I was pretty sure that if I let go of you, you were going to throw it into the Salt.”

I grin. “You got me.”

He shakes his head again. “You see? Reckless. So after you threw it in the Salt, then what would you have done? Bought Electra another one? With all that coin you have?”

I sigh and turn my gaze out over the water.

“I have to write you up,” he says. “I don’t know what the school will do. Hopefully, it will just be a suspension. Principal Yip has a soft spot for you, so maybe you’ll get off easy. Please, just…don’t do it again. Not in my class, at least. I know you think this class is a joke, but you need to take sailing seriously. It’s the law.”

“It’s a dumb law.”

He sets his jaw. “You need to know how to sail. You need to be prepared to quarantine out there in the event of another pandemic, and you need to be able to survive as the Salt keeps rising. You’ll be evaluated when you turn twenty and if your skills aren’t up to Zenith’s standards, you won’t be allowed to graduate. The community is only as strong as its weakest link. We’re all in this, right? Brume pride?”

“Yup,” I mumble. “Brume pride.”

Brume pride.

As if we made Brume what it is. We didn’t make Brume. Or at least, I didn’t. I was just lucky enough to be born here. In a bubble that wasn’t totally devastated by climate disasters. In a bubble that survived the pandemic, when billions of others did not. To me, that just feels like dumb luck, not something to be proud of.

“Look,” says Sargo, “I don’t want to go on at you about this. Can you please just make an effort not to derail my class in the future?”

I nod, my eyes still on the dock.

“Are you sticking around to help me out today?”

I shrug. “I guess.”

“Great.” His tone brightens. “Do you want to see what I did yesterday?”

I follow him over the rail onto Panga’s deck. He’s torn up the rotten old wood that used to be there, and in place of the splintered, graying planks he’s laid beautiful, honey-colored teak. The neatly-interlocking pattern reminds me of a woven basket.

I stare around with my mouth open. “Did you do all this yourself?”

“I did,” he says, and though he tries to temper it, I sense his pride. “I finished it last night.”

“You should have waited for me! I would have helped.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” He ducks into the boat’s cockpit, returning moments later with a jar of teak varnish, two brushes, and a sly smile. “There’s still plenty to do.”

I sigh and take a brush. “Am I gonna be able to invoice you for all this manual labor I’ve done at some point, or…?”

He snorts. “Sure, Howsley. Bill my secretary.”

I watch him twist the lid off the jar and set it on the deck. “Sometimes I don’t know if we’re friends, or if you just keep me around for the free labor.”

He sits beside the jar with his legs hanging over the side. “It’s mostly the free labor. But I don’t think you hate it.”

“Oh is that so? How do you figure that?”

“You’ve been doing it for almost a year.”

I sit on the other side of the deck and reach across to dip my brush into the varnish. “A year? No. No way.”

He taps his temple and reads words I can’t see out of the air in front of him. “April third, twenty-one ninety-two. Detention with Howsley.”

“You have a log of that?”

“I have logs of everything.”

“Jesus.”

He flinches. “Don’t say Jesus, Howsley.”

“Alright, fine.” I set my brush against the deck and drag a thick, black line of oily pitch onto the wood. “So it’s been a year.”

He dips his brush into the pot. “Which is interesting, because Fen told me your detention was only supposed to be a week. So I’m not really sure what you’re still doing here.”

“You seemed like you needed help. This boat was a piece of junk when I started.”

“Oh, is that what it is? I thought you just didn’t have anything else going on.”

My face heats. He’s right: I didn’t have anything else going on. When Mr. Fen, the old sailing teacher, gave me a week of detention helping Sargo, his star student, fix up Panga, I didn’t have any other friends. Sargo and I connected because we both have two moms—well, I have two moms. Sargo had two moms. A week turned into a month, and a month turned into six, and six months turned into a year. Sargo the patient sailor and his rotten little sloop became like a life raft in a school where I was drowning, and I’ve clung to them ever since.

Not that I would ever admit that.

I push itchy hair out of my sticky face with the back of my arm, sink my brush back into the thick, black varnish and pull it out, dripping.

“I had plenty going on. You’re the loser who’d rather spend a year fixing his boat than going to parties or getting laid like a normal dude.”

He looks at me sharply. “That’s not true.”

“I’ve never even seen you with a girl.”

“I’ve been with plenty of girls, Howsley. I could easily be sitting here right now, surrounded by naked girls, watching them paint this boat for me.”

“That’s what you’d do with a bunch of naked girls? Watch them paint a boat?”

He flashes a small smile. “To start.”

“Spare me.”

We paint in silence until the deck gleams dark and sticky and the air is damp and cold. Sargo ducks down the three companionway steps to wash up the brushes in the galley below deck.

I peek down after him. Beyond the sink, where he stands with his back to me, two faded, threadbare sofas run along either side of the narrow cabin with a small table set between them. Just beyond that is a door leading to the head, and another to the bunk in the bow where Sargo sometimes sleeps if he’s here working late.

The work that Sargo has done on the boat shines through here too—the patch jobs he’s done on the sofas and the floorboards he’s replaced. Everything worn but clean, the wood old but polished, the space small but tidy. Methodical. Everything in its place.

I swear Sargo could find something to fix on a perfect circle. He never seems to run out of projects. Sometimes I wonder if he even would sail out of Brume if it wasn’t illegal. Or if he would just sit here forever, finding stuff to fix.

He sets the brushes to dry and looks up the steps at me as he wipes his hands on a towel. “Tea? And then we’ll head to Blenny’s?”

I turn my gaze out to the horizon, where the last fiery sliver of sun is extinguishing itself in a bank of silver fog. “I don’t know, I thought maybe I would go find a bunch of naked dudes to surround myself with. Maybe watch them paint a boat for me.”

“Great, send them here when you’re done.” He sets the towel aside. “I have a ton of work for them.”

“Naked?”

“Very funny.”

I fold my arms. “A ton of work? You’ve been fixing up Panga since before I met you. What else is left to do?”

I don’t mean for the question to sound sarcastic, but I guess it comes out that way. Sargo looks annoyed.

“This stuff takes time,” he says impatiently, “if you want to do it right.”

“Okay. What stuff?”

He doesn’t answer right away, picking up the key to Panga’s main hatch and climbing back up the companionway. At the top of the steps, he says, “I suppose the biggest thing is the sail.”

“The mainsail?”

He nods. “It’s old. In bad shape. I can sail under it for a while, but eventually, it will fail.”

“Fail how?”

“Tear. Sag. Just generally fall apart.”

“How long will that take you to fix?”

He climbs out of the hatch, slides it shut behind him, and locks it. “That’s not something you fix. It needs to be replaced. And that takes coin. A lot of coin.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know—twenty thousand Ubicoin? Thirty thousand? Maybe more? Where are you going with this?”

“Just curious I guess. Wondered if you had plans to go somewhere.”

“Obviously not.”

“Right.” I watch him fiddling with the lock. “Where would you go, though? If you could.”

“That’s a pointless question, Howsley.”

“Indulge me.”

He sighs and squints at the horizon. “I don’t know. Pocosín, maybe.”

“Really?” My eyebrows lift. “Why?”

He shrugs. “Find my roots. People who look like me.” He finishes locking up and straightens.

I give him what I hope is an encouraging smile, because he doesn’t talk about that part of his heritage very often and I know he doesn’t like to bring it up. “Maybe one day you will.”

He tilts his eyebrow. “Don’t be obtuse, Howsley. Nobody leaves Brume.”

chapter

three

“DRUNK?” Sargo folds his arms. “In my class. Again.”

I shrink, dropping my gaze, and nudge at the dock with my toe. “I wasn’t drunk…”

“Drinking, then.”

“It was, like, two sips.”

I hear a long, angry exhale deep in the back of his throat. When I peek up to meet his eyes, they are stern.

“And you think this is acceptable behavior?”

I shrug. “I guess not?”

“You guess not?”

“Fine—no. You’re right. It’s not.”

“Do you think I can afford to have you jeopardizing my class like that?”

“No,” I mumble, skirting his eyes.

“Do you think I can afford to have you causing accidents?”

“No.”

“No what?”

I look up, frowning. “What?”

“No,” he says softly, “what?”

“No…way?”

His eyes flash. A muscle in his jaw ticks.

“Uh…” I smile hesitantly, confused. No what? What does he want me to say? “No…of course not? No…and…I’m sorry?”

His hand flicks up so fast I don’t have time to move before it’s around my jaw. My breath stills.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

He tightens his grip to just this side of too hard and pulls me toward him. My chest comes up against his, and the scent of him floods my nose—salt and sand, and fogwood trees. I can see the individual fibers of his shirt weaving over and under each other. His body firm and warm inside it. He tips my chin up so that he can glare at me a moment longer, then puts his lips against my ear.

“No,” he repeats, “what?”

The words ripple down the back of my neck. My pulse throbs under his fingertips.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I whisper to the sky.

A sigh of frustration against my ear. “Come on, Howsley. You’re a smart girl.”

The tips of my ears buzz. Heat blooms like a rose across my throat. It rolls like honey down my arms and into the tips of my fingers.

Being this close to him is disorienting. The brush of his shirt and the press of the body inside it. His fingertips on my neck. That this is happening here, on the public dock, of all places. That this is happening…at all.

What is happening?

His lips move in the hollow below my ear. “Your heart is beating fast. Are you nervous, Howsley?”

I manage to nod, my eyes still on the sky.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” he says, and he’s so close to me I feel the words inside my own chest. “No…what?”

“No…Sargo.”

He smiles against my neck. “Almost.”

The hand around my jaw releases. He brushes the front of my throat with his fingertips. I close my eyes as he trails them lower, drawing a feather-light line down the center of my chest.

His lips move against my ear again. “Do you want to know what I do to girls who—”

I wake with a gasp and blink at the ceiling.

Blenny’s ceiling. I’m on the couch at Sargo’s.

It’s early morning—the light coming through the window is weak and gray. I lift my hands and put the backs of them against my cheeks.

Jesus, what the hell was that?

Someone creaks on the floor above me. Snatching up the blanket, I yank it over my head and lie perfectly still as footsteps come down the stairs, quietly pass the couch, and head into the kitchen.

Sargo. Up to teach an early class.

I pretend to sleep while he creeps around, making quiet sounds with the kettle and filling the house with the bitter-orange smell of black tea.

For a long time after he softly closes the front door behind him, I don’t move. Or at least, the outside of me doesn’t move. Inside, my heart is still crashing around like a panicked animal, looking for somewhere to hide.

It was a dream, I tell myself.

It was a hell of a dream, my self replies.

An hour later I sit in the back of history class at Azimuth, staring into space.

“…was outlawed by Zenith,” someone is saying. “Can you tell me what year that was?”

Something pointy digs into my shoulder. I blink and turn around. The girl who sits behind me raises her eyebrows over my shoulder, to where Ms. Dawley, the history teacher, is peering at me expectantly over the top of her wire-rimmed spex.

“Oh…uh, what?”

Ms. Dawley sighs. “Please try to pay attention, Miss Howsley. I’ll ask again: in what year did Zenith make it a crime to leave Harbor Cities?”

“Uh…” I dig through my mind and find nothing. “Twenty-one-eighty?”

She sighs through her nose. “Try again. This test review is meant to benefit you, not me.”

“Twenty…one…” I shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Twenty-one-seventy-three. Can you tell me why they made it a crime?”

“Uh…the pandemic.”

“Yes,” she sighs, “but I’m looking for specifics.”

“They did it to prevent transmission of disease between cities,” says the girl behind me.

“Correct, Raven,” says Ms. Dawley. “Can you elaborate?”

“Before the pandemic, Harbor Cities like Brume were overcrowded with refugees fleeing natural disasters. That’s why the virus was so devastating. When the governments collapsed during the pandemic and the Big Four rose to power, Zenith made it illegal for any citizen to leave a Harbor City so that disease could never spread like that again. The only ships transiting the Salt now are automated freighters carrying parts for Big Four companies.”

“What about Reckoners?” says someone behind me. “Aren’t they still out on the Salt?”

“The Dead Reckoners were lawless pirates and most of them are presumed dead,” says Ms. Dawley briskly. “The few that remain operate outside the law and do not adhere to Zenith’s policies. We won’t spend much time on them in this class.”

She taps her temple and swipes through the air to pull up the next page of notes on her biochip.

“Can anyone tell me what year the citizens of this city returned from their offshore quarantine and moved back onto land? Miss Howsley? Want to give it another shot?”

I restrain a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know…twenty-one-sixty-nine?”

“Incorrect. Miss Tarbuckle?”

“Twenty-one-seventy-four,” says Raven promptly, “right after the pandemic. The citizens of Brume survived the pandemic by fleeing into the bay on their sailboats and anchoring just offshore for two years.”

“Correct. And can anyone tell me in what year the Gas Wars started?”

“Twenty-one-thirty-nine,” says Raven. “The same year the first Reckoners fled to the island of Île Tor to dodge the draft.”

“Correct again, Raven,” says Miss Dawley. “Everyone please take out your slates and pull up the map of the New Pacific.”

I reach into my pack and find the canvas cloth that wraps my slate buried in the bottom. Unwrapping the slender stone rectangle, I lay it on my desk and tap my right brow to pull up the course materials on the Net.

“Incidentally,” Miss Dawley says as I swipe through the air to find the map, “can anyone tell me why the Net was one of the few systems not affected by the collapse?”

“Satellites,” says someone behind me. “It runs on satellites and the satellites never came down.”

“Correct,” says Miss Dawley. “Miss Howsley, are you taking notes? The test is in two days.”

I scowl at my slate, aiming the projection of the map at the dark stone and adjusting the size by dragging my finger across my brow.

Brume is tucked like a green jewel into the New California coast. I zoom the map out to look at the rest of the Harbor Cities. Alluvium and Pocosín in Nuevo CentroAmérica, Grike in New Australia, Zhīliú in New East Asia, Krepost’ in новая россия and Qanat on the Arabian side of the Med. There are only seven cities left in the world, plus the island of Île Tor, so you’d think I’d be able to remember where all of them are, but sometimes I still struggle with the geography.

I’m stepping out of the classroom an hour later, into the cool, foggy forest of Azimuth’s outdoor campus, when a ding fires off inside my head and a new message alert slides in front of my eyes. I swipe through the air to open it.

>>> BIRD HOWSLEY. REPORT TO PRINCIPAL YIP NO LATER THAN 0945.

I close the message and tap my left temple to check the time.

>>> 0930

Better get going, Howsley.

The walk to the office seems longer than usual today. Of all the times I’ve been here—which is many—I’ve never been in for such a serious infraction before. If I get suspended, will it be my third this year, or fourth? I forget what’s supposed to happen after three suspensions. Something bad, I suspect.

I pick my way over the broken concrete and exposed roots of the abandoned quad. Everything slowly being reclaimed by trees and heaps of crawling vines. Past the buildings that stood empty for years after the pandemic before they were taken over by Zenith and turned into their headquarters. I don’t see a single other person. The benefit of living in a post-apocalyptic world where ninety-nine percent of humanity was wiped out by a virus: it’s quiet.

A poster on the door to Yip’s office instructs me to Put on your own mask first. A Zenith slogan drilled into my generation since the day we were born. Personally, I think it’s safe to assume that anyone who was carrying the virus is long dead, since the pandemic was almost twenty years ago, but what do I know? I tug my bandana up from its near-permanent position around my neck and pull it over my nose.

Put on your own mask first. It sounds sensible, but it’s really depressing if you think about what it actually means. It goes hand in hand with Brume pride. Brume first. Me first. That’s what it actually means.

With my bandana on, I steel myself and knock.

“Enter.”

Calypso Yip’s crisp soprano rings through the door. I push it open to reveal a small, neat office, filled with light, glass, and green plants. Yip sits behind an oak desk, her steely hair wound tightly into a little pile on top of her head. She acknowledges me with a bony finger while she sips from a cup of brew, then pulls a silk handkerchief up over her nose.

Yip has coin. You can tell by the fineness of that handkerchief. Her family owns a massive estate out by the wind farm. They’ve been there for generations. They’re the only family that survived the pandemic without fleeing into the bay. Holed up on their property and put up an electric fence. Killed all the horses for food and set the dogs on anyone who tried to come in.

Yip sets down her slate and taps a finger to her temple, then turns her tired eyes to me. “Bird.”

“Ms. Yip.”

We sit in silence while she observes me through her tiny spex then arches a questioning eyebrow. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

I shrug, picking at my nails. “Sorry, I guess.”

“Intoxicated on school property. In a school boat. Nearly caused the wrecks of two other vessels and then,” her already sharp voice pitches up a few steps, “starting a physical altercation with another student!”

“I didn’t start it! She provoked me!”

Yip tuts. “Yes, well I have spoken to Miss Nation about her involvement in the incident, and rest assured, she will be reprimanded as well. But regardless of who said what, I have several witnesses who all attest that it was you who threw the first punch.”

She leans back in her chair, pushing her spex to the top of her head and rubbing her eyes.

“How many times have we been here, Bird?”

“This year?” I want to say. “Three or four.” But I sense the question is rhetorical and hold my tongue.

She puts the spex back on and looks at me. “Ms. Parley says you haven’t been showing up for counseling.”

I exhale sharply and glare at my feet. “I don’t like talking to her.”

“We can’t help you if you won’t help yourself, Bird.”

Silence settles.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, not sure what else to say. “It won’t happen again.”

Yip sighs. “No,” she says heavily, picking up the slate. “Indeed it won’t. Because I’m afraid, Bird, that you’re being expelled.”

My stomach drops. Expelled?

Looks like you figured out what happens after three suspensions.

Yip touches two fingers to her left brow and then swipes them through the air toward me. A file transfer pops up on my chip. She turns the slate around and holds it out to me. I take it, my chest hollow, my arms oddly weightless, and focus the bright text of the file against the stone’s smooth, dark surface.

TUES. APRIL 4

TO MS. JADE SHORBE AND MS. KESTREL HOWSLEY,

THIS LETTER SERVES TO INFORM YOU OF THE EXPULSION OF YOUR DAUGHTER, BIRD HOWSLEY, FROM AZIMUTH ALL-LEVELS SCHOOL, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. BIRD SEEMS RESISTANT TO THE HELP SHE HAS BEEN OFFERED BY THE SCHOOL’S COUNSELOR, AND APPEARS TO BE MAKING NO EFFORT TO CHANGE. HER BEHAVIOR HAS ESCALATED TO THE POINT THAT THE STAFF BELIEVE SHE POSES A LEGITIMATE THREAT TO HER FELLOW STUDENTS. IN THE INTEREST OF THEIR SAFETY, WE MUST RECOMMEND HER IMMEDIATE REMOVAL FROM THE SCHOOL.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH ZENITH POLICIES, IT IS AZIMUTH’S DUTY TO DO ‘THE MOST GOOD FOR THE MOST PEOPLE.’ AS I’M SURE YOU ARE AWARE, RESOURCES ARE SCARCE. WE ARE OBLIGATED TO FUNNEL THOSE RESOURCES TOWARD THE WELL-BEING OF OUR STUDENT MAJORITY, NOT TOWARD A SINGLE SPECIAL CASE.

PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO CONTACT THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR SHOULD YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS.

SINCERELY,

HARDING SHORES

HEAD DIRECTOR, AZIMUTH EDU

I stare at the words for a long time. The most good for the most people. There’s another one of those delightful Zenith aphorisms. Legitimate threat. Who is this person they’re talking about? That can’t be me.

Through the buzzing in my ears, I become aware that Yip is speaking. “…has already been sent to your mothers. I’ve been instructed to escort you from the premises. Do you have any possessions in your locker?”

I blink and look up, the text of the file still glowing before my eyes—too small to read. The clutter in my vision only increases my wooziness.

“Uh—no.” I touch my fingers to my brow and the letters disappear.

“Okay.”

Yip holds out her hand for the slate and numbly, I hand it over. She sets it in a drawer and stands, bracing her fingers on the desk, her tiny frame and thin skirt like another neatly-trimmed plant in this room full of green.

“If you don’t have any questions for me then I’ll walk you to the gate.”

She pauses, and a sad look passes behind her eyes. Disappointment? Pity? Concern?

“I’m sorry, Bird,” she says quietly. “If it were up to me, it wouldn’t be happening this way. But the director,” she sighs, “was adamant, and I can’t go against Zenith’s dictums. I was at least able to get Shores to drop formal charges against you. You’ll be expelled, but you’re not facing proper authorities.”

“You already sent this to my moms?” is all I can think to say. She nods.

Great.

I stand and turn to leave. My legs feel like water. The bandana around my face is stifling. Now, on top of everything else that’s happened in the last three days, my moms are also going to murder me for this.

Yip hurries around her desk to open the door for me and I bristle at the exaggerated show of cordiality.

“I got it, thanks.”

“I have to escort you from the premises,” she reminds me quietly, standing aside and holding the door open.

“Oh. Right.”

____________________

That night, after Blenny and Sargo go to bed, I swipe a bottle of grog from Blenny’s booze cabinet and take it down to the harbor to drink it. As long as everything in my life is going down in flames, I may as well send it off right.

The moon is hazy behind the fog—blood red, like a perverted sun in the black sky. Even in Brume, where the air is relatively clear, the moon is never white. I take a long swig and toast it.

To failure!

Setting the bottle down, I tap my right temple to pull up Shale’s message on my biochip. I haven’t looked at it in three days. I’ve been doing a really good job of distracting myself from it.

>>> BIRB! IT’S ME. COME TO ALLUVIUM. I HAVE A JIB FOR YOU.

>>> *JOB

Birb. The word that blew my life apart. Ten years of silence, and then Birb. Ten years of silence and then Birb, and then three days of me spiraling and setting everything on fire. Beneath his message, my reply glows, unanswered.

>>> SHALE?

Why hasn’t he replied? I swipe through the air to pull up the message’s metadata, even though I looked at it a thousand times the day he sent it.

>>> TIME SENT: 1700. SAT APR 1. 2192

>>> SENT FROM: ALLUVIUM, NEW CENTRAL AMERICA

>>> NAME OF SENDER: UNDEFINED.

Sender undefined. But I don’t need metadata to tell me it’s Shale. No one else ever called me Birb.

I should be happy to hear from him. I should be sobbing with joy and celebrating with my moms. Instead I just feel pissed.

I take another long swig.

Where has he been? Why didn't he try to contact me before? What is he doing in Alluvium? How did he even get all the way to New Central America?

Another swig. I put the bottle down. Think better of it and pick it up again.

And what the hell does he mean a job? He wants me to come to Alluvium for a job? As if I could just up and leave?

A few more long drinks, and the knot of relentless questions untangles a little. The great thing about grog is that it works quickly. Like, really quickly. Especially if you’re a nineteen-year-old girl who weighs a hundred and ten pounds. It’s not like we have companies distributing carefully-regulated substances in this post-apocalyptic nightmare of a world. People basically make it in their bathtubs. The only reason I know it’s not actually rocket fuel is because there isn’t any rocket fuel left in the world anymore.

I don’t remember getting up from the breakwater, but I guess I must have, because I’m stumbling through the harbor. I sip from the bottle again. Half empty. Did I drink all that? What time is it?

You know what we should do? Steal that stupid necklace from Electra.

I stop at the edge of the street. How did I get here? I was in the harbor. Must have walked. Duh. Durp-dee-duh. Walking. What a concept. Like breathing.

Did you hear my idea about stealing Electra’s necklace?

Yes, I heard it. I heard the stupid idea sloshing around in my brain. That is a terrible idea. First of all, how am I even going to get into the Nations’ house? It’s like an impenetrable rich-person fortress on the top of the cliffs. Second of all, why would I do that?

Because she’s a stray bitch who insulted your brother.

I stop on the corner near Sargo’s house. Again, I don’t remember walking here. I drunk I might be thinker than I drunk I think. Just kidding. I think I might be drunk, though.

Like blackout drunk. Like that one time at Sargo’s party.

Look left. Look right. Street is clear. Step off the curb.

A blinding flash of white as two EV headlights blaze out of the darkness right on top of me. I throw up my hands, the empty bottle in one. Yeah, definitely drunk if I drank all that.

The vehicle’s tires screech. A horn blares. Everything goes black.

chapter

four

“YOU DO IT!”

“No, you do it!”

“No way!”

“I can’t go out there!”

“Fife, come on!”

Two little girls whispered and giggled inside a tall patch of dry brush. It was early morning, and the sun was just beginning to bake the hard, red earth. The younger of the two peeked through the bare branches at a lanky thirteen-year-old boy who was scuffing his bare feet in the dirt and whistling.

“He’s your brother,” whispered Fife.

The younger girl tightened her grip around the big, wriggling jackrat in her small hands. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

She exploded out of the brush in a shower of dry leaves and charged toward her brother. At the very last moment, however, as she raised her arms over her head and prepared to stuff the jackrat down the back of his filthy, ragged shirt, he ducked.

The world went upside down as he caught her by the waist, scooped her up, and flipped her over. She squealed and dropped the jackrat. She heard Fife utter a whooping war cry and leap out of the bush, as the world went roughly right-side-up again and her brother dumped her in the dirt. Fife came running up behind him and the girl launched herself at his legs, toppling him. They wrestled, and she found herself pinned.

“You stray sonofabitch!” she screamed. “Let me go or I’m telling Mom!”

“Language!” her brother sang, sitting on her chest and catching her wrists in his hands.

“Fife! Help!”

Fife threw herself across the boy’s shoulders and pummeled him with little fists, but he shrugged her off easily and trapped her too with an arm around her skinny waist. Fife shrieked and clutched at him.

It didn’t take long for the girl to tire herself out. The sun was creeping up in the sky and it was getting too hot for this kind of thing. Eventually, they called a truce, and the three of them sat in the anemic shade of a bare tree, wiping sweat from their faces and smacking dry, thirsty lips.

“Let’s go to the creek,” said the boy. “I’m thirsty.”

“We can’t drink creekwater. It’s not safe,” said the little girl.

He grinned a sly grin. “It is if you have a brackish pot.”

She goggled. “You don’t have one.”

“Do so.”

“From where?”

“I made it.”

“Did not.”

“Did so. Mom says I’m old enough to use one now.”

Fife narrowed her eyes at the boy. “Old enough to make a fire?”

“Yup!” The boy puffed his chest. “I made a fire yesterday.”

“By yourself?” said Fife.

“Yes, Fife,” said the boy. “By myself.”

His sister glanced at Fife. Fife looked impressed. Making brackish was a big deal. It was a rite of passage that meant you were capable of surviving on your own. The girl folded her arms and fixed her brother with a defiant stare.

“Okay,” she said, “prove it.”

They rounded a bend and sighted the creek ten minutes later. The girl’s brother carried a small pack over one shoulder, which she supposed must contain the alleged brackish pot. He handled the pack as if it were made of glass, carrying it carefully and not even letting her or Fife see inside.

The girl kicked dust and dragged her feet. Up ahead, her brother said something she couldn’t hear and Fife burst into giggles. The little girl perked up and trotted a few steps.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Fife tossed her hair.

The girl rolled her eyes. It didn’t use to be like this. The three of them used to do everything together. Now it seemed like it was always her brother and Fife walking together a few steps ahead.

They came to the edge of the creek and her brother gently removed his pack and set it on the ground. As he kneeled to open it, Fife uttered a cry and pointed.

“Look! There’s a man! A man in the creek.”

The girl looked. Standing in the middle of the creek, ankle-deep in the murky water, was an old man she had never seen before. The girl froze. There were only ten people in their part of the Settlement and she knew every one of them like family. Strangers were a rare occurrence. Strangers came from Outside.

Her brother set the pack aside and stood. He stepped forward and addressed the man.

“Hello?”

The old man didn’t seem to hear him. He was staring around through one cloudy eye, but at what, the girl wasn’t sure. Where his other eye should be was just an empty hole. The top of his head was bald and red from the sun, scabbed and peeling. A few oily strings of hair hung around his face and a gnarled gray beard sprang like foliage from his chin. His body rattled with a violent cough that turned into a long, wheezed exhalation.

“Sir?”

Her brother pulled a bandana over his mouth and goggles from the top of his head over his eyes. He pulled gloves from his pocket and donned them, then took another step forward. He touched the two middle fingers of his left hand to the center of his brow, as they’d all been taught to do when greeting an elder. The old man ignored him. Then, to the girl’s horror, the man stooped and cupped his hands in the creek water, scooped some up, and drank it.

“Sir!” Her brother waded into the water, stretching a gloved hand toward the man. “You can’t drink the water! It isn’t safe.”

The man dropped to his knees in the middle of the creek and put his whole face in the water. He sucked it down as though he’d never slake the thirst consuming him. Fife put her hands over her face as the boy reached him.

“Sir,” he said again, “you can’t drink that!”

He put one hand on the man’s shoulder, and the touch seemed to ignite something in the man. He snarled and flung his arm, catching the boy on the side of his head and sending him sideways. His sister stood paralyzed, frightened tears clenching her chest. The man bent back to the water. Her brother, looking reluctant to interfere again, turned around.

“Fife! Go and get help!”

Fife turned and bolted. The little girl watched her go, then turned just in time to see the old man circle on her brother like a monster, screaming unintelligibly and shoving him with all his might. Her brother stumbled, tripped, and fell backward into the creek.

Her heart lurched and she plunged in after him, the filthy water coming almost to her knees. She grabbed hold of her brother’s arm and helped him to his feet. They stood, watching helplessly as the man dropped to his knees again and continued to drink the creek water.

Their parents had always said—everyone in the Settlement said—that the creek water wasn’t safe to drink. Too much salt, too many minerals. ‘Microplastics.’ That’s why the older people in the Settlement made brackish. Brackish made the water drinkable.

But the little girl realized as she watched the old man that she had never actually been told what would happen if she did drink the water straight. She’d never seen anyone do it. Would it kill the old man right away? Would he fall on his face, clutching his throat and gasping his last breath, right there in front of them? She couldn’t bear the thought of it, and yet she couldn’t look away.

“Gods almighty!”

A shout went up behind her. She recognized her mother and two of the strongest older men from the Settlement, dressed in masks, goggles and gloves like her brother. They sprinted past the children, grabbed the old man under his arms, and pulled him to his feet. He spit and snarled like a sandcat and flung his limbs in all directions, kicking with his gnarled old feet.

“It only makes you thirstier! You’ll drink yourself to death,” one of the men said, struggling to pin the old man’s arms.

“Get him to the med tent!” the girl’s mother yelled, and then seemed to see the children for the first time. “And for gods’ sakes get my children out of here!”

Someone grabbed the girl from behind and the world went sideways as she was tucked tightly between a fat, strong arm and a large, round bosom. A woman’s deep voice vibrated through the tight squeeze.

“Come on little one. Let’s get you inside the perimeter.”

The girl watched the ground move as she was carried away. Behind her, the shouts and splashing of her mother and the two men wrestling with the old man faded as she rounded the bend and left the creek behind.

____________________

That night the girl huddled with Fife and her brother around a small fire in the center of the Settlement. Her brother had spent all afternoon getting it going, putting on a brave voice, showing the girls everything he was doing, making jokes, until the little girl had almost forgotten about the old man in the creek.

The fire was small and smoky because he had used the wrong kind of kindling, but Fife had oohed and ahhed enough to elicit a shy smile from her brother, which in turn elicited a monstrous eye roll from the little girl.

Fife hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them, and poked at the fire with a long stick. “What do you think will happen to that man?”

“They probably sent him off,” the boy said.

Fife looked alarmed. “What do you mean?”

The boy twisted and broke a twig between his fingers and tossed the two halves into the flames. “He can’t stay around here.”

“Did he die?” asked the little girl.

Her brother shook his head. “You don’t die right away. You have to drink a lot before it kills you. Years and years. I bet the elders sent him off.”

“But what do you mean off?” Fife repeated.

“Away. Out.” The boy gestured toward the dark outside the perimeter. “Somewhere else.”

“But there is nowhere else,” said Fife. The boy shrugged again. Fife’s eyes went momentarily wide, and then she fell silent, gazing into the fire.

“Why can’t he stay here?” demanded the girl, because she didn’t understand what Fife apparently had.

“We don’t have enough food and water for another person here,” said her brother. “And he’s a crazy old man. What use is he?”

“But shouldn’t we help him?”

The boy shook his head. “That’s not the way. You have to drink from your own creek. This is our creek. It’s all we’ve got. We have to make do. He has to make do with his lot. That’s just the way it is.”

The girl fell silent. She was only seven, and her brother was thirteen, so she knew he was right. But it certainly didn’t feel right. She felt the tightness of tears in her chest and turned to hide her face. Fife put her arm around her shoulders.

“It’s not fair,” sniffed the girl.

“I know,” agreed Fife. “But it’s the way.”

chapter

five

MY EYES SNAP open and dawn charges into them like an interrogation.

I squeeze them shut again. They feel swollen and crusty, and the inside of my mouth is like sandpaper. I lie very still and wait for my head to stop spinning, then make one eye into a tiny slit. Slowly, carefully, I do the same with the other eye, scrunching up my face against the invasive daylight until I can open them both.

I am, it would appear, alive. And very hungover.

The last thing I remember is those EV headlights coming at me out of nowhere.

I roll onto my side and struggle halfway up. I’m on the Green in the middle of Brume. Damp grass soaking my elbows through my sleeves. It must be early—no one else is around. Which is good because I’m sure I look like an absolute lunatic, waking up in the middle of the park like this. How did I get here?

There’s something heavy in the pocket of my hoodie. Frowning, I sit all the way up and pull it out. It’s a stone. As big as my palm, tear-shaped, and smooth like a pearl. There’s a copper wire wound around the narrow part of the tear drop, and a loop, like it came off a piece of jewelry or something.

Where did this come from? Why do you have this?

I don’t remember anything after I tripped into the street in front of that EV. Everything went black. Miracle I didn’t get hit. Where did that bottle of grog go? I twist around, looking for it. Nowhere. Oh well. It was empty anyway.

I rub my eyes and squint at the stone again. Must have picked this up somewhere. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done something during a blackout and had no memory of it the next day. Call it a blip. A gap in the tape.

Tucking the stone back into my pocket, I struggle to my feet. I should probably get off the Green before it starts getting busy; people are going to see me. Need to get ready for school.

No you don’t.

Oh. Right. No, I don’t.

The memory of yesterday comes crashing back through the cranial gates and I shut my eyes. Expelled. Expelled and now waking up hungover in a park. Excellent.

Great life choices, Howsley.

Sighing, I tilt my head back and stare at the foggy sky. Now what? I don’t have to go to school. I’m not going home. The moms probably haven’t left for work yet and after our fight and me going AWOL for three days and being expelled, I’m in no rush to bump into them.

I flip my hood up and stuff my hands in my pockets. I’ll go back to Blenny’s. Sargo probably already left to teach his early class and Blenny won’t be up for hours. All my stuff is there, anyway. I can regroup in peace and figure out what I’m going to do with myself for the rest of the day. For the rest of my life.

My pack is still on the floor beside the sofa, where I left it last night before I went to the harbor. Flopping onto the couch, I pull the stone out of my pocket. Set it in on the low wooden table in front of the couch and stare at it.

How the hell did you get this?

Picked it up somewhere, maybe. Found it on the ground. It looks expensive. Could have fallen off a necklace—

Oh shit.

My heart ticks up. I pick up the stone and hold it up to my face. This is the stone from Electra’s necklace. I remember it now. Unmistakable. The one I grabbed two days ago on the dock and tried to throw into the Salt.

The one you were thinking about stealing last night.

Right, but I didn’t actually steal this. Right? I would have remembered that…

Opening my pack, I dig out my slate, then sit back into the cushions and tap my right brow with two fingers to pull up the Net. Regardless of how I got it, the fact is, I have it. So let’s do some digging. What exactly is this thing?

Page after page of digging turns up nothing. I’m chewing my thumbnail and I’ve read the same paragraph at least four times by the time I realize that an hour has gone by. Pinning my hand under my leg to stop myself gnawing on it, I set down my slate.

This is ridiculous. You don’t actually care about this. You’re just trying to distract yourself from the fact that your life is falling apart.

I rub my eyes and check the time. 0715. Sargo will be done teaching his first class in half an hour. He’ll probably come home for breakfast in between sessions. I’m sure he knows by now that I’ve been kicked out of Azimuth; the thought of facing him appeals about as much as the thought of facing my moms.

Sighing, I pick up the slate and am about to shut down the Net when a link catches my eye.

I open it and find myself in a forum. It’s a pre-pandemic site—I can tell by the goofy styling. I scroll through a few of the entries. There's a lot of nerdy stuff going on in here. A lot of talk about rocks. Might be worth posting a question. Just to see what I can find out. Just to see exactly how rich Miss Richy-Pants and her Richy-Pants mom are.

>>> HELLO! NEWBIE HERE. I’M LOOKING FOR INFORMATION ABOUT A STONE. IT’S ABOUT THE SIZE OF A GIRL’S PALM, PEARLY WHITE WITH KIND OF A GREEN AND PURPLE SHEEN. ANY INFO, PLEASE DM!

I scroll through a few more pages before I remember the time. 0725 now. I should get moving if I want to get out before Sargo gets home.

A ping in my ear alerts me that a private message request has come through from the forum. That was quick. I swipe it open.

>>> U GOT FRENNONITE?

I squint at the name of the sender—V—then compose and send a reply.

>>> WHAT’S FRENNONITE?

Their response comes almost immediately. It’s text copied from an online encyclopedia.

>>> FRENNONITE: ENGINEERED FOR USE IN TECH MANUFACTURING. REPLACED COBALT, GOLD, TELLURIUM, AND LITHIUM AS THE PRIMARY ELEMENT IN ELECTRONIC DEVICES. CRITICAL IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF BIOCHIP TECHNOLOGY.

Underneath is a picture of a stone that looks exactly like Electra’s. My heart skips.

>>> YES, THAT’S IT!

So it’s not a natural stone at all. It’s an engineered pre-pandemic hybrid of some kind. Probably made by Zenith. Definitely worth something, then.

There’s a ping in my ear as the next message comes through.

>>> U SELLING?

Selling? No, definitely not. I should probably figure out a way to get this back to Electra. Preferably without her knowing I ever had it. She’d probably just accuse me of stealing it if I walked right up and handed it to her.

I begin to compose a reply and hesitate, my fingers hovering in the air. A wisp of an idea prickles down the back of my neck.

What if you didn’t give it back to Electra? What if you sold it?

That’s a terrible idea. That would be extremely irresponsible and selfish. That would be major asshole territory.

But…

I’ve been expelled from the only school in Brume. I can practically see my future spiraling down the toilet. Squeezing my eyes shut, I rub my face with both hands. Let’s face it: it wouldn’t hurt to have some extra coin. It’s not like I have a job, and at this rate, the odds that anyone in Brume would ever give me one are slim to—

My eyes snap open. Shale. Shale has a job for me.

If I sold this thing, I could use the coin to get to Alluvium somehow. Bribe someone to give me passage on one of the automated Big Four freighters, maybe. Super illegal, but there are plenty of sketchy people around who would do pretty much anything for the right amount of coin. There must be someone in Brume who would do it—how else did Shale get all the way to Alluvium?

It would be nice if I had my own boat. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone sketchy. Then I could just sail out on my own. Again, super illegal, but probably not impossible.

You’re arguably the worst sailor in Brume.

But I am nothing if not determined.

Sure. Anyway the point is moot. You don’t have a boat.

The prickle of an idea turns into a shiver. I don’t have a boat. But Sargo does.

Scrap the freighter idea: what if I convinced Sargo to sail to Pocosín? And what if, since he was already going to Pocosín, he just—dropped me off in Alluvium on the way? Where Shale has a job for me. Where maybe I have a future.

Is that crazy?

Yes, very. You are never going to convince Sargo to sail to Pocosín.

What if I used the coin to buy him a new mainsail? What if he was so grateful he wanted to repay me somehow?

It’s illegal to sail out of Brume. Sargo is the last person on Earth who is going to break that law.

Okay, but just hear me out: Sargo graduated from Azimuth over a year ago and as far as I can tell, the only thing keeping him at that school is teaching that class. He has no family in Brume, except for Blenny, and he literally told me that if he could sail anywhere, he’d go to Pocosín. That has to be more than a pipe dream. What else is he busy fixing that autopilot for? Now I can sleep while Panga steers herself? There’d be no point in fixing that unless he planned to use it. He wants to go. He’s just worried that the boat isn’t ready. But with a new sail?

Maybe. Maybe I could convince him.

Convince him to embark on a highly illegal suicide mission into the dangerous body of water that has claimed the lives of thousands of sailors? Sure, Bird. You go right ahead and try that.

Blocking out the unhelpful voice in the back of my head, I turn back to the slate.

Whoever this V person is, they replied to my question quickly. What are the odds that someone else is on the Net researching the same thing I am at the same exact moment? I don’t know. I was never very good at working out odds. I compose another message.

>>> WHO IS THIS?

>>> DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT U SELLING OR NO?

I take a breath.

>>> I’M SELLING

>>> HOW MUCH U WANT

How much do I want? I have no idea. How much is it worth? I chew my nail while I try to think of a response that doesn’t give me away as a total rube, and finally go with,

>>> HOW MUCH YOU GOT?

The cursor blinks for what feels like an eternity, then the reply comes, short and sweet.

>>> 20K UBC

Flogging Molly! Twenty thousand Ubicoin?! That’s a lot of coin. That’s more coin than I’ve even tried to imagine before. And all I have to do is type yes and I’ll have it! I’ve never felt so close to something so massive. I can’t believe that was so easy.

I’m sending my response before I can stop myself.

>>> MAKE IT 30

What am I doing?! Jesus, just say yes you lunatic!

An eternity passes with nothing but the sound of my heart in my ears. Then, a ping. The reply blinks back.

>>> 25. MEET AT THE WATERHOUSE. 2200

Twenty-five! Holy shit, did I just negotiate? Flogging Molly, I can’t believe that worked! Wait. The Waterhouse? That’s all the way in the Flats. I don’t have coin for a water taxi.

Unless…

Sargo has a second boat besides Panga—a little dinghy with an electric motor that he uses to run errands around the harbor. He calls it the skiff. I’ve never driven it before, but I know how. I’d usually never dream of taking it without Sargo's permission. But something tells me he won’t approve of my plan to meet a stranger I met on the Net at a sketchy bar in the Flats to sell Electra’s necklace—

Seriously though, who are you?

—better to keep him in the dark until after I get the coin. At 2200 Sargo should be asleep. It shouldn’t be too hard to borrow the skiff.

Steal the skiff. You mean ‘steal the skiff.’

It’s not stealing, I’m going to bring it back. Anyway, when I transfer Sargo twenty-five thousand Ubicoin tomorrow, he’s going to be so floored he isn’t going to care that I borrowed the skiff.

Again, stole the skiff…

Whatever.

My heart is beating fast. Picturing what Sargo's face will look like when I transfer him twenty-five thousand Ubicoin and tell him it’s for a new mainsail for Panga is a lot more fun than imagining the lecture he’s probably going to give me about being expelled.

I bolt upstairs to his room and grab the skiff key from its hook by the door, shoving down a twinge of guilt as I hang it around my neck.

Downstairs, I tuck the stone into the pocket of my hoodie and leave my pack on the sofa. Then I lock the door behind me and head to the Green to kill time until 2200.

chapter

six

AT 2145, after landing the skiff on a spit of land under Fisherman’s Bridge and following my biochip map through the sketchy, grungy streets of the flats for ten minutes, I stand outside The Waterhouse, chewing my nail.

A few people mill around the entrance, taking long puffs from a shared dart and chatting over the muffled thump of music coming from inside. The dart’s slender metal case glows through a rainbow of neon colors as the smokers drag on it, exhaling thick, floral plumes into the air.

I tap my right temple to pull up the chat log from earlier and send a message.

>>> HERE

>>> RED SCARF, V replies. BLUE HAT

I spot a blue hat on a man leaning against the corner of the club, obscured by shadow and facing away from me.

>>> I SEE YOU

The man in the blue hat lifts his head. He gestures in the air, and a moment later I receive,

>>> GREET ME LIKE A FRIEND

As I steel myself and walk to him, I have the sudden thought that V is probably not his real name. I suddenly wonder why he’s so interested in buying this stone at all. I suddenly wonder what the hell I think I’m doing at a sketchy warehouse in the Flats in the middle of the night on a Tuesday.

I watch my hand clap him on the shoulder as if it isn’t part of my body. I hear myself say, “Hey, man!”

V turns. He’s older than me—I would guess in his thirties—with very pale, smooth skin and weirdly metallic eyes that look like they’ve been augmented. His hair has been augmented too. Under the neon light from the sign above the warehouse door, it shimmers with a kaleidoscope of colors.

“How are you?” he says with a thin-lipped smile.

“Doing well, doing well.” I attempt a casual smile but I can feel myself nodding too much. When I’m nervous, my head bobs like a buoy in chop.

The door of the club bursts open and I jump sideways as a couple in matching orange leather jumpsuits stumbles out into the street. V watches them pass, then catches the closing door with his foot. He holds it open for me and I duck inside. A bald man with his arms folded across his massive chest steps in front of me, but V waves him away.

“She’s with me.”

My eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness of the club’s interior, and the music is so loud I can’t think. The floor is sticky and the air is filled with the pungent odors of booze, dart smoke, and sweat. In cages above me, men and women fling their half-naked—nope, fully naked—bodies around as though possessed. V pushes me through a small door next to the bar.

The raucous assault of light and noise ceases as we step into a quiet room lit with dim red light. Cushions and couches are flung about the plush carpet, a few people are sprawled on them, looking half-asleep. A thick curtain of smoke hangs just below the ceiling. V steers me to a booth at the back of the room. As we sit, over the thump of the muffled music, he says quietly, “You have the item?”

I scoot sideways to wriggle the stone out of my back pocket and slide it onto the table. V leans forward and picks it up, holding it between two fingers to catch the light.

“Okay?”

He sits back, dropping the stone into his palm and holding it flat. “Very nice.”

“And you’ll pay?”

“We’ll get to that.” He puts the stone on the table. “How about a drink? We should celebrate.”

He pulls a slender glass pipe and a leather pouch from inside his coat, opens the pouch with two fingers, and extracts a pinch of sticky black gunk.

“I don’t think—”

“Relax.” He stuffs the gunk into the end of the pipe and reaches back into his coat for matches. The tips of the three fingers he uses to handle the pipe are black and shiny as he strikes a match and holds it underneath. Matches. Who uses those anymore? He puffs a few times and a tendril of smoke curls out of the pipe. The overwhelming smell of spray paint and barbecue sauce assaults my nostrils.

Shaking the match to extinguish it with one hand, V beckons to a bored-looking girl behind the nearly empty bar with the other. She skulks across the room with the alacrity of someone who truly hates her job. She has bruises on her thighs.

“Two,” says V, exhaling a cloud of smoke into her face. The girl gives no indication that she’s heard him and saunters back to the bar as the smoke dissipates across the table.

I glance at the other patrons slouched around the room. “Look, I really just want my coin. I’m not looking for a date.”

