You could tell a swimmer’s skill by how they related to water. Kids first thrown into the ocean spasmed and flailed against it. Dogs that weren’t born swimmers did the same, scrambling to keep dry. The better you became the less you struggled, until like some of the fishermen who’d worked with Kai’s dad you approached an aquatic asymptote. Kai had admired those men, in a left-handed and horrified way: artists in the water, they moved unsteadily on land.

Teo wrestled the pool. Her hands pierced the water, threw it behind her, emerged dripping from the surface to pierce once more. She trailed a V-shaped churning wake. The pads of her toes were pale, and her silver bracelet glinted with each stroke. Reaching the wall she turned a somersault, gathered herself, and pushed off, a submarine missile. That one push carried her a third of the pool’s length, and Kai examined her while she was underwater. Sleek, rounded, wearing a swim cap and a black one-piece bathing suit, she looked like a seal. Then she breached the surface, and white water obscured her again.

This was Teo’s eleventh lap since Kai’s arrival. The woman knew she was here, and hadn’t stopped swimming. Not a good sign.

Twelve laps. Thirteen.

Teo somersaulted and pushed herself off again, holding her breath half the length of the pool this time. When her speed waned, she surfaced, gulped air, and wiped her eyes, treading water with both legs and one hand. She squinted against the sun, waved to Kai, and swam a breaststroke across three lanes to the edge. Her hands clutched the pool’s stone lip, and muscles shifted in her shoulders and back as she pushed herself up. Scars marked her left arm: a single long straight line down the inside of her wrist over the vein, and other curving cuts around it. Pale emerald drops rolled down her skin; she stood, and Kai took a step back before she shook herself.

A white-suited attendant appeared with a towel. Teo grabbed it blindly, wiped off face and body and hair (prying off swimming cap to reveal a damp crown of thorny black curls), and threw the towel onto an empty chair. “Kai. Thanks for waiting. I don’t like to stop in the middle of things.”

“You’re a strong swimmer.”

“I’m trying to be a stronger everything,” she said. “Can’t count on other folks to bail you out of trouble.” Her smile seemed to pack more teeth into it than most people’s. Kai spent more willpower than she wanted to admit dragging her eyes from the scar on the woman’s wrist.

“Do you get in swimming-related trouble?”

She laughed. “First time for everything. What can I do for you?”

“I’m here because maybe I can do something for you.”