The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(48)
“I’m here, Oma,” Swift says, spreading her arms. My wrist goes along for the ride.
“Thought you’d run off for good this time and left us to starve. Like your mother.”
“Mom, let her rest,” Saul mutters from over by the stove as he prepares a bottle for the baby.
Swift smirks. “You know I’d never do that. If you got it in your head that I wasn’t coming home, you’d get up out of that bed and do something useful with yourself.”
Her grandmother sighs exaggeratedly, tugging the blankets tighter around her. I don’t know how she can stand it in the sticky heat that swamps this house, but I guess this particular woman has managed to become part lizard in the face of her hardships. She narrows her eyes at me. “Did your crew become slavers? That thing’s far too skinny to sell on this raft. She looks like she’d snap if you asked her to bend.”
“Santa Elena’s taken a prisoner, and it’s my job to guard her while we’re on shore. Captain wanted her secure, so she cuffed me to her.”
“Doesn’t look like it’d do you much good. She could slip right out of those things.”
“Hush, Oma. Go back to sleep. Dream about that Islander prince who’s going to take you away from this wretched life.”
Swift’s grandmother mutters under her breath. I catch something about horrible girls and mothers, and then she’s burrowed back under her blankets and seemingly out like a light.
“Dad, do you need me to do anything?” Swift asks, moving toward the stack of money on the table. I trail her, nearly tripping over the little boy as he tries to dart between us. “Watch it, Rory!” Swift yelps, taking a gentle swipe at his wild red curls, but he dodges her and slips out the door.
“You go ahead and relax. I’ll take care of everything.” Saul nudges her gently to the side. He’s got Pima slung against his chest again. She nurses greedily from the bottle as he reaches over to the notes from the sack and takes a bundle. “Go see a show or something. Make the most of your shore leave—don’t waste it on little old me.”
“I want to waste it on little old you,” Swift whines, but he gives her another nudge toward the door.
“Show your captive the sights. The SRC’s got nothing on this place, you know?”
“Dinner’s at the usual?”
“As always.”
When his back is turned, Swift sweeps a handful of cash into her pocket and tugs me insistently toward the door. We burst out into the bright sunlight, and for a moment I swear I see a tear in her eye. She stops a moment to take in the view, so I share it with her.
As I take in the Flotilla’s sprawling jumble, I squint against the light and pick out the shapes of people on the farthest docks bringing in the fishing haul for the day. Seagulls glide through the network of bridges beneath us, their beady eyes fixed on the fresh catch coming in. This whole place is like a giant organism, an ecosystem that thrives on sheer willpower and the strength of the people who hold it all together.
“This place is a fucking dump,” Swift groans, leaning against the railing. “And don’t you dare try to tell me different, don’t you give me any of that shoregirl bullshit. I can already see it in your eyes—you want to make us into these noble poor people.”
I say nothing.
“Everything in this city works because of the pirate industry. I feed those kids back there with money that I earn by hunting ships full of innocents. I’m not oblivious, Cas—I know that’s not right. But it’s all I have, and it’s all I can do. So just … don’t look at me like that, okay?”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like you have more respect for me because you know where I come from.”
I try to come up with something to protest with, but I’m grasping at straws. This morning, I didn’t know anything about why Swift had gotten into the pirate trade in the first place, beyond the fact that she’d done it willingly. I’d never imagined what kind of life would lead to that. I guess in my head, Swift was born into piracy the same way I was born into the Reckoner trade, and I’d never pictured her growing up outside of it.
She gives my wrist a tug and starts picking her way down a dangerous-looking path, past racks of laundry hung out to dry in the afternoon sun. We descend a few levels to a grocery store that deals in both fresh catch and the far more expensive preserved items that ship in on the vessels trading here. Swift pulls out the wad of cash she siphoned and uses it to pay for a few giant sacks of rice and some assorted staple foods that she gets me to help carry back up to her house. It doesn’t do much to dispel the impression that I’m a slave. Her father rolls his eyes when we show up loaded with groceries, but he lets us store them in the baskets woven from plastic scraps that dangle in the kitchen area.
It’s so normal, after months at sea, that I want to cry. I’ve been bottling up how much I miss home, how much I miss late night runs to the little corner grocery down the road and cooking with Tom and Dad and just plain old stability, for god’s sake. What’s even worse is that I’m absolutely terrible at concealing it. I let my fingers fidget, trying to subtly vent off the effect all of this is having on me, but Swift feels it. She glances down at my hand, then catches my face before I can swallow back the emotion showing there. “What’s eating you?” she asks.