He laughs, a single short bark. “Funny.” He drags on the pipe and exhales another cloud of oily, evil-smelling smoke. “That’s funny. What’s your name?”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“I like to know the names of the people I’m doing business with.” He turns the pipe toward me.

I eye the black gunk. “What is it?”

“Haar.”

Haar?! Jack’s ass, Bird, you really are in deep.

For once in my life, I exercise caution. Haar is about the worst thing you can put in your body. Grog might make you wake up with no idea what you did last night, but at least you get to keep your teeth. I shake my head.

“Suit yourself,” he says. “I’m Five.”

“I thought your name was V.”

He regards me with an irritating smirk. “It is.”

What is that? Some kind of pun?

“Clever.”

He drags on the pipe again, his eyes crawling over me. “Is this your first time in a club like this?”

I fold my arms across my chest and look for the bar girl. She’s chatting to her coworker and hasn’t started making our drinks.

“Yes.”

“And what do you think?”

“About what?”

“The club. You like it?”

“Oh, uh—” Across the room, the bar girl checks her slate. Inside my head, I scream at her to hurry up. “Sure, it’s fine.”

Five surveys the room with a kind of bored amusement. “To be honest, I’m surprised Zenith hasn’t shut it down. It’s exactly the kind of thing those hags hate. But I guess they can’t be in control of everything, as much as they’d like you to think they are. They just don’t have the manpower—uh, womanpower.” He smiles, another creepy leer that makes my skin crawl.

That word—hags—sticks in my mind like a fishhook. It’s a word a particular kind of person, usually a dude, uses to refer to the women at Zenith. You don’t hear it around here very much—you don’t get a lot of Zenith dissenters in Brume, because basically everyone here works for them. Brume pride and love for Zenith go pretty much hand in hand. But apparently not for this guy.

“You’re not a fan of Zenith?”

Five curls a lip. “The Fat Sallies? No, can’t say I am.”

Fat Sallies. That’s another one. A term mostly used by angry little men who can’t deal with the fact that the world’s governing corporation is made up entirely of women.

I don’t really care for politics—that’s more Sargo's thing—but I do think it’s pretty cool that after the pandemic, people crawled out of the wreckage, looked around at the mess they’d made, and basically thought, You know what? The men had their chance. Let’s see how the women do for a while.

The girl returns with the drinks; two tiny glasses of steaming red liquid. The steam pricks the inside of my nose as she sets them down between us.

Five scoops his up and holds it to his nose. “You ever have pyrewater?” I shake my head. “And I bet this is your first black market trade too?” He gestures at the stone on the table.

Black market trade? Is that what this is? Is that what you’re doing on a Tuesday night, Howsley?

I nod.

“In that case, a toast.” He holds his glass aloft and winks. “To trying new things.”

“And then you’ll give me my coin?”

“Yes, yes. Like I said, we’ll get to it. Let’s talk a little first.”

His eyes crawl over me again and I cross my arms almost involuntarily. Of course this couldn’t just be a simple transaction. Of course he’s the kind of creep who wants to trap me here and make me have a drink with him. Because he can. Because right now, he has my coin, and the only way for me to get it is to play along. Because I’m too small and too weak to crack him upside the head and take it from him. I swallow my irritation and reach for the glass.

“To your first pyrewater.” Five tilts his glass toward me. “And your first black market trade.”

Sighing, I hold up my glass. He clinks it and tosses his back, and sets the glass down on the table as I sniff mine. It smells like smoke and cinnamon. Tilting my head back, I down as much as I can, cough and set the glass down, my eyes watering.

Five chuckles. “Not a drinker?”

“Not this stuff.”

He picks up the stone again and holds it up to the light. I’m starting to feel a bit itchy at seeing it in his hands without having my hands on the coin.

Actually…I think I’m just starting to feel…itchy?

“S’what’re y’gonna do withit?” I slur. Wow, pyrewater works fast. My tongue feels thick.

“Sell it.” He shrugs. “I know a guy. He works for some people. They’re working on a thing. Did you know that Zenith uses these stones to make biochips?” He pulls his sleeve back and presses a finger to his temple while he looks at his wrist, checking a watch I can’t see. “I imagine you’re feeling rather unwell by now, yes?”

“What?”

A weird, icy feeling is creeping outward from my chest. I can’t keep Five still in my vision. He jumps from side to side as the room swims behind him.

“I feel—funny,” I try to say, but instead of forming words, my tongue just flops around uselessly. Why isn’t Five having the same trouble with this that I am? I feel a string of saliva slip from the corner of my mouth, and then I lose control of my neck entirely and slump onto the table.

From the corner of my eye, I see Five stand, pocketing the stone. I try to reach for him, but my hand weighs a thousand pounds. He picks up the glass pipe again, drags on it, and squats next to me, blowing oily smoke into my face.

“Sorry about that. That wasn’t just pyrewater. But you’ll be fine. A mild sedative.”

“What?” My eyes are closing. I can’t make my lips move. “Why?”

“I couldn’t really afford to part with twenty-five K. Everyone’s trying to make coin. You understand.” He pats my cheek with his gross, smooth hand and winks. “I’d better get out of here before the haar kicks in.”

He adjusts his scarf and slips away from the table. Stops at the bar just long enough to press something into the hand of the girl who served us the drinks. She glances in my direction, then pockets it and retreats to a back room.

That stray flogging bitch.

At the door, Five turns, touches two fingers to the brim of his hat, and ducks out. The darkness in the corners of my vision spreads, blossoms like squid ink, clouds my eyes, and shrouds me in blackness.

____________________

My eyes snap open.

I’m outside. It’s early morning and chilly, damp fog has pulled the sky down on top of me. Sitting up, I look around. I’m on the beach—I guess by the black sand and trash everywhere that it must be somewhere in the Flats.

The stone.

I scramble to my feet, digging my hands into my pockets. But of course, it isn’t there. That sonofabitch drugged me and left me in that bar. He gave something to our server on his way out. He paid her off to put something in my drink.

That’s what you get for engaging in reckless shenanigans. You’re lucky he didn’t do worse.

Waking up outside two days in a row. Nice, Bird. How did I even get out here? Bouncer, probably. Found me and threw me out. Like garbage. Like the rest of the trash on this filthy beach.

I squeeze my head between my hands. So much for transferring Sargo twenty-five K. So much for him being okay with me borrowing the skiff. Probably best not to mention this to him at all. Probably best—

Oh shit, the skiff. If I don’t get it back before Sargo gets to the dock to teach his early class, he’ll know something’s up. I look around and see it, halfway down the beach where I left it last night, the tide just starting to lap around the bottom.

I pull up directions on my chip and check the time.

>>> 0553

If I’m fast, I can make it.

An hour later, with the skiff returned in the nick of time and my head pounding like a ship’s bell, I skulk home. Thank flog I don’t have school today. I feel like I woke up smashed on the bottom of someone’s shoe.

The six flights of stairs up to my family’s apartment are brutal. The woman in the faded Zenith poster plastered on the wall halfway up beams down at me, and I want to punch a hole in her face.

Climb into your future!

I stumble through the front door, gasping and sweating out grog and pyrewater. The kitchen is mercifully cool. The smell of damp earth tells me Mama K recently watered the veg. Her tomato vines climb around the kitchen window, their bright green leaves like stained glass in the light. I pluck a big red tomato off the vine and walk down the hall to my room.

My bed has been made, which means Mama K was in here without my permission, but I’m too tired to care. Fresh air pours through the open window. I lean on the sill and look out. The fog is burning off. A few small white birds swoop over the solar-paneled rooftops of Midtown. Fog traps soaked with fresh drinking water are stretched between the roofs, glistening like enormous spiderwebs in the cold morning sun.

The aloe plant on my windowsill has been watered too. With a sigh, I set the tomato next to it, kick off my shoes, flop onto the bed, and tug off my itchy beanie. Shaking out my hair, I look at my face in the mirror that leans against the opposite wall. My eyes are one hundred percent pupil. My hair looks like it’s having a party.

So at least somebody’s having a good time.

A ping ricochets through my head and a message from Mama K comes through.

>>> BIRDIE, ARE YOU COMING HOME?

I stare through it at the ceiling. I can feel the events of the last five days converging on my all at once, crushing me. I gesture in the air to send a reply.

>>> YES

The cursor springs to life.

>>> OH GOOD. OKAY. WE’LL HAVE DINNER, OKAY? WE’LL HAVE DINNER AND TALK.

I shut my eyes and sigh. Open them again and send a reply.

>>> ARE WE GOING TO TALK ABOUT SHALE?

The cursor blinks for a long time.

>>> YES. WE CAN TALK ABOUT SHALE.

I swipe the message closed. Tap open Shale’s message again and stare through it.

>>> COME TO ALLUVIUM. I HAVE A JIB FOR YOU.

>>> *JOB

No way I’m getting to Alluvium at this point. I swipe the message away. My eyes begin to close.

chapter

seven

“WAKE UP.”

My eyes flutter open. A wood ceiling with a single paper-covered lightbulb in the center of it appears. It’s a familiar ceiling. My ceiling.

My eyes are sticky. They want to close again. I turn my head to one side. “I’m tryna sleep.”

“Wake up.” A deep, unfamiliar voice. A man’s voice. I open my eyes again.

A man looms over me, pinning me to the bed. I try to scream, but the sound is muffled against the leather of a gloved hand.

“Stop screaming.”

I can’t. Not just because there’s a strange man in my room. Not just because he’s huge and pinning me to my bed. All of that is scary, but it’s nothing compared to his face.

This man has no face.

The hand releases my mouth and I manage to draw a single breath before it cuffs me hard across the face. Light explodes inside my head.

“Am I gonna have to tell you again?”

I feel blood in my nose. I shake my head.

He lets me go and I struggle upright. He stands at the foot of the bed, cracking the knuckles on his gnarled, hairy hands. The front of his head is a smooth, pixelated blur. It flickers and twitches like a broken screen, the indistinct smudges of his eyes, nose and mouth rearranging themselves into ever more grotesque configurations. The smudge of the nose moving to the forehead. The gaping holes of the eyes creeping down the cheeks.

“She cooperating?” says a voice from across the room. A short, stocky man stands in the doorway. He has no face either. “Bird Howsley?” he says.

I’m so stunned to hear my name in this monster’s mouth that I don’t even think to lie. I nod.

“She’s cooperating,” says the big man.

The little man walks across the room, the dissolved features of his faceless blur shifting and flickering so that I always see the same angle, no matter what direction I’m looking from.

I feel blood from my nose pooling on top of my lip. I lift my hand to stop it dripping. “How do you know my name?”

“A concerned citizen provided us with all the information we needed to find you, Miss Howsley,” says the small man, standing next to his partner.

I shrink back into my bed, the familiar sheets feeling suddenly bizarre and out of place. “What do you want?”

“I imagine a bright girl like you can work that out on her own.” The small man produces a slate from an inside coat pocket and taps the side of his head with a long finger. “Where’s the stone?”

My stomach drops. I try to keep my face impassive. “What stone?”

“I’d advise you not to play games with me, Miss Howsley. You are unlikely to win. Now I’ll ask again: where is the stone that you stole from Axioma Nation’s daughter two nights ago?”

Stole?

I must be taking too long to answer because the big man steps toward me and grabs my chin in his hand.

“I don’t have it,” I gasp. “It’s gone.”

His grip tightens. “Gone where?”

“I don’t know!”

He turns my head to one side and backhands me. Bright red spots appear on my white sheets as the blood already running from my nose splatters. Before I can right myself, his hand is around my face again.

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know.”

This time, he does me the courtesy of hitting the other side of my face.

“Alright, alright,” says the little man. “Give it a minute. We’re here to shake her up, not beat her to death.”

I blink woozily. It feels as though my eyelids are operating independently from one another.

“Someone took it,” I say through the blood in my mouth.

“Who?” the little man asks sharply.

“His name was Five.”

“Five what?”

It sounds like the setup to some kind of joke. Knock knock. Who’s there? Five. Five what? Fish alive? I shake my head, struggling to focus.

“I don’t know. I was going to sell him the stone, but he stole it.”

“Where was this?”

“At the Waterhouse.”

“And how do you know this Five?”

“I don’t.”

He makes a few quick gestures at his slate, then turns his faceless head back up to me.

“Well, I’d say you are in a pretty bad spot, Miss Howsley.”

I search for a trace of humanity in his blank, featureless void and find none.

“Our organization was hired to retrieve Miss Nation’s necklace,” he continues, “and unfortunately, we won’t get paid unless we do. Miss Nation claims to have entered into an altercation with you at the docks two days ago, at which time you attempted to steal the necklace.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal it—”

“Additionally, we found a post linked to your biochip in an online forum, seeking information about the stone.”

Shit. Stupid, stupid, stupid Bird.

“It disappeared from the Nation’s household two nights ago.”

“I didn’t steal it. I don’t know where it came from.”

At least…I’m pretty sure.

“But it was in your possession?”

“I—yes. But—”

“As of now you are the only person linked to its disappearance. If you’re unable to produce it, then the way we see it, you have limited options.”

Oh good. You have options.

“Option one: you find the item and return it to us. It seems unlikely that you’ll be able to do that, as you have no idea who took it or how to find him.” He makes another gesture at his slate. “Option two: you repay Miss Nation the full amount of the item. This comes to—” He consults his slate. “Fifty thousand UBC.”

Fifty thousand?! I barely have time to register the number before he plows on.

“Option three—and this is where I imagine we’ll be most likely to find a harmonious solution to this problem—we recoup payment from you in another form and transfer that to our employer.”

“What other form?”

He waves his hand. “Girl like you, young, in decent shape.” He steps back, and even through his faceless smear, I can tell he’s looking me up and down. “The parts look good. Could be sold separately or together.”

The big man chuckles.

“So,” says the little man, clasping his hands in front of him like he’s finishing a business meeting, “what will it be?”

I feel like I was clinging to a cliff edge and my grip just failed. I freewill backwards into nothing. This can’t be happening. The Nations hired thugs to beat up a little girl? A queasy feeling in my stomach wells up into my throat. I lean forward with my hands on my knees and vomit between my bare feet.

The two men jump backward as it splatters onto their shoes. And as they retreat, a clear path to the door opens up between them.

Without so much as pausing to wipe my mouth, I run for it. Sprint across the threshold and barrel toward the kitchen, my bare feet pounding like a drum on the carpet in the hall.

Flinging open the kitchen door, I take the outside stairs two at a time, past the smiling Zenith poster, feeling, rather than hearing, the big man behind me, gaining on me, reaching out to grab my hoodie.

I fling myself over the edge of the last flight of stairs and drop six feet onto the street.

Shoes. Where are your shoes?

Splintering pain shoots up my legs as I land on bare feet, and I catch myself with one hand against the pavement. Limping, I turn right and begin shoving myself through the crowd of morning commuters. When I reach the bakery on the corner I glance back over my shoulder, scanning for the creeps, then duck into the shop, pulling my bandana over my nose, my collar up, and my hood on.

The heat and smell of warm bread overwhelm me. I turn my face away from the girl behind the counter and walk briskly to the back. Squatting behind a wooden shelf piled high with loaves so fresh I can feel the heat still radiating off them, I heave in great lungfuls of yeasty air and strain to hear over the muffled pounding of rolling pins and the roaring of massive oven fires in the kitchen behind me.

A minute passes. Two minutes. The pain in my shins recedes. I stand up and peer around the shelf. The girl behind the counter is absorbed in her slate. There’s no one else in the shop.

Back in the brisk air of the street, I glance in both directions. Seeing no trace of the creeps, I turn left, toward the harbor.

I keep my bandana on and pull my hood around my face as I walk. Blood is still pouring from my nose, and my left eye stings. My bare feet are cold on the concrete. Blenny’s house comes into view as I round the last corner by the harbor. I check the time.

>>> 1007

Sargo should be teaching. Blenny might be home, but he’s easy enough to avoid. I step over the low wall into Blenny’s scraggly veg patch and slip around the side of the house to the back door.

The house is dim, the smell of old cooking and spilled grog leaching out of every soft surface. No sound of Blenny’s shambling footsteps, no sign of Sargo. I scoop up my pack, still on the floor by the sofa where I left it less than twelve hours ago, and head upstairs to Sargo's room.

I open the door and nearly drop my pack as I come face-to-face with him.

“Bird! What’re you—” His eyes widen. “Your face.”

“I—I didn’t think you’d be here. Why aren’t you teaching?”

“Conditions weren’t good. Too windy. We canceled class.” He stares at me. “What happened?”

I drop the pack. I’m going to have to tell Sargo what I’ve done. More than anything else that’s happened today, this frightens me. A drop of blood drips off my lip and lands on the floor between our feet.

“Sorry,” I murmur, looking down and noting my filthy bare feet for the second time that morning.

“Where are your shoes?” The alarm in his voice mounts.

All I can do is shrug.

“Bathroom,” he says, and I feel his firm hand on my shoulder. “Now.”

chapter

eight

SITTING on the edge of Blenny’s scrap metal bathtub, I try not to look at my face in the mirror on the opposite wall.

My left eye, already swelling shut, is blossoming an extravagant green and purple bruise. My eyebrow is split, and I hold toilet paper to my nose to stop the blood from seeping out of one nostril.

Sargo gently dabs my split eyebrow with something cool that smells so strongly of mint and citrus it make my eyes water. Everywhere he dabs, my skin prickles. He touches my eyebrow and I flinch.

“Sorry,” he says softly.

“It’s okay.” My voice comes out a whisper. I don’t know why we’re both whispering. The only other sounds in the room are our quiet breathing and the slow and steady plink of water from a tap.

I put my eyes on the wall over his shoulder. “I’m in trouble, Sargo.”

“That seems clear,” he says. “Close your eyes.”

I do, wincing.

“Hurts?”

I nod.

“I’m going to put some ice on it.”

I hear the clink of ice in a fabric bag, then feel his breath close to my face. I jolt as he touches the cold pack to my face.

“Okay?”

I nod, sitting up. “Just startled me.”

He gently places the pack against my face again and I hold it there. I sit with my eyes closed, listening to the rustle of Sargo putting away the first aid kit.

“How do you know how to do all this stuff?” I ask.

“I had to get trained in first aid when I started teaching.” I hear the click of a cabinet door closing, then sense him sitting next to me on the tub. “What happened? Who…did this?”

I can feel his eyes on the side of my face, but I can’t look at him. Keeping my eyes closed, I mumble my way through the events of the last twenty-four hours. Shale’s message. My plan to get coin for the mainsail. Finding the stone, Five, the club in the Flats, the two men. Everything.

Well, not everything. I leave out exactly how much grog I’ve been drinking, and that I’ve blacked out and woken up in a new place twice in the last week. I’m sure it’s pretty self-evident that these were not the decisions of a sober person. Sargo is so quiet by the time I finish that I wonder if he’s still there.

Finally, he speaks. “These men,” he asks slowly, “did they…have faces?”

I snap open my eyes and turn to him. “How did you know—?”

His face pales. “We have to go.”

“What?”

“We have to go.” He stands up, throwing the bathroom door open. “Now!”

He’s through the door before I can say anything else. My legs stand as though commanded by his voice and I stumble after him.

“Sargo, wait!” I follow him down the hall, still clutching the ice pack to my face. “What’s going on?”

“They’ll follow you here.” He ducks through the door into his room. “They’re probably already on the way.”

“Who?” I trip to a halt at his door and lean against the doorframe.

Sargo doesn’t answer. He’s on his knees, rifling through a large hamper in the corner of his room, stuffing clothes into his pack.

“They’ll figure out we’re friends. They’ll come here.”

“Who?! Who will come here?”

He glances over his shoulder at me and I see panic in his eyes. True fear. I’ve never seen Sargo look like that, ever. It’s surreal and unsettling.

“The Anonymity.”

He snatches up his pack and goes to the bed, lies flat on his stomach, and pulls out a pair of shoes. “They control the black market in Brume. Haar dealers. Murderers. Really…just really bad guys, okay?”

“How do you know—”

“Just trust me! I know. My mom—Mama Gnamma owed them money. My uncle still does.”

“Owed them money?”

He starts pulling on the shoes. “When I was a kid, Uncle Blenny got her in on some job. It went wrong, and Gnamma ended up owing someone money. When she couldn’t pay, they came after her. Mama Marlin tried to intervene. They were both killed.”

I gape at him. “Killed? Your moms were killed?” He’s never talked about how his moms died before. I feel like I can’t process this information. “What do you mean—”

“After they died, Blenny took on Gnamma’s debt. But Blenny’s too sozzled on grog to be of much use to anyone most of the time, so he’s still paying it off. Well—I’m paying it off.”

“You’re paying it off?”

Sargo’s moms died because they owed someone money. They owed these guys money. They owed these guys money and they killed them.

The parts look good.

“They know who I am,” he continues. “They know where I live. They know I’ve been paying off Blenny’s debt. They know everything about me. And if they find out I helped you—”

“Just tell them you haven’t seen me!”

“They’ll know, Bird. They always know.”

“Tell them I took off! You don’t need to be involved in this! I’m sorry I came here. I shouldn’t have done, it was stupid.”

“It’s not your fault.” His voice is shaking. “You didn’t know.”

I stand paralyzed in the doorway, feeling like I’m in some kind of weird nightmare, while he continues ransacking his room, stuffing things into his pack.

“This doesn’t make sense. Electra’s mom sent them.”

His head whips around. “What? No. No way.”

“They said they had an employer.”

“Axioma Nation wouldn’t do that. They probably just saw the post you made on the Net and decided to come after you. They’re always skulking around the Net looking for an opportunity.”

He continues throwing things into his pack. His alarm is beyond unsettling. “Sargo, you’re not listening to me. This doesn’t need to involve you. I’ll hide out at the Green, I’ll figure something out. If they come here, just lie—”

“You can’t lie to these guys. They always get the truth. You think your face looks bad?” He shakes his head. “Do you have everything you need?”

I look around, dazed, and spot my pack on the floor where I dropped it. My hand goes to my hair. “My hat.”

“Your hat? Come on Bird, focus. Do you have your pack? Your slate?”

Holding the ice pack to my face with one hand, I struggle into my pack with the other. Sargo flings a pair of shoes at me, and I barely catch them one-handed.

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. We just need to get somewhere safe for a while. I need to think.”

I put down the ice pack and pull on the too-big shoes, my mind racing. We can’t go back to my house. There’s no way I can go back to campus, and finding either of my moms at work is out of the question. Where can we go? Where is safe?

Panga.

“Sargo!” I gasp.

But Sargo is shaking his head as though he knows what I’m about to say. “I already thought about it. Blenny would know that’s where we’d go. And if the Anonymity comes here, he won’t cover for us. He’ll send them right to the harbor.”

“What if we’re not in the harbor?” The idea is forming as I speak, the pieces of my shattered plan reassembling themselves in real time. “What if we leave? On Panga. If we go now, we’ll have a decent head start.”

He’s shaking his head again. “No, Bird. No! Are you listening to yourself? What you’re suggesting is illegal.”

“And what you’re suggesting is that we wait around to get murdered!”

“Even if I was going to entertain the notion of breaking the law, leaving would be incredibly stupid. The mainsail is not reliable—”

I toss my head. “You use that sail all the time! How many times have you sailed Panga around the bay? Fifty? A hundred? You’ve taken her out sailing almost every weekend since I met you! Why should this be any different?”

“Because sailing around the bay isn’t the same as sailing across the Salt! Think, Bird! This isn’t like going out for a day sail and sandwiches! You can’t just decide to cross the Salt on a whim! If the mainsail fails here we’re close to home.We can call for help, come back to safety. Out there—” he waves an arm in the direction of the Salt, “—if something goes wrong, we have nowhere to go!”

“We already have nowhere to go! Those guys are coming here!” I fold my arms. “What would you suggest? Where else can we hide?”

Sargo seems adrift in the middle of the room. He clasps his hands on top of his head, looking around as though he might find an answer amongst his strewn possessions.

I catch his eye. “If these guys are as bad as you say they are, then we can’t stay in Brume.”

He holds my gaze, a thousand calculations flying behind his eyes. Getting to safety. Fixing the autopilot. Finding his people. Deep down—deep deep down—I know he wants to go.

“There’s a point seventy miles south of here,” he says finally. “With a cove on the other side. Naze. Where the old climate Settlement used to be. We could make for that. Anchor there. Hide out for a few days, I don’t know. Have some time to think.”

My heart skips. I nod. “Okay. Yeah. That’s a good plan.”

Even though nobody else is home, I find myself holding my breath as we creep down the stairs. The house is quiet but for the creaking of our steps. I’m halfway to the bottom when the front door shakes with three loud knocks. I freeze.

“Blenny Farr!” It’s the voice of the man who feng-shuid my face.

Sargo puts a finger to his lips and gestures at me to keep going. I creep down the last five steps like I’m trying not to wake the dead. At the bottom of the stairs, we turn right and, staying low, slink to the kitchen. The door knob rattles behind us.

“Blenny Farr! We have some questions for you regarding the whereabouts of Miss Bird Howsley.” The reedy voice of the big man’s little partner. “Our sources indicate that she is friends with your nephew, Sargo Paz.”

“Come on, Blenny. Open the door. We know who you are.”

In the kitchen, Sargo and I gently turn the knob on the back door. It opens with a squeak, and I flinch, listening over the pounding of blood in my ears for some indication that we’ve been heard. It doesn’t come.

My nerves sizzle as we step into the alley behind the house and head for the main street. Every step seems to echo tenfold as we slink down the alley, hugging the fence. They’ll hear us. There’s no way they won’t hear us.

We make it to the street, glance in both directions, and run.

____________________

The docks are quiet except for a few oyster farmers hauling in their morning catch. Walking down the pier toward Panga, we try not to look over our shoulders, try not to call attention to ourselves. The skiff has been hauled out of the water and stowed on Panga’s bow.

“Should we leave the skiff?” I whisper.

Sargo shakes his head. “We’ll take it with us. There’s no dock at Naze. It’s just a cove. If we need to go ashore, we’ll need the skiff.”

He swings himself over the rail and flips on Panga’s motor while I untie the dock lines with trembling hands. I lean back on the stern line with all my weight to point Panga’s bow out into the channel, then hop over the rail onto her deck as she glides away from the dock.

When we come to the end of the channel and reach open water, I climb out the bow to raise the mainsail. I keep pulling, hand over hand as the huge white canvas slowly ascends the mast, translucent in the sunlight, curved like a wing against the sky.

Sargo is steering with one hand and loosening the main sheet with the other when I climb back into the cockpit. The boom swings to starboard and the mainsail snaps open. As the wind fills it, Sargo flips off the motor and the boat becomes sail-powered.

I look back over the stern at Brume diminishing behind us, the hush of water against the hull and the creak of the mast the only sounds. After the panic of the last hour, the sudden quiet screams in my ears. The masts in the harbor grow smaller and smaller, until they look like matchsticks against the green hills. The solar panels and fog traps and little houses blur together and fade into the trees. Way up on the hill behind the harbor, the buildings of Azimuth campus and Zenith headquarters glint in the sun. Kids are in class up there right now. People are at work.

Mama K’s face appears before my eyes.

“Oh!” I cover my mouth with my hand. “I was supposed to be home for dinner.”

“You’re welcome to swim,” Sargo says from the helm, not taking his eyes off the horizon.

Panic seizes me. Those men. Will they go after my moms? I tap my temple to pull up Messenger and compose a hasty message.

>>> GONE TO FIND SHALE. I’M OKAY. PLEASE LEAVE THE HOUSE. YOU ARE NOT SAFE THERE.

My fingers are about to make the send gesture when something stops me. I can’t send this. It contains location metadata. If those Anonymity guys come for my moms, this message will give them the exact coordinates of my last known location and the exact time I was there.

I stare at the blinking cursor. I can’t just leave without telling my moms. Can I? What will they do when I don’t come home?

What would the Anonymity do to them to get information about your whereabouts?

I delete the message and close Messenger. I pull my hood on and face the bow. In front of the boat, the Salt stretches to the horizon like a glittering, silver wasteland.

We’re leaving Brume. My mind bends to accept that new reality. I won’t be going home for dinner, not for a long time.

chapter

nine

NIGHT IS FALLING, and the waves have been building since we left Brume. The Salt is violet in the fading light. It roils with confused swells that pick us up, turn us sideways, and throw us down, over, and over, and over. There’s no rhythm to it, no rhyme or reason. The chaos is almost monotonous.

My stomach heaves with each queasy tilt of the ship. My head aches and my eyes feel heavy. A kind of malaise is settling over me, a heaviness like the flu. I slump in the cockpit, staring over the side at the horizon. Sargo told me if I keep my eye on the horizon, I won’t get sick. It doesn’t seem to be working.

The swell is big out here; Panga feels like a toy duck in a bathtub. We’re twenty miles south of Brume now, and ten miles offshore. Further into the Salt than I’ve ever been. There’s nowhere to anchor between here and Naze, another fifty miles south. Nowhere to stop. No turning back. I feel helpless; at the mercy of the water. I eye the rapidly sinking sun and turn over my shoulder to Sargo.

“Is this safe? I’ve never sailed at night before.”

His face is grim. He readjusts his grip on the wheel. “Como la Sal, por lo que el marinero.”

I blink. “What?”

“As the Salt, so the sailor. Something Mama Marlin used to tell me.”

“What does it mean?”

He shrugs. “When the weather was bad and I was scared, or if the wind died completely and I was frustrated, she would say, Como la Sal, por lo que el marinero, mijo. It means…you can’t change the wind. You can’t change the waves. You can only change yourself and your ship. You have to sail in the conditions you’re given. You have to find a way to make it work.”

I let the words sink in as I turn my gaze back over the water. As the Salt, so the sailor. It reminds me of something my mom used to say. What was it? I can’t remember exactly.

“I didn’t know you spoke the southern language,” I say finally.

“I don’t. It’s the only thing I know how to say. Well…that and one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Te tengo. Means I’ve got you. That’s what she would say when I was scared. Te tengo, mijo.”

We drink from our own creek.

That’s the phrase I was trying to remember—it’s something Mama K used to say. But I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere else recently. In a dream, maybe? The image of a boy swims before my eyes. A boy in a creek. I blink, and it’s gone.

“Mama K used to say, We drink from our own creek.” I tell Sargo. “I guess it’s kind of the same thing. Only less uplifting.”

“Less uplifting? Why’s that?”

“Just always felt like she was saying, You get what you get. Like you’re stuck with whatever you start with. You can’t change it. Maybe that’s why I always felt so stuck in Brume.”

“Brume’s not such a bad place to be stuck.”

I look over the side at the roiling swell, feeling tiny and fragile and already far from home. “Yeah. I know.”

The boat rolls again and my stomach heaves. I quickly turn around and focus my eyes straight out, but it’s so dark now I can’t even make out the horizon. There’s nothing to anchor me. I’m just free-falling through the dark.

“Anyway, what I was trying to say is I think we’ll be fine,” Sargo says. “The waves won’t get worse just because it’s dark.”

He’s right, like he usually is. The Salt doesn’t care if it’s day or night. Nothing changes as the light disappears except that now we can’t see the massive waves barreling all around us. In a way, it’s almost better.

Almost.

We pull our hoods tight against the chilly fog and wedge ourselves into the corners of Panga’s tiny cockpit, bracing our feet against winches and cleats, fighting off sleep. It’s so dark, I can’t even see my own hands. I feel completely untethered from reality. For a long time, the roar of rushing water against the hull is the only indication that anything is out there at all.

In the early hours of the morning, the wind begins to drop. Panga rolls more gently over the waves. Now that we’re south of Brume, the air is fog-less, but a murky brown smog is beginning to creep around its edges.

“We’ll be around the point by sunrise,” croaks Sargo.

I struggle to make out his face in the graying dawn. I suppose he must look as tired as I feel. He touches his brow to check a map.

“There’s a cove on the other side of the point. We can drop anchor and rest for a few hours.”

“What about those guys? The Anonymity guys. Won’t they catch up?”

“They probably haven’t figured out we’ve left yet. And Panga is quick. I think we’ll be fine for a little while.”

Dawn is breaking as we round the tip of the point at Naze and tuck into the protected cove just beyond. I stretch the ache of cold and tiredness out of my limbs and touch my injured face gingerly with my fingertips. It’s stiff and sore. My stomach feels more settled, but the seasickness has left me with a flu-like feeling that I can’t shake.

We climb onto the bow to put the sails away and drop the anchor, then Sargo wordlessly retreats to the cockpit. Something’s wrong—he’s tense and silent—but I’m too weak and exhausted to find out what.

Instead, I stand on the bow and look around. We’re surrounded on three sides by a steep ridge of rock, bare but for a few cacti and Salt scrubs clinging to life against the cliff. Inside the lee of the point, the water is as smooth as glass. Except for the call of one lonely bird, the air is still.

I turn around and scan the open water behind us. I see no sails on the horizon, no one in pursuit. The sky is a sickly yellow-brown. Hard to believe that less than a hundred miles south of Brume, this is what it’s like. And this isn’t even the worst of it.

I run my index fingers over the gnawed-up skin around my thumbnails, then shove my hand into my pocket to keep myself from chewing them. Calm settles over me like a gentle gray fog.

Is it calm, or is it exhaustion?

Probably exhaustion.

On the bow next to the skiff, there’s a big canvas bag with a spare sail stuffed inside it. I curl myself into it and close my eyes. In my dreams, men without faces climb out of the water and drag me over the side of the boat, pulling me down into the black, cold squeeze of the deep.

I doze in snatches as the sun slowly warms the deck. When, by mid-morning, the heat becomes too much to bear and I wake, sweating through my clothes. I roll out of the sail bag and stagger back to the cockpit. Sargo is asleep on the starboard sofa in the main cabin below below.

I fill the kettle and make some tea. It’s the only thing we have on board that even remotely resembles food, and the smell of orange and cinnamon twists my stomach into grumbling knots.

When was the last time you ate?

Pretty sure I’ve been running on booze for, like, three strait days.

Sargo stirs as I’m pouring two cups of tea. I hand one to him. “How long do you think we’ll be safe here?”

He says nothing, staring through the steam in the top of his mug. He looks tired and distant and angry. I sit on the sofa opposite him and we sip our tea in silence.

“A day maybe,” he says. “We’ll need food. I’ll put out the fishing line.”

I scrunch my face. For all his skills as a sailor, I know for a fact that Sargo has never caught a fish. It’s not his fault. There are barely any fish left in the Salt to catch. “You think that’s going to work?”

“Do you have another suggestion?”

“We could go ashore. We might find some edible plants or something. Or…jackrats, maybe.”

He makes a face. “Jackrats? You’re going to eat jackrats?”

“I don’t know! I’m trying to be proactive here.”

He shakes his head. “We’re not going ashore. We don’t know what might be up there.”

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing up there. The remains of the climate Settlement, but everyone who lived in that died in the pandemic.”

“I said no, Bird.” His tone is so sharp it jolts me into silence. “We’ll fish. If that doesn’t work, then we’ll talk.”

I breathe out hard and slow through my nose. “Fine. One hour.”

“I wasn’t asking for your input,” he says. “I was telling you what’s happening.”

Sargo sets the fishing pole with a weighted lure and casts it over the side of the boat. With the sun beating down, it’s too hot for me in the cockpit, so I go below to find something to do. Our packs are lying by the navigation table. If we end up going ashore—when we end up going ashore—we’ll need them, so I dump out what’s in them and try to think about what might be useful to take with us. I dig a couple of knives out of a drawer in the galley. I’m not sure yet what I plan to do with them. Harvest cactus, I suppose. Or murder jackrats.

I find Sargo's pair of nox in a drawer at the navigation table. They look old—probably belonged to his great-great-grandfather. Big, heavy things with glass lenses and a canvas neck strap. Not terribly easy to carry, but necessary if you want to see stuff that’s far away. For all the advances in biochip technology that were made before the pandemic, they never figured out how to manipulate eyesight. No zooming in or enhancing. I’m not sure why. We learned about it at Azimuth, but I wasn’t really paying attention. In order to get that stuff to work you’d need to hook up ocular nerves to…other nerves and…stuff like that…

You’re out of your element here.

Anyway, nox are useful.

I tuck them into Sargo's pack and close the navigation table drawer.

An hour later I pop my head back up into the cockpit. Sargo sits with the rod across his lap, looking murderous. The hook is empty.

“Get anything?”

He glares at me in silence.

The air between us crackles as we lift the skiff from the bow and drop it over the side into the water. Glancing back at Panga as we speed away from her in the skiff, I feel a wave of apprehension. She’s just sitting in the middle of the bay, completely exposed.

How the hell do you hide a sailboat?

If the Anonymity catches up to us before we get back, they’ll find Panga and that will be it. They could board her and wait to ambush us, or sink her, or worse. The look on Sargo’s face tells me he’s thinking the same thing.

“We’ll be quick,” I say, peeking at him.

He doesn’t respond.

We land the skiff on a strip of sand at the top of the cove and haul it up the beach to keep it out of the rising tide. It’s a steep climb from the beach to the top of the surrounding ridge and we stop several times to rest. I use my kitchen knife to cut a few leaves from a cactus. The spines are lethal, but when I snap open the tough hide, the flesh inside is green and juicy. I put the leaves in my pack.

“You sure we can eat that?” asks Sargo bluntly.

I shrug. “I think so.”

I don’t know what makes me think that. Residual knowledge from watching Mama K in the garden, maybe. She was always nagging me about how important it is to learn how to grow your own food. Dig into the future! Another Zenith aphorism.

Everyone in Brume has a garden or a spot in the community plot. Everyone provides at least a portion of their own food. Mama K used to teach horticulture classes during the summer at Azimuth. I never paid much attention, but I guess some of it must have gotten through.

We stop at a small outcropping near the top of the ridge to look back across the Salt for pursuing boats and I feel a knot loosen in my chest when there are no other sails on the Salt.

I squint the other way: inland, across the hard, red earth. Looking for...what, exactly? Dust clouds, I suppose. Some indicator that someone is following us by land.

“They won’t come by land,” says Sargo, as though reading my thoughts.

I turn to him. “You sure?”

“There’s no infrastructure anymore for travel by land or air. It was all either destroyed by climate disasters or never got finished before the pandemic. And there hasn’t been fresh water on land for almost a century. At least on the Salt, if you have a watermaker, you can desalinate the saltwater to make desal. In the State, there’s nothing.”

We reach the top of the ridge. It feels like a thousand degrees, but it’s probably only a hundred. The red, rocky earth radiates heat and the only other signs of life apart from the bugs zinging in and out of our ears are the leathery cacti and some scraggly Salt scrubs. We haven’t so much as heard a jackrat.

I take a seat against a rock and look south. The coastline turns black and ugly pretty quickly after Naze. A bleak, charred stretch of cliff, barely recovered from the fires that burned this part of the world for over a century. Fire Season.

“Bird!” Sargo is looking over the top of the ridge and down the other side into the inland valley. I scramble up next to him and follow his pointed finger. “The old Settlement.” He hands me the nox and I lift them to my eyes.

Sprawling across the valley floor like junk spilled from a box is the remains of the Naze climate settlement. Miles and miles of tents, shacks, and lean-tos assembled from scrap; thousands of those big old electric vehicles that people used to live in. All of it run-down, covered in sand, and falling apart. Salt scrubs and saltnut trees have reclaimed parts of the space, sprouting through the windows of EVs, and splitting the fabric of tents. It stretches all the way to the horizon at the bottom of the valley, a river of scrap metal, wood, and canvas.

“I can’t believe all this stuff is still here,” I murmur.

“Yeah. It’s bigger than I thought.”

“How many refugees were here? Before the pandemic.”

“You’re supposed to call them Settlers, not refugees. And I don’t know. Millions?”

“Jesus.”

“Gods,” Sargo corrects me.

I shoot him a look. “Seriously? You’re looking at a graveyard millions of people deep, and you’re going to be pedantic about political correctness?”

“Words matter, Bird.”

“Jesus, Allah, Buddha, what’s the difference? It’s not like any of them are actually up there. And if they are, they clearly don’t give a shit about any of us.”

He observes the valley quietly. “It’s not about whether they’re up there. It’s about respecting other people’s beliefs. That’s what the Polytheistic Revolution was about.”

I take back the nox. “I’ll respect the gods when they do something to earn my respect.”

“It doesn’t matter if you respect the gods,” says Sargo. “It’s about respecting the people who believe in them. By singling out Jesus as an expletive, you’re actually disrespecting people who believe in other deities. It belittles the—”

I lift a hand to shut him up. “I’m gonna be honest: they’re just words to me. And God dammit is a lot more satisfying to say out loud when you stub your toe than gods.”

Lifting the nox to my eyes and surveying the ruined settlement, I feel a kind of deep, existential horror. It’s just so big. We learned about climate settlements at Azimuth. But seeing it right in front of you like this, the scale kind of knocks you back. Millions of people. Living on top of each other. No way to quarantine. No boats to escape into the Salt. The virus decimated places like this.

I lower the nox. “Is it disrespectful to scavenge shit from the dead?”

“Yes. Hugely.”

“Do we have a choice?”

Sargo scratches at the shadow of hair coming in around his jaw, looking hesitant.

“Maybe there’s cans of food or something.”

He sighs. “Okay.”

We’re halfway down the ridge when something catches my eye. A flash of light from a hut near the perimeter of the Settlement, so brief that I’m sure I’ve imagined it. A few paces later, it happens again. Probably just the sun reflecting off an old window. When it happens again, I stop.

“Sargo,” I whisper, “give me the nox.”

He hands them over and I press them to my eyes and focus them on the spot. My stomach drops.

“There’s a person.”

“What? No. No there isn’t.”

“Yes there is! Next to that hut, behind the barrel. They’re using nox. I can see the sun reflecting off the lenses.”

I hand the nox back to Sargo. He presses them to his eyes and I direct him to the spot.

He goes still. “We should get out of here.”

“Wait.”

“Bird, everyone here is supposed to be dead. We’re—”

“Just wait!” I hold my hand out again for the nox and Sargo hands them over. I scan back down to the hut. “It’s a kid.”

“A kid?”

“Yeah. A little boy. He’s really small. He doesn’t exactly look threatening.”

About twenty yards inside the perimeter of the Settlement, a small circle of dwellings catches my eye. They’re different from the others around them: less dilapidated, less covered in sand. One has a fence of sticks and barbed wire around it. On the other side of the fence partially obscured, is a patch of green leaves.

“There’s people down there. Look.” I had Sargo the nox. “I think they have a garden.”

“That’s not possible.” He squints through the lenses. “There’s no water. You can’t have a garden without water.”

“Well, it looks like they do. Maybe they have veg. Maybe they’d be willing to trade.”

“Trade? No way. Trade what?” He stuffs the nox into his pack and hoists it onto his shoulders. “This is crazy. I’m going back to the boat.”

A flicker of irritation lights in my chest. Typical Sargo. Overly cautious. Doesn’t want to listen to my idea. “Why do you just assume these people are dangerous? We don’t know anything about them.”

“I don’t know, Bird, but it doesn’t seem like a terrible idea to be careful, does it?”

“I have a good feeling about it.”

“A feeling? We can’t make decisions based on your feelings.”

“Oh, but we can make them based on yours?”

“I don’t make decisions based on my feelings. But if I did, you know what? It would be fine. Because my feelings are sound. Your feelings are unreliable. You are unreliable.”

I stare at him in disbelief. Then I hitch my pack higher on my shoulders. “You know what? Fine. Go back. But I don’t think these people are going to hurt us. I’m going down there.” I shove him out of the way.

“Bird. Bird!” His hissed cries fade over my shoulder as I stalk furiously down the ridge.

A few people come out of their homes, shielding their eyes from the sun and watching me with silent, expressionless faces. My pulse ticks up. This is supposed to be a ghost town. I sure as Salt hope the ghosts are friendly.

I stop at the edge of the settlement, pulling my bandana up to cover my face. A small crowd has gathered. As I raise my hand to greet them, I hesitate. Something stops me. Instead of waving, I touch my two middle fingers to my brow.

Where did that come from?

To my surprise, they all return the gesture. It’s not a greeting we use in Brume. I must have read about it somewhere. A history class at Azimuth maybe.

“Sorry for…intruding,” I say. “We’re in need of food.”

The sun-beaten faces remain expressionless, hard, and unreadable.

“We’re able to trade,” I continue.

A small man steps forward from the middle of the group. He’s shorter than me, with a spare frame and a ruddy face flecked with white sunspots. “Trade what?”

Good question.

“We have parts,” I say, thinking fast. “Spare parts for a sailboat.”

“No sailboats here,” says the man.

“Okay, not just parts for boats. We have…” I rack my brain. What does Sargo keep aboard Panga? Lots of stuff. He has at least two of every nut, bolt, and screw.

“Pumps, hoses, lines, filters,” I continue, “uh, a desalinator—”

The man perks up. “What kind of desalinator?”

“A…small one?” I have no idea. I tap behind my ear to activate the radio in my chip. “Sargo?”

The man narrows his eyes at me and I give him a nervous smile. “Just wait one second.”

“Bird?” Sargo's voice buzzes in my ear.

“Hey! Sargo, they want to trade. They want to know what kind of desalinator we have.”

“We’re not giving them our desalinator!”

“No, obviously not! But what about spare parts?”

He’s quiet. Then, “It’s a 10L. I made it out of scrap. I have a spare filter and a pump.”

I relay this information to the man, who nods. “We can give you bread and some veg. Don’t have much more’n that.”

“That filter is worth at least a hundred coin!” says Sargo when I tell him this.

“Well, it’s all they’ve got. Look—” I lower my voice to a whisper, turning my back to the man, “we’re not exactly in a position to be demanding here. Either we take what they have, or we live on tea for the next week.”

“We can fish!” Sargo exclaims impatiently.

“Really?” I fire back. “Do you really think we’re going to catch anything?”

He’s silent. I turn around and address the man again. “We’ll take whatever you’ve got. Thank you.”

chapter

ten

SARGO and I climb down the ridge toward the Settlement with Panga’s spare desalinator filter in Sargo's pack. It was over an hour of trudging in the baking sun and taking the skiff all the way to Panga and back, and I feel lightheaded.

The small man I spoke to before meets us at the perimeter, and we cross through the circle of dwellings toward the garden on the other side of the compound.

We’re nearly at the fence when the air shatters with an ungodly racket of cannon fire. A flash of brown and white shoots from under the hut like a bullet. It’s not cannon fire, I realize, as the thing tears toward us: it’s barking. An enormous doggerel---its eyes rimmed white, a ridge of hair bristling like a mohawk from the top of its massive head to the tip of its tail.

My insides become water. I stumble backward and feel Sargo catch me under the elbow. At the fence, the doggerel is stopped short by a length of heavy chain around its neck. It stands on its hind legs, clawing at the fence with paws the size of my hand, flecks of spittle spattering from its jaws. It’s nearly as tall as I am. Its eyes are startling. Not rimmed with white: so blue they are almost white.

The man grabs a hefty stick that’s leaning against the fence and clobbers the doggerel around the head with it. “Git back!”

