Eos was falling.

  And that was her own dumb choice — Iris wasn’t about to do all of that, even if she would look cool leaping off the ship without looking. Nuh-uh. Iris swung her staff and whistled clear and loud. Surely at least some people turned to watch her draw forth the big, beautiful bubble that she dropped into.

  There was a healthy, grumpy bounce to the bubble as she fell in. Iris sat and let herself float. Crossed her arms, too, so everyone she was descending on could see just how pissed off she was.

  The bubble drifted over the two vessels. Iris swiped her hand over the iridescent warping of the bubble, breathing a soft whistle over the surface until it transformed to a clear window. Thank mama she learned that trick. The Leviathan’s smoke had been no match for it.

  The two ships were still locked in the rigid, shuddering embrace of battle - the lily-white Chance was covered in white clouds of smoke, flashing with plasmic fire of slow, wrathful weapons. Good! Mama was still winning.

  Iris caught herself smiling and quickly schooled herself back into a scowl.

  The gangways were still there. Iris ran a critical eye over them. Wicked, barbed boards hewn from the same black wood as the galleon had descended onto the Chance. Each wooden bridge originated from magical tendrils of self-repairing, self-weaving roots that grew from the Leviathan itself. It didn’t matter how badly the cannons splintered up the gangway; it fought to hold on. From her vantage, the vines looked like onyx snakes, fangs sunk deep into its prey’s side.

  But her mama tamed snakes. They didn’t mean anything.

  Just like that stupid, looming galleon she was leaving behind. Iris stuck her tongue out at the Leviathan’s vicious sea monster figurehead. It wouldn’t be here for much longer if Mama could help it.

  And — if Eos could help it, Iris guessed. Eos Rhododacytlos, she’d said her name was, whatever the hell that meant. Iris racked her brain for a meaning and drew blank after blank. Had she met any other Rhododactylos? What kind of powers did somebody get with a name like that?

  Probably nothing that good. Right?

  Eos was rappelling down with a stupid amount of velocity. She was going to dive in between Mama’s cannons and the enemy like that? She definitely wasn’t trained in any kind of academy. Iris mentally scratched off the possibility of Eos earning the epithet for her brains.

  And she wasn’t that pretty, so axe that as a possibility for an epithet. Eos had a big, toothy smile and intense brown eyes, and a freckled face that saw way too much sun in far too little atmosphere. She was too expressive to be a pirate, too graceful to be a jester, and too damn annoying and weird to be normal.

  Rhododactylos. Rosy-fingered. Her skin wasn’t anywhere near rosy. What kind of name was that? Iris kept her brow fiercely furrowed. It was a name Eos was proud enough to wear. It was also the only epithet Eos had, because of all the dozens of beads on her hair and on her clothes, that was the only Namesake. She couldn’t have been that cool.

  Still. She’d gotten her hands on some Naguya Tan fabric. That was a little cool. Not that Eos needed to know that.

  Iris watched Eos land and roll, her body flying off the rope like it was built for nothing else. Even in those ugly pirate boots. Even with her dirty hair. Iris’s shoulders pulled back. She was fast? Well, not faster than Iris, obviously, but quick, and the element of surprise was enough for her disarm the nearest pirate to her. And — start talking to them?

  “Hey!” Iris said, pounding on the wall of her bubble. “Hey! What are you doing? You’re supposed to be arresting them!”

  Eos looked up. She’d managed to grab someone younger than the rest of the ship had been, someone who looked more like a trapped raccoon than a man. Iris racked her brain. He didn’t look like anyone she knew. Eos was holding by the back of his tunic, knife resting on his collarbone, but exchanged some kind of look with him. Iris did not like that look.

  “Is that right?” Eos said. “Arrest them? You best come down here and correct my form, then.”

  “You’re being stupid on purpose!”

  Did she have to do everything around here? Iris dropped her heel onto the bubble, and landed on the ground.

  “Good news, bug,” Eos said, infuriating smile still on her face, “our new friend here has a direction for us.”

