The Flotilla’s a Jenga game of shipping crates piled on skeleton hulls piled on what looks like real concrete foundation but must be something far lighter. The pile winds its way up into towers that steam and smoke in the noon sun. It’s a place that’s been carved out of salvage and wrought into something alive, something that rises and falls with the sea, a breathing being in its own right. Though it towers above us, it also splays out into a winding network of docks, like a cephalopoid’s arms, that host a veritable armada of pirate vessels.

I’ve never seen so many hunter ships in one place before. They slumber right next to each other, just waiting for a crew to wake them, to take them out and blaze their guns. I can feel an old impulse rising inside of me, the one that orders me to point projections, to direct Reckoners at the largest threat. Unleash a fully grown, fully trained Reckoner like Durga on this place, with all of the ships in such tight quarters, and we’d squash a good percentage of the NeoPacific’s infestation within hours. But everything here is bristling with heavy artillery, and I know that it’d be a waste to pit a single Reckoner against it.

It’s not like Bao would be up for the challenge anyway.

Or me, for that matter.

There’s some sort of nervous energy thrumming away in Swift. She keeps on fidgeting with the sack of cash, her eyes fixed on the looming Flotilla. If it wouldn’t take me along for the ride, I’d push her over the side of the boat. In all of her twitching and glancing and picking, she hasn’t bothered telling me what’s eating her. I don’t want to ask. Being chained to her is bad enough—it only gets worse if we have to have a conversation.

The Minnow prowls into the Flotilla’s inner harbors. We’ve gotten docking permissions at a prime slot, and I have no doubt that Santa Elena paid an arm and a leg to get us such a prestigious spot, just so she can show off her new pet. Bao follows quietly behind us, and already people are lining up along the docks, scrambling over haphazard stacks of crates and rickety platforms that balance on barrels and slabs of foam. Their eyes are wide, and some are already snapping pictures with their phones. When Swift spots them, she tugs me back from the railing and into the shadow of the ship’s interior.