The dog yelps and scurries away from the fence. The man flings the stick after it, catching it on the hindquarters and eliciting another yelp as it slinks under the hut with its tail tucked. He stalks through a gap in the fence and motions for us to follow him.

I hesitate. “Can it…get us?”

Shaking his head, he holds out his hand for our packs. I carefully step through the fence and hand mine over, keeping my eyes on the dog as he wordlessly stoops and begins to fill it with greens. The animal lies flat against the ground under the hut, its wide, fearful eyes fixed on the man.

“Your doggerel?”

He grunts and shakes his head, pulling an anemic carrot up out of the dirt. “Belonged to the girl who used to live here.” He indicates the hut.

“Where is she?”

“Died six days ago.”

“Oh.”

“Shame. Wasn’t much older than you. She used to tend the garden. Dog’s always been a menace, but the girl did a fine job with the veg so we let it slide. Now she’s gone, all anyone wants to do is put the damn thing out of its misery, but no one can get near enough to get it done.”

“You mean kill it?” Sargo's voice is disturbed.

The man nods.

I can’t say I’m surprised. No one keeps pets, even in Harbor Cities; the cost to feed and water them is just too high. I’m actually surprised to see a dog at all; I thought they had all died in the pandemic. Most of the domesticated animals did. Most of the wild ones went extinct long before that.

“What’ll happen to it?” asks Sargo.

“We stopped feeding her four days ago,” says the man matter-of-factly. “Only a matter of time til she starves.”

I watch the miserable thing cowering under the hut. “Couldn’t she be useful as a guard dog?”

“A guard against what?” The man gestures at the wasted red terrain around us. “No one bothering us out here. ‘Cept you two.”

He disappears into the hut. I note the ribs and hips poking through the dog’s filthy coat. Her blue eyes are so sad-looking that I have to look away.

We walk back across the settlement with our packs full of green and orange veg and two loaves of flat, pale bread. It’s more than I thought we would get. Even Sargo seems somewhat placated.

A few more people emerge from their dwellings to watch us leave. I don’t know why, but I feel compelled to perform the gesture again—touching my fingers to my brow and bowing my head. Again, they all return it. The back of my neck prickles with an unsettling sense of déjà vu.

Sargo frowns. “What’s that all about?”

“I don’t…know.”

“Where’d you learn that?”

I can’t help but give him some snark. “I guess it was just a feeling.”

At the front of the crowd is a squat, saggy-skinned woman who looks like she was once very plump. Big, strong arms and a red, sweaty face. She’s looking at me like she knows me.

I flip my eyes away and take in the rest of the faces, the tents and huts, the EVs. A twisted old saltnut tree, a creek. Something about it is familiar. Where have I seen this before?

Fife.

The name comes to me from nowhere. My mind clutches at it, tries to turn it over and examine it, but like a dream, it’s already slipping away. Blue eyes. A little girl with blue eyes. I’m leaving something very important behind—

The heat beating through my thick hood is suddenly unbearable. I can’t breathe. I tug the bandana away from my nose and mouth and double over with my hands on my knees, spinning. I close my eyes, but I can’t shut that image out of my head. Blue eyes. Eyes so sad I have to look away.

You left her behind.

The crowd parts to let me through as I stride back across the settlement. The man we traded the filter to stands exactly where we left him, the filter still in his hand. He watches me approach with a wary eye. I stop well back from the fence. From under the hut comes a menacing growl. I hear Sargo's footsteps pounding up behind me.

“Forget something?” says the man.

“I’ll take the dog.”

He tilts up his chin, regarding me with unmitigated suspicion.

“She’s a burden to you,” I continue. “You said so yourself. If you’re just going to let her starve, you might as well give her to me. I’d be doing you a favor.”

“Bird, what are you doing?” Sargo grabs me hard by the shoulder and pulls me around.

“I’m taking the dog.”

“What?! No way. This is not our problem.”

I shake my head. “I’m making it my problem.”

“No, Bird, this is legitimately insane.”

“I’m not leaving her behind!” A confusing knot of tears presses very suddenly behind my eyes and I whirl around to keep Sargo from seeing them.

I left her behind. I left Fife behind. I don’t know what it means but suddenly I know it as certainly as I know my own name. I left her behind.

The man is still watching me with narrow eyes.

“Do we have a deal?” I demand.

He shrugs. “Her chain hooks up in the back. Good luck.”

Sargo grabs my arm but I shake him off and march around the fence to the back of the hut. I hear him right behind me.

“Bird, what the hell are you doing? What are we going to do with a dog? How are we going to feed it? We can barely feed ourselves.”

Ignoring him, I look around for the end of the chain. I spot it looped around a metal pole sticking out of the ground and stoop to pick it up.

“We’ll figure it out. We have transport. We have coin. We can take her off these people’s hands. We’d be helping them and helping her.”

“We don’t need to be helping anyone! We need to help ourselves! I get that you’re trying to do something nice, but think for a minute. This is reckless. This is exactly the kind of thing that got you into trouble with the Anonymity in the first place! This is what got you kicked out of Azimuth.”

I glare at him, furious that he would bring that up. Furious that he would throw that in my face.

Furious that he’s right?

“These people have to drink from their own creek,” he says quietly. “You can’t change that.”

The words stop the air in my chest. We drink from our own creek. Put on your own mask first. They’re not just slogans. That’s how we survive. By putting ourselves first. I know that. But standing here, with those sad blue eyes swimming around my head, with that familiar sense of loss like an open, salted wound in my chest, I can’t just walk away. I left Fife behind. I’m not leaving this dog too.

“You’re right,” I tell him, “I can’t change these people’s lives. But I can change this.” I point under the hut. “I can fix this.”

He scoffs. “Oh, so now you want to fix things?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“When you were running around Brume, getting drunk, stealing from my friends, dragging me into your mess with the Anonymity, it seemed like you were hell-bent on destroying everything! But now, now you want to fix something?”

I stare at him. “Is that what’s been pissing you off all morning?”

“Are you kidding me, Howsley? Yes! Obviously. Obviously that’s what’s been pissing me off all morning. I just broke like ten laws and fled my home because of you! Because you selfishly figured you’d pawn off my friend’s necklace to fund your little jaunt to Alluvium!”

“I said I was sorry! I know I screwed up! I did it to get coin for your mainsail! I was trying to help!”

“Help? I never asked for your help! And neither did these people. Look at where you are, Bird! You were expelled for reckless endangerment and intoxication! You’re on the run from a criminal organization! You can’t help anyone. You can’t even help yourself! Who do you think you are?”

Angry tears choke me. “I’m someone who’s trying to do the right thing!”

“Well, this isn’t it!”

I wheel around and stalk away from him, but his words follow me like a toxic cloud.

Can’t even help yourself.

I drop to my hands and knees and peer under the hut. The chain snakes from my hand to the other side, where the dog lies facing away from me. Apparently, she’s too weak and tired to care that we’re back here. I pull my pack off, dig out a bundle of bread, open it, and tear off a chunk.

“You’re giving it our food?!” Sargo storms up behind me and snatches the loaf out of my hands. “My desal filter paid for this!”

I scramble to my feet and try to grab it back from him. “Do you hear yourself? My filter! My food! Brume pride. Me first.”

“But it was my filter! This isn’t the time to be having some existential crisis, Bird! This is about survival. You have to take this seriously! For once in your Goddamn life, take something seriously!”

I go still, my hands around the loaf. I’ve never heard Sargo say Goddamn before. “What do you mean, For once in my life?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“No…” I tilt my head and glare at him. “I don’t.”

“You treat everything like a joke! You make dumb mistakes all the time because you don’t think. Maybe you got away with it in Brume, but you can’t do that stuff out here. You have to think before you act. If you don’t, the Salt will kill you. And if it doesn’t, the Anonymity will. And frankly, right now, I don’t care if they do.”

I gape, stunned into silence. His words hang in the air between us like haar. He drops his hands, letting go of the bread. “I didn’t mean—”

“You know what?” I shove the remains of the loaf hard into his chest. “I never asked for your help either. I told you in Brume that I would handle this on my own. You didn’t have to come with me. You chose to leave. If you don’t want to be here, why don’t you take your food and get back on your boat and go home!”

He stares at me. I glare back. Then his eyes harden. “Fine.” He shoves the loaf into his pack. “Fine.” He swings the pack onto his shoulder. “Fine.” He turns, and storms across the compound.

My hands, still clutching the chunk of bread, drop limply to my sides.

Nice job, Howsley. What the hell are you going to do now?

Something cold and wet nudges the back of my hand and I nearly jump out of my skin. The dog sits next to me, her massive head level with my hips, face upturned, blue eyes blazing out of her gaunt face like dying stars. Around one eye is a large black and brown patch like some kind of mockery of a pirate costume. The other side of her face is white, I assume, under the filth. Her ears lay loose against the sides of her head. Big brown splotches paint the rest of her skinny, grubby body. Up close, she’s actually kind of cute. Big. Scary. But cute.

She nudges my hand again and I let the chunk of bread fall onto the ground. She pounces on it, snarfs it down, and looks back up at me, licking her chops. I stretch out my hand to pet the top of her head.

And she lunges.

“Jesus!”

Her jaws close around my hand, shooting pain up my arm. I wrench it free and hold it up to my face. Two dots of blood bloom from the meat below my thumb. The dog lowers her head between her ragged shoulder blades and eyes me, the patch around her eye suddenly menacing, like a black eye she earned in some brawl.

“Okay…” I put up my hands. “Alright…”

Glancing over my shoulder, I take two very slow steps backward. Sargo is just a speck halfway up the ridge. Is he actually going to leave me here? Is it too late to catch up with him?

I put one eye back on the dog. Is she fast enough to catch me if I try?

Only one way to find out.

Slinging the pack over my shoulder, I duck under the fence and run.

____________________

Halfway up the ridge I collapse. I can’t run anymore. I need food. And water. The doggerel, skulking about twenty paces behind me, looks to be in even worse shape than I am. Head sagging, legs trembling. The chain around her neck leaving a wide trail as it drags through the dirt behind her. Neither of us have it in us to keep this chase up. I roll onto my back and gasp at the sky, dry, red dust settling on my skin.

When I get my breath and stand, the dog is sitting ten feet away, watching me with big, sad, blue eyes.

“First I feed you, then you bite me, then you chase me, and now you want me to feed you again?”

She licks her chops and doesn’t move. I double over with my hands on my knees. The heat, the thirst, the throbbing of my wounded hand, and those sad, hungry eyes are too much. I can’t stand it. I pick up a rock.

“Didn’t you learn not to bite the hand that feeds you? I set you free. The way I see it, we’re square.” I half-heartedly toss it at her. “Go on, git!”

She flinches, but as the rock skitters off into the dust, she slinks toward me again, blue eyes and sadness and confusing, distant memories.

You left her behind.

I turn my back and keep walking.

At the top of the ridge, I stop. Panga still bobs serenely in the middle of the cove, and Sargo is nearly to the sand. I hitch my pack a little higher and pick up my pace, checking over my shoulder. The dog has disappeared.

Sargo is slinging his pack into the skiff when I catch up to him at the beach. He looks up briefly as he hears me coming, but turns away without saying anything. I stop a few feet from the skiff, chewing the inside of my cheek.

“I’m sorry.”

He makes no indication that he’s heard me.

“I’m sorry I got worked up over some hair-brained scheme to save some mangey doggerel. I’m sorry I dragged you into my hair-brained scheme to get out of Brume. I’m sorry we’re in this mess. You’re right. It’s my fault we’re out here with no food and no supplies. We need to focus on surviving. I sent the stupid dog off, I think. She’s gone, anyway.”

Sargo finishes coiling the skiff’s rope and wipes his palms together. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t’ve—” He looks up and his eyes go wide. “Bird,” he says, very quietly, “don’t move.”

The back of my neck lights up like someone ran an electric current through it. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” he mutters, his eyes fixed over my shoulder. “But it’s big, and it’s angry-looking, and it’s standing right behind you.”

Every single hair on my body lifts as a snarl curls into my left ear. That’s not the growl of a dog. That’s something bigger.

Much bigger.

Sargo’s face goes ashen. “Get down!”

I drop to the sand as something enormous sails so close over my head that I feel my hair ripple. A sandy-colored animal as big as a horse is twisting through the sky above me like a ribbon in the wind. It lands between me and Sargo. Some kind of mountain cat. Rangy, its coat pockmarked with scars and covered in grime. It spits at Sargo, then whips around and eyes me, flicking its tail. My legs turn to rubber. I stand paralyzed as it coils its powerful hind legs and prepares to pounce.

A flash of brown and white barrels past me from behind, a length of thick chain whipping through the dust behind it like a sidewinder. It nearly bowls me over and launches at the cat, hitting it head-on and sending them both into a cartwheel of claws, chain, and fur.

“Let’s go!”

Sargo grabs the side of the skiff. Together we shove it into the water, flinging ourselves into it over the sides as it drifts away from the sand.

I look back just in time to see the cat kick with its hind legs, sending the brown and white animal that I now recognize as the dog flying. She yelps and staggers to her feet, limping and shaking the dust from her coat. She’s half the size of the cat and skinny as a rail. The cat pounces again.

My chest squeezes. We can’t just leave her like this. Ripping open my pack, I shove both hands in and start pulling things out of it. Knife. Cactus. Nox. Another knife. Useless, useless, useless. I need a rock or something. Something I can throw. Something big enough to hit the cat so the dog can—

Two sharp whistles pierce the air.

I look up. Sargo is standing with one foot up on the side of the skiff, two fingers in his mouth. He whistles again. “Well, come on then, you big dumb mutt!” He pounds on the side of the skiff. “Get in!”

The dog tilts her head.

“Let’s go!” I shout, throwing aside the pack and clapping my hands. “Come on!”

The dog is hesitant. She puts one paw into the water. The cat prepares to pounce again.

“Swim!” I scream.

In the next moment, several things happen at once.

The dog takes another uncertain step into the surf. The cat, screeching, launches itself at the dog again. And Sargo leaps over the side of the skiff.

“Sargo, what the hell—”

He lands waist-deep and starts wading toward the shore as the cat takes the dog down and they both disappear under the water. Coming to my senses with a jolt, I scramble to flip on the motor, snatch up the tiller and spin the skiff in a circle, aiming it toward the beach.

As I reach the spot where the animals went under, the dog breaks through the surface and paws frantically at the air, her eyes white with fear. I manage to grab the scruff of her neck as Sargo catches up, grabs her, and heaves her over one shoulder. “Get her in the skiff!”

Grabbing the dog by the scruff of her neck, I help Sargo heave her over the side. Sargo throws himself after her, his wet shirt clinging to his chest and slicking along the curve of his shoulders.

Did he always have those shoulders?

Something flips over in my stomach and I quickly turn around, grabbing the tiller again and swerving us away from the beach. Sargo rolls onto his back in the bottom of the skiff, breathing hard, wiping water from his face.

“Are you okay?” I yell.

“I think so.”

“Why did you do that?”

“You were right,” he gasps, “I couldn’t just leave her behind.” He pulls himself upright in the bow, shaking water from his hair. Wet, black curls settle against his smooth brown face and my stomach flips over again. I put my gaze firmly over the bow past his shoulder and renew my grip on the tiller.

We careen away from the shore toward Panga. The dog hunches in the bottom of the skiff and growls. Sargo looks at me and we both squeeze as far away from her as we can. I tuck my injured hand out of sight. Probably best not to bring that up right now.

“She’s not going to attack us,” says Sargo. “Not after we saved her life. Right?”

“Sure. Yeah. Probably not.”

“I mean technically, she saved our lives. So maybe she already likes us?”

The skiff bounces over a wave and we both shrink backward as the dog lurches.

“I don’t think she meant to save our lives. I think she just attacks anything that moves.”

Sargo presses himself further into the bow and pulls his knees up to his chest.

“She’s probably just scared,” I say, unsure if I’m trying to convince him or myself. “And hungry. I bet if we feed her she’ll warm up to us.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs his face with both hands. “God dammit what did I just do?”

“Found us a really useful guard dog?”

“I hope I didn’t just make a huge mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking. We can’t afford this kind of malarkey.”

“Malarkey?” I scrunch my face. “What is that? Another word from Mama Marlin?”

“No. That’s one of Mama G’s. It means nonsense.”

“I know what it means. I just never heard anyone actually use it. What are you, like a thousand years old?”

He curls a lip. “Very funny.”

I pull the skiff up alongside Panga, kill the motor and stand up to catch hold of Panga’s deck rail, pulling us closer.

“Malarkey.” I keep one eye on the dog and roll the word around in my mouth as I tie up the skiff. “You know what? I like it. Pretty good name for a dog if you ask me.”

chapter

eleven

MY ASSESSMENT that Malarkey is just scared appears to be correct.

Once we get her aboard Panga, she wedges herself under the bunk in the bow and refuses to come out. Whether she will warm up to us remains to be seen—when I toss a chunk of bread under the bunk for her, she thanks me with a snarl.

We stow the food and make more tea and sit in the cockpit, sipping it in silence. Sargo is quiet and I get the sense he’s still pissed. Probably mad that he let himself be tricked into rescuing that dog.

I keep my eyes on my mug. “So what do you think we should do? How long do you think we can stay here?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. We could give it a few days. Wait it out and go back to Brume, if they don’t come looking for us. See if I can talk to the Anonymity, maybe. Get them to drop it.”

“You think they’d do that?”

He shakes his head. “Probably not. But I don’t know what else to do.”

I hesitate. “…we could keep going.”

His eyes snap up. “Excuse me?”

“We could keep going. South. To Pocosín.”

“Are you serious?”

“…yes?”

“That’s a really terrible idea. That’s one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.”

“Just hear me out—”

“No.” He looks at me like I’ve said the most unsustainably stupid thing he’s ever heard. “I won’t.”

“Why not? You said if you could go anywhere, it would be Pocosín. If you ever got out of Brume. Well, you’re out of Brume, so why not?”

“Because it’s insane. Pocosín is three thousand miles south. It’s batshit insane and I don’t want to die.” He swigs his tea and eyes me. “I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to get to Alluvium because you got that message from that Shale guy. But just because you don’t have a future in Brume, doesn’t mean I don’t. I haven’t ruined my life.”

I glare at him, but the look he’s sending back at me is just as angry and I can’t keep it up. I drop my eyes and fiddle with my mug. “He’s not just a guy.”

“What?”

“Shale. The guy who sent me the message from Alluvium. He’s not a guy. He’s my brother.”

He blinks. “Your brother?”

“Yes.”

“You have a brother?”

“He…I didn’t. For a long time. He was dead.”

“Was dead?”

“I mean—we thought he was dead. My moms told me he was dead. I haven’t seen him in ten years. He sent that message out of the blue.”

Sargo is staring at me like I’ve just told him I have gills. “What happened to him?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know anything except what was in that message.”

“Have you messaged him back?”

“Yeah. But he didn’t reply.” I tap my temple to pull up Messenger. “I guess I haven’t checked today, but I don’t think—”

>>> OUT OF RANGE. MESSAGING UNAVAILABLE.

“Oh.” I frown. “That’s weird.”

“What?”

“Says Out of Range.”

Sargo taps his temple. “Hm.”

“I’ve never seen that before.”

“Me neither. I didn’t even know biochips had a range. I wonder what else doesn’t work out here.” He taps his left brow. “No map either.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” He sighs and drops his face into his hands. He rubs his eyes for a long time, then looks at me. “He’s in Alluvium?”

“Mhm.”

“How did he get there?”

“Like I said. No idea. I guess I thought I could find out if I got there.”

He holds my gaze. Calculating again. Weighing something. His eyes are deep and thoughtful and studying me very closely, and it makes all the skin on my body light up. He sighs again.

“Dammit, Howsley, fine. Fine. Let’s go find your dead brother.”

My heart skips. We haul the anchor and set the sails.

We leave Naze prepared to sail straight through the next day and night. I keep my mouth shut and try to stay out of Sargo’s way for the rest of the day, partly because I don’t want to piss him off again, but partly because the image of his wet hair and the shirt clinging to his chest seems to pop into my head every time I look at him. The only way to make it stop seems to be not to look at him.

Sargo says we should take turns on watch overnight—four hours awake, four hours of sleep. He rigs up the autopilot so we don’t always need to be at the helm. He says it’s a common thing to do, but I suspect he just doesn’t trust me to steer the ship by myself while he’s asleep. Which, to be fair, I probably can’t.

As I go on watch at 2030 the full, hazy moon throws a great sweeping cone of glittering red light across the black water. Stars wink on two by two. Sargo sleeps in the bunk downstairs in the bow, and Malarkey is still hiding under that same bunk. I chew my thumbnail and stare at the water.

Snippets of visions drift around my head. The name Fife. A boy in a creek. Hard, red earth. I can’t seem to hold on to any of it long enough to make sense of it. Are they dreams? If so, I don’t know when I dreamed them.

I go off watch at midnight and Sargo comes up from below deck to take over. The air is damp and chilly, and I’m shivering by the time we switch, my fingers frozen stiff, my skin prickled with goosebumps.

He trips up the three companionway steps as I come down—groggy-looking, his hair tousled, still half-asleep. We squeeze wordlessly past each other on the narrow stairs, both turning sideways, and the brief press of his chest against mine—the closeness of his scent—rouses a heat under my skin that clings to me all the way to the bunk in the bow.

Rigid with cold, I strip off my damp hoodie and crawl under the blanket, pulling it all the way over my head and curling up on my side. Sargo’s smell is all over the bunk too—the sheets and blanket still warm where he rolled out of them moments ago.

The flush that his closeness aroused on the stairs simmers under my skin as I sink into that heat. His smell. The close, soft brush of him all around me.

I flip onto my other side.

That image I can’t stop seeing comes back. Sargo, soaking wet, the slick, translucent fabric of his shirt adhering to the curves of his chest. His dripping black hair falling around his smooth brown face.

It wasn't just the way he looked in that moment. It wasn’t just his wet shirt and broad shoulders and beautiful face. It was his foot up on the side of the skiff. It was whistling for Malarkey. It was the way he jumped over the side and went back for her. Because she needed help. Because it was the right thing to do.

Rolling onto my other side, I take a deep breath, but that only fills my nose with the scent of him. It’s like he’s all over me. I can feel him lying in this bunk. Sleeping between these sheets.

Doing…what else?

My face turns red hot and I flip over again, quickly shutting the door on that thought.

Or at least, trying to.

But it’s in there now. Has he done that in this bunk? What does it look like, that thing in his hand? What would it look like in mine—

Nope. Too far, Howsley. Reign it in.

I roll onto my back and shove the blanket around my hips to let the air against my skin. My breasts pebble, and a spark lights deep in my core. I push the hair off my face and draw a long, hard breath through my nose.

“You okay down there?”

The air comes out in a rush. Sargo can hear me tossing and turning. There’s no door between us—just the small space of Panga’s main cabin and the three short steps up to the cockpit, where he now sits on watch. No privacy, ever.

I close my eyes. “Fine.” The word sticks in my throat.

“Seasick?”

“No. Just…” I gesture uselessly in the dark, looking for a lie. Just thinking about parts of your body that I probably shouldn’t be thinking about. Just picturing you naked. Just wondering if you could spare a second to come down here and get in this bunk with me and—

“Just winding down.”

He doesn’t say anything else and I shiver and pull the blanket over me again. I tilt my head back to see if I can make out his silhouette in the cockpit, but it’s too dark to see anything. I stare into that darkness, across the fifteen feet of space and three steps that separate us, wondering if he can see me.

If he's watching me.

The spot between my thighs starts to ache. I squeeze my legs together. I need to find a way to relieve this pressure. But what if he sees me?

He can't see you. It’s too dark.

Slowly, under the blanket, I slide one hand to my breast and squeeze it gently. The hard point of my nipple strains through the fabric into my palm. The ache between my thighs becomes urgent. I hike my shirt up over my breasts.

A footstep on the stairs freezes me. I snap my eyes shut and go still as Sargo steps off the last step into the galley. I hear him moving around the cabin, making sounds with the kettle. Making tea for his watch.

For what feels like an eternity I lie there, pretending to sleep, my shirt hiked up under the blanket, my breasts taut and aching in my hands. I listen to him running the water, lighting the stove, setting the kettle to boil. Then he goes quiet.

I listen for his footsteps retreating back up the stairs to the cockpit, but don’t hear them. He must be leaning against the counter in the galley, waiting for the kettle. I imagine his arms folded, the shape of his shoulders and the cords of muscle in his forearms. The curve of his neck as he fixes his gaze on the floor. Thinking. Always thinking.

My fingertips glide over my nipples. A tiny movement under the blanket that sends a red-hot arc to the spot between my thighs. I arch into my hands, pressing my lips together to silence a moan. I am desperate for release.

My hands brush my ribs. My bare stomach. It’s so hot under the blanket sweat is sheening on my skin. I roll my hips against the bed, straining to find friction.

If he caught me what would he do? My fingers slide lower, under my waistband.

Would he stay quiet and watch me? Get hard watching me? Would he join me?

The heat between my legs turns slick. My hand continues its torturous teasing, tracing featherlight circles closer and closer to my center. I imagine him finding me. Looking down at me with dark hunger in his eyes. Unbuttoning his pants, crawling into the bunk on top of me, pinning me down, putting his hands on me, his lips. Grinding his heat against my thigh.

Forgetting where I am, I groan low in my throat, and hear a small sound in the galley.

Jesus, was that him?

I freeze, listening. My blood throbs and ebbs with the pounding of my heart. My whole body is giving over to that thumping, pulsing heat. I can’t ignore it. The need is too much. I slip one finger in and roll against my palm. The relief is so intense I shudder. But I need more. I want him to catch me.

The kettle shrieks and I nearly jump out of my skin.

I wrench my hand out of my pants and roll onto my side, curling into a ball and pulling the blanket tight around me. Sargo removes the kettle from the heat and pours his tea. My heart beats in my ears as I listen to his footsteps retreat back up the stairs to the cockpit.

For several minutes, I lie there, trembling, twisted into knots, trying to breathe. Then, somehow, my brain finds its way back to the control panel.

Don't be an idiot, Howsley, it says. Don't make this weird.

I roll onto my back and push the blanket down, and this time the cool air is like a welcome slap in the face. I gulp it down and close my eyes. I find my breath, and breathe.

____________________

On the afternoon of the next day, the wind picks up. The water stirs like a simmering pot and the sky darkens with clouds, as though someone closed a lid over us. By early evening, the wind is howling, and the Salt heaves like a beast awakening from sleep.

“We need to reef,” says Sargo from the helm, squinting at the scudding clouds. His voice, as always, betrays no panic or alarm, but his face is as dark as the sky. “I should have done it earlier.”

“Okay,” I say nervously, unsure if I remember what reefing is and how to do it.

“I’m going to point Panga directly into the wind so that the mainsail will luff,” he says. I must look confused because then he says, “Luffing means the sail is loose, flapping, not filled with wind. Right?”

I nod quickly, feeling like I’m back in his class at Azimuth.

“When it’s luffing, you go out on the bow, pull it halfway down, and cinch it to the boom. Then raise it again. The sail should be half as big as it is now. Does that make sense?”

I hesitate. “Yes…”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. We’re making the sail smaller, so it won’t catch as much wind.” I remember this lesson now. “So the boat doesn’t get overpowered and capsize.”

“Exactly.” He eyes me. “It will be scary. The swell is big, and the wind is very strong. It’s going to knock us around. And it will be hard to raise the sail again once it’s cinched down. You’ll need to use all your strength.”

“Okay.” I try to keep my face from showing my nerves.

“Ready?”

“Now?”

“Yes, Bird, now.”

I nod once.

“Okay, here we go.”

He turns the wheel, and the boat cuts up through one of the rollers, tipping sideways so that I have to grab the side of the cockpit to keep my balance. As we turn through the eye of the wind, the mainsail loses its full, curved shape and starts to flap, the thick fabric beating thunderously against itself like a monumental drum.

“Now!” yells Sargo.

Gathering my courage, I climb out of the cockpit onto the slick deck and cling to the handholds, inching toward the bow on all fours. I grasp the mast with both arms and pull myself upright, clinging with my knees.

Facing the stern, I can see Sargo in the cockpit, wrestling with the wheel, trying to keep us pointed the right way. His eyes are glued to me. He looks scared.

Is he…worried about me?

No. He probably just thinks I won’t be able to do this. I take a determined breath and remove one hand from the mast. Squeezing my knees tight, I unwind the main halyard from its cleat and the mainsail drops. I let it fall until the small loop of rope that hangs about halfway up the sail is close enough to grab, then pull the loop down over a hook in the side of the mast to cinch the sail down. It takes me three tries and all my strength to get the loop over the hook, and by the time I do it, my fingers are raw.

Gripping the halyard with both hands, I pull hard to raise the main up to its new height—but it doesn’t move. A deafening crash rattles the whole ship, and a sheet of water dumps over my head as we slam through a wave.

I’m gasping and blinking through saltwater when Malarkey leaps past Sargo and out of the cockpit. The wave must have spooked her out of her hiding spot. She slides across the deck toward the edge, her paws scrabbling uselessly on the wet wood.

“Malarkey!”

My scream is whipped away by the wind. I’m clinging to the mast and can’t do anything to save her. If I move, I’ll be over the side too.

Sargo lunges over the side of the cockpit, snatching her by the scruff of the neck and, with some kind of superhuman strength, pulling her to safety. He grabs the helm again just in time to turn us up through a wave, and Malarkey thanks him for saving her life by barking aggressively in his face.

I grab the winch handle and shove it into the halyard winch. Clinging to the mast with one hand, I crank the handle back and forth with the other, my arm burning as the sail inches its way slowly into its reefed position. When the halyard is tight I check it with my free hand and blink in surprise.

That’s it. Shit…I did it.

Another boom rattles the ship, and another sheet of water crashes over my head. My foot slips and I lurch sideways, clutching the mast with both hands.

“Howsley!”

Sargo’s shout comes to me over the crashing waves and howling wind. I scrabble my foot around until my toe wedges into something firm, then I drop to my hands and knees, crawl back to the cockpit, and fling myself back into my seat, gasping.

“Are you okay?”

Sargo is drenched too, still fighting to keep us pointed the right way, his sleeves rolled up as he heaves the wheel around with both hands, arm over arm.

Some kind of snarky retort would be great right now, but all I can manage is, “Uh huh. Fine.”

He takes his gaze off the horizon and looks at me. In his eyes is an expression I’ve never seen before. Surprise? Admiration? Both? They hold mine for a moment. Then he says, “Nice job, Howsley,” and flicks them back over the bow.

I sit up, tugging off my sodden beanie and shaking out my hair.“What? You didn’t think I could do it?”

His eyes flick to mine again and I see the flicker of a smile.

Malarkey cowers in a corner of the cockpit floor, gazing up at me with wide eyes that say, “Why have you brought me to this place, human?”

“I feel like we didn’t rescue this dog so much as kidnap her,” says Sargo.

____________________

The wind eases overnight, and at some point I must fall asleep because I wake in the cockpit mid-morning, disoriented and sore, my clothes still damp and stiff with salt. I touch my face, testing the pain of my days-old injuries. They feel better. I sit up and look around.

Sargo has turned on the autopilot and is nowhere to be seen. Malarkey yawns at me from the floor of the cockpit and rubs the side of her nose against her leg.

“You’re still here. I thought for sure you’d be hiding under your bunk again.”

She licks her nose and, astonishingly, doesn’t growl.

“Morning.” Sargo’s voice floats up the companionway, and I look down to see him standing at the bottom of the steps, holding two cups of steaming tea.

His eyes are sleepy, hair disheveled, and a smattering of stubble is coming in around his jaw. His blue Azimuth button-down is rumpled and faded from being worn two days in a row, drenched in saltwater, and slept in. It’s also—I try not to notice—distinctly more open at the collar than it ever was in Brume. I quickly put my eyes somewhere else and take both the mugs, handing his back to him after he climbs up into the cockpit.

A squadron of archipelicans swoops in front of the boat in prehistoric formation, their long-feathered wingtips and low bellies brushing the surface of the water. One dips its big beak and snatches up a fish, tipping its head back to swallow it in one smooth motion.

Breakfast is the same thing it has been for two days: chunks of bread slathered with a mixture of diced carrots, scraggly orange things, and greens, because that’s the only food we have. We’ve gone through half a loaf of bread and most of the veg between the three of us. I swallow my last mouthful and wonder if we’ll make it to Alluvium before we run out of food.

“We should try fishing again,” says Sargo, as though reading my thoughts.

I don’t try to argue this time. I don’t have any other suggestions and I don’t even know how to rig up a fishing pole. I stare between my feet, Sargo’s angry words floating through my head again.

Can’t even help yourself.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I mumble. “But I’m glad you’re here. You were right. I can’t do this on my own.”

Sargo stares into his mug for a long time. “I’m sorry I said that,” he says finally. “I didn’t mean it. And you didn’t drag me into this. I mean, you did, but…I’ve wanted to leave Brume for a long time.”

“Really?”

He shrugs. “I did always kind of hope one day I’d go to Pocosín. See where my family is from. Find my people.”

“Did you always think you’d be sailing to Pocosín with a crewmate who doesn’t know how to reef and a mainsail that might fail at any moment?”

He smiles and doesn’t respond right away. He sips his tea. Then he says, “Do you know how many things need fixing on this boat?”

I frown and shake my head.

“Hundreds. It’s not just the mainsail. There are winches that need servicing, rigging that needs replacing, wood that needs refinishing. I need to repaint the hull, replace the zincs…not to mention all the small projects—restitching seat cushions, building shelves, fixing the leaky faucet in the galley—”

“Okay, I get it. So basically what you’re telling me is this boat is a piece of shit?”

“No, what I’m saying is…” He sighs. “I could spend years finding things to fix on this boat. There will always be things to fix. I could have sat at that dock, fixing things and trying to make things perfect, for years. But it’s never going to be perfect. There’s never going to be a right time. At some point, if you really want to do something, you just have to do it. And…” He rearranges his hands around his mug. “Without you I don’t know if I ever would have.”

His eyes meet mine and my chest squeezes.

He clears his throat. “So, don’t be too hard on yourself. Yes, you’re a bit reckless. And okay, you’re not a great sailor. You drink too much, and you don’t pay attention—”

“You said don’t be too hard on myself…”

“—but you’re decisive. You make things happen. Not always good things. Sometimes terrible things. But I think you at least try to act from the bigness of your heart.” He drains the last sip of his tea. “You just need to slow down sometimes. Think before you act. Take one step at a time.”

I drop my eyes. “It’s not always as easy as that.”

He sighs, and I sense frustration. “Why not?”

“I mean…I am trying. You know? It’s like—I don’t want to be a disaster. I’m not trying to screw everything up and forget things and space out and be a reckless asshole all the time. But sometimes it feels like it doesn’t matter how hard I try. Like no matter what I do, I always make the wrong decision. Like my brain just takes the helm and I’m tied up in the brig with a blindfold on.”

He frowns. “Like you don’t have control of your own brain?”

I shrug.

“I guess I don’t really have an answer for that.”

“Me neither.”

“Did you ever talk to anyone about it?”

“There was a counselor at Azimuth. Ms. Parley. But all she ever did was give me breathing exercises and make me talk about my feelings. I don’t need anyone else poking around in my brain. I can handle it by myself. I just need to try harder.”

He looks at me with shrewd eyes. “Do you really think that’s the answer?”

“What?”

“Trying harder.”

I skirt his eyes and shrug. “I don’t really know what else to do.”

I feel him watching me for another long breath, then he sighs. “Well, think about what I said. One step at a time.”

Irritation flickers. “Okay, and maybe you could try taking, like…two steps at a time, every once in a while?”

He shoots me a look, then drops his gaze into his mug again, turning it slowly in his hands. “It’s not that easy for me either.”

“Why not?”

He sets the mug on the floor. Malarkey gives it a suspicious sniff, then licks the last few drops from the bottom. He watches her as he says, “You want to know why I’m so careful all the time? Why I work so hard and try to make everything perfect? It’s because I can’t make a mistake. I don’t get to screw up like you do. Ever.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“There’s hardly anyone else in Brume that looks like me. People that look like me don’t live in Brume. People with my last name don’t live in Brume. Do you know how much pressure that is? I represent everything that the people of Brume know about people from Pocosín. If I screw up, that’s all they’ll see. They’ll think that people like me don’t deserve to be in Brume, because we’re not good enough to be there.”

I stare at him. “Did someone tell you that?”

“They didn’t have to. When I was a kid, people just looked at me differently. If I said something smart, they looked surprised. If I did something kind, they were amazed. They would say, You’re so well-spoken! or What a polite young man! But I knew what they meant. They meant, For a kid from Pocosín. And I knew…that I would have to work twice as hard as everyone else to be taken seriously. That I would have to be careful and methodical and make sure I never screwed anything up. So that’s what I did.”

“Sargo, I—never thought of you as a…as—like that. To me, you’re just…Sargo.”

“But I’m not just Sargo, either.” His voice rises sharply and I flinch. “Sorry. That doesn’t make any sense. But I can’t just pretend like that part of me doesn’t exist. I want to feel like I fit in, but I don’t want to be erased. I don’t want people to notice that I’m different but I don’t want to lose the part of me that’s different.” He sighs. “I don’t know. It’s confusing. I don’t know anything about half of my family. I don’t even speak the language. It feels like there’s this whole part of me that’s missing. This part that no one in Brume understands. That I don’t even really understand. That I can’t talk to anyone about.”

“You could talk to me.”

“You never ask. You’re too busy with your own problems.”

His words hit me like a punch in the gut. Selfish. I’ve been reckless and selfish. Running around, screwing things up. Never even bothering to ask Sargo about his problems. I always liked him because he didn’t pry. Maybe I should have been prying.

“I’m sorry I never asked. I guess I thought it was easier not to talk about it.”

“Easier for you, maybe.”

I squirm, wishing I could disappear into the bottom of my mug. “I don’t know what to say. Except that I’m sorry and I’ll try to do better.”

He studies me with those dark, thoughtful eyes. Eyes that in the sunlight are flecked with black and gold.

“Were you really trying to buy me a new mainsail?”

I nod.

“So I could get to Pocosín?”

“Yeah.”

He shakes his head. “That was absolute lunacy, Howsley. But it was…” He smiles. “Sweet.”

My face ignites and I drop my eyes and fiddle with my mug. I feel like I just downed an entire flask of grog all at once. The knot of guilt in my stomach unties a little, but a new, different kind of knot is tying itself there instead. A nervous one.

He looks away, folding and then refolding his arms as though he can’t quite decide what to do with them. Finally, he stretches and clasps them behind his head, propping his bare foot on the wheel.

“So you’re going to stay in Alluvium?”

I blink. “What?”

“With your brother. When we get there.”

“Oh. I guess so. I hadn’t really thought about it. But…yeah. I think.” I watch his face. “Why?”

He shifts, keeping his eyes on the horizon. “I guess I thought you might come with me to Pocosín.”

My stomach sways. “Do you…want me to come with you?”

“Sure. I mean, it’s much easier to sail Panga with two people. To split up watches and stuff. Might be nice to have a first mate.”

The sway in my stomach abruptly stops. A first mate. Someone to help him crew the ship. An extra pair of hands. I choose my next words carefully, hoping the confused feelings diving around inside me don’t make their treacherous way across my face.

“I guess I thought you’d be ready to be rid of me after all this.”

He frowns. “Why would you think that?”

“I dragged you out here into my mess. I barely know how to sail. And it’s not like we were really friends in Brume. You were my teacher. You only started hanging out with me because you had to.”

A cloud crosses his face. “Is that really how you feel?”

I give an almost imperceptible shrug. The air between us feels suddenly very thick.

He sighs and sits up. “Look…I do think what you did in Brume was pretty stupid. But—” He shrugs and stands. “I’m out here. I’m doing something. And I guess I owe that partly to you. For better or worse. And if you wanted to come with me, I would be glad to have you.” He scoops his mug off the floor. “Think about it.”

Malarkey watches him swing himself down the companionway and disappear below, then heaves a dramatic sigh and flops sideways onto the floor.

The flecks of gold in his eyes seem burned into my retinas. I blink hard a few times and try to rub them away.

Just because you suddenly noticed he’s cute and has nice shoulders, doesn’t mean he feels any differently about you, I remind myself. And who even said I was feeling differently about him anyway? I mean, come on. You see the boy in a wet shirt one time and completely fall to pieces?

Get it together, Howsley.

chapter

twelve

“INCOMING!”

I look up from the half-mended fishing net in my lap and follow Sargo’s pointed finger over the starboard bow.

“Uh oh.” I grin. “You ready, Malarkey? Here they come!”

Delfines. A pod that looks to number over a hundred slicing through the water toward us, their fins cutting the surface like knives.

Since we got well south of Brume and Naze, we’ve started seeing more life on the Salt. Not much, but some. Archipelicans, delfines. This morning, while the sun was still just a milky white disc slithering over the yellow horizon, Sargo caught a fish.

The pod falls into formation around the boat, sweeping and diving under the bow, emerging on one side, then the other. One explodes through the surface, twists in a balletic arc, then slices without a splash back through the water’s edge.

Malarkey scrabbles to the bow in a raucous clatter of claws and fur and hangs her nose over the side, her tail spinning.

Sargo shakes his head. “You’re not gonna catch them, Malarkey.”

“Do you think it’s good for her to chase something she can’t catch?” I wonder aloud. “What if it makes her crazy?”

He shrugs and picks up the length of rope he’s been working with. “She’s already crazy.”

We’ve been on the Salt for seven days. The wind has been strong, frighteningly so at times, but we’re making good time. Sargo says we should be grateful for the wind—before the climate got all screwed up, sometimes you’d sit out here for days with no wind.

We’re about five hundred miles south of Brume, still hugging the coast. The dark smudge of the shore is always to our left, and the sun sets to our right every evening. Every night, we find a cove to anchor in, and every morning, we scan the horizon for pursuing sails. But we’ve seen none since leaving Brume. Neither Sargo or I have said it out loud, but I think we both secretly hope we might have dodged the Anonymity for good. Or if not for good, at least for now.

I try not to think about my moms. I try not to wonder if I’ll ever be able to return to Brume.

The days out here pass more quickly than I thought they would. Malarkey is taking to sailing better than either of us expected, and Sargo finds plenty of projects to occupy us during the long hours on the water.

This morning we both sit cross-legged and barefoot on the bow. Sargo splices a pile of rope with his hands and a knife, bending over his slate and scratching his head every few minutes, I assume reading instructions for something, which I guess must be saved somewhere on his biochip, since we’ve been Out of Range for days now.

I’m mending a fishing net with a length of twine. Sargo showed me how to tie the twine to a small wooden dowel, then pass the dowel over and under the broken strands of the net, pulling them together around the hole. It’s a meditative, repetitive task, like varnishing teak, and my mind ebbs gently with the looping of the twine, the rolling of the swell.

My thoughts wander to Shale. What will he look like after all these years? Will he have a beard? A girlfriend? A boyfriend? What kind of job does he have? How much coin? Does he still get in trouble like he used to? Is he in trouble now? What if the Anonymity—

I drop the net into my lap. I can feel my brain running away with the ship again. I close my eyes and grab at some unrelated thought.

How long has it been since you had grog?

Seven days.

So when do you think you’ll have it agai—

I toss the net aside and turn to Sargo. “What are you making?”

He holds up the pile of rope in his lap. “It’s a harness. For Malarkey. To stop her falling over the side in bad weather.” He tugs at a small loop. “This part goes over her head, and this goes around her chest.” He produces a metal shackle from his pocket and clips it onto a loop at the end of the rope. “Then you hook this onto something in the cockpit.”

“That’s amazing.”

His voice turns serious. “I’m going to make them for us too. That night we had to reef the sail, you shouldn’t have been out on the bow without a tether. It’s my fault. We should have reefed sooner when it was safer to do it. I shouldn’t have sent you out there.”

“Someone had to go. And you have to steer the boat.”

“I know, but we have to do better. I have to do better. If you went over the side—” He stops and fiddles with the harness, avoiding my eyes. “Well, it would be bad. We have to be prepared, always, for anything. Right now,” he gestures around, “sitting here in the sun, it’s easy to forget. But the Salt doesn’t take it easy, and it doesn’t care if you do.”

“Well, I think you’re doing a good job.” I hesitate. “Captain.”

The word feels awkward and he rolls his eyes, but I glimpse a small smile as he returns to his work.

The deck is warm from the sun and I roll onto my back, letting my limbs sprawl, absorbing the heat like a lizard. Malarkey comes huffing excitedly back from the bow, snorting, and sneezing and carrying on loudly enough to make sure we all know that there were delfines, and that she got ‘em. It’s not long before she’s shoving her cold, wet nose rudely into my face. She can’t seem to resist bugging me when I’m lying down.

“Gods flog-it Malarkey, haven’t you ever heard of letting sleeping dogs lie?” I swat her away and roll myself upright, wiping my face with the back of my hand.

The sun reflecting off the surface of the Salt is so bright it makes my eyes water. I screw up my eyes and squint, and a small white triangle appears on the horizon. I frown, shielding my eyes with my hand.

Is that a bird or a cloud? Or just a figment of my imagination?

No.

The realization creeps from my gut like a cold, black tide. I try to swallow it down, to shove it away. But the longer I stare at that little white blob, the harder I find it to deny what it is.

A sail.

They’ve caught us.

chapter

thirteen

“WHAT DO WE DO?”

Sargo is already swinging himself from the bow into the cockpit, shutting down the autopilot and taking the helm.

“We need to pick up speed. Trim the jib.”

I jump down after him and pick up the line that controls the headsail. Doubt flickers through me.

“Should I let it out, or sheet it in?”

“Gods, Bird!” His voice is uncharacteristically harsh. “You know this! Just look at the telltales! I don’t have time to teach you right now.”

I bite back a retort and stick my head out of the cockpit to check the three little red streamers that run along the inside of the sail. They’re sagging, so I pull on the line to sheet the sail in closer to the boat. The telltales catch the wind and lift, rippling in the breeze. Panga heels over and we pick up speed.

Sargo’s heaves on the main sheet. The muscles in his forearms pop and I sip in air and look away.

Now is not the time to be noticing his forearms, Bird. You are about to be chased down and captured by men without faces.

He looks back over the stern. The sail on the horizon behind us already looks bigger than it did when I spotted it five minutes ago. They’re gaining on us.

“It’s not going to be enough,” he says under his breath.

“How did they catch up to us? It’s been a week! They can’t have come from Brume?”

“Maybe they didn’t,” Sargo says darkly.

“What do you mean? It’s not an Anonymity ship?” My stomach flutters with hope.

“I don’t know,” he mutters, “but I’d rather not find out. Keep your eye on the jib. We need all the speed we can get.”

We trim the sails and adjust our course obsessively for the next half hour as the pursuing boat slowly closes the gap. We catch every shift in the wind, snatch every minuscule opportunity to pick up speed. My palms are raw from handling the sheets, but I’m so filled with adrenaline I barely notice. I’m sailing better than I’ve ever sailed before.

