“And who the hell is this?” Swift asks abruptly, pointing at the baby.

“Language, girl,” Saul warns, and she rolls her eyes. “This is Pima. She’s your half-sister.”

“Thought I had enough of those already,” Swift grumbles as two small girls scamper from the shadows and attach themselves to her legs. “Yes, hello!” she says, patting each of them on the head and shooting me a panicked glance. “Shouldn’t you be out of the house? Doing kid shit?”

“Swift,” Saul warns.

“Sorry. Kid activities.”

“Xiao saw your ship on the horizon. We wanted to be here when you got back!” the larger one yelps.

“That’s very kind of you, Teresa,” Swift replies, her voice thick with sarcasm.

“Is it true that you have a monster with you? Xiao said he saw a big beast following your ship, but it wasn’t attacking it,” the other girl says, still locked onto Swift’s leg. “Is it true?”

Saul raises his eyebrows.

“Yep, it’s true. Captain decided it wasn’t fair that all the buckets had beasties fighting for them, so she went and got us one of our own. And a trainer to go with it,” Swift says, hitching her cuffed thumb at me.

The girls’ eyes go wide, and the kid at Saul’s side lets out a whispered “Wow!”

Swift grins, and it’s the most honest smile I’ve ever seen her wear. She holds out the bag of cash to her father, who takes it without hesitation. This exchange is practiced—there’s no embarrassment or wavering in her handing over everything she’s earned to her dad, and I can immediately see why it’s happening, just looking at this place. I can’t even tell how three kids, a man, and a baby manage to get by in a living space so small, but I spot the hammocks strapped to the walls, the crib lashed to one of the beams that supports the roof, and the tiny stove tucked in one corner, and I realize that they get by.

It also does a lot to explain why Swift was so comfortable sharing her cramped bunk with me right from the start. When you come from a place like this, having your own room on a ship is a damn luxury.

“So, you’re a Reckoner trainer, huh?” Saul asks as he dumps the bag out on a table in the corner that seems to be cut out of the same material as the walls of the house. “Where from?”

“SRC,” I say, still lost in processing everything around me.

“Interesting. So the Minnow went after an escorted SRCese ship just to get its trainer?” he asks, more to his daughter than me.

“Not … exactly. Cas was a bonus on top of a good haul,” Swift says, her voice struggling to stay conversational. “Our focus was on killing the beast. Seeing if it could be done.”

“And how’d that go?”