The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(50)

“Captain’s got us good,” I groan, and Swift laughs.

“Fuck her,” she says. “I mean yeah, she’s everything I aspire to, but god, I was barely thirteen when I begged her to take me on. We scraped by in those years, but we only had two babies to feed. Then Rory came along, and I had to convince the captain to bump me up from deckhand to crew. And Dad didn’t tell me about Pima. With this new baby, thank god I made trainee on this last rotation.”

“Wait, so you haven’t been home in—”

“Over a year, yeah. Santa Elena likes to make the Flotilla a rare thing. It’s our biggest hub, so we make one big stop to trade and flaunt when the Northern fall’s over. It’s just one more nail in the coffin, the fact that I can only see them for at most a month out of the entire year. And this time around it’s even shorter. She wants us shipping out tomorrow. Probably has something to do with Bao.”

I nod, my fingernails digging into the gravely edge of the platform we’re sitting on.

Swift blinks. “I’ve been talking about myself this whole time! This was supposed to help you, not be all about me venting my issues.”

“It helps when you vent your issues,” I say with a shrug. “Your shitty life distracts me from my shitty life. It’s a win-win.”

She gives me a shove with her shoulder, her mouth drawn into a taut smile, and something inside me takes flight. Onboard the Minnow, the constant scrutiny and the balancing of power makes it nearly impossible for me to be certain of Swift’s motives whenever she does something like that. But out here, in a space that was completely her own until she decided to share it with me, Swift’s laid bare. I can see her for who she really is.

And I guess I really like her when she’s honest.

She catches my eye. “Hey, if it’d help put your mind at ease, we can go check on Bao. I’ll bet the crowds have died down, so there’s less of a chance you’ll end up in a video.” Swift stands, reaching down to help me up with her cuffed hand. As she grabs me by the wrist, I feel her nervous energy buzzing from her palm into my arm, and for once in this whole messy disaster, I feel like I have the upper hand.

“So how do we get out of here?” I ask, searching the walls that surround us. None of them look climbable, even by a single person. With the two of us chained together, it seems impossible to reach the roofs we slid down over.

But Swift isn’t looking up. Her gaze is fixed on the jungle of metal below us, on a spot that I can’t quite see, and my feeling of upper-handery vanishes. Suddenly I want my wrist back. She whips around her other arm, snaring my waist again, and just as the first word of protest is leaving my lips, she topples backward off the ledge, dragging me along with her.





24


We fall.

I scream, flailing my unchained hand as if I’m going to catch something. Panic threads in my veins.

But Swift is laughing, her fingers fisted in the back of my shirt. Her idiotic hair whips into my face as she yanks me closer and says, “Brace yourself.”

I don’t have time to question it. Swift twists in the air, rolling me off her so that we’re plummeting on our backs, and it’s not a second too soon. We hit canvas with a whumph and get tossed back in the air, gasping to recover the breath that’s been driven from our lungs. The second hit is better. We sink in, float up, and then come to rest.

“Holy shit,” I wheeze.

Swift’s still cackling.

I raise my free arm to hit her, but it’s shaking so badly that I can’t go through with it. “Warn me. Jesus, Swift, I thought we were going to die.”

“If I’d warned you, you wouldn’t have made that amazing face.”

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.”