It makes no difference. Before long, the pursuing boat is so close that I can read the name printed across her hull. Valkyrie.

The ship is enormous—at least five times as long as Panga, made entirely of metal, with turrets, stacks and pilot houses all over the deck. She has no mast—instead, her three sails are like enormous parachutes that fly over the bow, tied to the deck with thick tethers and managed by the crew like kites. The boat looks like some kind of freighter, or maybe an old military warship converted to run under sail power.

Before long, the Valkyrie is so close that she towers over Panga, her gunmetal hull blocking the sun, throwing us into cold shadow. I count the crew on her deck. Five. Desperately, I turn to Sargo. Surely he has a plan, some sailing trick up his sleeve that I don’t know about. But his face is ashen. Defeated.

“You sailed well,” he says quietly.

“It’s over?! We just let them catch us?”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

No. Unacceptable. There must be a way out of this. If we can’t outrun them, then we’ll have to think of something else. Just because they caught up to us, doesn’t mean they’ve caught us. Doesn’t mean we have to go quietly. I set my face in a mask of grim determination.

“Do we have any weapons?”

Sargo scoffs. “What do you think?”

There isn’t time to bicker, so I ignore his tone and swing myself down the companionway into the galley. Hanging above the stove from a loop of leather is a long, curved knife. I take it down and examine the blade. Dull as ditchwater. Probably as useless for stabbing someone as it is for chopping veg.

It’ll have to do.

I throw open the galley drawers to look for a second knife, frantically rifling through an assortment of mismatched spoons, forks, a whisk, a ladle. Some of the stuff in here is so old I think it must have belonged to Sargo’s great-great-grandfather. I wonder if Sargo even knows what’s in these drawers.

My hand closes around a handle and I pull it out a short, slender blade. We’ve never used it; I’m not even sure what it’s for. But it’s sharp. I turn it over in my hand then hold it out in front of me, pointy end forward. I feign a couple of stabs in the air with it.

What are you doing? This is ridiculous.

I’ve never wielded a weapon before in my life. Am I really about to try and fend off the Anonymity with a kitchen utensil?

Yes. That’s exactly what you’re about to do. Because you can’t do anything else.

What did Sargo say that first night we sailed out of Brume? As the Salt, so the sailor. Well, the Salt is about to get pretty violent. So the sailors are following suit.

When I turn back to the drawer to close it, I catch a glimpse of something metallic buried under all the junk. I dig it out. It’s a flask; small, silver, with a woven pattern of knots etched into the face of it. I turn it over. The initials B.F. are clumsily scratched into the bottom. Blenny Farr. I hold the flask to my ear and shake it. Something in there.

I unscrew the lid and sniff. Stinging vapors send me reeling backward with a violent cough. Grog. No doubt about.

God knows how old this stuff is. But it’s not like grog goes bad, does it? I mean, they use it as a preservative for flog’s sake. I take a small sip. It burns my throat and starts a fire in my chest. It’s a good burn. Familiar.

I finish the flask in three big gulps and brandish the knife again, lightness and heat coming into my limbs. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel so ridiculous. It feels like a weapon. Where’s my warpaint? I’m gonna mess these mollyfloggers up.

Malarkey emerges from her spot under the bunk to see what I’m up to. I hold the knife out for her to inspect. She sniffs it once, then looks up at me.

“You ready?”

She gives me a single, slow wag of her tail.

“Good girl.”

Tossing the empty flask back into the drawer and slamming it closed with my hip, I pick up the other knife and climb back into the cockpit with Malarkey beside me. A soldier going into battle with my trusty mutt. A tipsy soldier, sure. But a soldier nonetheless.

The Valkyrie is alongside us now. The rush of water against her rusty, barnacle-covered hull is a roar.

“Here.” I hold the two knives out to Sargo. “Pick one.”

Sargo looks at me as though I’ve just emerged from the galley with a second head.

“Bird, this is crazy.”

“We don’t have time to argue. Pick one. Quickly!”

“Bird, I can’t—”

“Sargo!” I fix him with a fierce, grog-fueled stare. “As the Salt, so the sailor! Right?”

He stills. A kind of electricity jumps between us and I see something shift inside him. Wordlessly, he takes the bigger knife.

“We have the element of surprise.” I tuck the small knife into my sleeve. “They won’t be expecting us to fight back.”

The air fills with a sinister hiss—the sound of uncoiling rope. Looking up I see four heavy lines flying over the side of the Valkyrie, four pairs of boots jumping over after them.

Here we go.

Malarkey launches herself at the first intruder before he even hits the deck. He gets an unpleasant welcome as her teeth sink into his arm. With a scream that tears my throat in half, I jump after her.

The grog is like gunpowder in my limbs. I shove the man hard in the chest and he stumbles backward toward the edge of the deck. Malarkey, latched onto his arm, skids with him.

Sargo must have let go of the wheel, because Panga swerves wildly to starboard, and I realize with a jolt that the man is about to go over the side with Malarkey still attached to him. I leap after them, grabbing Malarkey around the chest and heaving. She releases her jaws as the man teeters backward, and he disappears into the Salt.

Shoving Malarkey off me, I stumble to my knees, working the little knife out of my sleeve and trying to get my bearings. A hand closes around my neck from behind. Someone yanks me to my feet and turns me around. A hideous face, embroidered with scars, fills my vision.

Without thinking, I flip the little knife out of my sleeve and press it against the side of his neck. His eyes widen with momentary surprise, then crinkle with amusement.

“You know how to use that?”

My nostrils fill with the smell of rancid milk. I push the blade harder against his throat.

“Sure do,” I lie.

His grin broadens and he leans toward me until the hairs of his beard are scratching my cheek. “Go on then.”

I glare, pushing as hard on the knife’s edge as I dare.

“You don’t have the salt,” he growls.

Panga plunges sideways again, pulling my heart and gut into opposite ends of my body. The man slips backward, his leering face twisted into a comical Oh! of surprise. At least, it would be comical if he wasn’t dragging me with him toward the edge of the deck.

His grip tightens as Panga heaves again, and we teeter at the brink, the water seething below us. I feel the inescapable pull of his weight tipping us over the edge and brace myself for the cold, hard smack of the water.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead, everything goes black.

chapter

fourteen

A WEEK AGO, a group of strangers had arrived in the Settlement.

These strangers weren’t all burnt up and stringy and crazy like the old man the little girl and her brother had found in the creek last year. These strangers were clean. So clean they smelled good. And there were a lot of them, at least five. They had come in some kind of EV. Electric vehicle. But an EV unlike any the girl had ever seen. A big, shiny thing on large, knobbly wheels that rolled over the red earth so easily it looked like it was floating.

They had come to congratulate them, the strangers said. Their settlement had been chosen to take part in Zenith’s Lottery. One family would be chosen to win. The little girl didn’t know what that meant, but her parents had gotten very excited. It was a chance, they said, a chance to get out. The girl wasn’t sure if she liked that. Out was where they sent the old man. Out wasn’t safe.

“I’m thirsty,” said the boy, and the girl realized she’d been forgetting to pay attention again.

She looked at him. “Me too. Can you make some brackish?”

On the bank of the creek, the boy produced a pot from his pack. It was the brackish pot he had made for himself the year before, with a steam trap inside the lid. He filled the pot with water from the creek while his sister set about gathering twigs and dried grass, collecting them into a little pile near the base of the tree.

“Will you show me how to make a fire?” she asked.

He squinted at her. “You’re too young.”

“I won’t touch anything. But can you explain it?”

Her brother pulled a flat piece of board about three inches square from a pocket in his pack. He set it on the ground.

“This is called the fire board. And this—” he pulled a long, skinny and very straight stick from another pocket, “is called the drill.”

He gathered the dry grass she had brought into a pile and formed a nest with it on the fire board.

“That’s your kindling. It’s the first thing to light.” He stacked the twigs and sticks around the nest like a teepee. “And that’s your tinder. It catches the flame and makes it grow. You need to make a little house for the fire with the tinder, see?”

He held the slender stick between his palms and pressed the point against the board, directly in the center of the pile of kindling, and began to spin.

“When you spin the drill against the fire board, it creates heat. When you have enough heat, the kindling will catch.”

He sawed away with his arms, spinning the tip of the drill against the fire board until a thin ribbon of smoke appeared. Sweat beaded along his brow and the girl wiped it away for him with her sleeve.

“Blow,” he said.

She dropped to her knees, placing her face close to the kindling, and blew a soft, steady stream of air into it. She had to keep it up for several minutes, pausing to inhale and then blowing again, gently, carefully. Spots were dancing in front of her eyes and her head was spinning when suddenly, with a soft whoomp, the kindling lit and they had a flame.

The boy carefully fed the single flame until it became two, then three, then grabbed the pot and placed it over the fire. Then they waited. As the toxic creek water began to boil, the steam rose into the lid, where it turned back into condensation and ran down into the steam trap, drip by drip.

After about ten minutes the boy removed the pot from the stand and looked inside. He took off the lid and dumped what was left in the bottom of the pot back into the creek. Then he produced two small cups from his pack, handed one to the girl, and poured the water that had collected in the lid into each cup.

They sat and sipped. The water was too hot to drink, certainly not refreshing in the baking sun, and there wasn’t enough of it. When they finished, the girl handed her cup back to the boy, and he put it away in the pack.

“Do they make brackish in the city?” the girl asked.

Her brother shook his head. “No. They drink fogwater. They harvest it out of the sky.”

She scrunched her face. “Water from the sky?”

“All water comes from the sky.”

“I’ve never seen water come from the sky.”

“Well, yeah. It doesn’t here.”

The girl stared at the creek for a long time. “If we win, does that mean we go to the city?”

He nodded. “It’s gonna be amazing. There’s gonna be electric bikes and boats and fresh, clean water. We’re gonna get chipped.”

“We have to win first.”

“Of course we’ll win. They only want one family, and they want a family with kids. We’re the only kids in the Settlement.”

“What about Fife?”

Her brother paused. In all his excitement had he forgotten about Fife? The girl wrinkled her nose. She hadn’t forgotten.

“She can come later,” the boy said. “They said they do the Lottery every year. I bet it comes here again soon.”

But he was quiet for a long time after that, and the girl knew he was thinking deeply.

chapter

fifteen

“THIS IS CALLED THE FIRE BOARD…”

I wake with a gasp.

“...and this is called the drill.”

The dream is evaporating faster than I can remember it. A girl and her brother, boiling water.

Something cold and wet touches the back of my neck, and I nearly jump out of my skin. Malarkey’s nose. The dream is gone.

I hear a couple of slow thumps as Malarkey’s wagging tail beats against something. I open one eye. Something beside me stirs; a rustle of clothes in the dark. A groan.

Half of my face is against a cold metal floor. My arms are twisted painfully behind me, my wrists tied together. I can’t make out anything but shades of light and dark. The walls around me creak. The floor tilts gently one way and then the other.

I sit up, fending off Malarkey’s tongue, crane my neck, and squint around. Moonlight lances through a single small window high in the opposite wall, strafing hard orange lines across a stack of crates on the floor beside me. I make out Sargo’s profile, slumped against the crates, his chin on his chest.

“Sargo. Can you hear me?”

“Mmh.”

“Are you okay?”

“Mm-mm.”

“Can you move?”

His head lifts slightly and he groans. “Mm-mm.”

“Can you speak?”

“Did we get in a fight?” His voice is hoarse.

“I think so.”

“How’d we do?”

“Not great.”

His head drops again. Curling my knees to my chest with my hands still tied behind me, I get my legs under me and struggle to my feet. The floor tilts sideways and I catch myself with my shoulder against the wall.

In front of me is a thick, metal door with a small, round window at eye-level, large rivets around the edge, and no handle. I peer through the window.

A set of metal stairs with open rises leads from about five feet in front of the door, up over my head. I peer between the steps. We’re on a boat. The metal deck, slick with water, throws up orange glints in the reddish moonlight. There’s nothing charming about this boat—no hand-laid teak or lovingly polished stainless steel. Everything about it is functional, utilitarian, ugly.

We must be aboard the Valkyrie. So they caught us. Why don’t I remember being brought aboard this ship?

I hear Sargo struggle to his feet. He leans against the wall next to me and puts his face to the window. We watch a couple of crew members wrestling with the thick lines that control the boat’s bizarre parachute sails.

“Sargo,” I murmur, “how did we get here?”

“You don’t remember?”

Things are coming back to me. I remember a leering face and rancid breath. But I have no memory of being brought to this boat.

Sargo squeezes his eyes shut and tilts his head from side to side, as though the act of remembering physically hurts him.

“A big guy who cornered me. Malarkey went after one of them. And then I saw you—” His eyes go wide in the moonlight and he looks straight at me. “I saw you go over the side.”

Icy horror shoots up my spine. I did go over the side. I remember now—the churning water, the grip of the man, pulling me toward the edge, tipping, tipping, and then…nothing. A blip. A gap in the tape.

The guy who had me must have regained his footing and knocked me out. Or maybe we fell back onto the boat and I hit my head.

“I think I almost did go over the side. One of them had me. Panga went sideways and he lost his footing. I thought he was taking me down with him for sure.”

“So what happened?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I can’t—I can’t remember.”

All I remember is blackness and then the dream: a boy and a girl, and hard, red earth.

He’s staring at me with a funny look on his face. “I saw you go over. I saw you…disappear.”

“I guess…I didn’t? I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You really don’t remember?”

I shake my head.

He tilts his head from side to side again, wincing. “That big guy hit me with a bag of something.”

The ceiling shudders with heavy footsteps, and a pair of stout boots appears on the top step above my head. They scuff their way slowly to the bottom, then turn in my direction.

I pull away from the door and drop to the floor.

The door opens with a series of clicks, and a shaft of orange moonlight falls across my face. Malarkey’s cannon-fire bark fills the room, and I sense her massive frame launching through space at the opening. There’s a gruff curse, a dull thud, a yelp, and I hear her claws skittering back toward me.

“They’re awake,” says a thin, high-pitched voice. “What do you wanna do with them?”

I squint at the doorway. The man standing in it is barely as tall as I am sitting down, and appears to be all chest and shoulders. Moonlight from behind him gleams off his bald head, rendering him in silhouette. I can’t make out his face.

There’s a muffled reply that I don’t catch, and then a second figure appears over his shoulder, a wiry skeleton, silver coils of hair like a halo around her head, illuminated from behind by the moon.

“Get the captain,” she croaks.

Another creak, the door clicking closed, then the sound of retreating footsteps. Malarkey whimpers. I inch myself over to her, my hands still bound behind me.

“I’m sorry Lark. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

Sargo grunts and I hear him shifting to sit against the wall. “I don’t think this is an Anonymity ship,” he says under his breath. “Those weren’t Anonymity members.”

“How do you know?”

“The Anonymity hack their biochips with malware to hide their faces. Remember? Those two,” he nods after the retreating footsteps, “I saw both their faces.”

“I couldn’t see anything. The moon was so bright.”

“I only caught a glimpse. But I definitely saw their faces. They weren’t hiding.”

“So who are they?”

Sargo takes a deep breath and exhales through his nose. “Dead Reckoners.”

“Dead Reckoners? The people who were supposed to be living out at Île Tor? Didn’t they all die in the pandemic?”

“They looked pretty alive to me.”

“What do they want with us?”

“Could be anything. Our boat, coin, food. Maybe they think they can ransom us, or sell—”

Footsteps outside. The door swings open again and a hulking form fills the doorway, blocking the moon entirely. Pants crusty with salt, a stiff coat restraining a bosom like a pair of boulders in a sack. She squats, bringing her hard black eyes level with mine. She doesn’t bother with a mask or bandana; against her weathered gray skin, her lips are a gleaming black bloodstain in the red moonlight.

“Miss Howsley,” she growls.

My blood freezes. “H—ow do you know who I am?”

Her lips twist into a grin that’s more like a snarl. “I know all about you, Miss Howsley.”

I detect the trace of an accent—a softness around the ‘how’ that makes ‘Howsley’ sound more like ‘Hosely.’

“Well, not all about you, I suppose. I didn’t expect you to put up such a fight.” She glares at Malarkey. Malarkey growls. She turns to Sargo. “Mr. Paz, I presume?”

I feel Sargo trembling against my shoulder. “Yes.”

She leers. “Well, that’s grand. Two for the price of one. And with a boat thrown in to boot.” She leans toward Sargo and lowers her voice. “She is a beauty. Yours, I presume?”

Sargo nods, tight-lipped. The captain pats his cheek.

“Good lad. And you, Miss. I imagine you’re...first mate?”

I nod, tensely.

Her expression slackens into one of derision. “Cute.”

She grabs my face in her beefy hand and turns it from side to side, looking at my squashed features down her wide, crooked nose.

“Who are you?” I grunt through fish lips.

“That’s not information you need to have, sweetheart.”

“Why did you chase down our ship?”

She curls a lip. “Business.”

“What kind of business?”

“You could call it freelancing.”

“What does that mean?”

Still squeezing my face in her meaty paw, she pulls me toward her and leans her own face close to me. “It means we work for whoever’s payin’, and today, someone’s payin’ big for you two.”

“Mercenaries,” mutters Sargo.

“If you like.”

“Who’s paying?” I demand.

She lets go of me and stands. “I’m afraid that information is on a need-to-know basis.” She wipes her hand on her coat as though I might have contaminated it. “No hard feelings. Like I said, it’s just business. You understand.”

She turns. As she does, Malarkey, perhaps sensing an easy target, goes for her backside. But the captain hears the approach and counters, slugging Malarkey across the face with the back of her forearm, then kicking her in the ribs as she staggers sideways. Malarkey yelps and I scramble to her as the captain walks away, her boots like a draft horse on the slick black deck.

“Where are you taking us?” I yell.

“All in good time, Missy.” She waves a hand over her shoulder without turning around. “Close 'em up!”

The door slams shut, plunging us back into darkness. I get to my knees, my heart racing.

“They’re gonna take us to the Anonymity.” I shuffle blindly to the wall and use it to push myself to my feet. “They’re going to sell us back to the Anonymity!”

“Bird,” Sargo hisses, “calm down!”

“Calm down?! We need to get off this boat!”

“How do you plan to do that? We’re completely outnumbered! They have weapons.”

I don’t really register Sargo’s voice, as I’m too busy flinging myself at the door, which opens so suddenly I almost fall through it. A wiry pair of hands catch by the shoulders. An old woman’s face, so black it’s almost blue in the moonlight, razor-sharp, and etched with deep, angry lines, glares into mine. I recognize the halo of silver curls around her head: the skeleton who stood behind the little bald man when he first opened our cell.

“Keep it down, Turf Rat,” she says quietly.

“Why don’t you make me?” I spit back.

The cold sting of a blade is suddenly against my throat. She grins a nasty grin full of metal teeth as she leans on the point just hard enough to hurt me.

“Careful what you wish for, Turf Rat,” she whispers. “I just might.”

She pulls away the blade and shoves me back into the room. I glimpse her silver-toothed grin once more before the door slams shut.

“Bird, please try to think,” says Sargo as I slide down the wall and sit next to him. “I don’t think we’re barging our way out of this one.”

I hang my pounding head between my knees. My shoulders ache. My wrists, still tied behind me, are raw.

“Okay,” I mumble. “So what’s the plan?”

“I think we should wait. Observe the crew. Think. We might see an opportunity.”

It’s not what I want to hear. Sitting around doing nothing is not my preferred way of handling things. But at the moment I can’t come up with anything better. I tap my foot on the floor and try to roll the stiffness out of my shoulders.

“Fine. But you’re on first watch.”

I turn my back and lie down as best I can, wedging myself between the wall and the crates. I hear Sargo get to his feet again and lean his shoulder against the wall by the window.

____________________

“Sails! Off the starboard stern!”

A muffled yell from somewhere above pulls me out of a shallow sleep. I open my eyes to the dim cell, now awash with the gray light of dawn. The ceiling above me shudders with the pounding of footsteps.

“All hands!” someone yells on the other side of the door.

“What’s going on?” I hiss.

“I don’t know.” Sargo is peering through the window. “It sounds like they’re trying to gain speed.”

As he says this, the room lurches. A thunderous clap that sounds like one of the ship’s massive parachute sails launching shakes the walls around us.

“It’s Savage!” comes another hoarse shout from the deck.

We lurch sideways again with a gut-wrenching crunch. I hear Malarkey’s claws skittering sideways across the floor.

“Flogging Molly!” grunts Sargo, “I think we’ve been hit!”

Scrambling to my feet, I brace my shoulder against the wall and press my face to the window.

“They’re boarding us!” comes another cry from above, but a chorus of angry hollers drowns out the last word. The sound of pounding feet multiplies, and pairs of boots begin spilling down the staircase onto the deck.

The air fills with the sizzle of uncoiling ropes and shadowy figures drop onto the deck as if from the sky. The air becomes so filled with shouting and the clang of metal on metal that I can barely make myself heard as I turn to Sargo.

“I think I see an opportunity!"

In the corner of the room is a crate with a crooked nail sticking out of one side, the end of it sharp where a hammer must have chipped off the head. I drop to my knees and begin sawing the rope around my wrists against the point. Sweat is beading along my hairline and running down my spine when the rope finally snaps. My hands come loose with a sudden jolt, and I pull the nail from the crate to cut Sargo loose.

He peers through the tiny window, rubbing his wrists. “And what’s your plan for getting through this commercial-grade walk-in refrigerator door?”

“So salty,” I mutter, shoving him out of the way with my shoulder so I can look through it too.

Crusty men and women are slashing at each other with knives, cleavers and clubs as the cold, yellowish light of dawn creeps over the smoggy horizon. I count maybe twelve, total. It's impossible to tell who is part of the Valkyrie's crew, and who is part of the crew that just boarded her.

“I’m not being salty,” say Sargo, “I’m being logical. There’s no way we’re getting through this—”

I take as much of a run at the door as the tiny room will allow and launch myself at it, landing heavily on my shoulder.

Sargo winces. “Jesus, Bird!”

“It moved! I felt it move.” I tilt my eyebrow at him. “And since when do you say Jesus? Mr. Polytheistic revolution.”

“Since the situation started to call for it,” he snaps back. “And that door definitely didn’t move. There’s no way that door moved. What are you, like a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet?”

“I’m a hundred and ten pounds bone dry thank you very much. Come on, help me!”

“Can we just stop and think? I’m sure there’s a better—”

“Don’t think, just do!” I launch myself at the door again.

“Bird! You’re not going to barge your way out of this! Please, just—”

Something in my shoulder torques painfully as I land against the door. I blow a frizz of hair out of my sweaty face and lean against the wall, rubbing it.

“Fine. What’s your plan?”

“I don’t have one yet.”

He presses his face to the window again and I restrain a frustrated sigh. Typical Sargo. Doesn’t want to go along with my plan, but never has an idea of his own. I let myself slide to a seat against the wall. My shoulder throbs. Outside, the brawl continues. Minutes pass.

As they do, the sounds of the fight diminish. The shouts become less frequent. I make out the sounds of individual blows. I hear someone give an order to Drop your weapon!

Can it possibly be over so quickly?

I start to pull myself to my feet, but Sargo drops to a knee next to me, pushing me down with a hand on my shoulder.

“Someone’s coming,” he says.

“What?”

“Someone is coming!”

chapter

sixteen

I THROW myself onto the floor in the shadows with my back against the door as the clip-clop of boots on the metal deck approaches. The sound changes as the boots climb the stairs over my head. They clip-clop across the ceiling toward where I assume the ship’s helm is, then back and forth for a few moments.

“All clear,” a girl’s voice shouts. “Let’s get to work.”

Sargo and I sit motionless with our backs to the door as the boots clop down the stairs again and away toward the bow. As they retreat, I feel Sargo slowly unfold himself and get to his feet. Keeping to the shadows, he leans a shoulder against the wall and looks through the window again. I push myself up and lean against the opposite wall, doing the same.

The girl walking away toward the bow is short and well-muscled, with dark brown skin and what looks like a buzzcut. The first rays of the rising sun behind her render enough to see that she wears cargo pants and boots, and has a small pack slung around her hips. She walks purposefully, toward a congregation of people at midship, about twenty feet from us.

The group is lit from behind, so it’s difficult to make out much detail, but I spot two shapes I recognize: the very short bald man and the old woman with the curly silver hair who came to our cell last night. A third person—a lanky fellow with a shock of frizzy ginger hair lit like a fireball by the sun behind him—casually holds a long-handled ax across one shoulder and stands with one foot propped up on something.

“Prisoners up,” barks the girl with the buzzcut. The lanky figure removes his foot from the lump and I realize with a jolt that the lump is a person. Three other lumps stumble to their feet beside the first.

“Where’s Stark?” barks the girl.

The hulking form and enormous bosoms of the captain who interrogated us last night is shoved into view by a man so large I do a double take. His arms are almost as big around as the bald man’s tiny chest. A shock of short, black hair sticks straight up from the center of his head, like a mohawk.

He pushes the captain to her knees in front of the row of prisoners, where she slumps with her head hanging.

“And Savage?” the girl says.

Silence. The big man clasps his hands in front of him and stands over the captain with his feet wide apart, like a soldier.

“Where is Savage?” repeats the girl, irritation edging her voice.

“Right here.”

A man’s treble cuts through the still air, and a figure who looks to be about Sargo’s height and build hops nimbly over the Valkyrie’s rail. I squint, trying to make out either a face or a blank void, but he’s lit from behind, and all I can see is shadows.

The man I assume is Savage lands lightly on the deck and pushes shaggy, unkempt hair from his face. He dips one hand into the pocket of what looks like a peacoat. He withdraws something small and slender and lifts it to his lips, then tips his head back and exhales a plume of thick, white smoke into the morning.

“Is this all of them?” He has an accent I can’t place—a kind of twangy drawl. The Black girl with the buzzcut steps forward and nods once, tightly. “Okay, thank you, Fetch. Dismissed.”

The girl doesn’t move. She looks like she might be about to say something, then abruptly pivots and stalks to the other side of the deck. Savage saunters away from the rail toward the group, pulling the collar of his peacoat up around his jaw.

“Mojave Stark,” he says, drawing level with the kneeling captain and putting the dart to his lips again. “Didn’t think we’d run into each other so soon.”

The boulder-bosomed captain drags her gaze up from the floor to meet his. “Jameson Briggs-Savage.” Her voice is thick, as though she’s working the words around blood and broken teeth.

“This is quite the situation you’ve found yourself in,” says Savage.

Stark abruptly turns her face down and spits at his feet. Savage tuts and lifts one foot to inspect his boot.

“Mind your manners, Stark.” He shoves the toe of the boot into her chest. She topples sideways, bracing her fall with bound hands.

Savage puts a hand into his other pocket and withdraws another item. He flips it over in one hand and a flash of metal reveals the item to be a butterfly knife. He spins it deftly around in his fingers a few times so that it opens and closes, catching the sun, making soft, sinister snicks in the still morning air.

“Quite the situation,” he repeats. He stops the knife so suddenly my heart skips, holding it with the point toward Stark. “Find yourself a little shorthanded last night?”

“Go to hell,” says Stark.

“I’m sure I will,” says Savage. “And I’d be very surprised if I didn’t see you there.” He flips the knife end over end, a lazy, hypnotic motion. “But I suppose I do owe you an apology. I’m sure it was an unpleasant shock to discover last night that Sterling and Nana here were, in fact, never really part of your crew.”

The tiny bald man utters a high-pitched, raspy chuckle and the old Black woman with the mane of wiry gray curls sneers and flourishes her cleaver.

Stark wipes her chin with her two bound hands. “No skin off my hide. What do I want with a bald midget and a toothless old hag?”

The old woman steps away from the prisoner she’s guarding with frightening speed and shoves the point of her cleaver hard against Stark’s cheek.

“Call him midget again.”

“Alright, Nana.” Savage holds up a hand. “We need her alive, at least for now.”

The old woman doesn’t move right away, leaning on the blade until Stark flinches, then drops it with a snarl and returns to her post.

“So, Stark,” Savage continues, flipping the knife over in his hand as he speaks, “what’s the angle with that little yellow boat you’ve got rafted up alongside?”

Next to me, Sargo catches his breath. Panga. They have Panga.

“None of your business,” says Stark.

Savage shakes his head. “I thought you might say that. But that’s where you’re wrong, Stark. I’m afraid it is my business, because, you see—”

He flips the blade again, catching it by the point, then drops to his haunches in front of her. He raps the handle of the knife against the side of her head.

“What’s happened here is, we’ve commandeered your ship. Commandeered it with the intention of taking anything and everything that isn’t nailed down, I’m afraid. And that may include that lovely yellow boat. But before we take it, we’d like a little more information. We’d like to know what we’re potentially getting ourselves into, vis-a-vis, kidnapping situations and the like."

Stark glares at him, silent.

Savage raps the handle of the knife against her head again. "I recommend cooperating," he sings. "For the sake of your men here. It's going to make things very difficult for them if you don't."

“I’m not telling you a damn thing,” says Stark.

Savage sighs and gets to his feet. “I was afraid you’d say that.” He rubs something off the blade of the knife with his thumb. “That’s what I’ve never understood about you, Stark. You’ve no consideration for the lives of your own crew.”

He lunges, grabs the prisoner standing nearest him by the back of the neck, and uppercuts the knife into the man’s jaw.

The man retches, and his eyes bulge as Savage pulls the blade back out, a thick, strangled gurgle and a slick of black liquid following it. The man collapses onto the deck, burbling incoherently.

My stomach heaves. I reel away from the window, my hand over my mouth, and come up hard against the wall behind me. Sargo stands frozen, staring through the window, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“That’s one,” I hear Savage say.

Swallowing the tide of cold panic crawling up my throat, I force myself to look back through the window. The big man with the mohawk scoops up the convulsing body in his thick arms and dumps it unceremoniously over the side. Savage produces a bandana from the inside breast pocket of his coat and wipes the man’s blood from the blade and his hand.

“Fetch!” The girl with the buzzcut steps forward. “Shake this place down. If there were souls on that boat, I want to know about them.”

“There were.” The old woman—Nana—points with her cleaver. “They’re right over there.”

She’s pointing directly at the door I’m standing behind. My blood runs cold. She knows exactly where we are. She put us in here last night while she and the little bald man were pretending to be part of Stark’s crew.

Fetch nods once and pivots, beckoning the lanky redhead after her. I pull away from the window, finding Sargo’s terrified eyes in the dim light. Wordlessly, we both sink to the floor. I realize my hand is still covering my mouth and pull it away.

Malarkey walks an agitated circle between us, her nails clicking against the cold metal floor, until I grab her around the neck and force her into a sit, holding her still between my knees. I realize she’s shaking, and then I realize that it’s not her shaking, it’s me.

Savage is saying something outside, but I can’t seem to hear anything over the sound of my ragged breath and the clip-clop of those boots walking the deck toward us. Another glug turns my stomach, and the muted thud of a body dropping to the deck tells me a second man has died. Stark curses.

The clip-clop of the boots draws nearer.

Savage says something and Stark curses again. Another glug, another thud. The sound of my breath creates an off-kilter rhythm with the beat of the approaching steps and the pounding of my heart, until I’m no longer sure which sounds are coming from outside my body, and which are coming from within.

The boots draw nearer. Nearer. They pause outside the door. Malarkey snarls.

The door opens so fast that even Malarkey is caught off guard. Instead of lunging and barking, she jumps and scurries for the back corner as the buzzcut girl and the redhead crash into the room.

I scrabble backwards on my hands, but the girl is already on top of me. She’s shorter than me, but her hands are hard and strong, and up close I can feel the solidity of the muscle packed around her tiny frame. She pulls me to my feet and shoves me through the door ahead of her. I look back for Sargo, but she grabs the side of my face with her whole palm and forces it forward.

The door slams behind me. Malarkey barks her head off behind it as I stumble on numb legs toward the group. Stark is still on her knees, the big man with the mohawk is dumping another body over the side, and Stark’s only remaining living crew member is shaking so hard I can see it from fifteen feet away. The old woman leans against the rail with her wiry arms folded, the leg-sized cleaver hanging from her hip, a silver-toothed sneer painted across her face.

Savage is wiping off the blade of the knife. He looks up at the sound of our approaching steps. “Ah, that’s a shame,” he says, a pained expression briefly crossing his face. “So it is a kidnapping situation.”

Stifled sobbing reaches my ears, and as I draw level with the group I realize it’s coming from Stark’s remaining crew member. He’s just a boy, probably younger than me. Gangly, pale-skinned, with big feet and hands and a face pockmarked with acne. Savage finishes cleaning off the blade while he looks me up and down with sharp, gray eyes.

A tangle of blonde hair falls around his chin, and a scraggle of scruffy beard, flecked with salt and pepper, covers his jaw. Under the peacoat, he’s wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. The word HOLD is tattooed across the knuckles of the hand that holds the knife.

Sargo stumbles to a halt beside me, his arms pinned to his sides by the lanky redhead, whose skin is so white it’s almost translucent, and spattered with constellations of freckles. His wild mane of ginger hair is matched by an equally impressive beard, and he wears an olive-green army jacket and pants. A long-handled ax hangs from a black canvas strap at his hip.

Savage’s eyes take Sargo in, then return to the knife. I glimpse the word FAST tattooed across the knuckles of his other hand.

“Welcome to the party, my friends.” His eyes flick back to my face, and I find myself caught off guard by how handsome he is. Beautiful in the way a wolf is beautiful, right before it tears your face off. He returns his attention to the knife, wiping more blood from the blade and says, casually, “How much of that did you hear?”

“Nothing,” I blurt.

He smirks, shaking his head, and for a fraction of a second, I see something almost like pity flit through his eyes. Or maybe I just imagine that I see it. Maybe I’m just so desperate not to be stabbed in the jaw and thrown over the side that I convince myself I see sympathy in those gray, wolfish eyes.

“They heard it all,” says Fetch from behind me.

Savage tuts. “That’s a shame.”

He swaps the knife into his other hand and tucks the bandana into his back pocket before turning his attention back to the captain kneeling on the deck.

“So, Stark,” he says, “what was the plan here? Hm? Take that beautiful yellow boat from these nice young folks and sell it to the highest bidder?” He waves the point of the knife at me and Sargo. “Maybe sell these nice young folks to the highest bidder too, while you’re at it?”

Stark hisses through her teeth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well then, by all means, enlighten me, Stark!” Savage’s voice tips into impatience. “I’ve given you ample opportunity and incentive to explain to me what the hell is going on here.”

Stark doesn’t respond. Why doesn’t she respond? Why not just tell him she was hired by the Anonymity to track us down? Why not just tell him she’s taking us back to Brume? Why let him kill three of her crew?

Savage sighs and flips the knife over a few times. Then he crosses to the boy, the only member of Stark’s crew left standing, and throws an arm around his shoulder. He waves the knife casually under the boy’s nose as he leans on him the way a friend might lean on another friend to share a piece of advice. The boy whimpers. I find myself staring at the blade, transfixed.

Savage lowers his voice. “I suppose you can’t tell me what it is your lowlife scum-of-the-earth captain is up to here, can you?”

The boy stifles a sob and shakes his head. Savage draws a deep breath and lets it go very slowly. He stops the blade again, holding the knife loosely in his hand. He, the boy, and I all stare at it.

“And you’re sure about that, are you?”

“I don’t—I don’t kn—know any—” the boy chokes down a gulp of air, “anything.”

Savage nods, slowly, then pats the boy on the shoulder. “Okay.” He pulls away, releasing his grip. “That’s not your fault.” He steps away and I see the boy visibly crumple with relief. “Fetch!”

The grip around my arms releases and Fetch steps around me.

“See to him,” Savage says.

The boy’s face goes white with terror. Fetch pulls a crooked knife half as long as my arm from a sheath strapped across her chest. She levels it at the boy. She’s at least a head shorter than him, but he withers in front of that tiny ball of muscle, the shaved head, the hard, black eyes.

“Move,” she says quietly, and flicks the knife to the right.

The big man with the mohawk steps out of the shadows. The impulse to run and the impulse to freeze fight for space in my limbs as he bears down on me. But as he draws nearer, both impulses are replaced by stupefied surprise as I realize that he isn’t a man at all.

She’s a woman—a young woman, probably in her early twenties. The muscles in her arms and chest coil like ropes under a thin tank top riddled with holes. Nearly every inch of her is covered in intricate tattoos that weave and knot across her alabaster skin. Her wide jaw and heavy brows are set in an expression of malcontent. She carries no weapon. She’s the only person on the deck who doesn’t. She’s so awesome—and I mean literally awesome—that by the time I realize I’m staring and haven’t even tried to escape, her hands are around my arms, and I’m captive again.

A splash to my right whips my head around. The boy is gone. Fetch slips the knife back into the sheath across her chest and stalks back toward us. I widen my eyes at Sargo, who shakes his head almost imperceptibly. Did the boy jump? Did she kill him and throw him overboard?

Savage steps in front of me. “Well, Stark, since it looks like I won’t be getting anything useful out of you or any of your crew regarding these fine young folks and their little yellow boat, I suppose there’s not much point in wasting your time any longer.”

He flips the knife closed and tucks it into his pocket, and tilts his head at the redhead. The redhead and the woman with the mohawk haul Stark to her feet.

“God dammit, Savage!” Stark screams as they drag her away. “One day you’re going to be sorry you did this.”

“All you had to do was cooperate, Stark,” Savage calls after her. He tucks both hands in his coat pockets and turns to us, his eyes landing on mine. “All you have to do is cooperate.”

Suddenly, Sargo’s hand is around my wrist. He pulls me sideways and steps in front of me, his familiar scent washing over me, disorienting in this nightmare.

Peering around him, I see amusement turning up the corners of Savage’s mouth. He removes the dart from his pocket again and puts it to his lips. His eyes don’t leave mine until he tips his chin up to exhale a thick plume of fruity smoke.

“No need to fight over who goes first,” he says to the sky. “There’ll be plenty of time to kill you both.”

chapter

seventeen

SAVAGE JERKS his chin at Nana and a moment later I feel the iron grip of her bony fingers around my arms. Flanked by Fetch and Nana, we follow Savage back toward our cell.

Nana chuckles and deliberately steps on my heels all the way across the deck. She leans on the point of the limb-sized cleaver she has between my shoulders.

“I call this the Rat Catcher,” she wheezes into my ear. “Wanna find out why, Turf Rat?”

As we reach the steps that lead above the cell door, I hear Malarkey scratching and whining on the other side of it. To my surprise, Savage doesn’t return us to the cell. Instead, we climb the stairs.

The upper level is enclosed by a solid steel pilot house with a large window in the front. Savage ducks through a door in the side of it, and we follow him into a sparsely furnished, utilitarian cockpit.

I’ve gathered that this isn’t Savage’s boat, but he seems to know his way around it—he reaches over his head without looking to tug on a small light in the ceiling.

The light is harsh, and I squeeze my eyes shut against it. When I open them, Savage has sprawled in the captain’s chair, crossing his feet on the corner of the navigation console. His boots are the kind with steel toes and laces; scuffed, and flecked with salt.

Nana releases my arm and retreats to lean against the wall near the filing cabinet. Her wide, calloused toes spread firmly onto the floor like roots. Like someone used to being on the Salt. Someone used to standing on unstable floors that tilt and roll and try to knock you down. She props her blade against her leg, then pulls a sliver of a knife from the breast pocket of a ratty silk cardigan, and begins to pick her teeth with it.

“Do you have to do that in here?”

Fetch, arms folded, stands wide-legged across the open doorway. She’s close enough now that I can take in the array of small, silver hoops that adorn both of her ears. A similar hoop pierces one nostril. As she turns her head I make out a tiny tattoo on her shaved scalp, just above her ear—the number 4242. So small it’s almost invisible.

The door is still open. But would I stand a chance of getting through it? Past her?

Savage drags on the dart again and surveys us with mild curiosity, apparently in no hurry to speak. When he tilts his chin and exhales, I see a gap in his mouth where his left canine should be. The tips of the thumb and first two fingers on his right hand—the hand with FAST tattooed across the knuckles—are black and shiny. I can’t place his age. Thirty, maybe?

Nana’s tiny knife nicking softly against her teeth is the only sound in the room. The silence buzzes against the edges of my fraying nerves.

“What do you want with us?” I finally blurt, my voice too loud. Why haven’t you killed us yet? is what I mean to ask.

Savage drags on his dart again. His eyes flick to Sargo. “That’s your little yellow boat rafted up out there.”

It isn’t a question. Smoke pours lazily from his mouth and curls around his face as his speaks.

“It is,” says Sargo carefully.

“Cute,” drawls Fetch.

Savage looks over my shoulder at her. “Fetch, I’m sure Sterling needs a hand cataloguing the score we’re taking from the Valkyrie. Would you be so kind?”

Fetch tenses and fixes her steely glare on him. “Why can’t I stay?”

Silence descends. I stand in the middle of it, trembling in the heat of Fetch and Savage’s mutual glares.

From the wall by the filing cabinet, Nana leers. “Go on, girl. Git.”

“I don’t take orders from you, Nana,” growls Fetch.

Savage waves a hand. “Nana, why don’t you get out of here, too. See if Red and Goliath have finished with Stark.”

Finished with her? Finished what?

“Maybe she’ll have an eyeball left for you to extract.”

My stomach wobbles and I have the overwhelming urge to sit down.

Nana twists her mouth and grumbles, snatching up the cleaver and laying it across her bony shoulder as she skulks out the door.

Fetch doesn’t move. She and Savage glare at each other. Then, with a sharp exhale, she pivots and stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Savage removes the butterfly knife from his pocket again and swivels it open, casually. “I need to make a brief imposition on your time, my friends,” he says, “in the form of some questions.”

Friends. I clench my trembling hands into fists. If he’s going to kill us, I wish he’d get on with it already.

He flips the knife. “You may have gotten the gist outside, but the long and short of it is, I can’t for the life of me figure out why Mojave Stark might have taken an interest in a small, underfunded boat, such as yours.”

That’s why he hasn’t killed us. The realization hits me like cold water to the face. He’s trying to figure out what we’re worth. There would be no obvious reason for a boat like the Valkyrie to chase down a tiny sloop like Panga. We don’t look wealthy. We don’t have expensive equipment or cargo, and Panga herself isn’t worth much. There would have to be another reason. Something to make it worth Stark’s while. That’s what he’s trying to figure out.

And as long as he thinks we’re worth something, we might be worth keeping alive.

This is an opportunity.

With Stark out of the picture, we can stay clear of the Anonymity. And as long as Savage thinks we’re valuable, he won’t kill us. But how can I make him think we’re valuable without telling him why?

I meet Savage’s gaze again, stalling for time while my brain climbs around inside my skull. “I—I don’t know what she wanted. We were…we were just sailing. She came out of nowhere.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Just sailing.”

I nod.

“And may I ask where a boat of your size, carrying such an…unlikely crew, might be just sailing to?”

Sargo’s voice behind my shoulder is unnaturally hard. “None of your business.”

“Now look!” Savage stabs the point of the knife into the arm of his chair with an abruptness that makes me jump. “I’m doing my best to be patient here. But my patience will wear thin very quickly if I don’t see at least a modicum of cooperation from the two of you.” His eyes flick back to me as he takes another drag on the dart, leaving the knife sticking out of the chair. “Why don’t we start with some names?”

I say the first name that comes into my head that isn’t mine. “Electra—Nation.”

Savage cocks his head. “Nation?”

My pulse ticks up as I realize what I’ve just done. I’ve just told this murderous Reckoner that I’m the daughter of the CEO of Zenith. Even out here on the Salt, five hundred miles from Brume, people know what that means. The daughter of Axioma Nation, one of the most powerful women in the world.

Congratulations, Howsley. You just made yourself worth something.

“Yes,” I say, my brain scrambling to catch up with my mouth. “Electra Nation. This is—” I stumble over a list of possible aliases for Sargo; something that won’t be tied to the Anonymity. “Pitch Starkey.”

The name of the first boy I ever kissed. Not sure why that popped into my head.

Savage regards me quietly. “And what, exactly, is the daughter of the CEO of Zenith doing out here ‘just sailing’ in the middle of the Salt?”

“I was…” My mind spins, pulling disparate threads together into some kind of story that might sound convincing. “We were running away. Pitch and I are…in love. But he’s—my family doesn’t approve.”

Savage turns mildly amused eyes to Sargo. “In love?”

I force myself not to look at Sargo, but every nerve in my body silently screams at him to play along. I feel as though I’m walking an extremely narrow ledge, struggling not to look down. Electra doesn’t look anything like me—she looks like someone whose family came from Zhīliú, not like a little white girl from Brume—but apparently Savage doesn’t know that.

“Yes,” says Sargo. “Yes, we’re in love.”

The sound of those words is so oddly exhilarating that I almost forget why he’s saying them. And that they aren’t true. I fight back the heat rushing to my cheeks and force myself to focus on Savage.

“Your family must be worried about you,” his drawl is dripping with amusement as he turns his attention back to me, “if they were desperate enough to hire someone as unscrupulous as Mojave Stark to find you.”

“Yes.”

“And I imagine she was to take you back to—Brume, is it?”

I hesitate. “Yes, but…we were trying to get to Alluvium. I have a brother there. If you…if you let us go—”

“Let you go?” Savage’s eyes dance. “I don’t think I’ll be doing that. Not when your family in Brume will be so grateful to see you returned safely. You’ve found your way to a particularly dangerous part of the world, my friend. I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer my services."

"Services?"

"Mojave Stark may be the lowliest Reckoner I’ve ever met in these waters, but she’s certainly not the only Reckoner. I wouldn’t want to leave you at the mercy of any other unscrupulous types.”

“So they are Reckoners.”

Savage inclines his head. “As am I.”

“Pirates,” mutters Sargo.

Savage’s lips twitch. “We prefer freelancers. But yes, if you like. Pirates who know these waters far better than you do, my friend. I’m willing to bet you don’t know about any of the bad weather hideouts in these waters. What would happen if you sailed into a storm?”

“We’ve been in a storm,” says Sargo.

“I mean a real storm.” Savage drags on the dart again. “No, my friends, I’m afraid this part of the world is far too unsafe for me to even think about sending you off on your own. Not if I’m to continue calling myself an upstanding member of society—which I would dearly love to do.”

Upstanding. The murdered man’s bulging eyes flash through my head. I try not to let the image panic me; try to think. Savage just wants coin. He wants a reward. If I can’t convince him to let us go, can I at least convince him not to take us back to Brume? Can I buy us enough time to figure out a way to escape?

I take a breath. “Please—just…not Brume. Take us to my brother. In Alluvium. He’ll pay.”

Smoke curls from Savage’s nostrils. I watch him calculating. “Alluvium’s a long way from here. Your brother would have to make it worth my time.”

“He will,” I lie, breathless. “Whatever you want. I swear.” I’m digging a hole I have no idea how to get out of, but at least we’re alive.

