Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(52)

“Spending money on the poor is like throwing money into a fire. They’ll just consume it and never thank you,” Tool said.

“But it would probably save money, for people to have easy access.”

“The water doesn’t seem to stop them.” And indeed, there was a steady stream of people ahead of them; a few of them had scavenged plastic bags wrapped around some possession that they wanted to keep dry, but mostly the stream of people seemed unconcerned that they were forced to swim through the brown waters and green algae. Nita waded on, grimly determined, Nailer thought, not to show how disgusted she was by her circumstance.

Every time Tool spoke, his words were like a whip, lashing her. Nailer wasn’t sure why, but he liked to see her embarrassed. Part of him sensed that she thought of him as something like an animal, a useful creature like a dog, but not actually a person. Then again, he wasn’t too sure that she was a person either. Swanks were different. They came from a different place, lived different lives, wrecked whole clipper ships just so one girl could survive.

“Why are you even here, Tool?” Nita asked suddenly. “You aren’t supposed to be able to just walk away from your patron.”

Tool glanced at her. “I go where I please.”

“But you’re a half-man.”

“Half a man.” Tool looked at her. “And yet twice the size of you, Lucky Girl.”

“What are you talking about?” Nailer asked.

Nita glanced at Nailer. “He’s supposed to have a patron. We take them on their oaths. My family imports them from Nippon, after training. But not without a patron.”

Tool’s eyes swung to focus on her fully. Yellow dog eyes, predatory, examining a creature he could destroy in a moment if he chose. “I have no patron.”

“That’s impossible,” Nita said.

“Why’s that?” Nailer asked.

“We are known to be fantastically loyal,” Tool said. “Lucky Girl is disappointed to discover that not all of us enjoy slavery.”

“It can’t happen,” Nita insisted. “You’re trained—”

Tool’s huge shoulders rippled in a shrug. “They made a mistake with me.” He smiled slightly, nodded to himself, enjoying a private joke. “I was smarter than they prefer.”

“Oh?” Nita challenged.

Again the yellow eyes evaluated her. “Smart enough to know that I can choose who I serve and who I betray, which is more than can be said of the rest of my… people.”

Nailer had never thought to wonder why Tool was amongst the ship breakers. He had just been there, much as the boat refugees had been. The Spinoza clan and the McCalleys and the Lals had all come to work, and so too had Tool. They were there for the work.

But it was true what Lucky Girl said. Half-men were used for bodyguards, for killing, for war. Those were the stories he had heard. He’d seen them with Lawson & Carlson’s bankers. Seen them clustered around the blood buyers when they came to inspect the yards. But always with others. Swanks. People who could afford to buy creatures mixed from a genetic cocktail of humanity, tigers, and dogs. And they were expensive. The human eggs that jump-started their development were always in demand, and commanded a high price. The Life Cult often supported itself on the ovum of its devotees, and the Harvesters were always buying.

“Where’s your master, then?” Nita asked. “You’re supposed to die with your master. That’s what ours always say. That they’ll die when we do, that they will die for us.”

“Some of us are astonishingly loyal,” Tool observed.

“But your genes—”

“If genes are destiny, then Nailer should have sold you to your enemies and spent the bounty on red rippers and Black Ling whiskey.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No? But you descend from Patels, and so you are all intelligent and civilized, yes? And Nailer, of course, is descended from a perfect killer and we know what that means about him.”

“No. I didn’t mean that at all.”

“Then do not be so certain of what my kind can and cannot do.” Tool’s eyes bored into her. “We are faster, stronger, and whatever you may think, smarter than our patrons. Does it worry the swank girl to run across a creature like me, running free?”

Nita flinched. “We treat your kind well. My family—”

“Don’t bother. My kind will serve you, regardless.” Tool looked away and kept wading. Nita fell silent. Nailer pushed on through the waters, thinking about the strange conflict between the two of them.

“Tool?” Nailer asked. “Did they train you? Did they make you have a patron?”

“A long time ago, they tried.”

“Who?”

Tool shrugged. “They are dead now. It hardly matters.” He nodded at the approaching docks. “Do you recognize any of the clippers?”

Nita looked out at the ships against their floating docks in the distance. “Not from this far.”

They made their way closer, slogging through the water. The water’s cool was a relief from the tropic heat, but Nailer was tiring from wading. It was a slow process.

The water deepened, and they finally came to floating docks, where they were able to pull themselves out of the water. Lucky Girl wrung the brackish water out of her clothes with distaste, but Nailer enjoyed the breeze on his wet skin. Out in the distance, the clippers were sailing. From this vantage, the whole world stretched before him. Clippers and freighters at their anchor slips. The blue hulls of England, the Red flag of China North. He had memorized many of the flags from the old wrecks the ship breakers worked, the hulls painted with nation and merchant tags. The mass of shipping here was a catalogue of the world.