  “What direction?” Iris said. She jabbed her staff at the man’s chest, eyes narrowed. He glared back. Iris was gonna break this jerk. Iris didn’t let her icy glare waver as Eos kept talking.

  “To his captain,” Eos said. She was jiggling her knife around loosely. Stupid! Her hostage could grab and disarm her. “I would presume your mother to be on the bridge, somewhere, but I need to speak to them both. Our friend here is amenable to guiding us.”

  “He better be,” Iris said, settling her staff on his throat. The glittering golden wingtips hugged on either jugular, the hoop pressing down on his trachea. If Eos wasn’t going to protect them, she’d just have to do it herself.

  “Bug,” Eos said, voice warm and annoying.

  “What?”

  Her weight shifted, and almost too late, Iris switched her grip, her staff flicking away from the man to block Eos’s foot flying straight for her face.

  Iris leapt back, feeling the scraped marble rattle under her feet. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Creating some personal space,” Eos said. “We’re here to make friends.”

  Iris stared at her in disbelief. “You have a knife to his neck! And - and you attacked me!”

  Iris watched in complete disbelief as Eos slowly withdrew from the man’s neck. The man reached up and rubbed his neck, coughing.

  “I knew you’d block,” Eos said cheerfully, stabilizing the man. Now he was making eye contact with Iris like he was trying to give her a look about Eos. It was weird feeling to find that she was agreeing with him.

  Iris lifted her staff. “I’ll beat you up if I have to,” she warned. “And I’ll make sure to give you a huge concussion. Your eyes will probably pop right out of their sockets and become gross jelly all over the floor.”

  But Eos only grinned, shaking the man by the tunic. “Do you believe me now, friend? This girl and I are only recently acquainted. And if we work together, both you and her go home.”

  The man straightened slowly. He eyed them warily. Iris could see now why he reminded her of a raccoon — he had the eyes of one, his dark, heavy lids and sleep deprivation making him look animalistic. Man was also too big a word for him. Now that Iris got a look at him, he was probably only a few years older than her. A boy, then. Too young to be in any files Iris had read.

  Iris narrowed her eyes. She could take him.

  Eos was still talking. “This canister holds a very lucrative charter,” she said, pressing the brass into his hand. His hand wrapped around it — somehow, he wasn’t going for any secondary weapons. But his eyes weren’t on the canister, but instead on Eos, wide-eyed searching her face. Probably searching for a way to stab her in the nose, Iris thought.

  Eos didn’t seem to notice. “This charter is a way out for you. But! Opening it takes a very special technique only known to myself. Tell me where your captain is, and I’ll reveal to him the secret. Your battle-brothers Keret and Yatpan both have allowed me passage to do this thing — and to return this young passenger to her family. Help me do a good thing.”

  It was a good bluff. Saturated with just enough truth to be misleading. Who the hell makes a custom pneumatic tube? Iris eyed the canister. She doubted it would be worth even a single gold coin. It looked like a simple pneumatic tube, probably an alloy of something. Mama would’ve know exactly what materials it was on sight.

  “I know you,” the boy murmured in awe. It was like he hadn’t heard a thing Eos had said. “I know you, now. You’re the despoina who saved Ishak. He — he drew pictures of you.”

  Oh, hell. Iris felt her hair prick up all over as Eos’s voice came to a jarring stop. Iris could’ve tripped over the weighty pause. What the hell? Iris’s eyes darted between Eos and the raccoon-boy, but Eos just turned and gave him a wry smile, one that Iris recognized. It was the smile parents gave their children when they were hiding something. “You accuse me of crimes I most definitely did not commit.”

  Definitely a liar.

  But the boy shook his head and pointed. “Captain’s at the front,” he said. “Portside cannon we marked in green powder. Don’t - um, it’s very easy to die on the way there.”

  “No kidding, genius,” Iris cut in. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest, it was drowning out all other sounds. “You-“

  “Thank you, friend,” Eos said. “But I have a truly hard time dying.”

  Eos released him, and Iris took the chance to swing.

