“Cool. Got something I think you’d like to see. Come on.”

I follow her to the Minnow’s main deck, where the hulking shadows of Phobos and Diemos loom against the night. Swift clambers up on the barrel of the aft gun and motions for me to follow. The metal is warm under my palms as I pull myself up after her; the chill of the night hasn’t stolen the sun’s heat from it yet.

“Look up,” Swift says when I settle at her side.

The moonless night is a gift. The Milky Way stretches out above us, a spillage of light in the deep black of the ocean. With the slumbering Minnow’s lights off, we can see for millennia.

“That’s Cygnus, over there—the swan. And Pisces. Fish. And there’s Cetus,” Swift says her fingertips brushing up against the sky as she connects the dots between each one. “The whale.”

“You know your stuff, huh?” I ask, leaning back against the cannon.

“Mom always told me stories. Y’know, about the goddesses and heroes and monsters. And she taught me where to find them in the sky. Showed me how to navigate with them, told me what they were like. Never quite became one, though,” she says, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand.

When her fingers fall away, I spot the little fish inked there. “So I get that everyone on this ship has one of those tattoos,” I say, “but why … ”

The darkness emboldens me. I reach over and brush the sliver of ink. Swift’s spine goes rigid under the pad of my finger, and I jerk my hand back.

She smirks, her gaze fixed on the distant line of the horizon barely distinguishable from the dark of the night. “One of Mom’s best stories was about a Greek king and a man named Damocles. One day, Damocles goes to his king and starts sucking up, telling him how great his life must be and how wonderful his power is. So the king offers to switch places with Damocles, to give him a taste of what being king is like. Of course the sucker accepts, so the king lays out a lavish banquet for him, and Damocles is jazzed. Then the king shows him where he’ll be sitting. It’s a throne, totally tricked out, but suspended above it by a single thread of horsehair is a sword, pointed right at the seat. Damocles gets it now—he understands that with great power comes a shit-ton of danger. So when Santa Elena asked where I wanted my tattoo, I decided to put it where it would remind me of that story. ’Cause you’re at the top of the world—you’re the most powerful thing on the sea when you’re serving under her—but there’s a cost. There’s always a cost.” She trails off, staring out at the dark waves.