Savage regards me a moment longer, then leans forward and pulls the knife out of the arm of his chair.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he says. “My crew and I will escort you to Alluvium, where you will explain to your brother that we—an upstanding crew of fine women and gentlemen—rescued you from a gang of murderous pirates. Your brother will be so overwhelmed with gratitude that he will pay me—” he waves the knife, “—seventy five thousand Ubicoin. There will be no further inquiry into who we are, and no attempt will be made to contact Mojave Stark or the Valkyrie. You will not mention what you witnessed this morning, nor will you mention my name, the name of anyone on my crew, or anything you might happen to see between here and Alluvium.”

“What about our boat?” says Sargo.

His eyes narrow. “The boat you can keep.”

I fight to keep the air from leaving me all at once. He uncrosses his boots, stands, and extends the hand with FAST tattooed across the knuckles. Cautiously, I take it. His palms are rough with callouses, his grip firm. His eyes hold mine with an intensity that makes me want to look away, and I can feel myself turning red.

“Fetch can help you get your boat back in the water,” he says. “Then you'll follow us south to Alluvium."

I keep my face from showing my surprise. Follow us? He’s sending us back to Panga now? He’s practically handing us a chance to escape. Either he’s stupider than he looks, or I’m missing something here.

He drags on the dart and fills the room with sweet, fruity smoke. “And it should be obvious that if you do anything that tests my generosity,” the blade flashes as he spins it closed, “there will be swift renegotiation of terms.”

He indicates the door with the knife, and I take it that the conversation is over.

chapter

eighteen

“THAT WAS PRETTY QUICK THINKING, HOWSLEY,” Sargo says under his breath, as Fetch and Nana march us down the steps from the pilot house to the Valkyrie’s main deck. “But what the hell are we going to do when we get to Alluvium and you don’t have a rich, grateful brother to bail us out?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper back. “I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

Fetch helps Sargo and I loose Panga from where she is tied up alongside the Valkyrie. We retrieve Malarkey from the cell and leave the metal warship to board our little yellow sloop.

As my feet touch the familiar planks of her deck, I almost collapse with relief. My hands shake so hard that I can barely ready the lines to set sail. From Panga’s cockpit, we watch Savage and his crew depart the Valkyrie in a skiff and board their boat, the Kingfisher, an enormous, navy blue sailboat.

“You read me?”

Fetch’s terse voice buzzes into the radio channel inside my head. At Savage’s request, we've tuned our chips to an open radio frequency, like we used to do in sailing class, so the Kingfisher can communicate with us. I press my fingers to the spot behind my left ear.

“I read you.”

“Copy that.”

She buzzes out.

“She’s chipped,” says Sargo.

“What?”

“Fetch. She’s chipped. From what I always heard, Reckoners aren’t, or weren’t. Zenith never had the resources to chip anyone outside Harbor Cities.”

I furrow my brow back at him. “Is that something we should be worried about?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s just…weird.”

We raise Panga’s sails and take stock of the deck, then follow the Kingfisher into open water. As the wind fills the sails and the familiar tilt and roll of the swell begins to gently rock us, exhaustion overwhelms me. I sink to a seat in the cockpit and Sargo collapses behind the helm.

We sit like that for several minutes, until I find enough of my voice to croak, “The first chance we get, we run, right?”

Sargo whips his head up to stare at me. “Run?” His eyes are incredulous. “No way.”

“What do you mean? They let us come back to our ship. They practically handed us a chance to escape!”

He sighs, rubbing his face with one hand. “We can’t escape, Bird. We can't outrun ships like that. We’re not big enough, we’re not fast enough. You think they would have just let us come back to Panga if they thought we stood a chance of outrunning them? They know we can’t get away.”

“So we just do what they say? We’re not actually letting these guys take us to Alluvium, are we?”

“I don’t think we have a choice.” He adjusts his grip around the helm, putting his gaze over the bow. “Look, Savage is obviously dangerous and I feel like he talks a lot of shit, but something he said in there stuck with me. We are in dangerous waters. If the Valkyrie chased us down that easily, I’ve got to think there will be more ships out there that can. The Anonymity. Other mercenaries. People who might not be as willing as Savage to cut a deal with us. And what he said about the storms…what we’ve seen so far is nothing. If we get caught in something big, I don’t know if we could handle it. My chip won’t even pull up a map out here, what about yours?”

I open my mouth to argue, but he goes on.

“Why do you think they call these guys Dead Reckoners?”

I blink. Actually, I have no idea why they call them that.

Sargo sighs at the blank look on my face. “Because that’s how they navigate. Dead reckoning. Did you really learn nothing from my class? The Net doesn’t work out here. Chips are basically just radios. Most Reckoners don’t even have them. There’s no GPS. They use math, and the stars, and landmarks along the coast to estimate their position. It’s ancient stuff. Stuff we aren’t prepared to handle on our own. And if we hit weather—I mean real weather—we’re as good as dead. If someone goes overboard in bad weather, forget it. They’re gone. They would never find you.”

I gape at him. “So you want to put your faith in a bunch of pirates? Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me to think before I act?”

“I am thinking. I’m thinking that without this Savage guy, we might not make it to Alluvium.”

“He murdered people in front of us!”

“I know Bird! I was there.” His chest rises and falls. “We just need to feel this out. Keep a low profile and wait for an opportunity. Observe.”

“What the hell are we going to do when we get to Alluvium and he finds out I’m not Electra?”

“I don’t know, Bird. That was your brilliant plan.”

Hot fury slashes through my veins. “I didn’t see you coming up with anything in there.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It was quick thinking. I just…” He shakes his head again. We lapse back into silence, him staring at the Kingfisher, me staring at the floor.

The morning meanders into afternoon, hot and still as we follow the Kingfisher along the coast. Sargo puts on the autopilot and staggers below to sleep, and even though my bones ache with exhaustion and my frazzled nerves are hanging by a thread, I let him sleep and I take watch, because his face is hollow and his hands are shaking and I can’t stand to see him like that.

I’ve been on watch for an hour or so when Fetch buzzes into my ear again.

“Some nasty-looking storm clouds coming up behind us.”

There’s an edge of urgency to her voice that makes me sit up out of my drowsy half-sleep. I glance over my shoulder. Black thunderheads rise out of the horizon like a dark, ominous city. I hadn’t even noticed them.

I touch behind my ear to radio back. “What do we do?”

“There’s a cove not far from here that we’ve used as a storm hole before. It’s well-protected. We can make it there before the worst of the weather hits.”

“Okay.”

“We’re tacking that way now. Close your hatches. It’s gonna get rough.”

The clouds skate over the horizon so fast that by the time I’ve woken up Sargo, they threaten to swallow our stern. A warm wind surges through the air, carrying with it a choking, yellow cloud of particulate. A smog storm. I pull my bandana up to keep the burn of sulphur out of my nose and squint through my lashes as grit and dust sting my eyes.

Sargo pulls his own bandana on and takes the helm. “Do you see the cliffs?”

“Not yet.”

He reaches down with one hand to flip open the top of one of the cockpit’s bench seats and pulls out Malarkey’s half-finished harness “Put this on Malarkey.” He hands me another length of line. “And put this around your waist. Tie it to something in the cockpit. It’s not a proper harness, but it’ll be better than nothing.”

Before we know it, the storm is on us. The Salt rolls like a bag full of jackrats. Waves rise like mountains around us, so tall that the tops disappear into hazy, swirling dust. They climb, dwarfing tiny Panga, and then crest, their ridges shattering, white water tumbling down their faces like landslides. Hot wind lashes my face, kicking up sheets of spray.

Sargo, his face half covered by a gray bandana, is almost a silhouette against the rapidly darkening sky. He cranks the wheel to port as we crest another wave, then fights to keep the bow pointing forward as we careen down it. I lean out to check the sails. Despite the lashing wind and rolling waves, they’re holding fast.

“Don’t panic!” Sargo screams over the wind. “This is what the boat was built for!”

As we come to the crest of another wave, a gust of wind rips across the surface of the Salt, parting the smog like curtains. In that brief moment of clarity, I spot the cliffs.

“There!” I yell, taking one hand off my handhold to point. “There they are!”

As I let go, the bow tips forward. It crashes into the face of the wave, and my other hand slips. I lose hold of the boat completely and my blood runs cold as I feel Panga drop away beneath me. I’m floating in space, no part of my body making contact with the deck.

Time slows. The sound of the wind seems to quiet. Inside my head, I hear Sargo’s voice.

“If someone goes overboard in bad weather, forget it. They’re gone.”

Another gust of wind whips the curtain of smog away and for a second, the full expanse of the Salt flashes before my eyes. It’s enormous; bottomless. An endless plane of pitching black water. How long could I survive in there? How long until someone found me?

They would never find you.

The line around my waist yanks taught, jarring me back to reality. I have a tether. I’m attached to the boat. I’m not going over the side. The world goes upside down as I slam back onto the deck. We’re plummeting down the face of the wave, carving a rooster tail into the wall of water behind us.

I manage to grab the rail as a sheet of water crashes over the bow and cascades down the deck toward me. I don’t have time to catch my breath; all I can do is close my eyes and turn my head as the water hits me like a brick wall.

“Bird!” Sargo’s voice gurgles to me from somewhere, muffled, faint.

I emerge, gasping and choking.

“Howsley!” Sargo’s voice again, clear now. “Get up, Howsley!”

My limbs move automatically, one numb hand finding a handhold, one foot gaining traction on the deck. I push myself upright and propel myself toward his voice. Blindly, I tumble back into the cockpit and land on my side, gasping.

“Are you okay?” Sargo yells. I wave a shaking hand at him, nodding, unable to speak. “Good, because I need you to get back out there and guide us into this cove!”

“What?! Are you serious?”

“As the Salt, so the sailor,” he yells, and shrugs.

My ears are ringing, my nose and eyes stinging with salt water. My head, hips, and shoulders ache from being clobbered against the deck. My hands are shaking so badly I can’t imagine using them for anything useful ever again. But there isn’t time to recuperate.

As the Salt, so the sailor.

It takes everything I have to step back out of the cockpit onto that slick, deadly deck again. I check my tether and cling to the rail with both hands, the boat bucking below me like an animal. The entrance to the cove is frighteningly narrow and snaggletooth rocks jut from the waves.

“Come to port!” I scream, throwing my arm to the left. We narrowly miss a jagged rock shooting up out of the water. “Now to starboard!”

The gap between the cliffs is so slender that for one terrifying moment, it looks like we’re going to wreck. I grip my tether and close my eyes as we careen toward it.

Sargo must have turned us in the nick of time, because I feel Panga swerve to port, and suddenly the world goes still. The quiet is so abrupt it takes my breath away. I open my eyes.

We’re surrounded on all sides by sheer, towering cliffs. The water is flat and the air is calm. The only gaps in the rock are the nook at the entrance behind us, and, high above my head, a small circle of stormy sky. In the center of the bay, the Kingfisher sits serenely, her anchor already set.

Holy shit, we almost just died.

Fetch’s voice crackles into my ear. “You made it.”

I touch behind my with a trembling hand. “Yeah.”

“Get your anchor set. The captain wants to see you. Ten minutes.”

Ten minutes? I slump to a seat in the cockpit, my ears ringing. All I want is to get out of these soaking wet clothes and crawl into bed for three days. What could Savage possibly want?

“Savage wants us to come aboard,” I croak. Sargo’s face is white and he’s staring straight ahead with his hands still around the wheel and doesn’t appear to have heard me. “Sargo?”

He blinks. “What?”

“Let’s set the anchor. Savage wants to see us.”

“What do you think he wants?”

“I don’t know.”

He takes a deep breath. “Okay.” A note of calm creeps into his voice and the fist around my heart unclenches a little. He sits up. “Okay.”

“Maybe we should arm ourselves. Take those knives?”

“You mean the knives Mojave Stark’s crew took when they captured us?” He shakes his head. “Savage probably has those now. Besides, it’s not like they did us much good last time. I think it’s better to keep our heads down and play along. Savage made it pretty clear what would happen if we tested his generosity.”

I shiver, wrapping my arms around my soaking torso.

“I think there are some dry clothes below,” he says quietly.

I almost reply that it’s not the cold or wet making me shiver. But the look on his face tells me he already knows that.

I find the clothes stuffed in a locker below deck while Sargo drops the anchor. They’re Sargo’s clothes, and I hesitate before putting them on. It feels intimate. But they’re dry, and I don’t have much choice but to wear them unless I want to sit around damp and shivering all night.

I dry myself as best I can with a dish towel from the galley, then pull the clothes on slowly, my breath catching at the overwhelming scent of Sargo in them. My face flushes and my heart beats a little fast as I knot the button-down shirt around my waist and roll the sleeves up, then cuff the ankles of the pants until I can walk without dragging them on the deck.

When I climb back up into the cockpit, Sargo’s eyebrows lift. “Suits you.”

I roll my eyes.

His gaze drifts to the few inches of bare skin exposed above the waistband of his pants hanging too low on my hips. I feel his eyes stick there, watch them follow the curve of my hip like he’s forgotten I’m watching.

“Keep it in your pants, Paz,” I snap.

His eyes shoot up. My voice came out more angry than I meant it to, but before I can say anything he whips around and heads for the bow. I watch him go, the heat of his gaze still warming my skin. Like it was his hands on me, not his eyes.

I shouldn’t have said that. I was flustered. Now he thinks I’m mad that I caught him looking, when actually…I kind of liked it. As we silently lift the skiff off the bow and drop it into the water, Sargo seems to be very busy finding lots of places to put his eyes that are obviously nowhere near me.

Malarkey, who was curled in her hiding spot under the bunk, ventures up to the deck as we climb over Panga’s rail and into the skiff.

I ruffle her ears. “Not this time, Lark. These guys are bad news. If we get murdered it’s one thing, but if they got you, I’d never forgive myself.”

Her forlorn face tracks us all the way across the bay as we motor the skiff over to the Kingfisher. Above our heads, the sky still shakes with thunder. We pull up alongside and tie off to a cleat on the stern.

The Kingfisher is big, sleek and expensive-looking, with two headsails and a gleaming navy blue hull. The kind of yacht that super-wealthy people used to take on vacation, back when people still did that kind of thing. Stolen, would be my guess. Lifted from some charter company in the Med when their economy tanked during the pandemic. A lot of boats went missing around that time. A lot of blood was shed.

My stomach knots with sudden trepidation.

What are you doing here, Howsley?

chapter

nineteen

AS I PULL myself over the transom and onto the deck, Fetch steps out of the cockpit. Her knife is still strapped across her chest.

“Good evening,” she says.

Sargo steps up and puts himself slightly in front of me. “Good evening.”

Fetch motions for us to follow her, and disappears down the companionway.

Below deck, the Kingfisher’s rich upholstery, expensive wood, and careful attention to detail betray a fading luxury. Despite being worn-in and obviously used for piracy, the boat is big and beautiful. Compared to Panga’s single cabin, dimly lit by portholes and so low that Sargo’s head brushes the ceiling, the Kingfisher’s opulence is difficult to comprehend.

Fetch crosses the cabin and leads us down a short set of stairs to a hallway that I assume houses the crew’s quarters. Panga has just one bunk—the tiny, triangular one in the very front of the bow, where Sargo and I take turns sleeping. This boat has at least six.

We follow Fetch to the end of the corridor and enter a long, narrow galley with a single metal table and benches stretching the length of it. Compared to Panga’s nook, which is barely big enough for one person to stand in, it feels enormous.

Something hot and spicy wafts through a pair of swinging doors at the far end of the table. Fetch motions for us to sit.

I don’t move. “What’s this about?”

“About?” Fetch gives me a withering look. “It’s about dinner, Alluvium.” She folds her arms with a look of extreme displeasure. “Not my idea. Captain’s orders. Sit.”

Dinner? This morning we watched Savage efficiently and violently dispatch the Valkyrie’s entire crew. Now he’s feeding us? Is he planning to poison us?

No, that wouldn’t make sense. Savage wants his coin. It’s in his best interest to get us to Alluvium. But dinner?

Fetch disappears through the swinging doors as I sit at the end of the table. Sargo squeezes in next to me, sitting so close that his shoulder and thigh brush mine. The heat of him against me makes me warm all over.

He leans in and murmurs, “Just trying to keep up the illusion.”

“What?”

“We’re supposed to be in love, remember?”

My stomach swoops. Jesus, I forgot I said that. I nod, and the heat under my skin blazes as he slides his hand around my waist.

“Is this okay?”

My heart is beating at about a thousand miles an hour. “Yep.”

He pulls me closer and I let myself lean into him, feeling the strength of his chest against my shoulder. He takes a deep breath, and I find myself taking one with him. We exhale together and the anxiety inside me seems to evaporate. For just a moment, I feel really, really good.

“Your hair smells nice,” he says, quietly.

My heart trips. “What?”

“Is that weird?”

“It’s full of salt and I haven’t washed it in, like, days, so…yes?”

“Mm.” I feel him shrug against me. “Well I like it.”

Fetch stalks back into the room and eyes us with disgust. I start to sit up, but Sargo’s grip tightens around my waist. He pulls me against him again and I track Fetch across the room with my eyes.

“What do you think the angle is here?” he mutters. “Feeding us.”

“I think Savage is afraid of the Nations. He didn’t want us to mention anything we saw this morning. I bet Zenith could make his life pretty miserable. He’s probably trying to butter us up. Make sure we have only good things to say about our saviors.”

Sargo squeezes my hip and I blush all over again. “We keep a low profile, okay? Don’t give them any reason to be suspicious. We’ll have time to come up with a plan later.”

The doors at the end of the table swing open and I jump. Sargo releases his hand from around my waist, clearing his throat, and we both sit up. I hide my flushed nervousness by dipping my head to fix my hair.

Nana staggers through the doors backward, barely upright under the weight of the enormous, steaming pot she’s carrying. Sweat beads on her forehead. Her gray coils are piled high and secured with a handkerchief, wisps escaping at her temples and the nape of her neck.

She sets the pot in the center of the table, shoots us a surly look and slinks back through the doors without a word.

Fetch turns to the wall behind her, where a large copper bell hangs, green with rust. She gives the fraying rope tied to the clapper a single, decisive tug. The bell’s harsh clang has barely subsided when the rest of the crew falls in.

There are fewer of them than I expected. Savage, I notice, is conspicuously absent. It’s just the redhead, the tattooed woman with the mohawk, the tiny bald man, and a skinny boy with deep brown skin and a head of tightly coiled black hair. He looks to be no more than seven, and flashes me and Sargo a gap-toothed grin as he squeezes himself onto the bench between us. I hide my disappointment as the warmth of Sargo’s shoulder is pried away from mine.

Nana shoulders her way back through the doors, her arms now laden with three baskets of crusty bread rolls and a bag of apples. She slings the baskets of bread around the table and sets the bag of fruit on the floor in the corner.

Fetch sits opposite me, wordlessly sliding a couple of small metal bowls across the table. As I reach for one, Nana sits at the opposite end of the table, glaring at me. She mutters something to the tattooed woman and I hesitate.

Fetch follows my gaze. “Ignore her. She’s a crotchety old woman with an ax to grind. Eyes to yourself, Nana!” She stands and dips her bowl into the pot in the center of the table, filling it to the brim with thick, dark green soup. I spot chunks of meat and white potatoes, and my mouth begins to water.

“It’th nopal,” squeaks the little boy beside me.

I jump and look down at him. “What?”

“The thoup. It’th nopal. Thopa de nopal.” Without waiting for me to respond, he sticks out a small hand. “I’m Fid.”

“Uh, Electra.” I shake his hand, surprised at both the strength of his grip and the delicate feel of his tiny bones. “What’s nopal?”

“It’s cactus,” interjects Fetch. “In Pocosín they call it ‘nopal’.”

“Did you come from Pocosín?” asks Sargo, reaching to dip his own bowl into the soup.

Fid pushes a basket of bread rolls in front of me with, and as I reach for one, Sargo says, “Are those bolillos?” He reaches into the basket and pulls out a roll.

“Yup!” says Fid.

Sargo’s eyes flick to mine, and for the first time in over a week, he smiles. “Mama Marlin used to make these.”

“Nana got the rethipe when she wath in Pocothín,” says Fid.

“Fid…” says Fetch. “We don’t share our business outside the crew.”

“Oh. Right.” Fid’s brow furrows and he turns his attention back to his stew.

Savage steps through the swinging doors, a massive brown jug in each hand. “Drinks?”

He produces two mugs from inside his coat and hands them to Sargo and me. I take mine with numb hands and Savage decants amber liquid into it with a flourish. He passes one jug to Fetch and the other to Sargo, who serve themselves and pass the jugs along.

“Friends,” Savage raises his glass and the room falls silent, “and honored guests,” he tilts his mug in my direction, “I’ll keep this brief.”

Nana and the woman with the mohawk jeer. Fetch, stuffing a chunk of bread into her mouth and pointedly not looking at him, rolls her eyes. Savage holds up a hand for silence.

“Congratulations on another job well done. Sterling has been kind enough to do the math and divide the Valkyrie’s haul for us.”

He tilts his mug toward the short, bespectacled bald man, who smiles as the rest of the crew raise their mugs to him.

“You’ll each be entitled to your share when we make port,” continues Savage. “Incidentally, as I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, our next port of call will be Alluvium Bay, where we will deliver our esteemed new friend here into the arms of her waiting—and very grateful—family.”

At the far end of the table, Nana and the woman with the mohawk are muttering. Savage waits for them to quiet before continuing.

“I expect everyone here to be on their best behavior and show our guest the utmost courtesy and respect. I shouldn’t need to remind you all how incredibly valuable her company is.”

Soft snickers from Nana’s end of the table.

“For now,” Savage continues, “eat. Drink. Get to know our new friends. We’ll be spending a considerable amount of time together in the coming days.”

A chorus of cheers quickly dissolves into a rumble of talk, which dims to a low murmur as everyone digs into their food.

I examine what’s in my mug. It’s not grog, but it smells vaguely boozy. When I sip, it’s mild, bubbly, and slightly bitter. The anxious knot of fear in the center of my chest loosens just a hair. I may not be able to trust any of the people at this table, but I can at least depend on the contents of this mug.

Savage makes his way around the outside of the room, claps the redhead on the shoulder, then sits, crossing his feet on the corner of the table. He tilts his ear toward Nana as she mutters something to him, then throws his head back and barks a rich, musical laugh.

Sargo indicates the tattooed young woman with the mohawk at the other end of the table. “Who’s she?”

“That’th Goliath,” I hear Fid say. “And it’th they, not she.”

Savage drains his mug and produces a flask from his inside pocket. I watch him unscrew it, and it’s as if everything else in the room has been shut behind glass.

“They’re from the north,” Fid is saying, somewhere behind the glass. “Or eatht. Or….northeatht.”

Savage swigs from the flask and I drop my eyes as his gaze lands on mine. When I look up, he’s watching me, and as our eyes meet, he lifts one eyebrow. I stare at him for a long moment, my face growing warm under that wolfish, dangerous gaze. Then he tilts the flask in my direction, and winks.

“How long have you been on the Kingfisher?” I hear Sargo ask.

I scan the table, trying to gauge whose mug is empty and whose is full. There are seven of us, not including Fid. If we all had one so far, how many jugs is that? One? Half of one?

“A while,” I hear Fetch say.

What if it’s all gone? What if there’s none left? Am I allowed to have more? Should I wait for Fetch to have more first?

“Where were you before this?” Sargo asks.

Fetch sticks the last bite of soup-soaked bread into her mouth, wiping her fingers on her shirt, and chews in silence.

Just reach pour yourself another one. You’re an esteemed guest. You can do whatever you want.

A shiny red apple comes flying at my head. I barely register its trajectory in time to pull myself out of my mental calculations and catch it. Goliath stands at the other end of the table, holding the fruit bag and chuckling.

Sargo presses Fetch again. “How often do you go down to Pocosín?”

Fetch picks up her mug, still chewing, looks into the bottom of it as she swirls around the dregs, then tips her head back and downs the last gulp. She wipes her mouth and turns to Sargo, stone-faced.

“Look. The captain obviously didn’t tell you this, so I will: we don’t ask those kinds of questions around here. We don’t want to get mixed up in your business, and we sure as Salt don’t want you mixed up in ours. This isn’t a sleepover. It’s a transaction. As far as I’m concerned, you’re cargo.” She stands. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of sleep to catch up on. Red will show you out when you’re ready to leave. ‘Night Fid—try to keep your damn mouth shut around the guests please?”

Her boots clop briskly out the way we came in.

“‘Night!” Fid calls after her.

Next to me, Sargo stands. “Where’s the head?” he asks.

“End of the corridor outside,” says Sterling, gesturing over his shoulder. “Back the way you came.”

Sargo squeezes behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders. He stoops close to my ear and says, “I’ll be right back.”

My pulse quickens. “Where are you going?”

“Just using the bathroom.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

I glance around the table. Surely these people won’t just let Sargo walk out of the room right now? Unguarded? Are they really so unconcerned about us getting away? Isn’t someone going to stop him? Jump him? Stab him?

But nobody even looks up as Sargo steps around me and out of the room. I watch him go, breathing in slowly, and out carefully.

Nothing’s going to happen. They want you alive. You’re the daughter of a rich asshole, being escorted to Alluvium, not a panicked little nobody who’s been kidnapped by pirates. So think: what would the daughter of a rich asshole do in this situation?

My eye falls on the brown jug in the middle of the table.

Have another drink to settle her nerves?

I call out to the redhead. “Excuse me?”

“He can’t hear you.” Fid sets his bowl down, waves his arm over his head to catch the redhead’s attention, then makes some swift, complicated gestures to him.

“Red Bread ith deaf,” he explains.

“Sorry—did you say Red Bread?”

“Yup.”

“Not…Red Beard?”

“When Red joined, none of uth thpoke Thign. He had to write hith name down for uth. Turnth out he’th not a great thpeller. We never let him live it down.”

“So it’s a typo?” I frown. “How does he feel about having a typo for a name?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Sterling interrupts, a little tersely. “He’s sitting right there.”

I can feel my ears going red. “Oh, I don’t…speak Sign…”

Sterling scoffs and shakes his head, turning back to his food. The room has fallen quiet, and I look around, realizing everyone is watching me. I shrink against the wall, pick up my mug, and duck my face low over it.

Sargo steps back through the door and squeezes behind me to sit on the other side of Fid. His eyes fall on the mug in my hand.

“How many is that?” he says in an overly casual voice..

“Excuse me? Is that really what you’re worried about right now?”

“I didn’t mean—never mind.” He picks up his own mug and begins to turn away, but I catch his elbow, irritation flickering in my chest.

“Never mind what?”

“Nothing!” He leans toward me, his voice hushed. “Just—now is not a great time to be getting drunk, is it?”

I stare at him. “I’m not getting drunk.”

“Okay. Drinking, then.”

“Of all the situations where having a drink to settle your nerves is perfectly understandable, I think kidnapped by pirates is near the top of the list.”

“Come on,” he whispers, “just…you know how you get.”

“How do I get?”

I can hear myself speaking too loudly, feel heat rising in my cheeks. Glancing down, I notice Fid watching us. I drop my voice.

“I don’t need you to tell me when it is and when it is not a good time to do something.”

“Okay. Sorry. Just drop it.”

“Why don’t you drop it?”

Sargo opens his mouth, then pauses, glancing at Fid. “Can we take this outside?”

I wordlessly sweep my arm toward the door.

“Lovers’ spat?” Nana sneers as I follow Sargo out of the room.

The hallway outside is dark and cool. I press the backs of my hands to my cheeks. Away from the low din of voices, the rumble of wind and thunder creep back into my ears. Sargo walks halfway along the corridor, then leans against the starboard wall, his arms folded.

I lean against the opposite wall and glare at him in the dark “Well?”

He glances over his shoulder, and then says under his breath, “I followed Fetch.”

“You what?” My voice rises and I glance over my shoulder too. That was not what I expected him to say at all.

“When she went to bed, I followed her. Just to…I don’t know, get some more information.”

I gape at him in the dark. “You followed her?” My mind spins. “What if she had caught you?”

“She didn’t.”

“What happened to keeping a low profile? You’re getting on me about having too many drinks and meanwhile you’re off tailing murderers?! What if Savage had seen you?”

“He didn’t.”

“You don’t think he’d consider sneaking around his ship in the middle of the night testing his generosity?”

“Bird—”

“Electra! I’m Electra, remember?”

“Okay, sorry, Electra—”

“And we’re supposed to be…you know—together.” My face flushes and I’m glad he can’t see it in the dark. “How are we going to convince anyone we’re in love if you abandon me in a room full of murderers at the drop of the hat? We need them to think we are who we say we are until we get to Alluvium.”

His voice edges above a whisper. “And then what? When we get to Alluvium, then what?”

“I don’t know! I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

He scoffs. “Yeah, exactly.”

“That’s not fair. I saved our lives.”

“No, you saved your life.” He eyes me in the dark. “Your deal with Savage? The one where you’re the daughter of the world’s most powerful woman? Who am I in that again? Oh that’s right: nobody. I’m just your boyfriend. The brown kid your family doesn’t approve of. A prop.”

My mouth drops open. The brown kid your family doesn’t approve of? “That’s not what I meant when I said that.”

“Well what did you mean?”

“I don’t know! I was panicking. I wasn’t—”

“You weren’t thinking.” His voice is hard. “Right. Well whatever you meant, it doesn’t do me a lot of good, does it? I’m expendable. Did you notice nobody even batted an eye when I just got up and walked out of the room? They don’t care about me. You’re the valuable one. What incentive does Savage have to keep me alive?”

“I’ll—I’ll make him keep you alive.”

“Sure.” He shakes his head. “I need to look out for myself.”

“Where is this coming from? An hour ago we agreed to keep a low profile, and now you’re following an armed Reckoner around a boat you don’t know, in the dark, alone?” I lower my voice. “We need to look out for ourselves! We can come up with something. We just need to keep our heads down and wait for an opportunity, like you said.”

He laughs a short, bitter laugh. “So now you want to wait for an opportunity? For once in your life you want to stop and think? Where was that level-headedness a week ago in Brume?”

Fury sparks in my chest. “What about you? Suddenly you’re a risk taker? Where was that attitude when you were in Brume? Mr. One Step At a Time. You said we should keep a low profile. You said we should observe. Now you're sneaking around after murderers? Doing recon? Why? What happened? Did you get tired of being the kind of person who sits on a dock fixing shit for years and years and never makes a move? Did you get tired of being the person who never has a plan or anything to contribute—”

“Alright, enough!” His fist comes down sharply on the wall behind him.

A shadow falls across the square of light spilling from the galley door and Goliath steps into the doorway. They fold their arms and lean against the door frame, and before I've even clocked that the reason they are standing there is to keep an eye on us—that our raised voices must have made them suspicious—Sargo closes the gap between us, pinning me to the wall with his chest and bracketing me with his forearms. His scent floods my nose and my breath goes still.

"What are you doing?"

He puts his lips against my ear. "Pretending to kiss you. We're making them suspicious.”

A bolt of electricity shoots down my spine. I look at the door out of the corner of my eye. Goliath's massive frame still leans against the frame, and though they are just a silhouette in the shadows, I'm sure they are watching.

“Well…” I whisper, “I don't think they're buying it. Maybe you should—”

He pulls back to look at me in the near dark and his eyes narrow. The small space between us goes irresistibly taut. "Maybe I should what?"

Maybe you should kiss me for real.

In the corner of my eye, Goliath's silhouette straightens and moves out of the doorway. A sliver of light returns to the corridor.

Neither Sargo nor I move. Our eyes are still locked. His chest still pins me to the wall and his breath seems as short as mine; I can feel it on my lips. Feel his chest rising and falling against mine. For a moment, the world narrows to the few buzzing inches between us. I imagine him tilting his head, touching his lips to mine. Imagine him pinning my wrists, pressing his warm, hard body against me, crushing me, smothering me with that intoxicating smell of sand and sweat and salt. Imagine the sound of our breath as he tugs up my shirt and slips his hands underneath. Imagine his teeth on my neck, his hands on my breasts, on my hips, fumbling with my pants, lower…

His eyes bounce between mine. He swallows and steps back. "I'm going back to Panga.”

“What?”

"You can find your own way back."

The heat inside me winks out. “You’re leaving me here?”

He has his back to me, walking away. “Why don’t you have another drink? If you get into trouble, you can always come up with another shortsighted plan to save your own ass.”

The simmering, furious heat of the grog returns to my chest, rises into my face, boils over, and brims onto my lashes. Asshole.

“Great idea!” I spit after him. “Why don’t you go back to Panga and keep a low profile? Maybe six years from now, you’ll have a plan too!”

He waves a frustrated hand over his shoulder as he rounds the corner and disappears. I claw a breath back into me and drag my hands across my eyes. Something about watching him storm off like this feels familiar. Naze. He stormed off just like this in Naze. Last time, I went groveling after him because I was scared of Malarkey.

Not this time.

He’s right. I am valuable to the crew of the Kingfisher. And as long as I am, there’s no reason to be afraid of them. And as long as I’m not afraid of them, I’d rather go back in there and have another drink than deal with with whatever…that was.

I turn on my heel to stride back to the galley, but the sight of Goliath’s imposing form stepping back into the doorway stops me short.

Am I really going back into the roomful of murderers just to spite Sargo?

No, you’re going back into the roomful of murderers just to have another drink.

Goliath steps aside as I stalk through the door. The rest of the crew have gone, except for Red Bread, who lies along a bench with his hands behind his head. Goliath seats themself wordlessly at the far end of the table and Red lifts his booted feet and crosses them in their lap.

“Mind if I sit?”

If Goliath is surprised by my request, they don’t show it. They gesture wordlessly to the empty bench opposite them. I sit and indicate the jug in the middle of the table. Red Bread raises one hand above the edge of the table and signs to me.

“He says is empty,” Goliath rumbles. Their voice is deep and thickly accented. “You want a drink?”

Their question seems less like a friendly offer and more like disinterested obligation. Like a Zenith peace officer asking if you need help with directions. Probably Goliath’s attempt at best behavior.

“Sure,” I say, carefully.

They reach into the front of their coat, produce a small silver flask, and hand it over without looking at me.

“Thanks.”

I unscrew the cap and a blast of fumes rakes the inside of my nose. The smell is so overpowering, and so eye-wateringly familiar that I actually laugh out loud—a laugh that dissolves into a fit of coughing.

“It’s grog!” I choke, waving the flask.

Goliath looks completely unmoved by my revelation.

“Grog?” I repeat, pointing to the flask.

They shake their head. “Is hooch.”

“Nah.” I frown and sniff the open neck. “This is grog.”

“Hooch!” Goliath’s hand comes down sharply on the table.

“Whoa, okay.” I hold out the flask and they snatch it back. “It’s hooch.” Red Bread sits up and signs something to me. I stare at him helplessly. “I’m sorry. I guess I don’t speak either of your languages.”

He sighs and lies back on the bench. Crossing his boots in Goliath’s lap again, he signs something to them. The flicker of a smile crosses Goliath’s hard face.

“Your boyfriend leave.”

He’s not my boyfriend, I almost say. I grit my teeth. “Yeah.”

“He don’t worry about you? Leave you here?” Their eyes are faintly amused.

I hesitate. “What about you? You’re not worried about him? What if he escapes?”

Goliath snorts and signs to Red, who chuckles. “He won’t.”

One mostly silent hour later, I find myself staggering out of the galley. I’ve learned how to sign hooch, boat, and rain. Red Bread was far more amenable to teaching me his language—apart from the comment about Sargo leaving, Goliath said next to nothing.

Goliath is tucking the empty flask into their back pocket, so I suppose we must have finished the grog. Red Bread slips his hand into the back of Goliath’s waistband and the two of them stumble together down the hallway toward the crew’s quarters.

“You sleep in the galley,” Goliath slurs over their shoulder as they disappear through one of the doors.

Sleep in the kitchen? I rub my already aching head and vaguely remember that Sargo left in the skiff.

How are you supposed to get back now, Genius?

The question is too difficult for my sloshy brain to even begin to unravel, so I focus instead on the immediate and much more important problem of finding somewhere to pee. Where did Sterling say the head was?

I take a step down the corridor and something catches my toe. I trip, instinctively throwing out a hand to catch myself on the wall. Unfortunately, however, the wall isn’t there. I’ve put my hand through an open doorway.

My feet tangle and I get a brief, sideways glimpse of a room stacked with crates full of apples. I’m falling. Darkness is swallowing the edges of my vision, tunneling the light to a pinprick.

But before I hit the floor, everything disappears.

chapter

twenty

“WE WON.”

The girl sat in the shade of the saltnut tree, twisting a leaf off a branch. She tossed it toward her hemp sack. It missed the sack and fluttered away in the wind. She didn’t bother going after it. She was supposed to be stripping leaves for mash, but her heart wasn’t in it. The afternoon sun was low, sending its dark orange rays straight across the land.

“I know,” said Fife quietly.

“I don’t want to go.”

“I know.”

“Shale says you’ll come. Next year maybe?”

The girl tried not to let hope creep into her voice, tried not to peek over at Fife to gauge her reaction. If Shale believed Fife would come and Fife believed it too, then maybe it would be true.

Fife paused. “Maybe.”

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“Nah.” Fife nudged the girl with her shoulder. “There’ll be lots of new people in Brume. You’re gonna make tons of friends and forget all about me.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. I don’t care about stupid kids in Brume. They’re probably all a bunch of stray sonsofbitches.”

Fife laughed. “Better not go using language like that 'round there. They’re gonna know you’re a Settler straight away.”

“I don’t care. I want them to know. I don’t want to be a Citizen.”

She crossed her arms and sat back hard against the tree. They sat side by side, not speaking, for a long time.

Finally, Fife stood and held out her hand. “Come on. It’s dinner soon, we’d better get back.”

The girl stood but didn’t move. She clung to Fife’s hand, tears suddenly choking her. She tried to hide them, but Fife saw. Fife always saw.

“Don’t cry,” Fife said. “You’ll make me cry.”

The girl stuck out her bottom lip and screwed up her face and put all her eight-year-old will power into not crying, but it was no use. The tears rolled down her cheeks. She wiped them away furiously and looked at Fife.

Fife's eyes were rimmed with tears, and they blazed clear and bright as the defiant stars. The tears seemed to amplify her eyes. Make them more blue. They turned her eyes into something bigger; they pulled a magnifying glass before her eyes and said, "Look. Here it is. The sadness."

But there was something else in those eyes too. Behind the tears. Behind the sadness. Something more permanent, something harder.

Anger.

The little girl didn’t recognize it, because she didn't know this kind of anger. The anger Fife felt wasn't the childish anger of being left out of a game or told to blow her nose when she didn't want to. It was the real, grown-up anger that comes from powerlessness. The anger of being left behind. Of being forgotten. Of being given no chance.

Fife knew this anger now, and it was consuming her. She knew what was coming to her. Or rather, she knew what was not coming to her. She wouldn’t go to Brume. She would never leave the Settlement. It was likely that she would die here, and not necessarily as an old woman. Fife knew all this, and her eyes reflected that knowledge.

“I’ll miss you, Fife,” said the little girl.

“I’ll miss you too, Bird,” said Fife. And even though she was angry, she meant it.

chapter

twenty-one

“I’LL MISS YOU, FIFE.”

I blink my eyes open. The sun barges through them, followed almost immediately by the hangover. Some kind of insane, lousy hangover that makes my ears ring and spots dance in my eyes. My mouth tastes like metal. That’s new. I never tasted my hangover before.

I squint, covering my face with my arm.

“I’ll miss you too, Bird.”

The dream is fading. Burned away by the sun.

I prop myself up on my elbows. Malarkey licks her nose and fixes me with a reproachful stare.

Wait, how did Malarky get to the Kingfisher?

Frowning, I look around. I’m not on the Kingfisher. I’m in Panga’s cockpit.

How the hell did you get back here?

Closing my eyes, I sit all the way up and squeeze my head in my hands. Sargo stormed off. What were we even arguing about? Oh, right. Me being a drunk, reckless asshat. Well, I guess he’s got me there. Here I am again, waking up hungover again, not knowing how I got here, again.

I remember going back to the galley. I remember Red Bread and Goliath were there. I remember we finished Goliath’s flask. And then—

A blip. A gap in the tape.

I shut my eyes.

It’s time to stop using the cute word. You drank too much and blacked out.

This is no longer cute. This is a problem.

I stand up and lurch down the companionway to the galley, expecting to find Sargo making a cup of tea, but he isn’t there. I squint through the cabin to the bunk in the bow. He’s kneeling on it, facing away from me with his head down.

I take a few steps closer and hear him breathing hard. A shaft of fear goes through me. Is he sick? If he’s sick, I don’t know how I’m going to sail Panga on my own.

Then I see what he’s doing, and freeze. My view of his hands is blocked by the angle of his body, but I know immediately by the sound. The rhythmic sound of his fist, beating against his hips. The ragged breaths he is trying to take quietly.

He’s jerking off.

My whole body ignites. I feel like I just stepped over the edge of the world and am free-falling into nothing. I should turn around and go back to the cockpit. I should pretend I haven’t seen this.

Instead, I take a step closer.

He sits back on his heels, his knees spread wide, his arm moving in long, lazy strokes. I imagine his pants, unbuttoned and pulled open. My core aches. I wish I could see him properly.

He stifles a breath, and I slip to the edge of the doorframe to peek around the corner. He’s so close to me I could reach out and run my finger down the back of his neck. I imagine him shuddering, the arch his neck would make as he tilted his head to follow my touch.

Pressure grips me like a fist around my center. I take a trembling, silent breath, holding it at the top, afraid to exhale. Slipping my hand under my shirt, I flick my thumb over the nipple, and as I do, he tilts his head back and groans.

I cover my mouth and press my burning forehead to the wall.

His breath starts to come faster, like he's having trouble controlling it. I keep my eyes closed and my forehead to the wall, afraid to look around the corner, because the ache between my thighs is becoming unbearable and if I look at him again I won't be able to stop myself from doing something about it. I could still walk away. I could just pretend this didn’t happen.

I peek around the corner.

His hand is fisted in the sheet in front of him and he braces his weight on that fist, head down, like he’s focusing. Like he’s working. His shirt is hitched up in the front, like he wanted a better look at himself. What does his stomach look like? What would it feel like against mine, skin to skin?

Fuck, I want to feel his skin on mine.

I slip my hand into my pants.

A bead of sweat rolls down his neck and disappears under the collar of his shirt. I imagine sliding my hand into his hair, tilting his head, my tongue following it. The taste of him. The way he might moan when I put my mouth on him.

His hips begin to buck. I grind into my hand, matching his pace until I’m aching. Until his breath and the sound of his fist become frenzied and I’m so close I have to stifle my whimpers against the wall.

Unfisting his hand from the sheet, he reaches overhead to brace his arm against the low ceiling. Whatever decorum it was that was keeping him quiet has vanished—his breath comes in harsh gasps and the sound of his forearm slapping against his hips is brutal and hypnotic. There is nothing careful about him now—he is lost to his need. Animalistic. Thoughtless.

He mutters something under his breath and comes, head rolling back, ribcage heaving through his shirt. He thrusts into his hand over and over and over, and for one completely unhinged moment I imagine him thrusting into me, holding me from behind, his fingers buried in the flesh of my hips, wild and delirious. The thought of it is too much. I fracture. Sense and reason go flying out of my head and I choke back my moan, smashing my lips against the wall as I come.

For minutes afterward, neither of us moves. He braces his hand on the bunk in front of him, panting. We heave staccato, intertwining breaths. Gradually, they grow longer, then quieter, then calm. I hear him move, and dart away from the wall and back up the stairs to the cockpit.

I lie down on the bench seat in the cockpit and close my eyes, flushed and sweating. Downstairs, his footsteps come into the galley. He runs the water and begins making the sounds that I know mean he is brewing tea.

How the hell am I supposed to ever sleep in that bunk again? There's no way I'll ever be able to lie between those sheets without picturing him kneeling over me, stroking himself, and growling under his breath.

What was he saying? That's the thing I'm never going to get past. What was he muttering under his breath at the end? I open my eyes and stare at the sky. Suddenly, escaping the Anonymity, making it to Alluvium, finding Shale…all of it is unimportant.

The only thing I want now is to find out what Sargo Paz says before he comes.

Eventually I get up and go back down to the galley. Sargo is there, making a cup of tea. He doesn’t acknowledge me, and I remember with a jolt that we are fighting. Or at least, that we were fighting last night. I reach silently around him for the kettle, blushing, remembering how he pinned me to the wall. Wondering if that moment had anything to do with what I just saw. If he was affected by it too.

The galley is not big enough for both of us. The air is tense, the silence of us ignoring each other deafening as we each prepare our tea, bumping into each other, reaching over each other, stepping around each other. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I set my mug down with a bang and turn around.

“Look, I’m sorry. For what I said last night. I didn’t mean it.”

He stills. The curve of his neck lengthens as he drops his head, his hands flat on the countertop. His shoulder brushes mine as he turns to face me, the faint scent of his sweat rousing a nervous flutter from my stomach.

“How did you get back?”

I avoid his eyes and lie. “Goliath brought me.”

He observes me quietly. “I’m sorry too,” he says finally. “Being cooped up on this boat is making me a little crazy. I know you didn’t come up with that plan just to save your own ass. You were thinking quickly.”

“I didn’t mean…the thing you said, about being the—the kid my family doesn’t approve of. I didn’t mean...I don’t know what—to say.”

He draws a long breath. “I know.”

“I’m sorry. That I made you feel that way.”

We look at each other in silence.

Are we going to talk about what happened after the argument? Are we going to talk about the fact that we maybe very nearly kissed? That you were maybe as turned on by it as I was?

He sighs. “I’m sorry I hassled you about drinking. It’s not my business. I just…” His eyes dart around my face. “I worry about you sometimes.”

My chest squeezes. My skin stretches against the air, like the feelings inside me are too big to be contained. Nervous anticipation. Breathless excitement.

And anger. Frustration.

“If you’re so worried about me, why did you leave me there?”

“I—” His mouth sticks open. He scratches behind his neck. “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just hard to be around you when you’re…like that.”

Like that. Right. He feels bad for scolding me but he doesn’t even know how bad it is. He doesn’t know that I blacked out and have no idea how I got back here last night.

The pressure inside me builds, intensifies, solidifies the feelings until they start to become words. Until the edges of them are so sharp that I have to get them out.

I take a deep breath. “Sargo, I—”

“Heading out,” Fetch’s voice crackles into my ear. “Be ready to haul anchor in ten.”

Sargo taps behind his ear. “Copy that.”

He looks at me a moment longer, like he’s about to say something too, and I want to tell him everything. Not just about the grog. All of it. That last night, I felt something in those few tense inches between us. That right now, in this moment, all I want is to close the small gap between us and fold myself into his arms. That he’s right to worry. That I’m not okay. That I hate myself for ever making him feel bad.

But I’m afraid. If he were any other person—even someone I had feelings for—I wouldn’t care. But he’s Sargo. What if I tell him my feelings and he doesn’t feel them too? What if I tell him about the grog and he’s…disappointed? Or freaked out? Or disgusted? I wouldn’t just be losing a person I have feelings for. I’d be losing my friend. My best friend. At this point, let’s face it, my only friend.