  The boy yelped, diving out the way and scrabbling across the marble. “Get back here!” Iris said. He kept running. “Or — well, yeah! Get out of here!”

  “You’re a bloodthirsty one, aren’t you?”

  Iris spun around to see Eos standing, her knife in one hand — the raccoon-boy’s forgotten and abandoned cutlass in the other. Her stance was easy-breezy — her weight shifted to one foot, her torso exposed, her wrists turned outwards. Everything screamed Eos was done with combat. There were still cannons firing and pirates shouting and Mama hadn’t even brought her best cannons out yet, so — what the heck was Eos doing?

  “You’re letting the pirates who attacked us go!” Iris said. “And you’re clearly trying to — to help them, or something. You’ve got a screw loose, lady.”

  “Just because I am helping them doesn’t mean I am against you.” Eos turned the cutlass around and offered it to Iris. “I don’t believe in a zero-sum game.”

  You will, Iris wanted to say, the words floundering in her mouth. Mama could just snap her fingers and turn you all to dust.

  “Give them a chance,” Eos said. Iris couldn’t help but be both annoyed and soothed at the rise and fall of her voice. “He doesn’t mean anyone harm, and I can turn them to the same mind.”

  “How?”

  “With you, bug. You’re my bargaining chip for peace. Come on!”

  And Iris wouldn’t have listened — why would she listen? Total criminal and thief — but then one of Mama’s cannons fired, loud, and the rocking of the ship sent Iris running. It just happened to be in the same direction as Eos.

  “Over here!”

  Iris yelped as she overshot — a force caught her arm and threw her down, behind a planter. Eos grinned beside her. Iris watched the shockwave of a cannon thrashing her mother’s lilies against the stone, flattening their stems.

  “A good catch,” Eos said, shaking her cloak behind her. Iris caught a glimpse at her knives. “I thought a little shock and awe and mystery might tip our young one over the edge. But the old quartermaster? He wouldn’t like surprises.”

  “What did he mean, you saved his uncle?”

  “I haven’t the faintest clue,” Eos said. “A case of mistaken identity, I’m sure.”

  And a bad liar, too.

  That should be enough for Iris to pass judgement. Eos’s obvious roguishness, her helping the enemy, the fact she thought she could lie to Iris and get away with it. Arrogant, or probably just plain stupid.

  Judgement was easy. It was staring Iris in the face so hard she could spit on it. But she hesitated all the same. Eos saved her life. It felt a little — just a little — wrong to try and kill her. And she… admittedly had some skills. Skills that Iris couldn’t learn from a corpse (no matter how hard she had tried.) All of this was spinning out of control and losing the plot and jumping the gun — and somehow, Eos seemed to feel act like it was all still making sense. Lying. She definitely had to be lying.

  A warm hand touched her shoulder, and Iris jumped.

  “Are you alright, bug?” Eos asked.

  Iris opened her mouth. I’m going to arrest you. I’m going to make you train me. I’m going to kick all of these pirates straight out of the atmosphere into space. I want to finish this.

  “I want to go home,” is all that came out.

  It was just the dust in her eyes, and the smell of burning in the air. Iris’s arms shook. She was supposed to have defeated the Leviathan. She was supposed to have cleared all the smoke from its decks and be waving down at her mama by now, but now — she was just tired. Her arms ached from waving her staff around and her throat hurt from talking and singing and shouting. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, and Iris was done now.

  “We’ll get you back to your home, and your mama, I swear,” Eos said. “I just need to speak to the captains of these ships. Captain Yammu, and-“

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “My mama is the captain!” Iris said. Under normal circumstances she’d roll her eyes. “She owns this ship! Don’t you know - know anything?”

  “Afraid not. And your mama is-“

  “Sionna.” Iris remembered to lift her chin. Square her shoulders, stare Eos down like she was trying to stamp the memory of her mom right into Eos’s brain. Mama’s name meant something, because she was everything. And right now, she really, really needed everything in front of her. “Sionna Nixie, Despoina of House Nixie.”

