Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(27)
Pima laughed. She squatted beside her. “Yeah. Sure. Lucky Girl. Damn lucky.” For a moment her eyes lingered hungrily on Lucky Girl’s hands, on the gold glittering against her brown skin. “Damn lucky.”
“So why not take my gold and walk away?” She held up her hand where the thin slivers of their blades had cut. “You could have had my fingers for Fate amulets, right? Could have had my gold and my finger bones, too.”
Her smooth features had hardened. She was clever, Nailer realized. Soft, but not stupid. Nailer couldn’t help thinking that he’d made a mistake letting her live. It was hard to tell when you were being smart, and when you were being too smart for your own good. And this girl… she already seemed to be taking over the space around the fire. Owning it. Asking the questions instead of answering them.
Lucky Strike always said there was a fine line between clever and stupid and laughed his head off every time he said it. Watching this girl across the fire taunt and tease him, Nailer suddenly had the feeling that he understood.
“I think one of my fingers would have made a nice amulet for you,” she said to him. “Would have made you exquisitely lucky.”
Pima laughed again. Nailer scowled. Dozens of futures extended ahead of him, depending on his luck and the will of the Fates… and the variable that this girl presented. He could see those roads spinning away from him in different directions. He was standing at their hub, looking down each of them in turn, but he could see only so far, one or two steps ahead at best.
And now, as he stared at the sharp eyes of this perfectly unblemished swank, he realized that he had missed a factor. He didn’t know anything about the girl. He knew about gold, though. Gold bought security, salvation from the ships and the breaking and light crew. Lucky Strike had gone down that road. Nailer would have been smarter to simply let Pima pigstick the girl and be done with it.
But what if there were other roads? What if there was a reward for this rich girl? What if she could be useful in some other way?
“You got crew who’ll come looking for you?” he asked.
“Crew?”
“Someone want you to come home?”
Her eyes never left his. “Of course,” she said. “My father will be hunting for me.”
“He rich?” Pima asked. “Swank like you?”
Nailer shot her an annoyed glance. Amusement flickered across Lucky Girl’s face. “He’ll pay, if that’s what you’re asking.” She held up her fingers. “And he’ll pay you more than just my jewelry.” She pulled a ring off and tossed it to Pima. Pima caught it, surprised. “More than that. More than all the wealth I’ve got on my ship.” She looked at them seriously. “Alive, I’m more valuable than gold.”
Nailer exchanged glances with Pima. This girl knew what they wanted, knew them inside and out. It was as if she were a beach witch, and could throw bones and see right into his soul, to all his hunger and greed. It pissed him off that he and Pima were so obvious. Made him feel like a little kid, stupid and obvious, the way the urchins looked when they were hanging out behind Chen’s grub shack, hoping he’d toss out bones for them to pick over. She just knew.
“How do we know you’re not lying?” Pima asked. “Maybe you’ve got nothing else to give. Maybe you’re just talking.”
The girl shrugged, unconcerned. She touched her remaining rings. “I have houses where fifty servants wait for me to ring a bell and bring me whatever I want. I have two clippers and a dirigible. My servants wear uniforms of silver and jade and I gift them with gold and diamonds. And you can have it, too… if you help me reach my father.”
“Maybe,” Nailer said. “But maybe all you’ve got is some gold on your fingers and you’re better off dead.”
The girl leaned forward, her face lit by the fire, her features suddenly cold. “If you hurt me, my father will come here and wipe you and yours off the face of the earth and feed your guts to dogs.” She sat back. “It’s your choice: Get rich helping me, or die poor.”
“Screw it,” Pima said. “Let’s just drown her and be done.”
A flash of uncertainty crossed the girl’s face, so quick Nailer might have missed it if he hadn’t been watching closely, but he caught the slight widening of her eyes.
“You should watch yourself,” he said. “You’re alone. No one knows where you are or what happened to you. You could be drowned in the ocean for all anyone knows. Maybe you just disappear and the wind and waves don’t remember you even existed.” He grinned. “You’re a long way from your swank servants.”
“No.” The girl drew her blankets around her like a cloak and looked out at the moonlit ocean and the far waves. “The GPS and distress systems in the ship will tell them where to look. It’s only a matter of time now.” She smiled. “My ‘crew’ will be coming very soon.”
“But right now, you’ve only got me and Pima,” Nailer said. “And you definitely ain’t our crew.” He leaned forward. “Maybe your people really will hurt us bad—yank out our guts, cut off our fingers—but that doesn’t scare us, Lucky Girl.” He drew out the words of the nickname, mocking. He waved back toward the ship-breaking yards. “We die here every day. Die all the time. Maybe I’m dead tomorrow. Maybe I was dead two days ago.” He spat. “My life isn’t worth a copper yard.” He looked at her. “So the only way your life is worth more than that gold on your fingers is if it gets us out of this place. Otherwise, you’re just as good dead.”