So I just stand there, staring at him, the pressure of a thousand unspoken words and the heat of a million unresolved feelings stretching the inside of my skin like the air inside a balloon.

Then he turns, picking up his tea, and steps out of the galley.

____________________

We follow the Kingfisher down the coast as the bright morning sun tracks across the sky. As it reaches its highest point, beaming hot and white, obliterating shadows, Fetch buzzes into my ear again.

“We’re making a stop. Phreatic. It’s a small bay about a mile from here. Follow us in, drop anchor, and wait for instructions.”

The shape of the bay of Phreatic reminds me of Brume. A small horseshoe set into the lee of a point. The entrance to the bay is protected by two enormous rocks, which we navigate carefully, yesterday’s harrowing journey through that gap in the cliffs still fresh in our minds. A beach of black sand lines the water’s edge, and red hills slope away from the bay into the desert beyond.

The shape of the bay is where the similarity to Brume ends. There’s no lush, green blanket of trees covering the sloping hillside. No fog. No city. No harbor. No solar panels, or fog traps; no windmills ponderously turning in the distance. Phreatic is just a single row of about eight small, brightly painted wooden houses lining the beach.

For the first time since leaving Brume, we find other ships already anchored in the bay. Three boats, one at least as big as the Kingfisher. It flies a blood-red flag with a set of yellow fangs stitched into it. Across the stern is painted the name Beowulf in dark red letters. Another boat—Tomahawk—flies a tattered black flag with a large red X slashed across it. The very names are enough to make me uneasy.

We find a spot as far from the other ships as possible and drop the anchor. As we stand on the bow, watching it set, I hear a motor, and look up to see a skiff pulling away from the Kingfisher.

I shield my eyes with my arm as it comes across the bay toward us, the figures of Goliath, Fetch, and Red Bread visible in it. They pull up alongside Panga, Fetch standing wide-legged and cross-armed in the front.

“We’re going ashore,” she says. Goliath produces two lengths of thick rope from inside a large sack slung over their shoulder.

“What’s that for?”

“This is how we’re going to ensure you don’t do something stupid while we’re gone,” says Fetch.

She takes a rope from Goliath in one hand, grabs hold of Panga’s rail with the other, and swings herself nimbly over the side. Malarkey’s deep, booming bark issues from somewhere below as she lands on our deck.

Pulling the rope taut between her hands, Fetch advances, while Goliath heaves themself over the rail behind her.

“We can’t risk you two going rogue while we’re conducting business on shore,” Fetch says. “If you cooperate, we won’t have any problems.”

Malarkey barrels past me as if from nowhere and launches herself at Goliath. It happens so fast I barely have time to step out of the way. To my horror, however, Goliath is ready for her. They duck sideways, simultaneously throwing out a massive, tattooed arm to catch Malarkey around the neck, and wrestle the eighty pound dog into a headlock.

“Sorry dog. I don’t like to hurt you. Keep still and all will be fine.”

I glare at Fetch. “So, what? You tie us up and leave us here?”

She sneers. “Obviously not. We tie you up, take you back to the Kingfisher, and lock you down below, where Nana and Sterling will keep an eye on you.”

I step back, shaking my head. “No way.”

Fetch sighs, drawing the knife from the sheath on her chest. “Don’t be stray, Alluvium. I don’t want to have to do this the hard way.”

“Take us to the captain,” says Sargo. Fetch stills and looks at him. “Take us to the captain,” he repeats, “or we’ll have to tell our families about the poor treatment we received while we were your so-called guests.”

Fetch looks as though she’s about to argue, but Goliath stops her with a hand across her chest. They bend to Fetch’s ear and mutter something I can’t hear. Fetch’s jaw sets and she looks to Red, who signs, shrugging. Fetch glares at Sargo. Then, with a huff, she sheaths the knife.

“The dog stays here,” she growls.

Savage sits behind the Kingfisher’s helm as Sargo and I climb out of the skiff and board the massive sailboat. He doesn’t have his boots jauntily crossed on the edge of the instrument panel this time; he sits with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging, sipping delicately from a small flask.

At the sound of our footsteps he looks up and I almost do a double-take. His skin is sallow and gray, his eyes sunken, and his cheeks hollow. He looks tired. Beyond tired; exhausted. Weak and frail. He looks as rough as I felt when I woke up this morning. A pair of mirrored darx lays on the cockpit floor by his feet, and he quickly picks them up and puts them on as I draw level with him. He doesn’t get up. He cranes his neck to look up at me, the darx obscuring his eyes.

“Yes?” There is no trace of the cruel amusement or machismo I saw in him yesterday. His voice is thin and clipped.

Fetch digs her knife into the spot between my shoulders as she says, “They’re not cooperating.”

Savage sighs and scratches his lanky blonde hair with a tired hand.

“Don’t make this difficult, Alluvium. My crew and I need to go ashore to take care of some things. Naturally, we can’t have you and your boyfriend wandering off while we’re gone. It will only be for an hour or so.”

I shake my head. “You’re not tying us up.”

He waves a hand. “Fine. Fetch and Nana—”

“I’m not staying here with that woman.” I try to shrug the point of Fetch’s blade away from my shoulders, but it stays firm.

A grimace of impatience flickers across Savage’s tired face. “Then what would you propose, Alluvium?”

“Take us ashore,” says Sargo. “You can keep an eye on us there.”

His voice is so firm it startles me. I peek at him out of the corner of my eye. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but something tells me it’s along the same lines as what I’m thinking: that we stand a better chance of getting out of this mess as long as we’re not tied up and locked aboard the Kingfisher.

Savage draws a long breath. “As much as I would love to take you both on a tour of all the fascinating places that Reckoners inhabit, this particular location is one I’m afraid I can’t share with anyone who might disclose its location to Zenith.”

“What does Zenith have to do with us?” I demand.

Sargo stiffens. Behind the darx, I sense Savage’s eyes narrow. “Aren’t you the daughter of the CEO?” he asks cooly.

My blood goes cold. Shit. I’m Electra. Shitshitshit. I scramble to cover my mistake.

“Yeah—but….that doesn’t mean I care about Zenith. Just because my mom is the CEO, doesn’t mean I agree with her.”

“Is that so.”

“I don’t give a shit about her stupid company. I hate her. Why do you think we’re running away?"

Savage’s eyes behind the darx are inscrutable. I stare at my own reflection in the lenses, wishing I could see even a glimmer of what he’s thinking, and decide to take a chance and play the only piece of leverage we have.

“Look, you can threaten and intimidate us all you want, but I know you’re scared of my family and what they can do to you. And you’re right: I could tell them about everything I see if you take us ashore. I could tell them the name of every boat in this anchorage. I could tell them everything I know about you and your crew. I could tell them how I saw you murder two of the men aboard the boat they hired to find me, and that I’m pretty sure you tortured that boat’s captain for information about me. And I don’t know much about the law, but I’m willing to bet that none of that stuff is going to put you on the right side of it. So if you want to get your coin, and you don’t want me to tell them any of that, I suggest you do what you said you were going to do, and treat us with courtesy and respect. And that means not tying us up and locking us in your boat.”

Savage glares at me. Then he takes a slow, deliberate sip from the flask, carefully caps it and tucks it into the breast pocket of his coat.

“Okay, Alluvium,” he says. “You’ve made your point.” He stands. “Fetch, take our fine young friends here back to their boat so they can prepare to come ashore.”

The point of Fetch’s blade digs even more painfully into my shoulder blades. “Captain, I don’t think—”

“That’s an order,” he says smoothly. A beat goes by as he stares at her over my shoulder. Then Fetch withdraws the point of her knife and sheaths it.

“You heard the captain,” she growls. “Back in the skiff.”

I stumble out of the cockpit on weak legs, my hands and feet numb.

“Oh, and Alluvium…”

Savage’s voice stops me as we reach the edge of the deck. He climbs out of the cockpit and steps up to me, chest to chest. I move back to create space and my heel slips over the edge of the deck. He dips his face and speaks right next to my ear, smelling of grog and fruity dart smoke.

“That was a very eloquent speech,” he says so only I can hear. “But don’t forget that your argument hangs on me thinking this whole ordeal is still worth my time.”

He pulls back, his hand dipping into his pocket.

“You may recall, when we first came to this little arrangement, that I asked you to please not do anything to test my generosity. I’m a fickle man. When things test my patience, I tend to change my mind about them. And if I decide that taking you and your boyfriend all the way to Alluvium is too much trouble to be worth the coin, well…”

The hand withdraws from his pocket and the butterfly knife whirls open with a flash. He lays the cold blade against my cheek.

“I’m afraid there won’t be much sense in keeping you around then, will there?”

Back aboard Panga, Sargo and I prepare to go ashore in tense, terrified silence. He neither commends me for standing up to Savage, nor berates me for getting us deeper into our hole. We wrap bandanas around our faces and despite the heat, I pull my hood over my head and my collar all the way up, as if they will somehow protect me.

Into my pack, I stuff a canteen of water and the nox. I fashion a leash for Malarkey out of rope. I’m done leaving her behind for her own protection: we have no weapons; we may need her massive jaws to deal some damage.

The beach is already littered with skiffs, and we land as far away from them as possible and pull our skiff out of the tide. Malarkey leaps over the side and bounds up the beach as though she’s never seen land before. She throws herself down and rolls in the sand like she’s afraid she might never see it again.

A speck of amusement drifts around the edges of my discordant nerves. Drama queen.

Fetch, Red Bread, Savage and Goliath land the Kingfisher’s skiff right behind us. Red Bread and Goliath each carry a lumpy duffel bag, which I assume are filled with weapons stolen from the Valkyrie. As they haul the skiff up the beach, I note the lethal-looking ax hanging, unconcealed, from Red Bread’s belt.

Savage sees me eyeing it.

“Only for show," he says, slithering over the side of the skiff and landing on legs that look ready to buckle. Whatever's in that flask he's been sipping on clearly isn’t helping his hangover. "You have to let ‘em know you’re serious in a place like this,” he says. “But don’t worry. Disagreements rarely come to blows.”

I narrow my eyes. “How rarely?”

With a chuckle, he sets off up the beach toward the row of houses. Red Bread swings the ax from his hip and points it at me. He flicks the head in the direction of the houses.

“He say walk,” says Goliath, shoving Sargo hard in the chest.

Following Savage up the beach, I try to put what I’ve sussed out about the crew so far into some kind of order in my mind. Fetch appears to be doing most of the work. But she listens to Red Bread and Goliath. Goliath looks like muscle, but I suspect there’s more to their role than that. The fact that Savage is even more hung over than I am this morning makes me wonder if he’s much use for anything except drinking, making speeches, and stabbing people.

“Does Savage look…different to you?” I mutter to Sargo.

“He looks like he had a rough night.”

“Yeah, like, a really rough night. What do you think he was doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

His voice takes on an edge. “I think we’ve pushed the limits of what we can get away with far enough today, don’t you? Maybe now’s not the time to be asking questions. Maybe it’s time we actually started keeping a low profile.”

I gape. “Are you kidding me? After last night? Now you want to keep a low prof—“

“Quiet,” barks Goliath.

Savage stops at row of houses and leans against the trunk of a lone, anemic-looking tree. I drop to a seat in the dirt and brace my elbows on my knees, wishing I had brought more water. My hands and face are already coated with red dust and my mouth feels bone dry.

Each house in the row is painted a different bright, pastel color, and each has a small garden. I frown.

A garden?

I look for a water source, but see none. Which is weird. How do they have gardens but no water? In Brume we have fog traps. Even the Settlement at Naze was working on building a desalinator. But there’s no indication of any fresh water here at all, not even a creek.

Some scrap of memory or fragment of a dream floats by me. Hard red earth. A creek. Two little girls and a boy. Me and Shale. In the dream I saw him bending over a fire, tending a pot. Making brackish.

What is that word, brackish?

“Hey,” Sargo’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts, “do you notice anything weird about this place?”

I blink, letting the image of young Shale fade, and turn my attention back to the row of houses.

“Yeah, they don’t have a water source.”

Sargo frowns and studies the houses again. “You’re right. Good eye, Howsley. I was going to say—doesn’t it seem kind of empty?”

I scan the row of huts again. Apart from the gardens, there’s no sign of life anywhere. The one closest to us has boards across the windows.

“That’s weird.”

“Right? How are the gardens so well-maintained if there’s no one here?”

“And how are they watering veg with no water?”

Fetch, who hung back to secure the Kingfisher’s skiff, strides up from the beach and joins the group at the tree. She reaches into the small pack around her hips and takes a couple of swigs from a canteen.

I squint up at her. “What’s the deal with this place? Where is everyone? Where’s the water?”

She wipes her mouth on her sleeve, then tucks away her canteen and pulls Savage aside. The two confer in hushed voices. Fetch looks over her shoulder at me and Savage shakes his head. She glares at him, turns, and stalks back to the rest of us.

“Circle up.”

Goliath and Red Bread drag Sargo and I to our feet. Fetch signs for Red Bread as she speaks. “Captain thinks we’ll draw too much attention if we handcuff the prisoners—”

“Guests,” Savage interrupts, falling into position in the group.

Fetch grimaces. “Guests. So we’ll need to stick together to ensure we can prevent them from doing anything—” she eyes me, “—stupid. We’ll get the score on the haul settled first. Then pick up some provisions. Everyone clear?”

We all nod.

“Let’s get in and get out,” she says. “One hour.”

As terrified as I am of her, I have to admit that something about Fetch is extremely impressive. She’s got to be all of eighteen, and she’s basically running this crew. Where did she learn to command that kind of respect?

She marches up to the first house in the row and raps smartly on the bright green door. A hatch slides open, and Fetch stands on tiptoe to speak through it. “Kingfisher,” she says, then she lowers her voice and mutters something I don’t catch.

The hatch slides closed. After a moment of clicking and jingling, the door swings open. Fetch beckons us with a single flick of her hand and steps across the threshold.

The air inside is stuffy, and my clothes immediately stick to me. I peer around in the dim light at a small room, sparsely furnished with an old sofa, a low table, and a chair. On the table is a slate and a mug, half full of brew. The walls are bare. Mobiles made from sticks, shells, and feathers spin lazily under the ceiling.

A small, gray-haired woman with ivory skin locks the door behind us. She hobbles past us to a second door in the far wall, which she opens with a large rusty key. Fetch leads the way as the old woman gestures us through, pressing something into the woman’s hand as she passes her. I crane my neck to look over Savage’s shoulder, and through the door I see a set of stairs disappearing down into darkness.

As we descend the stairs, the air grows cool, and a crisp, familiar smell fills my nose. We’re going underground. At the bottom of the stairs is another door with a hatch in it. Fetch gives the Kingfisher’s name again, and drops her voice to a password. As the hatch snaps shut she turns to me and Sargo.

“Welcome,” she says, with a grim smile, “to Reckoner’s Row.”

chapter

twenty-two

THE FIRST THING I’m hit by as the door opens is a wall of sound.

A hubbub of voices, punctuated by shouts and laughter. The sizzle of cooking, the clang of tools, the occasional strike of metal on stone. I’m sure for one surreal instant that I hear the bleat of a farm animal. Above it all drifts a jangle of music—strings and percussion carrying a clear, earnest voice. The air smells of meat and baking bread, of brew and tea, and has a pungent, fishy undertone.

Stretching before of us is a wide tunnel with a ceiling just a few feet above the top of Sargo’s head. It’s packed with people and the walls on either side are crammed with stalls and tables. A hodgepodge of string lights, lanterns, and bare lightbulbs throw a kaleidoscope of colors onto the cinder block walls and bare earth ceiling.

Fetch pulls a slate from her hip pouch, pressing two fingers to her brow. I watch as she swipes through the air, reading from the slate, I guess checking some kind of provisioning list on her biochip.

Sargo says a Reckoner being chipped is unusual, and I wonder if that tattoo behind her ear has something to do with it. I squint again at it. 4242. I never heard of anyone being tattooed when they got chipped, but I guess it’s possible.

She tucks the slate back into her pouch. “Ready?”

Goliath, Savage, and Red Bread flank us close behind as we follow Fetch into the crowd. We’re packed too tightly into the crowded space to even think about trying to escape.

We pass carts laden with fly-covered raw chickens, or hung with whole pigs, flayed open to reveal the ribs, blood pooling in the dirt below. Tables bow under pounds of fish and oysters. Halfway along the tunnel, the musicians—four people crammed into a tiny doorway—are thumping away on their instruments with broad smiles and bright eyes. I find myself stopping to watch them.

“Impressive, eh?” says a voice in my ear.

I whip my head around to find Savage leering over my shoulder. He hasn’t removed the darx, even though we’re deep underground and the space is barely illuminated. The multicolored lights from the various stalls reflect off the lenses, and I stare into my own wide-eyed reflection as he steps around me and I counter, taking a step back.

He smirks. “Are you afraid, Alluvium?"

Next to me, Malarkey snarls. Savage's eyes flit to her as my back comes up against something firm. Sargo. He stands right behind me, his eyes fixed on Savage.

Savage chuckles. "I see you brought both your guard dogs today.”

His hand dips into his pocket and I imagine him fingering the handle of the butterfly knife I know is in there. “Do you think if I wanted to kill you, I would do it in the middle of a crowd like this. No, Alluvium. I’m not going to do something as stupid as that.” His eyes cut over my shoulder to Sargo. “But I might make him do it.”

Sargo sucks in a breath. “What?”

“What do you say, Son? Get yourself out of this mess she got you into? Trade her life for yours? I could use another strong sailor on my crew.”

My heart begins to beat in my hands and feet.

“What would make you think I would do something like that?” Sargo says in a low voice.

Savage shrugs. “A hunch. Maybe you’re starting to feel like you need to look out for yourself. I can’t have been the only one who’s put two-and-two together and realized her little plan doesn’t offer you much insurance.”

“What about your coin?” Sargo says, his voice so close to my ear I shiver. “If she’s dead, you don’t get anything.”

“Perhaps I’ve decided she’s no longer worth it. Perhaps I’ve realized this whole gambit is just a little more work than I’m willing to do. Perhaps I’ve realized that I can’t guarantee that both of you will make it to Alluvium.”

I swallow. He’s bluffing. He has to be. He wouldn’t throw away seventy-five thousand Ubicoin like that. No way. This is just intimidation. He gets some kind of twisted kick out of trying to scare us. Plus, Sargo would never go for that.

Right?

Savage leans closer and I shrink against Sargo, pressing my back against his chest. I’m trapped between Savage’s dangerous leer and the edge of the chasm of unspoken words separating me and Sargo. I have no reason to believe Sargo wants me this close to him, but there’s literally nowhere else to go.

Then his hands close around my shoulders. His grip is firm. I swear I feel him pulling me tighter against him. His heart beats hard against my back. And even though I can feel his fear through that heartbeat, something about it empowers me.

I glare at Savage. “You’re bluffing. You’re just trying to scare us. It won’t work.”

“And I’m not interested,” says Sargo, his voice a low growl that rumbles through me from deep inside his chest.

Savage grins. “Suit yourself.” He removes his hand from his pocket, shoulders past us, and disappears into the crowd.

We weave through the throng and stop in front of a nondescript door. Fetch raps on it, and when it cracks open, Fetch and Red Bread slip through the door with the duffel bags they brought from the Kingfisher. It closes behind them, leaving me, Malarkey and Sargo standing between Goliath and Savage.

Goliath’s glare settles on me. “We wait.”

My eyes flick to Sargo. Surely now, with just two of them to deal with and Savage obviously in rough shape, is the time to run. It would be so easy to disappear in this crowd.

Savage sinks onto a crate and pulls the flask from his pocket. “Don’t get any ideas, Alluvium. Would I have brought you down here without handcuffing you if I thought you might be able to get away? Even if you manage to lose us in this crowd, there’s nowhere for you to go. The place is locked from both sides and guarded. You need a password to get in or out.”

He leans against the wall and stretches his legs in front of him, crossing his boots. As he does, two words are revealed on the side of the crate: Zenith Biotech.

What the hell is a crate of Zenith merchandise doing here? I look around, becoming aware of more stacks of crates and boxes. Many are printed with the same two words. Others are marked with the names of the other Big Four companies. Spindrift Hydrosolutions. Star Net. Heliacal Solar and Energy.

Savage grins at me. “Not exactly a place your mom would approve of.”

I frown. “I don’t understand.”

“Black market goods,” mutters Sargo. “This whole place is full of stolen parts.”

Savage tuts. “So disparaging.” He uses the flask to gesture around. “Phreatic was one of the few spots along this coast that didn’t burn during Fire Season. When Reckoners figured out this cove was big enough to anchor in, they started coming here to trade."

He sips from the flask, and coughs.

“The people here were running out of water, so they were happy to trade their fish for Reckoners’ desal. Eventually, all kinds of stuff started coming through here. This tunnel used to be basements for the houses above, but the market got so big they knocked through the basement walls and made this.”

Goliath steps away from the door as it cracks open behind them and Fetch and Red Bread slip through it. The sacks are gone. Fetch nods to Savage, who tucks the flask back into his pocket and pulls himself to his feet. “Shall we?”

We continue along the Row. After so many days on the water with no one but me, Sargo, and Malarkey around, being in a tight, fully enclosed space with so many other people is jarring. Even more off-putting is that no one but me or Sargo is wearing a mask or bandana.

An old woman gives me a hard-eyed stare as we pass, and my skin prickles. "People are looking at us,” I whisper.

Sargo glances around. "Probably the bandanas. If these people are dealing in black market goods, I’m guessing they don't put much stock in Zenith's policies.”

“Should we take them off?”

He says nothing.

“We’re trying to keep a low profile, right?”

He tugs his bandana down, revealing a grim mouth. “So now I'm playing a character who is such a hardcore Zenith dissenter that I'm hanging out, unmasked, at the black market?”

I forgot that Sargo is actually pretty serious about his support of Zenith. I guess because his moms had some kind of tie to Electra’s family back in the day. He quotes the slogans at me all the time. Brume pride. Put on your own mask first. The most good for the most people. He's always been a fan of rules and policies and order.

"Probably best to keep your moral compass on the down low here," I say in a low voice, removing my bandana and tucking it into my back pocket.

"Yeah, obviously," he says tersely, tucking his own bandana away. "I just don't like it.”

Fetch halts in front of a stall loaded with veg, bread, and canned goods. “You lovebirds need any provisions?" She gestures at the stall. "Here's the place to get them."

We are low on food, so I fill my pack with greens, apples, a couple of loaves of bread, a hunk of cheese, and a few dented cans of meat for Malarkey. I hold the cans out for Malarkey to sniff before tucking them into my pack and she snorts, evidently not impressed. As I reach to swap one can out for a less dented one, I bump into the man next to me.

He eyes me sharply. “Watch where you’re putting those elbows.”

“Sorry.”

I flash him an apologetic smile. He’s a tall, well-dressed young man with a ponytail and fastidiously groomed beard. As our eyes meet, something flickers across his face. A look of recognition, almost.

His brow crinkles ever so slightly. “Do I know you?”

My blood freezes. I don’t know what kind of people frequent a place like this, but I’m willing to bet that being recognized by one of them won’t lead to anything good. Is it possible the Anonymity distributed my picture on the Net? I quickly turn my face away, bending to examine a piece of fruit.

“I don’t think so. I just have one of those faces.”

I feel his eyes on the back of my head for a long, uncomfortable minute, then he pays for his purchases and moves away. The specter of the Anonymity falls across my mind like a shadow. I had forgotten about them.

The next time Fetch stops, we're in front of a table covered in scrap metal and spare parts. The names of Big Four companies are printed on almost everything. As Fetch haggles aggressively with the guy behind the table over a part that Red Bread apparently needs for the Kingfisher, my eyes fall on something I recognize.

I pick it up. "Is this a desalinator filter?"

Sargo looks over my shoulder. "Yeah." He takes it from me. “It's the same size as the one we gave to those settlers at Naze. I could use another one."

"See if Fetch will get it for you. You could transfer her the coin."

As he turns the filter over in his hands, the name of a Big Four company is revealed: Spindriff Hydrosolutions. His hands still. He sets the filter back on the table. "I don't want it."

“You just said you needed—”

"I said I don't want it!" he snaps. He starts to walk away, only to be stopped by Goliath's enormous hand on his chest. He growls and tries to shake them off. "I'm not going anywhere! Your captain made that pretty clear."

Goliath removes their hand and folds their arms. With a frustrated sigh, Sargo retreats to lean against the wall. I carefully step around Goliath and follow him. "What is going on with you?”

"It's nothing. It doesn't matter. Forget it."

"Clearly it matters.”

His chest rises slowly and falls hard. "I just—" He glances at Goliath and drops his voice a hair. "I just don't like being here. That's all. The flogging black market?” He looks around darkly. “This is not a good place.”

I take a breath and work hard to keep the irritation out of my voice. “Look, I get that it's hard for you to be here because you’re friends with Electra or whatever. I get that you support Zenith and you don’t like going against their policies or being around all this stolen shit. But can't you just—let it go? For now? Just pretend like you don't care?”

Sargo stares at the ground in front of his feet. "It's not that.”

"Well then what is it?"

"I mean, yeah, you're right. I do support Zenith. I think they do good work, and their policies keep us alive, but…" He leans the back of his head against the wall and delivers his next words to the ceiling. "In Brume, the black market is run by the Anonymity. They steal from Zenith and sell it on. That's how they make their money. To fund everything else they do. Like dealing drugs. Dragging people like my uncle into debt. Killing…my moms.”

His eyes close slowly as he takes a breath.

"Most of the stuff the Anonymity steals in Brume probably ends up here. I just feel like…if I spend my money here, I'm giving money to the people that killed my moms. It's stupid. But—"

"It's not stupid." I put my hand on his arm, guilt knifing me. "You're right to care about that. I’m sorry. I didn't know.”

His eyes flit to my hand. Suddenly, the feel of his bare forearm beneath my fingers is electric. I blush and pull my hand away.

"Just trying to keep up the illusion.”

I lean against the wall next to him and watch Fetch arguing with the spare parts guy while I mull his words around in my head. I've been so worried about Savage and his crew that the Anonymity had slipped to the back of my mind. Now, those faceless heads creep back into my consciousness. If the Anonymity run the black market, they could be here. That guy with the ponytail…

The parts look good, the little man said. Could be sold separately.

Nausea sweeps through me. The parts look good. Suddenly, the hubbub of the Row is too loud. The lights too bright. The crowd too close. Somewhere here, I realize, behind some door, there is a stall selling human body parts. Those could have been my body parts.

Fetch's sharp bark snaps my attention back. "That's it crew. Back to the boats."

Goliath snaps their fingers at me and Sargo. Numbly, my head spinning, I trip back to where Fetch and Red Bread are standing.

The parts look good.

Sargo’s voice cuts through the noise of my thoughts. "Where's Savage?"

I look around. Savage is gone.

What could possibly be so important that he would leave his crew shorthanded while guarding us? The Anonymity drifts to the back of my mind as I scan the surrounding stalls for his blonde hair and mirrored darx.

Fetch tucks the slate back into her pack. "The captain’s taking care of something. It's none of your concern.” She eyes me. “Don’t get any ideas.”

Goliath shoves me hard between the shoulders and I stumble forward, tightening my grip on Malarkey's leash as Fetch turns to lead us back along the Row.

Sargo falls in step to my right. “I heard the password,” he whispers.

"What? What password?"

He speaks quickly and quietly, his eyes fixed on Fetch, his mouth barely moving. "When we came in. Fetch gave a password at the door. I think I know what it is."

"What?" My voice comes out a harsh whisper.

"Quiet," growls Goliath.

My pulse accelerates. Savage said the way in and out was protected by a password. With Savage gone, if we can lose Fetch, Goliath and Red Bread in this crowd, make it back to the door we came in through…

"Even with Savage MIA I don't think our chances are very good," mutters Sargo. He nods at Fetch then glances over his shoulder at Goliath and Red Bread. “These three are the ones we need to worry about."

"But if we did make it back to Panga, it would give us a head start, wouldn’t it?" I whisper back, my voice barely audible even to me. “They’d have to wait for Savage to show up before they could come after us. It might give us time to get a lead on them.”

"Maybe."

"Okay. So what's the plan?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him shake his head. “I don’t know. This is crazy.”

“Just…run. Go sideways. I'll go left, you go right. Get into the crowd and try to get back to the door.”

"It sounds pretty risky.”

“Yes, it does,” I agree. "Got anything better?"

We lapse into tense silence again, both of us watching Fetch as we walk for another five minutes, shuffling our way slowly through the crowd. Then Fetch stops so abruptly I almost run into her.

“God dammit,” she mutters. She pulls the slate from her hip pouch and taps her temple, flicks through her list, then addresses Goliath over my shoulder.

“We didn’t go to the Shaman. Nana needs her meds.” She eyes Sargo and me briefly, and then signs to Red Bread as she speaks. “Can you go? Goliath and I will get these two back to the skiff.”

Next to me, Sargo tenses.

Fetch digs into her hip pack and pulls out a small pouch. She hands it over my shoulder to Red Bread and I glance back as he pockets it and ducks into the crowd, heading back the way we came. When I turn back to Fetch, she’s eyeing me with a flinty, narrow glare.

“Don’t worry,” I say, “I’m not getting any ideas.”

Fetch drops her gaze to tuck the slate back into her pouch. As her eyes leave mine, I feel Sargo’s hand grab me around the wrist and squeeze hard. I don’t need any more signal than that.

“Alluvium!”

Fetch’s angry snarl follows me as I duck to the left, dodging between a stack of boxes and a barrel full of ice and fish heads. I let go of Malarkey’s leash, trusting her to follow me, not even looking back to see where Sargo is as I sprint down a narrow passage between stalls.

Popping out on the other side, I find myself shoving through a tight throng of people carrying bags and baskets. Daring to glance behind me, I spot Goliath on the other side of the Row, head and shoulders above everyone else. They don’t appear to be coming my way; must be following Sargo. Fetch is nowhere to be seen, but I know that’s only because she’s too short to stand out in the crowd.

There is no thought in my head except that I have to somehow throw Fetch off my track. I push sideways for a few steps, then dart between another stall and a rack of weapons. Malarkey appears at my hip, tail high, startling the woman beside me so that she stumbles out of my way.

I duck my head and keep pushing, diving and bobbing, weaving around people, elbows in my ribs and shoulders in my face until, up ahead, I see the end of the Row. A familiar head of sable hair emerges in the crowd ahead of me.

“Sargo!”

He doesn’t hear me; he’s shoving people out of his way with a callousness I would have never expected from him. Angry shouts recede into the hubbub as I make my way through the wake of people he’s thrown aside.

“What’s the password?” I gasp as we reach the door. Over people’s shoulders I spot Goliath about forty feet behind us, their eyes darting wildly, searching. I pull my hood over my head. They’ll know where we’re going; they’ll be coming this way, but they haven’t seen us yet.

Sargo hammers on the door and a small hatch opens at eye level. “Red sky!”

My heart is pounding like a drum. We’re almost out. We might actually make it.

The eyes on the other side of the hatch narrow. “Wrong door,” says a voice.

My heart stops. “What?”

“You can’t get out this way.”

“What do you mean, we can’t get out?” yells Sargo.

“This is the entrance. You need to go to the exit.” The hatch slides shut with a bang.

The world seems to fall out from under me. I step back, staring at Sargo. A tidal wave of cold panic rises in my chest.

“Alluvium!”

Fetch and Goliath emerge from the crowd, boxing us into the corner. Fetch’s eyes are black and murderous as she pulls the knife from the sheath across her chest.

Malarkey launches herself at Goliath and this time, Goliath isn’t ready for her. Malarkey’s massive paws land squarely in the middle of their chest and the two tumble backward, Goliath grabbing at the scruff of Malarkey’s neck.

In the same moment, Sargo bolts. But as I follow him, a tight grip closes around my wrist. Fetch yanks me backward and slams my back against the door, bracing her forearm hard across my chest, the knife in her hand pointed backward into the side of my throat.

I choke, unable to cry out as Sargo disappears into the crowd. Over Fetch’s shoulder, I see Malarkey twist herself free of Goliath’s grip and bolt after him. Goliath leaps to their feet and starts to follow Sargo, but Fetch yells over her shoulder.

“Leave him. We can look for him later. Nation is the priority.”

She presses her forearm against my windpipe, lowering her voice and bringing her face close to mine.

“As far as ideas go,” she snarls, “that was one of the stupidest I’ve ever seen.”

chapter

twenty-three

THE SUN IS SO bright it stings my eyes as we emerge from a door at the top of a basement staircase at the other end of the Row.

Disoriented, my eyes watering, and my hands bound in front of me, I stumble into the sand. We’re on the back side of the row of wooden houses. Ahead of me, rolling red hills covered with gray scrub slope infinitely toward the horizon.

Fetch presses her knife into the small of my back as she steps through the door behind me, and I arch away from the feel of the sharp point against my spine.

“Keep walking, Alluvium.”

Red Bread and Goliath fall in next to Fetch. We walk along the row back toward the beach, the white sun blazing directly overhead. When we come to the last house—the same one we entered the Row through earlier—we turn left. Black sand stretches down to the sparkling blue water of the bay, and my heart sinks as I scan the water.

Panga is gone.

Sargo must have found the exit while Fetch and Goliath were tying me up and rendezvousing with Red Bread. A confusing mix of relief and despair settles in my bones. He got away.

He left me.

“I guess your boyfriend bailed on you,” Fetch sneers over my shoulder. “Smart.”

I grit my teeth against tears and say nothing.

Red Bread and Goliath push the Kingfisher’s skiff back into the water. Fetch flicks the tip of her knife at me. “In.”

I glare at her, not moving. “Where’s Savage? You’re just going to leave him behind?”

“Why don’t you let me worry about my captain, Alluvium. In.”

We motor back to the Kingfisher, where Red Bread and Goliath wordlessly usher me out of the skiff, through the cockpit, down the stairs and through a sturdy wooden door into a storage room next to the galley. Tripping across the threshold, I turn just in time to see the door bang shut behind me, plunging me into total darkness. With my bound hands, I feel my way to a wall, put my back against it, and sink to the floor.

I don’t know how much time passes while I sit there, staring into blackness. The room is stuffy and smells overpoweringly of garlic and ripe fruit. Boots scuff back and forth on the deck overhead. I hear muffled voices, snatches of shouted orders. They must be waiting for Savage, because we don’t move. At some point, the skiff starts up and pulls away.

Eventually, the drone of it motoring back across the bay reaches me. I hear it pull up, hear boots stepping out of it onto the deck above me, then Savage’s unmistakable drawl. Fetch’s voice replies and the boots make their way across the deck.

Minutes pass as I strain to hear, and then I clock the sound of the boots at the end of the corridor outside. The sound grows closer as they stride briskly down the hall and stop in front of the door.

When the door swings open, Savage’s rangy silhouette stands on the other side, the collar of his coat turned all the way up around his jaw, shaggy hair falling around it. Behind him, I see the unmistakable shapes of Red Bread and Goliath.

“Well, well, well.” Savage steps across the threshold and pauses. “You know, there’s a light in here.”

A wash of yellow light floods the room and I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them, Savage is leaning casually in the doorway, loading a cartridge into his dart.

He looks…the picture of health. Handsome, even. His eyes are no longer hidden behind dark lenses. His skin has lost its pallor and returned to a radiant golden brown. An air of dangerous shrewdness has returned to him. Whatever he disappeared to do at the Row, it apparently did him a world of good.

He regards me cooly. “What did I tell you about things that try my patience, Alluvium?”

I say nothing.

“If I recall, I believe I told you that when things try my patience, I tend to change my mind about them.”

He finishes loading the cartridge, clicks on the dart, and takes a long, slow drag.

“Fortunately for you, you are a very valuable commodity, and for that reason—” a thick cloud of smoke settles into the air between us as he exhales into the tiny room, “I’ve been willing to put up with more than the usual amount of shit.”

He waves a hand to disperse the smoke.

“But enough is enough. That reckless little stunt was a pretty serious breach of contract, as far as I’m concerned. Evidently, you can’t be trusted. And as none of my crew can find neither hide nor hair of your boyfriend or his little yellow boat, it appears that you’re unfortunately without transport.”

I force my face to retain a neutral expression, even though the pain in my chest when I think about Sargo makes me want to cry.

“So,” continues Savage, “you’ll be making the rest of the passage to Alluvium aboard the Kingfisher, where my crew and I can keep a better eye on you.”

“You can’t do that. I’ll tell my family you kidnapped me. They’ll come after you.”

“Ah, Miss Nation.” He tuts and shakes his head. “You don’t seem to have grasped what’s going on here. Your boyfriend is gone. If you don’t come to Alluvium aboard my ship, what are you going to do? Stay here at the Row? They don’t really welcome outsiders. Go back to Brume? How? On whose boat?”

He gestures with the dart in the direction of the shore.

“Or perhaps you’d like to take your chances out there, alone on the Turf? To date, I haven’t heard of a single person that’s survived it, but you are fairly scrappy, so who knows? Maybe you’ll be the first.”

He drags again on the dart and lets another slow cloud of smoke trail from his mouth as he turns and saunters toward the door.

“The way I see it, Alluvium,” he says over his shoulder, “I’m doing you a favor. In fact, I think my generosity might even be sufficient to warrant an increase in the gratitude displayed by your family. Shall we say…another fifty thousand coin?”

He steps through the door and turns, bracing one hand on each side of the doorframe and leaning back across the threshold. He grins. “Call it a handler’s fee.”

_____________________

The next six days blur into one continuous string.

The crew move me out of the storage room and lock me in a spare cabin, so at least I have a bed to sleep on. Through the cabin’s tiny round porthole, I watch the color of the sky change. The air grows warmer and more humid. Day by day, the thick brown soup of smog and ash that hangs along the coast south of Naze incrementally clears.

My nails become short, then ragged, then bloody with constant, anxious gnawing. I wake with one question on my tongue and fall asleep with it going round and round inside my head:

What the hell am I going to do now?

Short of getting kidnapped by yet another crew of Reckoners, or actually having a rich brother in Alluvium who can pay Savage over a hundred thousand Ubicoin for my ransom, I can’t see a way out.

What happens when I get there and Savage doesn’t get his coin? It’s a question I try not to let worm its way into my head too much. Because I already know the answer.

I fall asleep every night to the creak and roll of the ship as it plows through the Salt, and wake every morning to the same disorienting motion. We don’t drop anchor overnight anymore—I guess Savage must be in a hurry to get me to Alluvium before I make any more reckless escape attempts.

Honestly, though, his fear is misplaced: I’m too miserable and defeated to even contemplate an escape. Where would I go? He was right. I have no one out here. I’m alone.

Sargo is gone.

Thinking about that makes my chest ache worse than anything I’ve ever felt, so I try not to do it. He did the right thing. Since that day I showed up at his house in Brume, his life has only gone from bad to worse. He was right to look out for himself. Savage would have killed him eventually.

One night, I dream about him.

A rope is around my wrists. He kneels over me on the bunk, one knee either side of my hips. His hair and shirt are wet and his eyes blaze with savage heat. I’m wearing his shirt; his blue button-down. And nothing else.

"You watched me,” he says.

A shimmer of breathless heat goes through me. “Yes.”

“Did you like watching me, Howsley?"

"Yes."

I can’t breathe under his gaze. The spot between my legs is already hot and tight. I need to touch him, to feel his skin. I pull against the rope, twist to look at it.

"Look at me," he growls.

I snap my gaze to his. His eyes are like they were that night on the Kingfisher—I’m not sure if what I see in them is anger or desire. I wonder if he knows himself.

"You shouldn't have done that," he says.

"I'm sorry.”

"Sorry isn't good enough." He’s trembling as he reaches down to unbutton his pants, where a bulge is already straining. "We're going to even the score."

My breath catches. “Even it how?”

"I'm going to watch you now, Howsley." He sits up on his knees and reaches over my head to free one of my hands. "Show me how you touch yourself."

My blood runs so hot it seems to freeze. “I can’t.”

He reaches into his pants and pulls himself free and I feel my eyes go wide. The air stills inside me.

“Look at me,” he repeats, and I drag my eyes to his. He wraps his fist around himself and strokes slowly, once. “Show me,” he says. And then, his voice catching, "Please."

Heat and nerves quiver through me. I start to undo the buttons of his shirt with my free hand, squirming as the fabric brushes my bare breasts. His eyes track my fingers as I slowly make my way down the front, undoing each button. I can smell him in that fabric. Smell him on me.

“I like you in my shirt,” he says, stroking himself again. “Suits you.”

As I reach the last button and push the shirt all the way open, he groans, pumping himself harder, his eyes raking over my belly, my hips, my breasts.

I ache under those eyes. I brush my fingertips down the center of my bare chest, watching him watch them. I circle my nipple and feel my breast tighten. When I thumb my nipple, my skin is so on fire already that I gasp. He echoes my gasp with a low noise of need. “Does that feel good?"

"Yes.”

His fist beats faster, his hips bucking a little. “Show me more. I want to see exactly how you like it.”

He raises up on his knees again and shifts back. I slide my fingers to the top of my sex, circling there. His breath becomes heavy and the ache inside me grows. I writhe under him, burning, desperate to feel him against me. “I want you,” I gasp. “I want you to touch me.”

His eyes turn wicked. “That’s not how this works, Howsley. We’re evening the score, remember?”

I plunge my fingers into myself and he growls. My eyes close, my head tipping back as I arch, grinding into the palm of my hand.

"God.” I hear his fist beating hard and fast against his hips. “That’s so fucking hot, Howsley.” His breath rasps. “Do you think about me? Do you think about me when you do this?”

“Yes,” I whimper.

“I’ve thought about you too. Every night. For weeks. I can’t sleep. I can’t breathe. I can’t think about anything else.”

"Do you want to touch me?”

"I’m going fucking crazy not touching you.”

"Do you want to fuck me?"

"Yes,” he groans. “God, I want to fuck you so badly, Howsley.”

I open my eyes to find his—and a pair of hands grabs him by the shoulders from behind. A pair of thick, tattooed arms wrap around his chest and drag him, thrashing and swearing, backward off the bunk and through the cabin door.

"Sargo!"

I wake, crying out, the sheet twisted around my wrists, my hips bowing off the bed.

____________________

On the morning of my sixth day captive on the Kingfisher, I wake to a text alert sliding in front of my groggy, half-open eyes.

>>> CONNECTION REESTABLISHED. MAPS, MESSENGER AND THE NET READY FOR USE.

I sit bolt upright. My biochip is back online. I hadn’t used it in so long, I had forgotten I even had it. Suddenly, the prospect of sending a message becomes a reality, and with that new reality comes a rush of hope. I can send a message for help.

But to who?

The Zenith peace force is so overtaxed I doubt they’d even get to my message before the end of the week. For the CEO’s daughter, sure, a swift response would be assured, but for just some girl from Brume? Not to mention a girl who was recently expelled and is likely accused of the theft of an expensive necklace? No chance.

My moms are too far away to be able to do anything in Brume, and Sargo is probably still offline somewhere along the coast.

Then it hits me. Shale.

I may not have a rich brother in Alluvium, but I do have a brother in Alluvium. Surely he can help me. He must know of some kind of local law enforcement. Maybe not Zenith law enforcement, but something?

My fingers are halfway through composing the text when the door of my cabin slams open and Fetch strides through it. I crawl backwards on my elbows into the corner of my bunk, but she grabs me by the ankle and yanks me down onto my back, swiftly climbing onto me, planting one knee in my chest, grabbing my wrists in both hands and pinning them over my head against the bed.

“Stop what you’re doing,” she growls.

“What am I doing?”

“My chip just came back online. That means yours did too. If you’re thinking about sending a message to your boyfriend or your family, you’d better think again.” She climbs off me. “Let’s go.”

I push myself to my elbows as she steps back from the bed. “Go where?”

“You’re with me now. Need to keep tabs on you. Can’t have you trying to get in touch with people.” She folds her arms and pins her eyebrows to her hairline. “Quickly! Up!”

Trembling, I throw back the sheet and stumble to my feet. She watches as I pull on shoes, then produces a length of rope from inside her hip pack and binds it around my wrists, wrapping it so that my hands are sandwiched together as if I’m praying. Which is convenient, I suppose, as I probably soon will be.

“Move your fingers,” she says.

I try. The very first knuckle of each finger barely wiggles.

“Good. Follow me.”

She ties my hands to a cleat in the back corner of the cockpit, the rope so short that I have to sit cross-legged on the floor. She calls Fid over.

“Watch her,” she growls. “She so much as moves a pinkie, I want to know about it.”

The whole crew is on deck. I spot Sterling and Nana uncoiling lines on the bow, Red Bread managing the headsail, and Goliath preparing to drop the anchor.

To my left, Savage stands behind the helm, for once not wearing his trademarked peacoat—I imagine because of the stifling, muggy heat. His short sleeves reveal a wealth of new tattoos decorating his arms—a turtle, an anchor, a girl in a grass skirt, a five-pointed star. His face is taut with concentration and he continually checks an instrument panel to his right.

“What’s going on?” I ask Fid.

“Alluvium!” he chirps. “We’re here.”

Twisting around as best I can with my hands tied to the cockpit floor, I look over the port side of the boat at the shore as the bay of Alluvium comes into view.

From the water, the city is a jarring mix of wealth and dilapidation. A row of unfinished concrete hotels with exposed rebar and gaping, empty windows lines the rocky breakwater. A row of finished hotels gleams like a jeweled necklace next to it. Corrugated tin roof shacks covered with graffiti are squeezed between elegant homes surrounded by high walls. A spiderweb of telecom wires criss cross between rooftops. The domed tops of grain silos puncture the skyline at random intervals.

Everywhere, there are trees. They stick up between buildings and crowd the sand. The structures interweave so intimately into the foliage that the trees seem to be part of the city. At the northern tip of the bay, an estuary comes almost to the water’s edge.

“This place looks crazy,” I murmur.

“It ith crathy,” says Fid.

“I thought it would be like Brume.”

A frown crinkles Fid’s tiny forehead. “No. People in Brume are rich.”

We anchor in a small cove and I watch from the cockpit floor as the crew puts the sails away. It takes them over an hour to furl the sails, coil all the lines, tidy the deck, and jot down readings from the instruments.

When it’s done, they load me into the skiff and Fetch swerves us away from the Kingfisher toward a channel mouth that will take us up a river to the city docks. The channel is lined on either side by lush, bright green vegetation that grows straight up out of the water on slender, twisted roots. The air is muggy, the surface of the water perfectly still but for clouds of tiny flies.

I don’t know where they’re taking me. Somewhere they can arrange the handoff, I guess. At the top of the river we cross a lake to a busy public dock, and Goliath and Red Bread haul me out of the skiff by my elbows. They set my unsteady feet down on planks that radiate heat and smell vaguely sweet: soft pine, baking in the sun.

Goliath puts their hand between my shoulders and pushes. “Move.”

“Where are we going?” I ask, as I stumble ahead of them. Fetch and Savage step in front of us to lead the way. Nobody replies.