  Eos stared. Iris watched her sink to a knee, hold her face, and start laughing. Something hot boiled in Iris’s chest.

  “I - what are you-!”

  “I’m just thinking,” Eos said, laughing into her hands breathlessly, “I’m thinking I may have overestimated how much peace I can bring.”

  Whatever the hell that meant, that couldn’t be good. And maybe a second ago Iris hated that Eos felt like she had a handle on things, but this was worse. This was way worse.

  Iris reached out a hand. It hovered in the air for a moment — just beyond her fingers was the purple bruise spreading over Eos’s face, the one Iris gave her.

  Iris let her hand fall to grab a fistful of Eos’s cloak.

  Eos lifted her head. When her head lifted, there wasn’t any a smile on her face anymore. The look in her eyes made Iris’s stomach churn, some hot mixture of anger and shame. She couldn’t say anything, though — it would be like sinking a fist into a pillow.

  “Nothing to fear, bug,” Eos said softly. “I’ve done impossible things before.”

  Another round of cannon fire. Iris ducked her head down. She felt her body fall sideways onto Eos’s. For whatever reason, Eos didn’t comment on it. An arm draped around Iris’s shoulders. “And that was before I had such a powerful ally at my side. Could you lend me your strength one more time?”

  “What are you talking about?” Iris said, her mouth tasting the ash in Eos’s cloak. Debris poured like silty rain over their head. She felt Eos’s hand on her head.

  Eos waited for the ringing to settle. “Something only you can do,” Eos said. “To get the attention of Captain Sionna Nixie.”

  A bubble.

  That was Eos’s brilliant idea — not that Iris couldn’t have come up with it — but it was kept small and mobile. They ran in single file. They were decidedly not flying.

  Iris didn’t want to think about what would happen if the auto-targeting of the cannons decided her bubble was too freakishly close to a fat pirate, and shot them out of the sky.

  The air in front of them was thick with marble dust. It was hard to tell what was real. One shadow passed by — a demolished, disabled cannon, marked in sickly green paint. Idiots! Did they know how much that cost? Iris didn’t, but she’d be sure to point it out and complain to her mama, and then they’d complain about it together. Soon. Really soon.

  “There!” Eos called, pointing. “Upon your ship’s beautiful crest.”

  House Nixie’s banner had a lotus, of course. It used to be something else, back when Mister Nixie had been alive — Iris didn’t care to remember whatever it was. But now it was her mother’s favorite flower. They skidded to a stop right atop it. Iris could feel every pebble of torn-up marble under her shoes.

  “Stand back,” Eos said. She drew her knives, and twirled them. Once — twice — a flame caught on its tip. “When I pop the bubble, send another flurry up - fast as you can.”

  Why wasn’t going to get out of Iris’s mouth in time. Was there even a point to asking?

  Eos thrust the knife into the side of the bubble and shattered it. Hot air blasted back the mineral fog. In complete wild abandon, Iris flung her staff around, her voice pitched as high as she could make it. A torrent of bubbles tumbling up in a spiral — a solid beacon for anyone to see.

  All cannonfire ceased.

  The dust settled. And all around them pressed against the base of cannons, buildings, half-walls, her mother’s poolside planters was the crew of the Leviathan. Iris could name maybe three-fourths of them by heart. Surrounded. Great.

  The nervous breathing of the Leviathan’s crew whistled and hissed around them. Iris could imagine all the drastic thoughts they were thinking. Even if they were ugly and smelly and terrible, unfortunately, the Leviathan wasn’t stupid. Usually. With the exception of today, they normally flew safe and small. Iris remembered the faces flickering past in files, each scowling and dead-eyed.

  The Leviathan was full of vultures. They normally waited for a weak or dying ship to pass by before striking. To attack Mama like this, they had to have known it was beyond suicidal. They had traced the trajectory of this full-on disaster, seen their own faces superimposed over all the corpses they’d witnessed. And yet they stayed still. They watched her — or rather, they watched Eos.

  Eos stepped forward, tapped her foot lightly on the Nixie lotus, and bowed. A sign of deference. Crazy. Stupid.

