She’s saved my life, and I’ve saved hers. Well, saved her arm, at least. Bao probably would have ripped it clean off if she’d left it there a microsecond longer. I acted without thinking. Maybe there’s some instinct deep inside me that wants to save people; maybe that’s why being a Reckoner trainer feels right, why I leapt for Swift the instant I realized she was in danger. Maybe I’m a good person at the core.

But in the back of my head there’s an insidious little voice telling me, “You’re part of the ship now.”

The laughter we shared sours in my memory, and I fight to keep my face straight.

Then the all-call crackles on.

“This is navigation,” an unfamiliar voice drawls. “We’ve picked up a bucket on our instruments three leagues to the North. Unescorted. The captain says we’re hitting it. Prepare accordingly.”

14

14

A change comes over Swift as soon as the all-call snaps off. The dog is gone; she’s all wolf now.

“Bao can’t keep up,” I tell her.

She doesn’t seem to care. She strides for the door into the Minnow, her shoulders squared, her right hand on her pistol as she cranks the hatch open with her left.

“Swift, wait—Bao can’t keep up.” I stagger to my feet and lunge after her, but she slams the hatch just as I hit it. There’s a click beneath my fingers, the click of the lock sliding into place.

She’s gone mad with power or fanaticism or something. She can’t possibly be thinking straight by locking me down here.

But it’s about to get worse. If the ship takes off without Bao and leaves him far behind, he won’t catch up. It’s a rule of Reckoner training. You don’t leave a pup unattended in open water. Without supervision, a Reckoner pup could wander off into the wild or submerge, never to be heard from again. We take careful precautions to ensure that none of our beasts go missing, installing tracking tags on all of them at the minimum. But Bao doesn’t have that luxury. If he’s gone, he’s gone.

Which means I have to act fast.

Swift didn’t leave me a radio, so I can’t hail the captain and tell her what’s happening. All I have at my disposal is what’s left on the trainer deck …

And the deck itself.

I know what I have to do. I swallow back the knot of fear building in my throat and step up to the deck’s edge. Above me I can hear the pounding of feet as the ship prepares for battle, and below the engines are starting to hum. I haul the beacon up over the deck’s lip and drag it backward until I’ve positioned it in the middle of the deck.