The piers are swarming with people. Russet-skinned sailors, ruddy and flecked with white sun spots. Fishermen hauling nets of fish that reek and stare into the sun with vacant, jellied eyes. Reckoners carrying canvas bags full of God-knows-what across their backs. Vagrants sprawled in doorways and on corners.

As we round the corner from the public dock and step onto the harbor’s main walkway, a man steps in front of me. I run into him, rebounding and stumbling sideways, feeling Goliath catch me under the arm.

The man shoots me an impatient look as he straightens his jacket. “Watch where you’re goi—” He frowns, his eyes sticking on mine with a look of surprised recognition. “It’s you again.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

Ahead, Fetch and Savage have stopped, Fetch registering the interaction with impatience. “Let’s go!” Fetch barks. Goliath tightens their grip on my arm and pulls me sideways around the man.

“No, hold on.” The man stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “I know you. I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

His blue eyes are narrow, scrutinizing my face. He looks to be in his mid twenties, with thick, chestnut hair gathered into a ponytail at the nape of his neck and a sleek, well-groomed beard. He wears an expensive-looking jacket and a crisp linen shirt, buttoned all the way up, despite the heat.

I do recognize him. It’s the same guy I bumped into at the veg stand in Reckoner’s Row. I was afraid he might be a member of the Anonymity, or someone who had seen my picture somewhere and knew I was wanted by them. Suddenly, I don’t care if he is or not: he’s a human who recognizes me. He’s a human who might be able to help.

“She don’t know you,” growls Goliath. “Now move.”

The man doesn’t remove his hand from my shoulder. His eyes flick to my bound hands, then back to my face, then to Goliath. “Everything okay here?” he says in a low voice.

“Everything is fine,” says Goliath.

Fetch and Savage have turned and come back to us. They press in behind him, Fetch laying her hand casually on the handle of the knife at her chest. The man looks back at me, then up at Goliath and Red Bread, who are boxing him in from the other side.

He carefully removes his hand from my shoulder. “Okay, no problem.” He takes a slow step backward. “Didn’t mean to interfere.”

“No problem at all,” says Savage, very quietly. “An honest mistake.”

The man’s eyes dart back to mine and I hold his gaze, begging him with my eyes not to leave me there. His brow creases as he stares back at me, like he’s still trying to work out where he knows me from.

Then something his face shifts. Suddenly, something clicks. His brow un-furrows, and his mouth falls slightly open. For one long, hypnotizing breath, he just stares at me, a look of bemused disbelief unfolding across his face.

Finally, he blinks. He shakes his head once, as if to clear it, and says, “Bird? It’s me. Shale.”

chapter

twenty-four

MY BODY GOES DEAD STILL.

Pieces of the face in front of me start to swim into a new arrangement inside my head. The bright eyes. The quizzical brow. The thick, chestnut hair and a beard I would recognize better as a teenager’s weedy patch of scruff. In my mind, I see a boy in a tree. Making brackish. Starting a fire. This is him. This is Shale.

“She’s not who you think she is, buddy.”

At Fetch’s icy reproach, Shale’s eyes snap away from mine. He looks around at the four Reckoners surrounding us. This is not the time or place for a tearful family reunion. My brother and I are surrounded by bloodthirsty pirates who all think I’m someone else. Someone important. Someone they think is worth a hundred thousand coin. In the corner of my eye, I see Savage’s hand slide into his pocket.

Oh God. My stomach turns as a cold realization settles on me like a shadow. They’ll kill him. If Shale doesn’t walk away, they’ll kill him. He can’t save me; I have to save him. I have to make him walk away.

I bury the voice inside screaming for Shale to help me and take a breath. “I’m sorry. You have me confused with someone else.”

His face creases. “What? Birdie—”

“She doesn’t know you, friend,” growls Savage, so close to us now that his face is inches from the side of Shale’s. Fetch’s hand remains tight around the handle of her knife. All around us, oblivious people stream like a river around rocks.

“I’m going to ask you once more,” says Savage, low into my brother’s ear, “to kindly take a step back, and leave the young lady alone.”

Shale’s eyes meet mine again and hold them for a long moment. Then, to my absolute horror, without breaking my gaze, he says to Savage, “And what if I don’t?”

In a flash, Savage has the butterfly knife out of his pocket and against Shale’s ribs. A woman tucks her head as she scurries by, pretending she hasn’t seen.

“Well, then I’d have to cause a scene,” Savage says. “And that would be a real problem.”

“It would be a real problem,” says Shale carefully, his eyes still on mine. “You’re already calling more attention to yourselves than I bet you’d like to.” He inclines his head ever so slightly to the right. “And harbor patrol is right over there. Where are you going to run to in this crowd?”

A flicker of hesitation crosses Savage’s face. His eyes flit to the stream of people going by.

He has no intention of causing a scene here.

He can’t risk being caught with me before he gets me to my family. He must have been counting on Shale being scared enough of his empty threats to drop it. Apparently, though, my brother is not so easily intimidated.

“Now look,” Shale continues evenly, “clearly there’s been a misunderstanding. Whoever you think this person is, I can assure you, you’re mistaken. This is my sister, Bird Howsley. If you’ll let me—” He raises his hands very slowly, palms facing out, until they are on either side of his face. “I can find you a picture.” He taps his temple with one finger. “Is somebody here chipped?”

Savage’s jaw tightens. He grips the knife harder, twisting the point against Shale’s ribs as his keen, gray eyes calculate. Then he withdraws the blade and tilts it toward Fetch.

Fetch lets go of her knife and steps forward, tapping her temple. Shale presses two fingers to his brow, then slides them through the air toward Fetch, initiating a file transfer. She taps her brow to open the file.

Her eyes unfocus briefly as she looks at the image inside. “It’s her,” she confirms.

Savage turns his steely glare to me. “That doesn’t prove anything. So he has a picture. Anyone could have a picture of the Nation girl.”

“The Nation girl?” Shale’s face cracks into an incredulous smile. A smile. Here. Surrounded by Reckoners, with the point of a knife barely removed from his ribs. “That’s not a picture of the Nation girl.” He shakes his head and looks at me, his smile widening. “Did she tell you she was Electra Nation?”

My heart is beginning to beat fast. Shale is either very brave, or very stupid, but either way, he’s taking the threat posed by these Reckoners very lightly. If they find out I’m not Electra, that they wasted over a week and sailed over a thousand miles for nothing…

I swallow and look at Savage. Behind his eyes, I can see the realization dawning that he may have been lied to.

Shale taps the side of his head again and gestures briefly in the air, then transfers another file to Fetch. “This is Electra Nation.”

Fetch receives the file with a suspicious, sideways look and opens it. Her eyes narrow. “It’s not her.”

Savage’s eyes dart to mine and an eternity passes as I absorb the fury in them. Then he rounds on Fetch. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Fetch taps her brow to close the file and glares at me. “The Nation girl looks like she came from Zhīliú or something. Plus she’s blonde. She doesn’t look anything like this chick.”

Savage seems to hang suspended in time, vibrating, his hand clenching and unclenching around the handle of his knife. Then he grabs Fetch roughly by the shoulder. “How did this happen?” he snarls. “How did you let this happen?”

Fetch seems totally unfazed. She glares back at him with eyes as hard as his. “We’ve been offline since we picked her up,” she says. “How was I supposed to verify? Besides, this was your scheme.”

Savages shoves her away in disgust and she stumbles into a man walking by. A few cries of surprise go up around us. Several faces turn our way. People are starting to notice us. Savage notes it. He flips the butterfly knife closed so fast I hardly see it and tucks it into his pocket.

“Grab them,” he says quietly, his eyes turning to Goliath and Red Bread, “and take them to the ship.”

Goliath’s massive hands close around my wrists and my stomach drops into my feet. Red Bread throws an arm around Shale’s chest.

“Wait a minute!” Shale cries. “Wait a minute! I have coin.”

Savage stills. He holds up a hand to Red Bread, who loosens his grip on Shale. Shale wrenches himself free, straightening his jacket and smoothing his ponytail.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it? Some kind of payout?” He nods at me. “That’s why you kidnapped the girl you thought was the daughter of Zenith’s CEO.”

Savage regards him with hard eyes and says nothing.

“Now, I can’t promise you I’ve got anything like the amount of coin you might have gotten out of the Nations,” Shale says under his breath, “but seeing as how you’re not going to get anything from the Nations at this point, it seems like we should be able to make some kind of deal.”

My eyes dart between Savage’s face and Shale’s as the two size each other up. Savage tilts his head to one side, his eyes shrewd “Twenty-five thousand Ubicoin.”

“Fifteen,” says Shale. My eyes go wide. Does Shale have fifteen thousand Ubicoin?

“Twenty-three,” says Savage.

“Seventeen.”

“Twenty.”

Shale pauses. The two stare at each other for a long moment. Then Shale holds out his hand. “Done.”

My legs turn to water. Twenty thousand Ubicoin? How the hell does my brother have twenty thousand Ubicoin going spare?

Savage drops Shale’s hand and steps back. “Fetch!”

Glowering, she skulks up to Shale, who initiates the transfer. She checks something on her slate, then nods at Savage.

Savage smiles. “Well, what do you know?” His eyes slide to me, the smile twisting into a leer. “I guess you had a rich brother in Alluvium after all.” He extends a hand to Shale again. “Pleasure doing business with you, friend.”

Shale takes his hand, not returning his smile. “The pleasure was all mine.”

Savage drops Shale’s hand and motions to Fetch. He doesn’t so much as look at me as he pulls the collar of his jacket up around his jaw and shoulders his way into the crowd. Fetch, Goliath and Red Bread push around us and follow him.

And just like that, they’re gone.

____________________

I follow Shale in a daze through the busy harbor to the gate that leads out to the City. He walks fast, not attempting to make conversation or even look back to make sure I’m keeping up.

“We should probably get out of here,” was all he said to me after Savage and his crew left. I barely had time to register that the transaction was over.

The scene outside the harbor is madness. There is no street, just a shallow, black swamp with a series of low wooden footbridges stretching across it. A crush of people shuffles across the footbridges, which all converge at the base of a wide metal tower in the center of the swamp. At the top of the tower, sixty feet above the ground, more bridges converge—wider, towering metal bridges hung with cables and shaking with the weight of thousands of footsteps.

The buildings around us are made of shipping containers, raised out of the muck on teetering wooden foundations. Dense-population living. A Zenith project that started here but never got off the ground. Recycling old junk to make homes for the influx of refugees. By the time the governments started implementing those kinds of programs, it was way too late to make a difference. I think this was the only place they ever built them before the pandemic shut everything down.

I tuck myself behind Shale, letting the crowd carry me across the swamp on one of the wooden footbridges. Black muck caked onto the shoes of people above drips onto our heads. When we reach the tower the crowd carries us inside it, and up a metal spiral staircase. It’s a long, hot, crowded climb. At the top, we pop out onto a platform. The taller cable bridges all converge around the platform, and I follow Shale to the right one.

We’re so high that I can see the land stretching from the shore to my right, all the way to the distant horizon on my left. It’s flat. Very flat, and swampy. The city seems to exist where it can, with large expanses of swamp separating densely packed hubs of buildings. Each hub is connected to the others by bridges.

We make our way across several of the bridges to a wealthy-looking neighborhood by the beach and descend by another tower onto a wide, beachfront promenade. It’s almost deserted, just a few people wandering along the breakwater. The empty beach is covered in trash, windswept and somewhat bleak, the surf breaking furiously against the dark sand and making the air hazy with spray.

On the other side of the street from the breakwater is a row of walled mansions. They give off the impression of having been expensive at some point, but even behind their high walls, I can tell that they are in disrepair.

Shale stops in front of a large wooden gate set into a towering stone edifice and taps his left brow. The gate clicks and swings open.

I tilt my chin back to gaze up at the wall. “This is your house?”

“It is.”

He steps through the gate. On the other side of it is a large plot of bare, rocky earth with a few scraggly scrubs and some patches of dry grass dotted about. A path of concrete slabs leads to the front door of an enormous, crumbling mansion that looks only half-finished, as though whoever was building it stepped away for lunch one day and never came back.

Inside, the house is dimly lit and sparsely furnished. The curtains are all drawn, I assume to keep out the heat of the blazing sun during the day. The living room smells faintly of mint and dart smoke. It feels like the room of someone who has a lot of money and not a lot to spend it on. The room of a boy who never quite grew into a man.

Shale releases a long breath as the door closes behind us. He turns to me as though about to say something, but then just stands with his mouth open, his brow furrowing, eyes taking in my face, my filthy clothes, my borrowed shoes. The shoes Sargo threw to me the day we fled Brume. So long ago now that it feels like it never happened at all. Did I actually make it? Am I really here?

Shale shrugs and scratches the back of his neck. A long moment of silence hangs between us.

“You look like hell,” he says finally.

“You finally managed to grow a beard,” I retort.

He barks out a sharp laugh, then smoothes his ponytail and nervously adjusts collar of his jacket. “I guess I don’t really know what to do in this situation.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you want a cup of tea? Or something?”

I shrug. “Okay.”

In the expansive and mostly empty kitchen, Shale sets a small black kettle to boil while I sit at an island in the center of the room. Through the floor-to-ceiling window dominating the west-facing wall, I can see the beach. The Kingfisher is still anchored across the bay. I flick my eyes away from it. They’re gone. They can’t get me. I’m safe.

I stare at the back of Shale’s head as he scoops loose leaves into a teapot, trying to think of something to say. I want to tell him that I can’t believe I’m here. I want to tell him that I can’t believe he’s alive. I want to ask him how he pulled twenty thousand Ubicoin out of his ass like it was nothing, and how he could possibly have a picture of me when we haven’t seen each other for almost ten years.

Questions are free-falling through me like water from a ledge, as though they’ve been building up behind some dam inside my mind for the last two weeks and are now cascading through me all at once.

Why did he leave Brume? Why did he message me? Does he really have a job for me? What kind of job? And why? Why me? Why now?

But I can’t find my way through this heap of questions. Not now. It’s too much. Too soon. I retreat, sidestep, recoil from them and seek out something easier. Something smaller. Something less intimate.

“Nice…place,” is what I land on.

The kettle whistles. Shale decants the boiling water into the teapot, filling the room with the scent of peppermint. “Thanks. It’s an abandoned prospector home, I think.”

“Prospector home?”

“Prospectors were the people who came here to make a profit off the population boom. Before the pandemic.” Setting a steaming mug in front of me, he pulls up a stool on the other side of the island. “Alluvium is one of those weird little micro climates that stayed temperate while everything else went to shit. Too far south for hurricanes, too far north for lightning. And they have the estuary, for water.”

“Kind of like Brume.”

“Well…yeah. But Alluvium was a backwater. Tiny little town. Not a lot of resources. Then people started coming in droves. Climate refugees, mostly, but other people too. People with money. They started building hotels and buying up real estate. You couldn’t do that in Brume—property was too expensive. Everything there was already bought up. Plus you had the Big Four people pricing everyone out.”

“So what happened? Why is everything half-finished?”

“The pandemic. Everything stopped. The people with money left. Or died. Mostly died. This city is full of places like this. Empty lots. Half-built houses. Vacant hotels. Just a lot of shit that was going to be great and never ending up getting built.”

“Why don’t you finish it?”

“Me?” He looks around as though the thought had never occurred to him. “I don’t know. I guess I kind of like it this way.”

We sip our tea in silence.

“You live alone?” I venture at last. He nods. “You must be doing well?”

He shrugs. “It’s much cheaper to live here than it is in Brume. And yeah, business is good. I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire right now. Big things on the horizon.”

Twenty thousand Ubicoin big? I think. But I don’t say it out loud. It feels rude and ungrateful to ask him that.

Instead, I say, “Thank you. For…I don’t know what. Saving my life, I guess. If I hadn’t run into you…”

He takes a slow sip of his tea. “Let’s just be glad that didn’t happen.”

“I saw you at the Row, right?” I ask cautiously. “That’s how you recognized me just now. From Reckoner’s Row. What were you doing there?”

He chokes, tea apparently going down the wrong way, and sets his cup down, coughing. He waves a hand as he fights to speak. “Just—business. Research.”

He pulls a yellow bandana from the pocket of his coat and coughs into it until he recovers enough to straighten up and pick up his tea again. He wipes his eyes with the bandana and tucks it back into his pocket. “What were you doing there?”

“Savage stopped the Kingfisher there to trade some stuff they looted from another ship.”

He strokes his beard thoughtfully. “So that was Savage?”

“You know him?”

“I know of him.”

“Kind of a scumbag.”

He shrugs. “Guys like him are usually just after coin.”

I fiddle with the handle of my mug, staring into the murky inch of green tea at the bottom of it. “But that was…a lot of coin.”

Shale waves a hand. “Like I said, business is good.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to repay you.”

Silence suddenly squeezes me from all directions. I feel a slow minute tick by as Shale repeatedly tries to say something, fails, picks up his mug, sips from it, and tries to say it again. “Actually,” he says finally, “I wasn’t going to bring it up right away, but…I’m assuming you’re here because of my message?”

An odd, panicked excitement grips my chest. “Actually…yes.”

“For the job?”

I hesitate. In light of everything that’s happened, it feels so trivial to have come all this way for a job. But he’s right. It is why I came. “Yeah. I guess I came for the job.”

He grins. “Stellar, Birdie. That’s stellar.”

“Stellar?”

“Is ‘stellar’ not cool anymore? What do you say now? Wicked? Bad?”

I lift an eyebrow. “Cool?”

He makes a face. “Okay. Cool. Whatever you like. It’s good.”

“So you actually want to give me a job?”

“Sure do. And we can figure out a repayment thing.” He shrugs. “If you take the job.”

“You’re serious?”

“Dead serious, Birdie! That’s why I wanted you here.”

“But why?”

“Like I said, a lot of big things are happening. I need people around I can trust.”

I frown. “You barely even know me.”

“Know you? Of course I know you, Birb. You’re my sister. You’re family.”

My heart thumps so hard in my chest that I have to drop my gaze into my mug again. “So what’s the job?”

“Why don’t you come see for yourself? Tomorrow morning. I’ll take you to the shop.”

I peek up at him. His eyes are bright, expectant. Hopeful. I nod. “Sure. Okay.”

Shale grins, tips the last of his tea back, and wipes the corners of his mouth. He stands and takes his mug to the sink, rinses it, sets it aside, then turns and folds his arms, leaning against the counter and surveying me.

“I’m assuming you don’t know anyone else in the city?”

I shake my head.

“So you probably don’t have anywhere else to stay?”

Again, I shake my head.

“So you should probably stay for dinner? And the night? At least.”

Tears prick the backs of my eyes and I pour the last of my tea down my throat to hide them from Shale.

After dinner, I follow Shale upstairs to a guest room and washroom. He digs a towel and a pair of pajamas out of a cupboard and bids me goodnight.

I turn up the shower so hot I can barely stand under it and emerge from it feeling reborn. Wiping fog from the mirror above an elaborate stone sink, I step back to examine my reflection for the first time in two weeks.

I’ve never been very curvy or exciting to look at, but two weeks of little food and hard sailing have left me even skinnier than I was when I left Brume. Not exactly the kind of shape that keeps men up at night.

Oh? And who is it you’re hoping to keep up at night?

I close my eyes and let my head drop, drawing a deep, difficult breath. Nobody. Not anymore. He left. With my eyes still shut, I tap my temple to open Messenger. My fingers hover in the air for a long time before I write,

>>> I HOPE YOU’RE SAFE. I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE GONE. I MISS YOU. I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU THAT I

Then I delete it all and replace it with,

>>> HOPE YOU’RE OK. LMK IF YOU GET THIS.

I gesture to send it, then open my eyes and stare at myself in the mirror.

What would have happened today if Sargo had been with me when I bumped into Shale at the docks? Would Shale have been willing to fork out another twenty thousand coin to buy Sargo’s life as well? Doubtful. It’s better he got away when he did. He and Malarkey are probably on the way to Pocosín right now. As long as Panga’s mainsail is holding out. I hope it is. I hope he makes it. I hope he finds his people. That’s why he came out here, after all.

I force a grim smile at myself in the mirror then push his face out of my mind and examine my face instead. My skin has tanned and my hair is streaked with blonde from days in the sun. The saltwater has thickened it, turned the frizz into a tangle of curls. I reach up to touch it and a curve in my arm I’ve never seen before stands out under the hard bathroom light. My brows shoot up.

Is that a muscle?!

Flexing my arm, I turn sideways. Shadows define more muscles in my stomach. My thighs. I smile at myself in the mirror again. A real smile this time. A hundred-and-ten pounds soaking wet, but getting stronger.

The towel Shale lent me is soft, and the pajamas, which are just a pair of boxers and an old tank top, are warm and smell faintly of lavender.

I pad down the cool hallway on bare feet and into the guest bedroom. Another vast, nearly empty room with a floor-to-ceiling window in one wall. Upon approaching the window I discover that it’s actually a pair of doors that open onto a balcony.

Outside, the air is warm and sticky; the sound of surf from the beach below a constant, soothing drone. I leave the doors open and collapse into bed, barely finding strength to crawl under the thin sheets before the hum of the surf and the caress of the breeze slip around me, pulling me into deep, welcome sleep.

chapter

twenty-five

AFTER BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING, Shale and I head for his shop.

The wind is up, whipping the bay into whitecaps and pulling sheets of spray off the surf crashing on the beach. I pull my beanie on and stuff my hair into it to keep it from whipping around my face.

We take the bridges toward a central hub and descend toward the crowded, sodden ground-level. An enormous hexagonal platform, raised a few inches above the swamp on stilts, stretches before us. Shale walks fast, like a person with somewhere important to go. I try my best to keep up.

“This is kind of the center of the city,” says Shale. “Lots of the outer hubs are uninhabited now, but it’s still a pretty busy place. Way bigger then Brume; way more diverse.”

He points things out to me as we cross the platform. A bike with a cooler strapped to the back, laden with fruits of every color, sprinkled thickly with chili and salt. A cart with an enormous leg of meat turning on a skewer. The vendor hacks off chunks, folds them into small, round flatbreads, sprinkles them with diced onions and some green herbs, and distributes them to customers.

We stop in front of a wide tree tucked between two half-finished cement buildings. A set of wooden steps spirals around the outside of the trunk and disappears into the branches.

“Is this your shop?” I ask.

Shale scoffs and shakes his head. “Brew!”

At the top of the stairs, my mouth drops. A sturdy wooden platform has been wedged into the massive branches, and chairs and tables are scattered across it, filled with chattering people sipping brew and sharing sweetbreads. Behind the counter is a short, wiry girl with skin like Sargo’s and a shock of iridescent purple hair. She’s drying a cup with a rag, nudging a second cup to the edge of the counter for a customer with one elbow, and opening a cupboard below the counter with her foot. Shale buys two thermoses of brew from her, and she winks as she hands the over.

“That your girlfriend?” I ask, when he comes back across the shop.

“Who, Ellie?” He shakes his head. “Just a friend.”

Back on the street, he ducks and weaves through the morning commuters so skillfully that I can barely keep up. “Good brew, right?” he calls over his shoulder, gulping from his cup.

I take a tentative sip. It’s so hot that I can barely put my mouth on it, and I don’t understand how Shale is downing his so quickly. I’ve never had brew before. It’s bitter and gritty.

“Yeah, it’s good,” I lie, picking coarse black specks off my tongue. I shoulder past a girl my age and do a double-take as the scarf around her neck raises its head and looks at me. “Was that a snake?!”

“Probably.” Shale doesn’t bother to look back, “I’m telling you Birb, this place is nuts! If you stick around a while you’ll see.”

We ascend to the footbridges and I watch different neighborhoods pass below my feet as we walk to an industrial district on the far side of the harbor. We descend to ground level and Shale dives down an alley between two warehouses. He stops abruptly, and I almost run into him. A tiny red door is set in the wall next to us, almost completely obscured by stacks of empty boxes.

“Here we are!”

“This is your shop?”

“This is it!”

I look around. As far as I can tell, Shale and I are the only people here. We’re a long way away from the center of town. The warmth of the sun is obscured by the shadows of the surrounding buildings and I shiver, feeling suddenly isolated.

“How do people find it?”

“Ohh…word of mouth.” Shale waves his hand, tapping the side of his head and shoving open the door with his shoulder as it beeps.

I follow him through, and my eyes adjust to a dim, unlit warehouse. Every square inch of the floor is filled with stacks of boxes, save for a cramped walkway that’s been cleared down the middle.

Shale flips on a bare lightbulb and sets down his empty thermos, simultaneously picking up a sleek white slate from on top of a crate. I’ve never seen a white slate before. It looks crisp and expensive. Like Shale and his waxed beard; his clean, white shirt.

He reads from the slate, making quick check mark motions with his finger in the air as I follow him down the narrow walkway between the stacks.

“Like I was telling you yesterday, Birb,” he says over his shoulder, “business is good. I want to bring you in. Not just to the business, to the whole organization.”

“What will I be doing?” The path between boxes is so narrow I have to turn sideways to wedge myself down it.

“Oh, little of this, little of that. Don’t worry about the details.”

I frown at the back of his head as I wedge myself around another box. “Shouldn’t I know what I’m doing before I come on board?”

“You can learn as you go.” He waves a hand. “It’s the perfect time for you to be coming on board. Some really exciting things are in the works. Stuff that I think…well, I think you’re gonna play a big part in.”

I stop. “Me? A big part in what?”

He halts and turns back to me, and as his gaze lands on mine, all the hair on the back of my neck stands up. His eyes have turned bright. Intensely so.

“Something is coming, Bird. Something big.”

The air feels suddenly still and electric. I hold his gaze, becoming acutely aware of how narrow the space is around us, and feel myself wanting to step backward. “O—kay. What kind of thing?”

Those bright eyes quietly calculate. Then he gestures to a box beside me. “Sit down.”

I don’t move. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to explain something to you, and I think it might take a while.”

Narrowing my eyes, I perch on the edge of the box. I’m still clutching the mug of brew he bought me. I’d forgotten I was holding it. I set it aside as he folds his arms and leans a shoulder on the crate beside him. His eyes continue to study me, then he says, “Where should I start?”

I smile nervously. “I don’t know. I guess that depends what you’re going to explain.”

“I’m going to explain to you why I left Brume.” He doesn’t say anything else right away, and I wait, watching him think. “How old were you when I left?” he says finally.

You mean when you died?

I frown. “Ten? Almost ten, I think.”

He strokes his beard, nodding. “Yeah. That sounds right. That was about when it started.”

“When what started?”

He looks at me. “The blackouts.”

I feel my heart turn over. “Blackouts?”

“When I was sixteen,” he continues, “I started hanging around with some kids in Brume that I probably shouldn’t have been hanging around with. Older kids. I used to drink with them down at the harbor. Sometimes we would get pretty wasted, and sometimes, I would black out. And when I blacked out, I would see things.”

My pulse ticks up. “What kind of things?”

“A creek in a desert. A boy and two little girls.”

My heart flips over again and starts to beat fast. The dreams. He was having the same dreams.

“I figured it was from the grog,” he says. “But my friends were all drinking it and they weren’t having any weird visions. Everyone brushed it off when I asked them about it, except for one guy. He had a dad who used to work for Zenith, and when I told him what was happening, he said his dad wanted to meet me.”

He pauses, watching me closely, more quiet calculations happening behind his eyes, then continues.

“His dad told me about a program he had heard Zenith was running. Not something they advertised or anything. A secret program. A Lottery. Every year they would pick a family at random and pull them out of a settlement. He said they moved them to a Harbor City, set the parents up with jobs, chipped everyone, the works. It made no sense to me, because according to everything we had been taught in Brume, everyone in the Settlements died during the pandemic.”

Outside, the wind howls through alleys between warehouses, rattling tin, but the room is deadly quiet.

“There was no evidence of this, obviously. It was all rumor and hearsay. The guy was a hardcore Zenith dissenter and for all I knew he could have been a conspiracy nut. I blew it off and went back to my life, kept drinking and screwing around. But the blackouts kept happening. And I kept seeing those kids.”

I watch his face carefully. “So what did you do?”

“I went back to the guy and said, Okay, if that’s true, then what does it have to do with me?”

“And what did he say?”

“That it had everything to do with me. I was those kids. Zenith picked my family and brought us here from Naze.”

Pieces of some dark, unsettling puzzle start to slot into place inside my head. That day in Naze. I greeted those people like I knew them.

But that can’t be right. I shake my head. “I would know if I was born in Naze. I would remember it.”

“Not if Zenith didn’t want you to.”

“Why wouldn’t they want me to?”

“You think a company like Zenith runs a program like that out of the goodness of their hearts? The organization whose slogan is Put on your own mask first? You think they go around helping families get out of the Settlements and start a new life, for free? No. There’s a price.”

“What price?”

“Us, Bird. You and me. We’re the price.”

A prickle goes down my spine. Something in his eyes has shifted. A kind of quiet mania is shining there, like he’s been waiting to tell me this for a long, long time.

He taps the side of his head. “These chips? We haven’t always had them. Zenith put them in us when we won the lottery and came to Brume. They aren’t regular chips. They’re not like the biochips that everyone else in Brume has. There’s experimental tech in them.”

“Experimental tech? That sounds a little…dystopian.”

“It is,” he says. “They’re developing something.”

I narrow my eyes. “Developing what?”

“I don’t know for sure. But if you want to know what I think?” He pauses, his eyes once more scrutinizing mine. Then he says, “Teleportation.”

A laugh barks out of me. I gape at him with a confused half-smile as all my nervous anticipation ripples away. Suddenly, the fanatic light in his eyes is almost comical. I’m no longer sure if I’m intimidated by his intensity, or amused by it.

“Teleportation? You think Zenith is testing experimental teleportation technology on children?”

“I don’t think, I know.”

I fold my arms. “How do you know?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? A company like Zenith?” He raises his eyebrows like that’s all the explanation I should need. “You know, the other Lottery kids—the kids that Zenith picked in the years before us—got chips that malfunctioned so badly they were electrocuted. Thousands of kids. Fried from the inside out. Burned the eyes out of their heads. Charred. Blood coming out of their noses.”

“Shale—”

He leans forward and I find myself recoiling. This is grotesque. This is nonsense. He can’t actually believe this? This is the kind of crackpot conspiracy theory you hear from angry little men in Brume who call the women that run Zenith Fat Sallies. Like that asshole who drugged me and left me that night at The Waterhouse. This isn’t Shale. This isn’t my brother.

Who is your brother? says a voice in my head. Do you even know?

Oh shit.

A shiver of realization goes down my spine. I don’t.

I don’t know this person. He may be Shale, but I don’t know him. This is a person I no longer recognize. A person who’s been living alone for ten years in a crumbling mansion in a city thousands of miles from home. Who threw twenty grand at a Reckoner to buy my life without batting an eye. Who got fed some dangerous propaganda when he was sixteen years old and was naive enough to buy it. A person who believes that the world’s most powerful corporation is putting teleporters into the heads of children.

A crazy person.

A crazy person I am currently trapped in a room with.

“Come on,” I say slowly, stalling, my mind running through a list of possible ways the next few minutes might go. “That doesn’t make sense. How would Zenith get away with that? Year after year? Kids dying?”

“Kids who won’t be missed! Kids no one in the cities even knows about.”

“But thousands of kids? Kids like us? There’s no way our moms—”

“Our moms knew!” His voice cracks and I jump. He steps away from the crate and agitatedly paces the small space between us. “They knew, Bird. They knew what was happening and they let it happen. That’s why I left. Not because of the Lottery, or the chips, or Zenith, or any of that stuff. I left because I couldn’t trust them. I couldn’t trust my own moms anymore. I went back to that guy in Brume and I told him I believed him. He let me join his organization and they brought me out here.”

He stops. Spins to face me, his eyes shining.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. What matters now is that you’re here. You’re here, and now you know everything. You’re ready to join the organization too.”

There’s that word again.

I swallow, my eyes darting again to the closed door behind him. “What organization?”

“The organization I work for. The one I joined in Brume. I make good money for them doing black market deals and selling haar, but that’s not the only thing we do. We’re starting something bigger now. Something you’re going to play a very important role in.”

A chill falls across the back of my neck like a cold shadow stretched by the sinking sun. Black market deals. I only know two types of people who make black market deals: Dead Reckoners, and the Anonymity.

And Shale sure as Salt doesn’t look like a Reckoner.

I open my mouth, hesitate, close it again. When I manage to speak, my voice is a whisper. “What’s—what’s the name of the organization?”

“The faction I lead here in Alluvium is called Ardent,” he says. “But in Brume, people still call them the Anonymity.”

chapter

twenty-six

IT’S A TRAP.

I jolt to my feet, my eyes bouncing around the room. For the first time, I see the words printed on the crates stacked all around me. Zenith Biotech. Spindrift. Star Net. Black market goods.

The thing I’ve been running from is here. All this time I thought I was running away from it, and it’s been here, waiting for me. I was so preoccupied with Savage and his crew that I stopped paying attention.

“The Anonymity is here?”

Shale smiles. “The Anonymity is everywhere.”

I feel the blood drain out of my face. I have to get out of this room. I don’t even know what’s going on at this point, but I have to get out of this room. My eyes cut to the door behind him. Did he lock it behind us when we came in?

I try to step around him, but he shoots out his hand and grabs me by the wrist.

“Where are you going?”

“Out—outside. I need to get some air.”

“Don’t do that.” He tilts his head. “We’re talking.”

I try to twist my arm free. “I just feel a little dizzy. Just a lot of information—”

“You’re panicking. There’s no need for that.” His fingers tighten and he gestures to the box I was sitting on. “Sit down, and let’s finish our conversation. Let me tell you about the organization first, and then we can go outside.”

I stare at him, feeling weak. Any notion I had that his intensity was comical or amusing has vanished. This man is strong and unbalanced and dangerous.

“If I listen to what you have to say, you’ll let me go?”

He smiles, studying me again with those quietly manic eyes. “After you’ve heard what I have to say, you won’t want to go.”

My eyes cut to the door again. The only way out is through that door. I’m willing to bet I have a much better chance of getting through it with his blessing than trying to fight my way past him.

“Okay.” I swallow. “Okay, I’ll listen.”

Shale releases my wrist and I sit on the edge of the crate. He folds his arms. “So you’ve heard of the Anonymity?”

“Some.”

He strokes his beard. “In Brume, all the Anonymity was known for was running the black market, dealing haar, and dragging people into debt, but—”

“And murder.”

“Just listen!” His voice rises over mine. “That’s all you know about them, but that isn’t the whole story. The only reason we even need a black market is because Zenith regulates manufacturing so tightly that people can’t get what they need! It’s Zenith that’s luring people out of Settlements with false promises. Turning people into lab rats. Killing children! The Anonymity has been working against Zenith for years. Running the black market. Organizing. Recruiting people like me.”

“And dealing haar and murdering people!”

His eyes flash. “We do what we have to.”

“What you have to? You have to kill people?” My blood runs cold. “Have you killed people?”

He steps toward me. “We’re ready to expose them, Bird. That’s why I need you. It’s why I brought you here. You’re proof. We are proof of what Zenith has been doing. I can’t do it by myself. By myself I’m just another angry guy with an ax to grind at the Fat Sallies. But you—you’re sympathetic. You’re a kid. You’re a girl. People will believe you.”

I gape at him. “Is that why you paid Savage twenty thousand Ubicoin to get your hands on me? Because you needed me to—to be a mouthpiece for your extremist group?”

“To tell your story! To expose the lies—”

“I thought you cared about me. I thought you were going to give me a job.”

“This is a job! This is the most important job you can do! You’re going to be crucial to the movement.”

He’s close enough now that at any moment he could reach out and grab me. My eyes dart to the door. What if this job isn’t something I can turn down? How far will he go to convince me to take it?

Keep him talking. Keep him talking and think.

“If I’m so important to the Anonymity, how come they came after me in Brume?” I pull back my beanie to reveal the scar above my eyebrow. “They threatened to kill me.”

He shakes his head. “Those weren’t my guys.”

“What do you mean my guys?”

“Only a handful of us are working on this plan to expose the Lottery. A small faction. The rest of the organization just want to do business as usual. Those guys that came to your house—they were business as usual guys.”

A realization goes through me like a bolt of lightning. “Then how do you know about them? How did you know they came after me?”

His face goes taut. His eyes register a mistake and dart away from mine.

“Shale? Did you know they went after me?”

He touches his fingers to the slate sitting on top of the crate. He fiddles with the edge of it. Picks it up. Puts it down. “I’m going to tell you something,” he says, carefully. “Please don’t flip out.”

I sit very still, watching him. “Why would I flip out?”

“A few days after I sent you that message about the job, I got word through the grapevine that some Anonymity members in Brume had been hired by a high-ranking Zenith official to track down a thief. Something about a stolen necklace. They had a picture of the primary suspect.” He looks at me. “Obviously you know who that was.”

My stomach turns over. The picture he showed to Savage. That’s how he got it.

“I saw…an opportunity,” he says.

“An opportunity?”

He puts up his hands. “Bird, you have to understand: this thing I need you to do, it’s—it’s so important. I needed you to come. I wasn’t sure if offering you the job would be enough. I thought you might need more incentive. And when I heard the Anonymity had been hired to find you, I saw…a way to incentivize you.”

“Incentivize me?”

“I knew the Anonymity guys would only be after the necklace. Maybe they’d shake you up a little. But as long as you gave it up, that would be it. They’d get their coin, and you’d go on your way.”

“Only I didn’t have the necklace when they found me.”

He shifts. “R—ight. Because I called in a favor to a buddy of mine. You probably don’t remember him. When we were kids, he went by Five. These days everyone pretty much calls him V.”

The wind goes out of me. That asshole at The Watering Hole.

“You told him to drug me?”

“I told him to do whatever he felt was necessary.”

I can’t comprehend what I’m hearing. My whole life. He destroyed my whole life. “You turned me into a fugitive.”

He scoffs. “Don’t be dramatic. I needed to get you out of Brume and I know how the Anonymity operates. I knew that if they caught you, and you didn’t have the necklace, they’d give you a pretty short list of options. The kind of options that would likely force a person to—well, run.”

“What if I hadn’t run?”

“I know you better than that, Bird,” he says dismissively. “I knew you would run.”

“You know me? Who are you? I don’t know you at all! What if they had caught me?! What if I had died on the Salt? Jesus, they sent mercenaries after me!”

My head is spinning. He’s a psychopath. Who does this? Who thinks this is okay? He hired someone to drug me. He forced me to risk my life on the Salt to come here. And for what? To use me in some delusional plot to overthrow the most powerful corporation in the world? Because he thinks they’re building a teleporter?

He reaches for me and I jump to my feet. “Don’t touch me!”

The light in his eyes winks out. Suddenly, I see the faceless voids of the creeps that came after me in Brume. A final realization crawls up my spine: my brother works for an organization that kills people. My brother definitely kills people.

He lowers his voice. “I don’t think I’ve explained this very well. I’m trying to be patient. I’m asking you to do this for me. Don’t make me make you, Birdie. Don’t make me force you. I would hate to have to do that. We’re family.”

An ear-splitting bang shatters the quiet.

Dazzling light pours into the room as the door bursts open and something shoves Shale hard from behind. He stumbles into me, clutching clumsily at my shirt, as whatever hit him drags him to the floor. Temporarily blinded, I stagger backward, throwing my arm over my face and squinting as an enormous four-legged shape pins him to the floor, wraps her jaws around his ankle, and shakes.

Malarkey.

Shale screams and I hear the snap of splintering bone. Astounded, I gape past Malarkey at the open door behind her. A familiar silhouette steps into the rectangle of light.

“Howsley!”

“Sargo!”

I don’t think. I leap over Shale, grab Malarkey by the neck and drag her through the door.

“Run!”

I don’t look back until we’ve sprinted all the way back across the city and the bay comes into view, glittering and white-capped in the clear morning sun. The wind howls around me as I scan the water and spot Panga’s cheerful yellow hull shining like a beacon of hope in the middle of the bay.

We make it to the harbor and Sargo shoves people out of the way as we make for the skiff. Malarkey leaps over him as he kneels to untie the lines. He hops in after her and turns, reaching out a hand to me, and without thinking, I take it.

Our eyes meet and the world falls away.

He came back for me.

I was selfish and reckless and he still came back for me. He was out—he was safe, he could have left me behind. But he’s here. In the skiff. Holding my hand and smiling at me like he’s never been so happy to see anyone in his life. Like he can see everything I’m thinking. Like he’s looking inside me. Watching the world falling away around me. Watching my poor, dumbfounded heart, stumbling around in my chest. It’s a smile I’ve never seen before—confused, but curious. A question. Like he’s seeing something he doesn’t totally understand, but can’t wait to figure out.

I think I'm returning the same smile.

He tugs my hands and pulls me into the skiff. Loops an arm around my waist and pulls me tight against him, and murmurs against my hair, “Te tengo, mija. I got you.”

My heart aches. The scent of him—it’s Brume. Fogwood and petrichor, sand and the Salt. It’s the spires of the forest and the mist winding through it. It’s the fresh salt spray of the surf on the shore and the soft wet crunch of sand beneath my feet.

It’s home. He smells like home.

He holds me a moment longer, then steps back, finding my eyes. “You good?”

I try to think of something clever to say; I try to think of anything at all, but my brain has turned to mush and all I can do is nod.

He grins. “Just trying to keep up the illusion.”

Winking, he steps nimbly around me to the stern, kicks on the motor and snatches up the tiller, spinning the skiff around in a bank of spray and shooting us away from the dock. My hair whips wildly around my face as we speed across the water toward Panga.

“How the hell did you find me?” I gasp.

He shakes his head, grinning, and points at Malarkey. “She found you.”

“But—at the Row. You escaped.”

“I didn’t mean to leave you. I didn’t realize you weren’t behind me until Malarkey and I got to the exit.”

He grimaces and shakes his head.

“I wanted to go back. But I just didn’t see how I would be able to help you. Not with all of them in there. I knew the Kingfisher would have to wait for Savage, so I got Panga out of the bay and started heading for Alluvium. I knew the Kingfisher would beat me here—they’re faster than me, I needed all the head start I could get. I arrived this morning and saw them in the anchorage, so I figured you must already be somewhere in the city. I tried to message you but I guess it didn’t go through. When we got to the dock, I thought we had no chance of finding you. But this one,” he grins at Malarkey, “just put her nose on the ground and started walking. She led me right to that warehouse. All I did was follow her. Well…” He shrugs, looking modest. “I also kicked the door down.”

Tears prick my eyes. “You came back.”

“Of course I came back, Howsley. You’re my first mate. I need you.” He smiles. “Anyway, Malarkey’s useless as a first mate. Can’t pull a line or anything. She doesn’t even have thumbs.”

My heart swells so immensely that it hurts. I wonder if he’s always been able to see that. See my heart aching for him, even when I couldn’t see it myself. I grab Malarkey’s big dumb head in my hands and smash my face against it. She waves her tail ecstatically and washes my head with her tongue.

We come alongside Panga and haul ourselves aboard, weighing anchor and setting the sails in record time. I put Malarkey below while Sargo steers us toward the point at the top of the bay.

“So what happened?” he asks. “With Shale?” I stumble through the events of the morning. Sargo’s eyes grow wide. “So he’s a terrorist?”

“A terrorist?” I frown. “No, I don’t think—”

“He sounds like a terrorist.”

I turn my gaze back over the stern, watching the crazy, mismatched skyline of Alluvium grow smaller.

“You think he’ll come after us?” Sargo asks.

I chew the inside of my cheek and say nothing. I’m almost certain he will. Shale didn’t seem like the kind of person who just lets something go.

“So what now?” he says. “Where are we going to go?”

Anxiety begins to pulse in my temples. “I have no idea. We can’t stay here. We can’t go back to Brume.”

Sargo says nothing for several moments, his thoughtful eyes on the water. Then, to my amazement, he smiles. A calm, easy smile that somehow grounds me, plants me in the eye of this hurricane.

“Pocosín.” He shrugs, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Come with me to Pocosín.”

My heart skips. “Really?”

“Yes, Howsley.” His smile widens. “I don’t want to go without you.”

My heart stretches to bursting again, and all I can do is nod. He turns the wheel to set a new course and shifts his gaze back toward the horizon.

His face goes ashen.

A black, angular speedboat is flying around the point. It’s moving faster than anything I’ve ever seen, and it’s coming straight for us.

Sargo leaps to his feet, cranking the wheel hard to starboard. “Bird, tack!”

I scramble to shake the port sheet loose. Sargo grabs the main sheet with one hand, spinning the helm with the other. Panga begins to bank to starboard, out of the path of the oncoming ship.

“Help me with the mainsail!” Sargo yells. “When I say now, let it out—slowly!” He hands me the sheet and peers up at the sail as it begins to tack across the deck. The boat pitches so hard I have to brace myself to keep from falling. “Now!”

The next few moments seem to happen in slow motion. As I ease the mainsail into position, a gust of wind comes up behind us, catching it the wrong way. The sheet wrenches from my hand and the boom slams hard all the way over to the wrong side of the boat with a gut-wrenching crash.

The unmistakable screech of tearing sailcloth rends the air.

chapter

twenty-seven

THE MAINSAIL HANGS NEARLY in two. The ragged pieces, shredded from foot to head, flap viciously in the wind. Through the raw edges of the sailcloth, I catch fleeting glimpses of the clear blue sky.

It’s over.

We’re in the middle of a bay thousands of miles from home with an Anonymity speed boat barreling toward us and we have no mainsail. We’re dead.

Sargo’s voice floats to me over the howling wind like something out of a dream. “Bird! Take the helm!”

I shake my horrified gaze off the sail and stare at him. Take the helm? Sargo’s never let me take Panga’s helm in my life. The only time I’ve ever been at the helm is in sailing class, and that ended with me almost wrecking two boats and getting expelled.

“Bird, come and take the helm!” he yells again. “Stay with me here! We’re still sailing! I don’t have time to tell you everything twice!” I stumble to the helm. Sargo steps aside and I take the wheel. “Just keep us steady,” he says, laying a hand on the small of my back and pointing out over the bow. “Point us past that sandbar. I’m going to deal with the mainsail.”

“And then what?” My voice is shaking. “We have no mainsail! What are we going to do? How are we going to get out of this?”

He grabs me by the shoulders and looks firmly into my eyes. “As the Salt, so the sailor. One step at a time.”

He climbs out of the cockpit and onto the bow.

I brace myself and cling to the wheel, fighting with all my strength to keep us pointed the right way. The black boat barrels toward on the port side, and starts to turn.

“Sargo, they’re coming this way!” I yell.

Sargo is on the bow, hauling the mainsail down hand over hand. “Keep us steady!”

I put my gaze over the bow and try to focus on the sandbar, but I feel like I’m navigating through a curtain of fog. The panicked thoughts plummeting around my head are all I can see. I can feel the cumulative weight of a thousand bad decisions coming down on me one by one.