  It would work on her mama.

  Iris stayed standing.

  “Lady Sionna,” Eos called. The curved deck of the Chance carried her voice like a player on an amphitheater stage. On the upper deck, a glass window opened. A woman stepped out.

  And for a second, the world turned into a singular telescope, focused on the distant celestial body that was her mama.

  Her mama was a fair woman. It always shocked and surprised others when Iris got introduced as daughter — but it didn’t matter, because it was her mama’s word against their disbelief. Today she was leaning into her fairness.

  White gemstones flashed from her fingers, a white feathered robe drawn around her shoulders. She had a soft figure and she seemed happy, full, and amused. Delicate, light hair curled around her face like sunbeams on ice, and her eyes held the same stark quality. Shadows of wrinkles hinted around her cheeks, but when her ruby lips curled, the stretch of her laugh lines made years drop off of her like water.

  She swirled a crystal glass in one hand. The wine kept swirling right up until mama saw her — their eyes locked through the telescope — and then the wine glass was falling, falling, falling.

  Her mother was flying down the stairs, her heels clicking onto the marble in a frenzied staccato. And each step she took, the cannons responded — there were curses flung by the Leviathan crew as the cannons rotated to meet her mama’s trajectory, to make approaching her a complete suicide mission.

  Iris slung her staff over her back and went running. Iris couldn’t see anything until they met on a far petal and clung to each other tight, tight, tight.

  “…did you see me, mama?” Iris said. Her voice was muffled, and she was getting ash all over her mother’s clothes, but she had to ask. “I was good out here. Did they hurt you?”

  “See you? Hurt me? How long have you been out here? Are you bruised? Are you hurting?” Mama pouted as she pulled and prodded Iris's cheeks. “They leave a scratch on my little girl? You smell like smoke!”

  “They couldn’t,” Iris said. Her eyes drifted over to where Eos was standing, a muddied feeling of relief in her chest. Eos’s promise had been good. Somehow. Her mother’s gaze followed. “… There was a fire. She was okay. She helped me, I guess.”

  “Lady Sionna Nixie,” Eos greeted. Mama didn’t make a move to Eos — just squished Iris’s face against her.

  “You saved my baby girl?” Mama said. “Then I suppose a very generous thanks is in order.”

  “I ask only one thing, right now,” Eos said. “Will you let me call on their captain?”

  “Go ahead,” Mama said. “But a hair out of place, and they can say goodbye to their pretty atmosphere crystal.”

  Iris let her body sag against her mother.

  Eos was saying something to the crowd behind her. Iris watched dully, but the sound wasn’t traveling to her— the only sound was the sound of her mother’s heartbeat, and the rush of blood in her own ears, each beat linked together like she and her mother shared one pulse. Her mother pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  The world tuned in slowly. Iris only caught the last of Eos’s speech trickling in.

  “After a dozen turns of the sun, wandering the heavens, you will have something like a home. Is that not what you’ve been looking for?”

  Eos held out her other hand. In it, a knife identical to the twin blades in her bracers. But Iris could see this one was new — completely unblemished, and its handles weren’t wrapped in that patterned weaving that Eos’s knives were.

  Either Eos had become a good liar all of a sudden — or she was telling the honest truth. Iris felt her mother drumming her nails on Iris’s arm. Not pensively. Judgmentally. Just like the time she’d had to judge a pageant or fire an embezzler or tell her darling, you can’t possibly go out wearing that.

  The man she was speaking to licked his lips. He swallowed. He stared at the knife, and Iris could tell he was flicking through every single angle, all of which her mother had already thought of. He was trapped.

  “...tell me,” he asked anyways. “Why do you help us?”

  Eos paused. “I have a name to polish. I hope you can forgive me for that.”

  The man eyed her mama. There was something in his eyes that made Iris reach for her staff. But then —

  —his hand took the knife. The knife, and the canister.

  “Tell me the name, and I’ll make sure it is sung.”

  “Anesidora,” she said. “Captain Anesidora.”

