Blackfish City(54)

“If she doesn’t just kill us all.”

“She could try.”

“Is she powerful, or isn’t she?” Masaaraq said. “If she is, she can destroy us. We’re not invincible. Killer whales and polar bears are just like any other weapon—they can’t solve everything. And they have their limitations. I know that better than anyone.” She paused. “Almost anyone.”

“Come along,” Dao said. He stepped away from the button. The soldiers receded. To Soq, he said, “She’s in her cabin. I believe you know the way.”

What seemed like a small army squatted on the deck of Go’s ship, repairing fishing nets. Kaev was always surprised by just how boring Go’s criminal empire really was.

Soq didn’t seem bored. They stopped to stare, to watch the little fingers at work.

Kaev’s heart hammered. His blood sang. He flexed his fingers to keep them from making fists. He was on the beams again.

And also—he wasn’t. He was a boy, young and handsome and strong, sneaking out of the foster barracks to meet a girl. A girl who didn’t mind his stutter and yips, and how his sentences didn’t make a lot of sense. A girl as strong as he was, as fearless, but far smarter. A grid grunt, like him, but unlike him she had a plan. A way to work her way up, a way to build an empire where they’d both be safe. Where neither one would be nothing.

Go had succeeded, he saw. She’d had to abandon him—or had he abandoned her?—but she’d succeeded.

The door to her cabin opened. She stood there. She saw Kaev first, and he could see, now, with the calm and clarity that the bear had given him, the emotions that danced across her face, the happiness and then the anger; the love and then the hate. All in a fraction of a second, then swept under the rug of her fearless-leader face.

But then she saw Soq. And her mouth opened. She looked back and forth between Soq and Kaev, and he could have sworn he saw something inside her fall away. The fearless-leader face broke. Whatever Dao had told her, she hadn’t put the pieces together until this moment, seeing them together. Probably he hadn’t mentioned Soq at all. Probably he’d been focused on the polar bear. Which would be understandable. But Go wasn’t focused on the polar bear. Go didn’t seem to see it at all.

She took a step forward. One hand went to her chest.

“I—” she said, but said no more.

Kaev took three swift fearless confident steps forward and embraced her, held her to him.

He loved her. He had always loved her. Every other piece of it fractured, crumbled. The anger and the hate and the slow poison bitterness of being her flunky, her fall guy, her journeyman loser, and then her brutal thug, her soaker. And something similar must have been happening for her, because he could feel the slow melt, the way her arms around him went from rigid to tentative to being as hungry and firm as his. He did not need to ask, Why didn’t you tell me?, because it all made perfect sense.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” he said, stepping forward without letting go of her, carrying her back into her cabin, knowing she would not want her underlings to hear what they had to say. Would regret even letting them see the two of them kiss. “But me too.”

Her eyes overflowed. Her words came fast, between sobs, sentences strung together like she’d been saving them up for ages. “I didn’t want to abandon Soq. I didn’t want to abandon you. But I had made my choices by then. I had started down this path. I had made enemies, people who would have killed you both. Jackal was already consolidating power, getting people into her corner. I was going to end the pregnancy. I should have. But I loved you too much—loved who I was with you. I knew we could never be together, but that what we had could . . . I don’t know . . . continue to exist.”

“Shhh,” Kaev said. He saw Soq pretending to play with the polar bear. Trying hard not to look in his and Go’s direction.

“I did it to save your lives. Broke up with you, hid Soq from both of us.”

“And you succeeded,” Kaev said. “We’re alive! All three of us.”

Go shook her head. When the words came, they came so fast he knew they’d spent years echoing through Go’s head. “I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you. Jackal’s been dead for a long time. No one has seriously threatened my position in a decade. The coast was clear. I could have come for you at any time. And I didn’t. Because when I left you—both of you—it hurt me so bad. I swore nothing would ever hurt me like that again. I built a wall around my emotions. Never let anyone in. I wasn’t thinking big. I was so focused on my little goals—climbing the ladder, one step at a time. I wanted to hold on to the rung I had, and maybe get to the next one.”

Kaev kissed her forehead. “It’s okay.”

“I know. But I want you to know where I was coming from.”

“Tell me.”

“Syndicate leaders always think small,” she said, pulling one arm away but coiling the other tighter around his waist. Together they turned to look out the porthole, at the city’s jagged green skyline. “They’re really just good little capitalists, no different from any corporation head. They want to make money, and make money for their friends. But I want more.”

“What do you want?”

She opened her mouth. He knew that look. The look you have when you’re about to say something you’ve whispered to yourself a thousand times but never uttered out loud.