When I first met Swift, I thought she was only tense around me. I thought that I was the drag in her life, the thing that sealed her off when she was around her fellow trainees. She always seemed so carefree when she didn’t have to deal with me. But that’s not right—that’s not who Swift is. She’s been showing me who she is all along. Swift is a scared, stressed, angry girl, but she’s trying. She’s trying so hard.

And because of the way our lives have been twined together, it’s only now sinking in that there’s far more at stake than just me, Bao, and Swift. There are four children and two adults whose existences depend on Swift. And Swift’s existence depends on me. And my existence depends on Bao. And he depends on me, and I … well, as much as I hate to admit it, I depend on Swift to keep me alive. We’re all stuck together, and if any of us falls, we all fall.

“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.”