  Iris watched Eos. There had been ten dozen names Iris had memorized and filed away in anticipation of a day like this. But completely unbidden, Iris could feel this name sink in like a stone. It bubbled and sank and sat, nestled, right next to Eos Rhododactylos.

  Eos stepped forward and showed him a thin seam on the side of the canister, one that let the knife slide in like a key to a lock. It shifted and opened.

  Huh. Guess she hadn’t been lying after all.

  Eos turned back, and gave Iris a knowing smile. Iris felt her face heat.

  “It seems like you have it all figured out,” Mama said. “Letting them get away with murder. But why can’t I stuff them back into their ship and tow them all the way back to the Inner Ring for a Guild hearing, hm?” She lifted her hand and the cannons tilted in response.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Eos said, projecting her voice above the grating of stone-on-stone. She could see Yammu twitch in the distance. But Eos kept her eyes on Mama.

  Eos waved a hand at the ship behind Iris. “They know the Chance is off limits. And we all know the might of House Nixie is more than just gossip and talk. But what of her mercy? Your name could be known far and wide for this. Magnanimous Lady Sionna. And of retribution — how much more salt would be rubbed in the wound if you release these poor fools? The story will go, you were so assured that they wouldn’t be able to touch you again, you didn’t even look their way. Your House is one that that neither the Leviathan fleet nor Argonauts would risk.”

  Eos reached into her belt and produced another blade. Identical to the one she’d gifted Yammu.

  “Being a leader is a double-edged blade,” Eos said. “Your choice is magnified to all. To choose to hunt, to kill... to subject others to be killed. Or to carve, to create, to divide a meal to share. To choose save others; to save yourself. Or to choose both. ”

  Eos turned the handle around to face her. “I'll let you choose how to wield it.”

  But Iris could see it in her mama’s face — she wasn’t going to take the knife.

  “Mama,” Iris murmured.

  Her mama looked down. Her blue eyes caught Iris’s own. Iris drew her lips back, tried to lift her chin and impress it to her mama’s mind — she could read her mind well enough, couldn’t she?

  “…oh, alright,” Mama said. “I suppose Sionna the Merciful has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  Iris nodded. Merciful. She hoped her mother would still be feeling merciful later tonight, and spare her the fussing. One less lecture wouldn’t hurt.

  Mama turned to Yammu, who was warily holding his newfound weapon.

  She smiled.

  “Now get off my ship.”

  The Leviathan crew cleared quickly. It was almost impressive how quickly they did so, like ants scurrying away from a magnifying glass. Iris watched them from the upper deck. She’d been sent off for a bath (ugh) and a change of clothes, but had run back here as fast as her legs could take her to watch them flee.

  “Honestly, baby,” Mama said. She was combing her hand through Iris’s hair. “I’m shocked at you! Trying to run those ruffians out— without telling me! What were you thinking? I couldn’t even get a picture.”

  “You wouldn’t have wanted to take a picture! You never let me down anything on my own,” Iris muttered, but let her eyes slide shut. She scratched at her arm and winced as it stung. Ugh. One of the dirty pirates had landed a nick on her. Barely enough to draw blood, hardly noticeable against her dark skin. It itched more than stung. It would heal soon.

  From nowhere, her mother produced a roll of gauze and a tin of cream the color of powdered mint. A sharp, familiar scent filled Iris’s senses. Mama had pulled out an early version of this cream the day they’d met. Just a prototype. Iris couldn’t remember much other than the darkness around her. She remembered her own kicking and fussing. She remembered Mama shushed her gently as she covered her cuts and bruises in cream.

  Mama held out a hand. Iris offered her arm.

  ”Your momma would never keep you from anything,” Mama said, sitting beside her. She smoothed the cream over the cut, and Iris hissed as it stung and bit. But Mama hummed a soft melody, and the pain washed away. “Not a thing. Anything for you, darling. But you need to ask. What if I’d shot you out of the sky? Honestly, the optics!”

