There’s a scream like a jet engine and the white hulls take off, their needle-shaped forms skimming over the tops of the waves like gulls as they shoot ahead of the Minnow. Three others join them, one circling wide from the aft of the ship and two cresting out from the other side of the stern.

They’re our herding dogs. When we get within range of the ship’s sensors, it will bolt. The Splinters are the ones that’ll slow it down. Any decent-sized Reckoner could snap a Splinter in half with a single bite, but an unescorted ship would be hard-pressed to hit one with their artillery. The guns aboard the needleboats are weak—nothing hull-piercing—but they’re enough to bring most other ships to a standstill.

And that’s when the Minnow will pounce.

This is going to get messy fast, and I need to keep out of it. I crank down the doors as quickly as the mechanism will allow and slide my way back over to Bao. With a layer of metal between us and the waves at our hull, it sounds like we’re in a washing machine, surrounded by the muted churning of the sea.

Bao hates it. I can see the stress eating away at him. He’s got his head drawn back into his body, his chin rocking back and forth on the floor as he lets out a long, keening groan. His blowholes flare in and out rapidly, and all I can think right now is how lucky I am that he’s not an ichthyoid or a cephalopoid or anything that couldn’t handle a stint out of the water.

But he’s still a Reckoner, and they’re meant to swim. His body is designed to rely on the water’s support, and though his keratin plating shields him on the outside, it also weighs against him in ways that I can’t fight for long with the tools at my disposal. I’ve got the wet towels, but that’s about it.

All I can do is wait and pray.

If Swift had waited three seconds before running off to kiss the captain’s ass—if she’d just listened to me, the only person on this boat who knows how to keep the damn beast alive—we wouldn’t be in this mess.

She’s not on my side. I’d almost forgotten, what with the sleeping in her bed and the joking around and the lessons about Reckoner training. Her life may depend on mine, but she’s only interested in saving her own skin. For a few minutes there today, when we were both earnestly laughing, I’d forgotten what she was.