I groan. She’s high on the adrenaline rush, her cheeks pink, her hair wild. Up above I can spot the ledge we fell from, a little sliver glowing with the light of the setting sun. Internally I remind myself that even when Swift’s in her natural environment, she’s still a tricky little bitch who can’t be trusted.

We’ve landed on a tent that covers some sort of shop, as I deduce from the yells of a man below us. Swift perks up. “I didn’t know Vorsta still ran this joint,” she says as she pushes herself into a sit. “Oh, by the way, it’s time to run.” She grabs my hand and yanks me up.

We leap from the roof of the stall and land hard in the street. There’s a shout from behind us, and a mountain of a man comes crashing out from the racks of fruit and fish, brandishing his fists. “You!” he bellows.

“Me!” Swift shouts as she whips me into an alleyway. We plunge down a narrow flight of stairs. The shouts fade from behind us, but Swift keeps running until we’ve spilled out onto the lower levels of the Flotilla. My heart is still pounding in my chest, and it takes me a few seconds to realize that I’m clutching her hand as if it’s a lifeline. I let go.

“Figured out that trick by accident a few years back. Shopkeeps around here roof their stalls with old sail, stuff that’s supposed to swell in the wind. Nice and bouncy. But Vorsta’s a real pain in the ass about it.”

“By accident.”

“I … slipped, yeah.” Swift shrugs, but something dark flickers over her face for a second, something I know I’ll never be able to ask her about. “C’mon.”

We weave through the bustle surrounding the docks, dodging traders, slavers, and seemingly everyone in between. The chatter around us shifts effortlessly from language to language. I swear everyone around me is fluent in at least three. English dominates the conversations—pre-Schism colonialism at its finest—but as we slip through the crowd, I catch snatches of Spanish, what I think is Tagalog, and a few strains of Canto that I instinctively try to translate. We make our way toward the heart of the harbor, where the not-quite-sleek form of the Minnow awaits us.

There are still a few spectators on the dock when we arrive, but there isn’t much to see. Bao sulks behind the ship, his bulk barely eclipsed by it. Reckoners are finicky creatures, and they’re notoriously shy when they’ve got hundreds of people ogling them. They’re built for the privacy of the open seas, not the speculation of ports, but the homing signal keeps him bound to the Minnow’s side, regardless of how bashful he feels.