Mr. Kagawa blinks again, his gaze dropping to Durga’s distant form. “The floodwalls. That’s my story, that’s the best one I can tell.” He bows his head. “I lived in … well, you know them as the drowned cities. New Orleans was one of them. The floodwalls had stood for years, but that didn’t matter in the end. I was eight years old the night it happened, and I’ve never forgotten a moment of it. The screaming, the roar of the skiffs as they rushed up the canal streets and under the supports of the apartments. My mother grabbed me and my sisters and threw us into our boat. But my father wouldn’t budge. He’d lived his whole life in the shadows of those floodwalls, and I guess in the end he decided to die with them.”

He runs one hand absently over what’s left of his hair. “My mother knew him well enough to let him. We were three miles out when the walls came down.”

The sea is still tonight, and the decks are silent. “I’m sorry,” I tell Mr. Kagawa, meaning it wholeheartedly. He came on this ship to relax, not to relive the memories that haunt him.

But he waves off my apology, a tense smile cracking over his face. “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give someone, knowing their stories.”

Off in the black, Durga’s blowholes release a long-held blast of air, sending up a spray of saltwater cut by moonlight.

Durga’s tremors are getting worse. On the first days of the voyage, I barely noticed them, but now her legs shudder like the engines beneath my feet. She’s begun to lag behind the ship, forcing the Nereid to slow. I spend an entire afternoon sitting on her back, scouring her plating for any sign of an infected wound that would explain her worsening condition. There’s nothing but old scars. Reckoners don’t get sick—they get injured, but it’s been months since the last time she fought off a pirate attack.

The stench of carrion hangs heavily in the air around her, and it lingers on my clothes as I make my way to the Nereid ’s navigation tower.

Captain Carriel’s face goes taut when I step through the door. “Miss Leung,” he says, turning away from the ship’s instrumentation panel.

“I’m sorry—” I start, but he raises his hand to cut me off. He already knows exactly what I’ve come for.

“We need to make it to our first island by tomorrow evening. If we slow the ship any more, we’ll be putting this whole voyage drastically behind schedule.”