  Anything her handmaidens had washed and silently skipped over, ignored, or left to heal on its own, Mama took measured care of. Iris squirmed and wiggled in her seat, but didn’t pull away. Her bruises and little cuts just melted into nothing.

  “I still could’ve taken them,” Iris sniffed, watching the wounds vanish. “All by myself, momma. I know I could’ve.”

  But Iris’s eyes darted to the pink-clad figure on the deck. Eos hadn’t left yet.

  “I know, I know, you studied,” Mama sighed. Studied. That was a weak way of saying Iris had memorized all the fleet numbers and knew all the wanted posters in her room by heart. Not that it had helped, but — but — Iris could have been close.

  “I’ll get them next time,” Iris said. “I can do what she did.”

  “Oh no, no, dear, I don’t think so,” Mama said. “She was a pirate talking to pirates. I certainly hope you never do anything like that!”

  “But I can!” Iris said. “I could learn. I could get better at it than anyone. And I could arrest them, instead of letting them go.”

  Mama turned a curious eye onto her, tapping a finger to her lips. “Then why did you, baby?” She said. “I can change my mind right now, round them all up. Why did you ask me to accept that funny pirate’s knife?”

  “She’s not that funny!” Iris said. “… and I n— I want her to stay. You said anything I want!”

  “Want her to stay for what?”

  “To tell me what she does.” Iris looked out the window again. Eos was there, helping a limping man to the gangway. “You didn’t see her, Mama, she knows stuff. ‘Cause she knows them. The pirates, and how they work. Everybody else is just teaching me stuff I could read on paper.”

  “Paper is one of life’s greatest inventions,” Mama hummed, rebraiding her hair. “Next to everything I’ve made, hm? Just stay here. A pirate is as a pirate does. It’s all stealing and pillaging and swiping good things away. And you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, hon. You don’t need anything from them.”

  “…I want to go outside, Mama,” Iris said, sitting up. Mama’s hands startled into before finishing the braid. “Let me watch them. What if one of them tries to sneak in here?”

  “You’re safe now, darling,” Mama said, soothingly. It did not soothe.

  “But what about you?”

  Mama’s face fell. Iris gripped her staff. She didn’t know what she said — or maybe she did, and maybe it was more about how she said it. She was twelve years old now. She couldn’t be sounding so — so — desperate. Scared.

  “Then, of course you can go outside,” Mama said. “Just don’t go far, darling.”

  Don’t go far. Everywhere felt far, and nowhere felt far enough. How was Iris ever supposed to learn anything under these conditions? But — how could she blame her mother?

  Iris sat on the steps of the upper deck.

  The last of the Leviathan crew was being marched across the gangway. Iris tried to hold their faces and names in her mind, but each bootprint walking away from Iris was like the knowledge just walking away from her. All that studying. Mostly useless. It got her on the ship. It didn’t get the ship away from them.

  A pink speck in the corner of her eye. Eos was moving across the ship. But she wasn’t helping people, anymore — she was picking up her things, slinging them onto her belt, over her back. She was leaving?

  …Mama would forgive her.

  Iris went running.

  The cannons were quiet now. Iris could appreciate that. The cannons had seemed really cool before. Now they left a ringing in her ears that wouldn’t go away. She hummed to drown it out, tried to listen to the echo of her sandals going slap slap slap across the ground instead.

  “Wait!” Iris called, skidding to a stop.

  Eos turned.

  “Ah, bug! It’s time for me to take my leave. I was wondering if I’d get the chance to say fairwell,” Eos said. She offered a little bow. “It was very nice to meet you.”

  “Wait!” Iris said again, panting. “You’re going with them?”

  Eos laughed. “No, no,” she said. “They have the starmap to their next destination. I have my own ship, and my captain to attend to.”

  “Anesidora, right?” Iris guessed. “But she’s not here. Or the rest of your crew.”

  “This was a one-person job,” Eos said. She winked conspiratorially. “Well. Two persons, huh? We made an excellent team.”

  Iris drew her shoulders back. “We weren’t a team,” she huffed. “You just broke onto our ship…but yeah, I guess we ran those other stupid pirates out.”