I shouldn’t have been drinking in Sargo’s class. I shouldn’t have tried to fight Electra. I shouldn’t have tried to sell that stone. I shouldn’t have made Sargo leave Brume on Panga. He knew she wasn’t ready.

What will Shale’s Anonymity faction do with Sargo? They don’t need him; he isn’t part of their plan. Would they send him back to Brume? Bury him in debt like his uncle? Force him to sell haar? Kill him?

This is all my fault. I should never have dragged him into this.

Stupid brain. Stupid—

“Bird!” Sargo’s voice snaps my eyes up. “Bird, what the hell are you doing?! Look where you’re going and pay attention!”

The black boat is dead ahead, and we’re about to plow into her side.

I crank the wheel hard to port and Panga turns so sharply I have to cling to the wheel to keep myself from falling over. Panga’s bow passes within inches of the black ship’s hull, and we narrowly avoid her. Regaining my balance, I watch the other boat over my shoulder as I the let the wheel spin back through my hands to center. Relief pours through me like cold sweat.

“It’s okay!” I yell, looking back to the bow. “We—” The words die on my tongue.

Sargo is gone.

I turn around and scan the water. He’s fifteen feet behind us, face down in the water, motionless.

“Sargo!”

He must have fallen over the side when I made that crazy turn. I’m alone. Panga is completely under my control. Barely under my control. I don’t even know how to engage the autopilot. I have no idea what to do.

You’ve killed him. You’ve killed—

“Think, Bird! What would Sargo do?”

I check Sargo’s position. The black ship is circling in on him. Horrified, I watch as a figure clad head to toe in black rubber climbs atop the boat’s deck rail and dives into the water. He swims to Sargo in three powerful strokes, gets his arm around him, and drags him back to the boat.

They’ve got Sargo. They’ve got Sargo and—

The boat revs its motor and swings toward me. A bank of spray shoots into the sky.

They’ve got Sargo and now they’re coming for me. I have no mainsail, no captain, and nowhere to go. But I’m not just going to sit here and wait for them to catch me.

I’m going to have to jump.

Letting go of the helm, I grab hold of the rigging and climb onto the rail. The other boat tears toward me, chewing up the water and spitting out spray. Wind ripping at my face and clothes, I cast one more desperate glance at the choppy water, at Panga’s flapping sails, then I let go of the rigging and jump.

But I don’t hit the water.

Instead, I disappear.

chapter

twenty-eight

THE ZENITH TRANSPORT vehicle squatted on the earth like a massive, shelled creature, its knobby tires baking in the sun. One door stood open, revealing the vehicle’s dark interior.

Bird could feel the cool air from inside the vehicle blowing on her face. She had never felt cool air before.

“Shut that door!”

A tall, pinched woman strode past her, a small, stone tablet tucked neatly under her arm. “You think coolant is free?”

A second, smaller woman scurried out from behind the vehicle and slammed the door shut. The tall woman surveyed Bird and her family, then pulled the tablet from under her arm and tapped the side of her head. She made a few quick, nimble gestures in the air with her fingers, then seemed to become very interested in the tablet.

Bird felt the grip of Mama Kestrel’s hand tighten on her shoulder “Gods, what if they change their mind?”

Mama K’s voice was a thin, high whisper. Bird could feel her trembling through the hand on her shoulder.

“They won’t, Kes,” said Mama Jade. “Relax, please. You’re frightening the children.”

“No, she’s not,” said Shale.

He had an enthusiastic look on his face and was peering all around at the activity around the transport. He was taller than the Moms by half a head now, with a few scraggly hairs on his chin making a brave effort at being a beard. But that day he looked like a kid again, standing on his toes, craning his neck to see.

The last two days had been a blur. Zenith women produced all kinds of equipment from that van, which had been parked outside the perimeter of the Settlement for so long that Bird had almost forgotten it was there. They weighed the family and measured them—not just their heights but the length of their arms, the size of their heads, their feet, hands, even fingers. They poked and prodded and stuck things in their mouths and went Mm and tapped the sides of their heads and consulted their little stone tablets.

“It’s routine,” Mama K said. “They want to make sure we’re all healthy.”

“When do we get our chips?” was all Shale wanted to know.

“Will we come back and visit?” Bird asked Mama K. Mama K got a strange expression on her face and squeezed Bird’s shoulders so tight it hurt.

“No, sweetheart,” she said. “People don’t leave Harbor Cities.”

Once Bird knew that, that her worst suspicion was confirmed, that she would be trapped in Brume forever, and would never see Fife again, the fight went out of her.

She sleep-walked through her physical examinations, allowing herself to be propelled, manipulated, positioned, and prodded without objection. She felt like a leaf, blown around in the wind.

Now, the day had finally come. Today was leaving day.

She twisted around and peered through Mama K’s legs. The whole Settlement had come out to see them off. People stood around in twos and threes outside their huts. Some murmured to each other and pointed, watching with unabashed interest.

Pathra, Mama J’s best friend, brought her a little wrapped package, and when Mama J thanked her she burst into tears and wrapped her so tightly in her massive arms that Bird thought she would crush her. Bird remembered the day Pathra had carried her home from the creek after she, Shale, and Fife had found the old man drinking the creekwater. She squinted against the blinding sun.

Where was Fife?

“Okay Howsleys, time to go.”

Mama K’s grip tightened so hard on Bird’s shoulder that she yelped.

“When do we get our chips?” Shale asked.

The woman gave him a brief, tidy smile. “Soon.”

Bird felt the grip on her shoulder loosen, a hand gently propelling her toward the van. She stumbled, looking desperately over her shoulder. Where was Fife? She said she’d be here!

“No!” Bird twisted away and lunged out of Mama K’s reach. “No!”

She plunged blindly through the small crowd of people gathered at the edge of the Settlement. She had to find Fife. She had to say goodbye.

Something big and soft collided with her stomach and she felt herself lifted off her feet. She tipped sideways as she was tucked tightly between a massive arm and a familiar bosom. Pathra’s warm voice vibrated through her bear-like grip. “Come on little Bird. Time to go.”

“No!” Bird kicked her legs and thrashed like a jackrat in a kill sack, but it was no use. She felt like she was six all over again.

Pathra turned her upright and set her on her feet in front of the open door. She heard Shale’s voice behind her, felt his hand on her shoulder. “Come on Birb. It’s gonna be okay.”

“I don’t want to leave her behind,” she said, and felt tears spilling down her cheeks. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“Fife will be okay,” Shale said. “She’s coming. Don’t worry.” He took his hand off her shoulder, knelt in front of her and held it out to her, palm up.

Bird glared at him, snot pouring from her nose. She wiped it on the back of her hand and sniffed.

Why wasn’t Fife here? Of all the times for her not to be here, why now? She was supposed to be here. She said she’d be here. Bird looked back one more time, and she felt her glare harden.

Fine. If that’s how Fife wanted it, that’s how it would be. If Fife didn’t want to say goodbye, that was just fine with her.

You don’t need her, she told herself.

You don’t need anyone, her self replied.

She took a deep breath, stood up straight, and touched the two middle fingers of her left hand to her forehead. The crowd returned the gesture. She turned to Shale. His eyes crinkled.

“Ready?”

She nodded. He held out his hand again and this time, she took it. She stepped up into the cool darkness of the transport vehicle and didn’t look back again.

chapter

twenty-nine

EVERYTHING IS WATER.

My mouth and nose are full of it, my eyes stinging with it. I inhale without thinking and suck it down my throat.

I’m spinning through space. All around me, the world is dark and cold and murky and blue. Through my feet, I see the sky through the water’s surface, warped by fractured, rippling sunlight.

Another crazy, spinning rotation and my head breaks the surface. I gasp air that burns my throat and squeeze water from my eyes. The sun is in shattered pieces all around me. A wave crashes over my head and I go under again, spinning and tumbling through the gurgling blue madness.

My foot touches something firm and I push off it.

As I surface for the second time I glimpse white sand. I pull myself toward it. A current lifts and pulls me too. I’m in a surf break. These are waves. That is the shore.

I drag myself onto the shore, throw myself down on my knees, and cough and gasp and snort saltwater until I can breathe again. I roll onto my back and close my burning eyes and breathe.

I dig water from my ears with my finger and silence is replaced by a cacophony of shrieking—a raucous, deafening din. I open my eyes.

Birds. Thousands of them circling overhead, their forked tails starkly painted: black against the blinding sky. They dip and swerve and dive; shriek and cry. Where did they come from? What are they doing here? My chest rises and falls. My thoughts dip and swerve and dive.

They got Sargo.

I sit bolt upright.

They got Sargo. And I forgot about Malarkey.

Malarkey was down below when I jumped. Where is she now? I look around, tears springing to my eyes. Where is Malarkey? Where is Sargo? Where am I?

A glob of nausea surges up from my belly. I roll onto my side and vomit into the sand. My eyes close.

____________________

“As the Salt, so the sailor.”

I wake with a gasp and Sargo’s voice in my head, clawing my way out of some damp, dark nightmare. My face is sunburned. I turn my head. Cool water at my cheek. The tide has risen. The sun has moved and the air has cooled. The smell of feathers and bird shit and vomit. I sit up.

It wasn’t a nightmare. I’m actually here. His voice floats through my head again as fragments of sleep recede.

“Te tengo, mija.”

I shrink into the sand, as if physically moving will help me dodge the pain of those words going through me. I got you.

He did have me. Always. Had my back. Had my heart. And I couldn’t keep my shit together long enough to do the one simple thing he asked me to do. “Keep us steady,” Sargo said. That’s all you had to do. Keep us steady.

I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t change who I am.

“You can’t change the wind,” says Sargo in my head. “You can’t change the waves. You can only change yourself and your ship. You have to find a way to make it work.”

I don’t want to find a way to make it work. I want to give up. I want to drink until I can’t stand up and lie here in bird shit and vomit until the tide rises and the water overwhelms me and the Salt drags my useless body down to Jones.

You know you can’t do that, Bird, says a voice, and this time, it isn’t Sargo. This is your wind. These are your waves. These are the conditions you’ve been given. You have to find a way to make it work.

As the Salt, so the sailor.

I struggle to my feet.

____________________

Shielding my eyes with my hand, I turn a full circle.

A beach. I’m on some kind of beach. Where’s Panga? What the hell just happened?

There’s no sign of the docks, of the bay, or of Alluvium. All I see is sand and some scrubby jungle coming down to its edge. At the edge of the trees is a wide, hollow stump.

I turn my gaze out to the horizon. Two enormous rocks thrust into the sky like monuments just beyond the surf break, their twin tops shrouded by carousels of birds. Behind them, it’s empty all the way to the edge of the world.

Don’t panic, I tell myself. Think.

Don’t tell me what to do, my self retorts. Why don’t you think?

Maybe there’s a map.

I press a finger to my brow. Static screams through me like a hurricane; a trillion needles drilling the inside of my skull. I wrench my hand away, blinking away spots, my ears ringing. The sharp, rusty taste of metal or blood is on my tongue.

What the hell was that?

I touch my brow again. Static. I pull my hand away. That wasn’t anything like being out of range. My chip must be broken.

Okay. Don’t panic. There’s nothing you can do but start walking. The sooner you start walking, the sooner you’ll know where you are.

I turn to my right and find myself squinting into the sun. So I turn left. I’ll put the sun behind me. I’ll walk along the beach until I find someone, and I’ll ask them to help me get back to Alluvium. Then I’ll find Shale and make him tell me where they took Sargo. And then I’ll break his flogging legs.

Sounds like a plan.

The sun warms my back and steam begins to rise from my clothes. I ignore the thirst crinkling the back of my throat and try to guess the time—1400, maybe 1500? I have nothing to go on except the angle of the sun. I wish I could remember how to read it.

Sargo could do it. He can tell you the time down to the quarter-hour just by looking at the sun. Why didn’t I ever pay attention to anything he tried to teach me? All that shit would be so useful right now.

The sun sinks and the air gets cold. I try to ignore the fact that I’ve been walking for what feels like hours and still haven’t seen anything that resembles a city. I try not to think about how much I would love to sit down and drink an entire flask of grog. I try not to bite my nails. I focus all my energy on walking because it’s the only productive thing I can do. I create a rhythm out of my breath and steps—two steps in, two steps out, two breaths in, two breaths out—repetitive, meditative, endless, until suddenly, ten feet ahead, I see footprints.

Suppressing a small whoop of excitement, I hurry to them. They stretch ahead of me into the dusk, a single, long line of tracks in the sand. Maybe they go all the way back to Alluvium. Maybe I just need to follow these—

Actually, these footprints look very familiar. I lift my foot and place it into the first one. It’s a perfect fit. These are my footprints.

That can’t be. I look up at the path of the footprints, snaking away from me along the beach until they disappear. I turn and look behind me. The same prints track toward me out of the rapidly falling dark.

I look up the beach. At the edge of the tangle of trees and scrub, sneering at me like a craggy, toothy face, is the hollow stump I started from. I’ve gone in a circle.

How did this happen? I walked next to the water, I never changed direction. I couldn’t have gotten lost, I’ve only been going one way. I look desperately up and down the beach at my footprints stretching off in both directions, as a harsh and inescapable realization dawns on me.

The only possible way I could have walked in a full circle is if this beach forms a complete circle. And the only way that could be true is if this is a very small island. And if this is a very small island…then I am well and truly lost.

____________________

The next morning dawns damp and muggy. My mouth is dry, my clothes stiff, and my skin itchy with dried saltwater. I smell earth, wood, and sand. And sweat. Mostly sweat, in fact.

I roll onto my side and sit up. The cries of birds and the musty reek of shit and molted feathers are immediately overwhelming. I’m inside the hollow stump at the edge of the jungle. I slept here.

I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.

Yesterday.

Yesterday comes rushing back at me so fast I actually lift my hands to stop it. Yesterday feels like a lifetime ago. This time yesterday I was watching the sun come up over the bay of Alluvium. This time yesterday, I had a brother. I had a job. I had a future.

I shut my eyes against yesterday.

Standing up, I scan the beach. Still full of birds. No surprises there.

The trees in the scrub behind me are short and skinny, their white, brittle trunks and spiny branches twisted, their leaves dry. There’s enough space between them to walk, a carpet of dead leaves and feathers covering the ground below.

There are trees here. That means there must be water. I lick my parched lips. I’m not just starving, I’m thirsty. Which is a much bigger problem. An empty stomach gets your attention, but it’s not so swift and deadly as the sneaking specter of thirst. I need to find that water.

I climb out of the stump and head into the trees.

It’s immediately awful. Everything is armored with tiny spines and needles; they tear at my clothes and scratch my face and arms. The birds in the trees are big and black. They puff bright red throats like balloons and click their beaks as I pass beneath them.

The way rises steeper and steeper until I’m climbing on all fours up a slippery bank of loose soil. My palms collect needles, and my face mars with dirt every time I wipe it on the back of my arm.

Halfway to the top, my foot slips, plunging into the soft soil of the bank. The branch I’m holding tears out of my hand, and I tumble backward in an avalanche of dirt and leaves. I roll down the bank, head over heels, until I land hard on my shoulder with the side of my face in mud.

Gasping, I heave myself onto my knees and sit back on my heels, clawing mud from my eyes and hair. I’ve fallen into a squelchy, soupy mess of sludge. One side of my torso is black, my shirt sticking to me, my feet and legs completely soaked.

Soaked. Soaked means water.

The realization propels me to my feet, and I spot the source of the water: a tiny trickle seeping almost silently from between two rocks. I throw myself down in front of it and drink.

And immediately gag and spit it out. Salt.

How can it be salty? How can all these trees be here if the groundwater is salty?

Because they’re Saltnut trees, Genius.

I stare at that trickle of saltwater, willing it to be something else. Anything else: freshwater, or oil, or blood, or grog, or just…nothing. I’d rather have nothing. I’d rather have never seen water at all.

I sit very still with my hands on my knees, breathing deeply, concentrating all my energy on not letting rage at that deceptive trickle of water consume me. Finally, I wipe my face and do what I can with my clothes. Then I pick myself up and start to climb again.

Little by little, the undergrowth thins, and I feel the heat of the sun on the top of my head. A breeze shifts through the canopy, showering me in leaves. It catches my clothes, pulling them away from my damp skin, and I hold my arms away from me, relishing the cool air. Up ahead, I can see the top of the hill, and above it, the sky.

When I reach the top, I see that I was right. This is an island. A very small one. I shade my face and look out at the Salt in all directions. There’s not a lump of land on the horizon or a single sail on the water.

For flog’s sake, where are you, Bird?

I sit on a rock and stare at the water and try to back to the moment I jumped from Panga. I jumped but I never hit the water. I blacked out. I saw the red desert, and the girl and her brother again. I saw me and Shale, leaving the Settlement. I disappeared in one place, and I woke up in another.

I teleported.

This was not just a blackout. This was something else. That night I was almost hit by the EV and woke up on the Green. The day the Valkyrie chased us down and that Reckoner almost pulled me over the side. The night I got drunk with Goliath on the Kingfisher and woke up the next morning in Panga’s cockpit.

Not a blackout. A blip. A gap in the tape.

What if Shale’s right? What if Zenith is testing teleporters on settlement kids? What if we did win the Lottery and move to Brume? What if that night in Brume, I did steal Electra’s necklace?

The knife of hunger twists in my belly. I blink and look around. White sky. Black birds. Endless, endless, endless miles of gray, miserable Salt. At this point, worrying how I got here is honestly sort of moot. I need to start thinking about how I’m going to survive.

I stand up and take one last look around the island, taking stock of everything, fixing a mental map of the place in my mind.

Then I begin the long climb back down to the beach.

chapter

thirty

I AM UNBELIEVABLY, viciously thirsty.

I’m hungry too, but it’s nothing compared to the thirst. My tongue and throat are so dry they burn. My lips crack when I move them. The feeling is like dry rot in my bones.

I lie on my back in the sand by the stump with my arm over my face and the hot, white sun burning a hole through my spirit. Even the itch for grog, which has been a constant, gnawing presence at the back of my mind for days, shrinks in the presence of the thirst. The idea of drinking grog is repugnant. Just thinking about it makes me thirstier. I need water.

“I’m thirsty,” said the boy, and the girl realized she’d been forgetting to pay attention again.

Another fragment of a dream. I wave it away with a tired hand. Pieces of the dreams are coming back to me all the time now. Memories of my life before Brume, I guess, if I’m taking Shale’s word for it. It’s like the blip in Alluvium Bay opened some kind of floodgate, and my brain is pummeling me with a torrent of information about my childhood in the Settlement.

A torrent of information about my childhood in Naze isn’t going to quench my thirst though. An actual torrent, like, of water, would be great.

“Will you show me how to make a fire?” the girl asked.

Her brother squinted at her. “You’re too young.”

I pound on my forehead with my fist. Come on, Bird, concentrate! I can’t seem to stop the memories from coming. It’s making it nearly impossible to think about a solution to the water problem.

“I know, I won’t touch anything. But can you explain it?”

What I do have is plenty of saltwater. If I could figure out a way to get fresh water from saltwater—

“Come on,” he said, “I’m thirsty. Let’s make some brackish.”

I sit up.

Brackish.

My stupid brain isn’t flooding me with useless memories. It’s putting the answer right in front of me. With fire, I can boil saltwater and trap the steam to make brackish. Young Bird knew you could do that.

I struggle to my feet, dizzy, but invigorated.

Young Bird knew how to make a fire.

____________________

It takes me a long time, but eventually, I assemble a small pile of leaves and grass and choose a flat, sturdy log to serve as my fireboard.

An offshore breeze shifts some of the leaves, and with a tsk of irritation, I corral them, nesting them into a small pile on top of the log and pressing the pile together with my palms.

“When you spin the drill against the fireboard, it creates heat,” says Shale’s voice in my head. “When you have enough heat, the kindling will catch.”

I place the slender, round stick I’ve chosen as my drill in the center of the pile, sandwich my palms together around it, inhale deeply through my nose, and begin to spin. The motion immediately re-opens all the cuts on my palms that I sustained while climbing around in the scrub yesterday. I grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut.

The drill slips. It shoots out from between my palms, tearing a chunk of skin from my thumb as it does. The tip slides off the fireboard, scattering my pile of leaves and grass, which are caught by the wind, lifted, and blown across the sand like tumbleweeds.

“No...”

I drag myself to my feet, hopelessly snatching at them as the wind chases them away. A wave of lightheadedness makes the ground rise up and I stagger to my knees, watching in despair as the work that encompassed the last hour of my life skitters away down the beach.

Do better, says a voice in my head, and at this point I’m no longer sure if it’s my voice, Sargo’s voice, Shale’s voice, or someone new entirely. You have to do better. This isn’t a joke, Howsley. For once in your life, take this seriously. As the Salt—

Yeah, yeah, yeah…

I struggle up and begin scouring the sand for kindling again.

This time, when I have a pile of kindling assembled, I dig a small pit to stop it blowing away while I light it. As I’m digging the hole, I start to wonder what else I could improve about the process.

I wash my hands in the Salt and wrap them with tough leaves to protect them from the drill. As I’m doing that, I wonder if there’s anything else I could do. I spend the better part of an hour carefully peeling all the bark off the fire board to make it smoother and easier to manage. Finally, with all my preparations made, I kneel at the fireboard and place the drill between my palms.

I lose track of how long I spin that drill. An hour, maybe? Longer? I mutter a mantra under my breath. It becomes meditative, picking up the rhythm of the drill, the rhythm of my breath, focusing everything into a single, cohesive beat.

“As the Salt, so the sailor. As the sailor, so the Salt.”

A tiny flame leaps into life. It sputters and trembles and then, timidly, starts to grow. I bend my face to it and blow. It catches and crinkles the grass around it, rapidly turning the small pile of debris into ash. I grab a handful of leaves and carefully feed it until it one flame becomes two flames, and two become three, and three become a fire.

I flogging did it.

A tremendous clap of thunder ruptures the sky, and a torrent of water unlike any I’ve ever felt comes down on top of my head.

Rain.

Horrified, I watch as my little fire is extinguished. The kindling is drenched and then swamped, water pummeling the grass, pooling on the branch, picking up the leaves, and swirling them away. Everything is soaked.

In disbelief, I turn my face to the sky. Storm clouds completely obscure the early evening stars—I hadn’t even noticed them rolling in. I’ve never seen rain before in my life.

I snatch up the drill and hurl it into the trees, screaming. The tears I’ve been repressing for days finally erupt and I sink to my knees and sob.

I was trying. I’m trying.

My face is so soaked with water that I don’t even feel the tears running down it. I heave gasping, furious, devastated breaths. It doesn’t matter what I do. It doesn’t matter how hard I try. I can’t do it. I can’t change. I can’t do this on my own. I can’t even help myself.

And then it hits me. Rain is water.

You can drink this, Idiot.

Scrambling to my feet, I turn my face to the sky again and stretch my hands above me in a daze. I’ve never seen rain before—it’s so alien to me that I hadn’t even realized what it was. I was so blinded by my anger that I couldn’t see the gift that was falling from the sky. I couldn’t see the water for the rain.

When I cup my hands and bring them to my lips, the rain is like a poultice on my rage. It’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted: cool, and sweet, and clean. It pours through my head like a soothing light, driving out the headache that’s been clanging there for days.

My clothes become heavy, and stick to me, and without thinking I tear them off and fling them on the sand. Days of salt and sweat and muck pour off me. I throw my head back again and open my mouth. Grog never tasted like this. Nothing ever tasted like this.

If I ever make it off this island. I’ll never drink grog again.

With renewed determination, I look up and down the beach. I need to capture this water. Store it somehow. My legs propel me to the edge of the scrub. Tucked amongst the spindly Saltnuts with their brown leaves and white bark squats a dark green shrub with big, waxy leaves. In a frenzy, I gather the leaves until my arms are full.

I return to the beach. I drop to my knees and start to dig. I dig a hole about six inches across and tuck one of the big leaves in it to create a bowl. The rain begins to pool inside the leaf. I dig another, then another, and another, until I have about fifteen little pools, all lined with leaves, all filling with rain.

I start to laugh, imagining the sight of myself, naked, stumbling around in the rain, digging holes in the sand. I laugh so hard it winds me. I laugh until I collapse, overcome with exhaustion, soaked to the bone.

____________________

I wake the next morning with a snort, face down in the sand with my ass in the air. I sit up and look around.

The pools I dug last night are still full of water. They glitter like jewels in the sand. They might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Kneeling at the one nearest me, I put my face in it and suck it down. The water is cool and tastes faintly of leaves. I stand up take stock of my camp. Everything is soaked from the deluge, my clothes included, so I throw on underwear and hang the rest in the branches by the stump.

One thing at a time.

I’m alive. I have water. Today I will make another fire.

The morning is overcast, damp, and muggy. The air, bitter with petrichor, seems to cling to me. At some point, the blazing sun emerges, drawing steam from the beach. By late afternoon, everything seems dry enough to attempt another fire.

It takes me the better part of three hours, but I manage it. As soon as the fire is stable enough to be left, I venture into the bird colony to steal some eggs. I don’t feel great about it. But I feel better about that than I do about starving.

I crack the eggs into one of the big, waxy leaves and set it over the hot coals near the edge of the fire. I cook them until I can’t wait any longer then pour them down my throat. They’re rubbery around the edges, cold in the middle, slimy, and very salty. I chase them down with leafy water. I can’t remember a better meal.

I wake many times during the night. Every time I wake, I panic. I feed the fire and fall asleep watching it. By morning, the roaring pyre has turned into a pit of glowing coals, and I scramble to feed it before setting out into the scrub to gather more wood.

For the next three days, scarcely another thought occupies me but the fire, the water, and the eggs. There is an immediate and undeniable need to keep the fire going at all costs. I wake, feed the fire, eat half-cooked eggs, drink from the pools, and fight my way through the scrub, gathering wood.

Every morning the fire has dwindled down to embers, and by every evening I’ve built it back up. I watch the weather like a hawk.

On the morning of day four, I see rain clouds. I move the fire inside the hollow stump and cover the stump with leaves. It rains, and the fire stays dry. I dig more pools and collect more rain. I begrudgingly thank whatever gods might be watching for their help with the rain. I hope they’re all enjoying the show.

I live moment to moment, always focused on the task at hand. Thoughts of teleporting, of Shale, of finding Sargo and Malarkey, are crowded out of my mind by the ever-present hunger of the flame. I don’t even think about leaving the island. I don’t even think about grog.

So it’s with no small amount of shock that I wake on the morning of my seventh day to see a sail on the horizon.

chapter

thirty-one

I STAND with my feet in the surf and one hand over my brow, watching the approaching sail. After seven days of moment-to-moment survival, I should be ecstatic about seeing a sail on the horizon. Instead, I am afraid. Because what if it’s the Anonymity.

Being rescued from the island doesn’t seem like such a high priority if Shale’s going to take me back to Alluvium to join some insane terrorist organization. I’d rather stay here. Am I not doing fine here? I have a fire. I have these eggs. It’ll probably rain again at some point.

Don’t be insane. You can’t stay on this island. You’re panicking. It’s probably just some fishermen or something.

Just some fishermen or something. Right. That’s the kind of luck I usually have. Anyway, even if it’s not the Anonymity, what are the odds it’s someone friendly? How many friendly people have I met out here so far?

So proud of my stupid little fire. The fire that told them I was here.

Way to go, Howsley.

It’s too late now to put it out. They’ve seen the smoke; they know I’m here. I’ll have to hide. At least until I know who they are.

There’s a rocky outcropping tucked in the trees that I discovered on a wood-gathering mission two days ago. It looks down on the beach and gives me a good view of my little camp. If I can get up there I’ll have a good vantage point to watch them land.

I fly up the beach, snatching up and pulling on my clothes and stuffing the drill into my back pocket. I kneel by the pools, almost all empty now, and tip the last of the water from them down my throat, then run to the edge of the scrub.

Wait. Stop and think.

If I go into the trees here, they’ll follow my footprints right from the beach. I should try and throw them off my track.

I shuffle back to the stump, kicking sand over my footprints, then run down the beach in the other direction, leaving a long trail of footprints. Carefully, I creep back along the edge of the scrub, being careful to walk on the carpet of leaves so as to leave no prints. I fight my way up to the ledge I discovered two days ago and tuck myself behind a rock. For what feels like a lifetime, I wait.

I hear the dull hum of a motorized skiff approaching, then shouts and splashes as the crew land the skiff and drag it up the beach. The first of them comes into view. He’s tall and wearing a hood. The wind flips a corner of his coat open, and something metallic at his hip flashes in the sun. He’s followed by a small, nimble-looking fellow, and an absolute giant of a man. They scuff around my camp, turning over branches with their feet.

The little one points at my footprints leading off in the wrong direction. The tall one starts to follow them, but the little one stops him. They confer briefly, and then to my horror, the little one points to the exact spot where I entered the scrub.

If they saw through my trick that easily, it won’t take them long to find me here.

Moving as quietly as I can, I turn and jump from the outcropping. My sleeve snags on a branch, and an explosion of squawking fills the air as the branch snaps and a giant black bird launches out of the tree, scattering leaves and swelling his big, red throat.

Stumbling to my feet, I run, as someone shouts below me on the beach. I bob and weave around branches and logs, spines tearing at my face and clothes, and hear someone crashing through the trees behind me. Gaining on me.

I reach the embankment I fell down on my first day in this forest and teeter on the edge, casting one wild glance back over my shoulder before I jump. I slide and tumble down the slope and come to a stop against a log. Rolling onto my belly, I wedge myself under the log and lie still.

I hear a shout above me and a grunted response. The sound of big footsteps tromping through the undergrowth at the top of the bank. The footsteps stomp around for a couple more minutes, then recede. I hear another shout, another grunted response, but muffled, further away this time.

Exhaling softly, I inch out from under the log on my forearms.

“Stop right there.”

I freeze. The cold point of a blade is against my cheek. I sense rather than see a booted foot plant itself inches from my head.

“Come all the way out, slowly, with your hands up.”

I slither out with my hands over my head, stand, and turn to face my pursuer. My jaw drops.

“Fetch?”

The scrappy Black girl with the buzzcut does a double-take. “Alluvium?”

I begin to drop my hands.

“Keep them up!” she snaps, pointing her knife at me.

I jerk them back up. “What are you going to do, stab me?”

“I might.”

The sound of something enormous crashing through the trees draws my eyes away just in time to see a hooded figure burst into the clearing. He wrenches off his hood to reveal a thick, black mohawk and an alabaster neck covered in tattoos, and I realize he isn’t a man at all.

Goliath stops, their eyes darting to me, then to Fetch. “Who is?”

Fetch replies without taking her eyes off me. “You don’t remember our friends from the little yellow boat? What happened, friend? Lost your way?”

The lanky figure of Red Bread stoops under a branch and steps into the clearing, pulling off his hood. In his hand is his long-handled ax. He takes in the scene, then quietly hooks the weapon to a canvas loop on his belt, walks up behind Fetch, and puts a hand on her shoulder.

Fetch stiffens, tightening her grip on the handle of her knife, then with a tsk of frustration, she sheaths it. I slowly lower my hands, glancing from Red Bread, to Goliath, to Fetch, who stands with her hands on her hips, looking me over.

“You look like shit,” she says.

“I’ve been stranded on a deserted island for a week,” I retort. “What’s your excuse?”

She lunges at me, flicking her knife back out of its sheath, but I’m prepared for her this time. A new, powerful energy burns in my veins. I just survived a week on this God-forsaken shithole bird farm of an island. I’m not just some pathetic, naive little nobody anymore. I’m sick of being intimidated by this stray.

Red Bread wedges himself between us, driving us apart with a hand on each of our chests.

Fetch glares past him at me. “So where’s your boyfriend and that big dumb dog?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Search the area,” she calls to Goliath. “They could be hiding in the trees.”

“They’re not.”

“Oh yeah?” Fetch glares. “Why would I believe that?”

I hesitate. I could tell her the truth, but how much do I want her to know? How much can I tell her without having to explain the Anonymity? If Savage and his crew find out how valuable I am to Shale and his insane faction, I’ll be right back where I started.

Red Bread shoots a look to Goliath, who mutters into Fetch’s ear. Fetch glowers. “I’m not taking her anywhere near the captain.”

Red Bread removes his hand from my chest and uses it to sign something.

“He’s right. Is Captain’s decision,” Goliath says. “She have rich brother.”

Fetch glares at me, then sheaths her knife with a sharp exhale. “You’re lucky these two are such bleeding hearts. If it were up to me you’d be getting a knife in the neck.”

“Guess it’s a good thing it’s not up to you.”

She narrows her eyes as though preparing to lunge at me again. Then she whirls around and stomps across the clearing into the trees.

____________________

Savage observes me from the chair behind the helm in the Kingfisher’s cockpit, his steel-toed boots propped, as ever, on the edge of the instrument panel, the butterfly knife turning lazily over in his hand.

“That was some stunt you pulled, Electra. Made me look pretty stupid.”

His voice is casual, but I sense the dangerous undercurrent just beneath the words. He flips the knife abruptly at the floor, where it sticks in the wood with a sharp thunk. It stands on its point in the deck, vibrating.

“I don’t like to look stupid, Alluvium.”

My hands are bound in front of me. Fetch insisted on tying me up with before she, Red Bread, and Goliath loaded me into their skiff and brought me out to the Kingfisher. Every wave that rolls in toward the island tips us sideways, and I have to constantly readjust my feet to steady myself.

“What I don’t understand,” says Fetch, “is how you came to be on this island in the first place.”

She leans with her arms folded in the doorway, the side of her head with the 4242 tattoo on it propped against the doorframe.

“I had to abandon ship. I jumped overboard and hit my head. I must have drifted out into the Salt and washed up here.”

“From Alluvium?”

“Guess so.”

“Alluvium is almost a thousand miles south. You’re telling me you drifted a thousand miles, unconscious, against the prevailing current?”

I try to keep the shock from showing on my face. A thousand miles?

“You abandoned ship?” Savage cuts in, a note of genuine curiosity in his voice. “Why?”

“We lost our mainsail. It tore in half. Sargo—Pitch—uh, my…captain…went overboard, and I jumped in to get him back. I don’t remember what happened after that.”

It’s not entirely a lie.

Savage surveys me with those keen, wolfish eyes. Like he can tell I’m lying about something, he just can’t figure out what. I find myself heating under his gaze and look away. He uncrosses his boots and stands. He stoops to retrieve the butterfly knife.

“It sounds to me like that rich brother of yours is probably worried about you.”

“I’m sure he is.”

He swivels the knife. It snicks quietly as it opens and closes in his hand. “So what are we going to do about that?”

I keep one eye on the knife. He hasn’t used that knife on me yet. And as long as he thinks he can get more money out of Shale, he probably won’t. “I guess you’ll just have to take me back to him.”

I don’t know why, but Savage and his crew don’t feel so threatening to me anymore. Maybe it’s because I dodged them last time. Maybe it’s because I dodged the Anonymity too. Maybe it’s because I just survived a week of hell on a deserted island, and doing that makes me feel like escaping Savage and his crew might not be so difficult. On the island, I had nothing. Here, I have tools. Options.

“How do I know this brother will be so generous a second time around?” Savage says, still swiveling the knife. “Twenty thousand is a lot of coin. Your family might be tired of your shenanigans. I know I am.”

I glare at him. I don’t have time for this. Just take me back to Alluvium so I can escape, already. “Trust me. He’ll pay.”

He stops the knife, holding it with the point facing me. “Trust you? Why on earth would I do that?”

“Because if you want the coin, you don’t have a choice.”

His eyes narrow. He flips the knife closed and tucks it into his pocket. “Fetch, see to it that Alluvium here gets a berth in the crew quarters. We’re going to treat her a little less delicately this time around. She’s not royalty, after all.”

“What do you mean, delicately?” I ask.

“Since I have no guarantee that your brother will cough up the coin for you a second time around, I think it’s only fair that you earn your passage back to Alluvium. Plenty of things need to get done around here that my crew, frankly, are tired of doing. I’m sure they’ll appreciate a break from all the menial, degrading tasks.”

He flashes his teeth as Fetch unties my wrists and takes hold of my arm to steer me out of the room.

I shake her off. “I’ve got it, thanks.”

She rolls her eyes and stomps past me for the door. As we reach it, Savage’s voice stops us.

“Oh, Fetch—”

We both turn. His expression is serious as he watches us from behind the helm. My stomach twists. What now?

He leans an elbow on his knee and points a stern finger at Fetch. “See to it that there are no shenanigans this time.”

____________________

I eat with the crew at the same long table in the galley that Sargo and I sat at just two weeks ago. That night it may as well have been a dream. Sargo and I argued that night. Stupid. So pointless, in light of everything that’s happened. He was right. He was always right.

Someone passes a big brown jug of drink in my direction and I shake my head and watch it go by. It makes me itchy, but it also feels good. I’m so grateful just to be alive—and I’m still so thirsty—that just to have water feels like a miracle. I told myself when I was on the island that if I ever made it off, I would never drink again. For once in my life, I might take that seriously.

Later, I stand on deck as the Kingfisher sets sail, watching the island recede into darkness. As my eyes adjust, I hold up my hands and crook my knuckles to look at my nails. I haven’t chewed them. Not since I started tending the fire. There wasn’t space for that on the island. Just like there wasn’t space for grog or recklessness or twisting myself into knots. There was only space for the next five minutes. There was only space for one thing at a time.

“Alluvium!” Fetch’s bark comes up the companionway. “Go help Red clean up dinner.”

Wrapping my arms around myself, I put my back to the island and turn my gaze over the bow.

Malarkey and Sargo are gone. I may have escaped the Anonymity and survived a deserted island, but my work is far from over. I saved myself; now I have to save them.

The enormity of that task feels insurmountable. But I think I’m beginning to see the way to go about tasks like that: one step at a time. Changing myself and my sails to suit the conditions I’ve been given.

I pause at the top of the companionway, taking one last look over my shoulder at the island, no more than a shadow now, receding into darkness. I inhale the night. Exhale my fear. Then head below to join the crew.

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It is not the Salt we conquer. It is ourselves.

So I just found out that Sargo has been abducted to a city eight thousand miles across the Salt. Which means if I ever want to see him again (which I'm pretty sure I do), I'm gonna have to embark on a treacherous voyage to get him back...

...alone.

Dangerous? Yes. Insane? Definitely. Necessary? Well, I'm pretty sure I'm falling in love with the guy, so...yeah. The problem is, I'm still a massive asshole and I haven't really gotten over this drinking thing. And there might be a teleporter inside my head. Oh, and I still don't know how to sail.

Plus, every step closer seems to unravel more dark secrets about the people who took him...and about me.

An Excerpt

“You’re cold,” he says.

“I’m okay.”

I feel his hand on my shoulder. “Turn over. On your other side.”

I do. The mattress sinks just behind me and suddenly his chest is warm and firm against my back. Heat erupts under my skin.

“Is this okay?” he says just behind my ear.

I tremble. “Yes.”

“You’re still shivering.”

“It’s not from the cold.”

“Mm.” He carefully—so carefully—slides his other hand around my waist and settles fully against me, closing his arms tighter and nudging one knee between mine. I feel his breath warm against my ear.

“Still okay?” he says. His stubble brings prickling heat to the skin it touches.

I swallow. “Mhm.”

“Nothing to be afraid of.”

“Mhm.”

We lie very still and quiet for a long time, as though we’re both afraid to acknowledge what it is we’re afraid of: that this moment feels made of glass and if we move, we might break it. I can feel his heart thumping against the back of my ribs. I can feel each breath he takes brushing the back of my ear.

I reach a hand behind my head and find his hair again, let my fingers trail through it, let them go a little further, until they touch the soft, prickly skin of his jaw. Feeling bold, I trail one finger down his neck. He shudders, and I smile.

“You like that?”

His breath stills, and in the same moment, I feel something twitch against my ass.

My eyes go wide in the dark. I know what that is. I've only felt it once before, but I know exactly what it is. That was all it took? Those three words and my finger on his neck?

I find my voice and say, “You do like it.”

He turns his face into my hair. “Yes.”

My blood ignites. I push my fingers into his hair and grip a handful of it, pulling his face into the crook of my neck. His lips press under my ear as he pulls me closer. The feel of him hard against me turns me liquid inside, and, still gripping his hair, I roll my hips against him.

“Fuck,” he groans, grinding his hips into me.

That word sets something burning even hotter inside me. I’ve never heard him swear like that.

"Crack. That's what this is."

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glossary

PANGA - a slang word for a small, motorized fishing boat used throughout Mexico and Central America

XANTIC SARGO - a type of rockfish found along the California coast, primarily between Santa Cruz and La Paz. Also known as the California Sargo

MALARKEY - nonsense; meaningless talk

FETCH - short, choppy waves created by wind. Also, the distance that wind travels over open water

FID - a small metal tool used to splice rope

FLY - to use a sail

BLENNY - the name given to many types of small fish generally found in saltwater

MARLIN - a type of large fish with a long, speared nose

GNAMMA - a fertile place; oasis

BRUME - fog, mist, vapor

ALLUVIUM - soil, clay, silt or gravel deposited by flowing water, as it slows, in a river bed, delta, estuary or flood plain

POCOSÍN - A low, wooded swamp (especially coastal) with deep, acidic peat soils

TOR - a rocky outcropping or summit; a hill; a tower or turret

GRIKE - A deep cleft formed in limestone surfaces due to water erosion

QANAT - An underground conduit, between vertical shafts, that leads water from the interior of a hill to villages in the valley

DEAD RECKONING - making a rough estimate of your current position, based on clues like your last known position, time you’ve been sailing, and landmarks you’ve seen

ZENITH - the highest point reached by a celestial body during its daily apparent path around a point of observation. In celestial navigation, the Zenith is directly over the head of the observer, and the Zenith distance is the distance from that point to the position of the celestial body being observed

AZIMUTH - the direction of the sun from your assumed position

SKIFF - a small boat or dinghy used to get ashore from a larger boat

SLOOP - a type of sailboat with a single mast, typically having a mainsail and at least one headsail

MAINSAIL - the biggest sail on the boat, hoisted from the mast

JIB/HEADSAIL - a sail that sits forward of the mast

LINE - a rope

SHEET - a line used to control a sail

ANCHOR - the large metal hook that is dropped from a chain to keep the boat in one place in the water

BOW - the front of the boat

STERN - the back of the boat

FORWARD - in front of

AFT - behind

STARBOARD - the right-hand side of the boat, when facing toward the bow

PORT - the left side of the boat, when facing the bow

BOOM - the rigid beam that sticks straight out from the mast and from which the mainsail is run

MAST - the vertical beam in the middle of a sailboat from which the mainsail is hoisted

COCKPIT - the area of the boat, usually toward the stern, where the helm is. Where the boat is steered.

GALLEY - the kitchen

HEAD - the bathroom

RIGGING - any lines or ropes used to control the sails

DOCK - a pier used to tie boats up to

MOORING BALL - a floating ball attached to the bottom of the ocean by a long line, which boats can tie up to instead of dropping an anchor

THE BIMINI TWIST - a knot used to tie one fishing line to another, or to tie a fishing line to a hook

LOCATIONS BASED ON

BRUME - Santa Cruz, California, USA

ALLUVIUM - Puerto Madero, Tapachula, Mexico

POCOSÍN - Panama City, Panama

ÎLE TOR - Tahiti, French Polynesia

GRIKE - Great Artesian Basin, Australia

QANAT - Dubai, United Arab Emirates

KREPOST’ - Moscow, Russia

ZHĪLIÚ - Shanghai, China

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SCOURGE (BOOK ZERO)

The year is 2172. The world is mostly water. Marlin Paz and her pregnant girlfriend arrive in the harbor city of Brume after forty-two harrowing days at sea only to find themselves forbidden to go ashore.

Meanwhile, Axioma Nation, CEO of the world's leading corporation, struggles to solve the climate refugee crisis. But when an urgent message from a colleague overseas comes through, Axioma realizes that the climate is the least of her worries.

And thousands of miles away, in the ravaged heartland of the State, Heron Howsley must reckon with her family's legacy and her own demons while facing down tornados and discovering that her love for her hometown runs deeper than she knew...

SEED (BOOK 0.5)

The world has ended. The virus took everything. Heron Howsley and her cat Zig Zag flee the tornado-ravaged Alley for a better life in Naze, a climate refugee camp on the West Coast.

Heron has just two rules: don’t make friends, don’t get murdered. But when she spots a lonely hitchhiker on the side of the road, she breaks Rule One and stops to pick him up.

That simple act of kindness sparks a chain of events that forces Heron to reconcile with demons both old and new: a past she thought she'd left behind, a sister she thought was dead, and a future she may not be a part of.

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more by liz shipton

TALES OF MISCHIEF AND F*CKERY

Short. Silly. Sexy. Speculative.

Small town apocalypses? Dystopian billionaires? Fae mafia bosses? How about hockey playing shifters? A Greek god desperately in need of a nanny?

You may ask, "Why?" This series of steamy holiday-themed short stories asks, "Why not?" Why not a mishmash of genres? Why not funny, off-the-wall romance with hot spice and big heart? Why not a sexy hockey shifter rom-com starring the Easter bunny?

Inside these 12 books, you'll find 12 short standalone “fairy tales”, each set during a different holiday in every month of the year.

"Even August?" I hear you asking.

Yes, friend. Even August.

"But there isn't even a holiday in Aug—"

Don't worry about it. It's gonna be fine. I have, like, eight months to figure that out. Just start at December, and we'll all be fine. Okay?

Okay.

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social media and stuff

LIZSHIPTON.COM

playlist

SPTFY.COM/THALASSIC

the songs that were in my head while I was writing this series.

acknowledgments

As an indie author working primarily on my own, I don’t have a big team to thank. However, there are a few people who have been incredibly supportive throughout this process, and without whom, this book would not be what it is.

In no particular order, those people are

My writing group JOSELINA REIS, TARA BRODBECK, CAROLYN VIOLET, and KAREN MARKS for showing me how to be a better writer

SAM STOKES for beta reads, ARC reads, reviews, and general unbridled enthusiasm

LENA COOPER for expert-level proofreading

THE CREW for ARC reads, support, and generally being amazing

GEOFF SHIPTON for dad jokes

TREVOR HOPE for steering the ship and fixing everything all the time

ALOY BONESNATCHER MCGEE for being the world’s most legendary dog

about the author

PART-TIME AUTHOR 🪶⚓ FULL-TIME PIRATE.

HI! I'M LIZ. I'm a freelance writer, indie author, and full-time, off-grid, live-aboard sailor. I’m currently sailing around the world with my boyfriend and my dog, turning my real-life adventures into speculative fiction.

I am extremely grateful to be able to explore the world as I do, and I love incorporating the experiences, places, and people I encounter on my travels into my work.

I also use my books as a means to explore themes of mental health, addiction, technology, climate change, and the looming collapse of society (but, like...in a fun way.)

When I'm not penning novels about the impending apocalypse, I work as a freelance content writer specializing in articles about code, music theory, and off-grid living. On the rare occasion I'm not writing, you can find me swimming, hiking, telling my dog I love her for the bazillionth time today, or watching Taskmaster.