  Eos laughed. “And now I’m the last one to be run out,” she said. “Goodbye, bug.”

  And before Iris could protest again, Eos struck the blade against her bracer. Iris held her breath. A note reverberated, rippled, and vanished into the atmosphere.

  Iris wasn’t sure how it worked. All sound should die out at the limit of a ship’s atmosphere.

  Was it magic?

  Surely.

  Was it science?

  Had to be, since unnamed folk without epithets could use it.

  The truth probably lay somewhere in the middle.

  But most people would call for their ships with a Khenium bell. They would reach their mind out, willing the bell to move towards them, then let it go. And the bell, bolted down to the ship, would ring to let its Captain know - I’m here, come find me. I’m here, I need help.

  Eos was not the first nor the last quartermaster to use Khenium to summon a ship. It was expensive to find Khenium metal not already soul-bound; it was more expensive to buy it. The longer the distance between the bell and its soulbound human, the more Khenium was needed.

  And the more Khenium on board, the more tantalizing a target, and the more dangerous it became. But in a dangerous universe, it became ever more important to keep the good people near you, and alive.

  So good captains bought scraps of Khenium. They had their crew bind their souls to it. They hired craftsmen to fashion bells, or lights, or whistles, and adorned their ships with the very souls of the crew.

  A Khenium soul-bond didn’t end at the limits of atmosphere. Anywhere in the universe, if a soul reached out to call its Khenium, the Khenium would respond. That’s what made it reliable, and safe.

  But nothing Iris knew anticipated this. Clear, beautiful music. The ringing that Eos made now, striking knife to bracer, over and over... maybe it was closer to that soul-bond than it was to sound.

  And then came the ship.

  She rounded the corner of the asteroid she had been hidden behind. She writhed out of the shadow sluggishly. Suddenly, silhouettes that belonged to the asteroid sprung to life. A thin, pale line there. Then a dozen more, unfurling in ghastly fashion, drawing shadows across the sun.

  “Friends,” Eos announced, bowing. “My very own humble ship, the Lucifer — and the body of my goddess, sweet Elpis.”

  (She called in a voice that reminded Iris of her mama’s favorite kind of song — long, sad, a ballad about love and goodbyes. She’d linger on it more, but—)

  Spilling over the lily-white Chance was the skeleton of a massive beast. Iris could see the glint of the bleach-white bones in everyone’s eyes, and felt her jaw fall slack in shock. And as she watched, the the creature’s jaw flexed. Sunlight glanced brilliantly off the chains binding all of the bones together. The spindly outlines of her wings crested the sunlight, and her empty eye sockets left two burning circles of sunlight tracing across the Chance like spotlights. Lodged inside where lungs should be was the hull of a ship, cradled in the embrace of a giant’s ribcage.

  Now, everyone could see the ship for what she was. The corpse of a god. The body of a dead dragon. Dead, yes, but magnificent.

  A shadow cast over Iris’s face. A hand touched her shoulder, milk-white and adorned with jewels.

  When Iris looked back at her mother, she was staring at the knife she’d been given, and then back up to the skeleton. She had that look in her eye that Iris knew well — the look her mother had passed down to her. Appraisal. Value.

  There’s more to this girl than meets the eye.

  Iris was always right.

  “Why don’t you stay for dinner, darling?” Mama said to Eos. She curled her arm around Iris’s shoulders, and Iris leaned into her hand. Her mother smelled like rose petals and cream. Iris shut her eyes and inhaled.

  Eos looked over her shoulder, a curious look in her eyes. Iris stuck her tongue out. “You’re welcome,” she mouthed.

  Everything for you, Mama had said. Maybe she really meant it. Maybe Iris was really forgiven for sneaking out — maybe it helped that Iris had discovered something so novel and strange, so awesome and mysterious and maybe even powerful.

  Eos was smiling right at them.

  “I suppose I could be persuaded,” Eos said.

  Mama smiled right back.

  “Tell me your name again.”