White noise. Blistered ash. Eos tumbled down from the stack of crates she’d been plastered against, feeling her entire back smart. The belly of the Leviathan’s storeroom was split open, the smoldering edges of the wall beginning to catch flame.

  “Oh, stars,” Eos groaned, and pulled her cloak tight around her. A blurry glance told her the fabric stayed as true as ever — no new tears. The dragonscale shimmered in the newfound firelight. But a scrape of black soot drew a line down her body — a reminder that neither it, nor she, were invincible.

  Chances. All they had were chances. Eos could still breathe. Their bodies weren’t drifting into the bitter embrace of space. Someone was groaning. And, of course, the fire that was still chewing its way through the storeroom planks. All that meant the atmospheric crystal was intact. It meant unless they burned to death or the crystal shattered, they had a chance.

  Eos drew her collar close to her nose and crawled. Her eyes adjusted enough to find her opponent sprawled against the floor.

  “Oi,” she said, patting his cheeks. He stirred, cracking one bruised eye open. “Friend, come on, no rest for the wicked. We’ve got to get out.”

  Eos dragged them upwards, glancing around the room as a line of flame began to crawl along storeroom ropes and the desiccated wall. The man groaned and leaned heavily against her. Not good. He was surely still shaking off a concussion. Her fault, for thinking they could get away with a fight uninterrupted. And her fault, for her greed. There was no way she could carry all her spoils out along with him.

  Eos shrugged off her packs. All her loot tumbled out to the ground. The man swayed to fall over, but Eos caught him and looped his arm across her shoulders.

  “Don’t breathe in too deeply,” she said, and threw her cloak across him. The fabric fluttered down over his lanky back, and she tugged the scrap of fabric around his throat and over his nose. “I know you boys live in smoke, but this is different.”

  The toothless man nodded at her commands, though he looked barely cognizant of who was giving them. Together, they stumbled towards the exit. Eos could see the ship working against itself, the repairing magic causing more wood to slowly grow in its place, more fuel for fire to consume. The sea snake was eating itself alive.

  “Stop,” the man gasped. His feet stopped dead. “The fire.”

  The fire had rounded the room. It lapped at the base of the stairs, shooting plumes of flame that licked the ceiling of the ship, sealed off their exit with a red-hot curtain.

  “We won’t — make it,” he coughed. “We’ll catch fire, and the fire seal… they’ll seal us off.”

  “Good sir, you fret too much,” Eos said, though her laugh came out more as a wheeze. “Don’t you know? You’re wrapped in the weaving of Naguya Tan.”

  Eos saw his eyes widen in recognition. It was all the time for hesitation he had — Eos grabbed his arm, tied her cloak-end across his arm and chest, and started their mad flight up the stairs.

  The flames singed their feet and ate at the stairs beneath them - Eos could feel her companion slip on the ash, smell her own hair burning. But her skin, his face, their flammable clothes all felt nothing more than a welcoming heat, cozy and familiar.

  Just like crawling into bed, Eos wanted to laugh at him. Wouldn’t you buy a bolt, or three dozen of these? Wouldn’t you find its safety so comforting in trials of fire? This is just one of the many splendors of my home.

  But his wild-eyed, wheezing fear caught her gaze, and Eos turned her eyes upwards to see the daylight slipping away from them. The Leviathan’s repair system had sensed the fire, it seemed, and was beginning to seal off the hallway. Wood plated in metal slithered out of its compartments from the walls with a rushing urgency — bit by bit, their exit was slipping away.

  “We’re not going to-“

  It wouldn’t do to let him despair now. Eos drew her knives from her bracers, the metal hellishly hot from the heat, and flung it with all her might. Her mind narrowed to the exit before her. She imagined her fingers curled around the woven handles of the spinning knives. Focus and sound, Anesidora had chided her. Eos listened to the whistling of her knives and pulled.

  Sparks sailed. The metal fireseal screeched to a halt as Eos’s knives responded to her mind, both wedging into the narrow corners of the door and halting its advance. Eos whooped.

  “You go first!” Eos called. The man didn’t bother with a heroic plea, just held the end of her cloak fast to his face and kept running. The firesmoke gave way to the Leviathan’s obscuring smoke. Out! Eos felt him exit before she saw him as the end of her cloak went slack. He’d gotten to safety.

  The Leviathan’s smoke swirled and parted. For a glorious moment, Eos could see the meteors. See the stars. See sunlight. And now, one foot in front of the other and she was plunging into the Leviathan’s smoke and freedom.

  But for some reason, freedom was very, very loud. Eos’s cheers were all drowned out by the clash of metal on metal, pistol fire that sounded far too close to her ears. Eos whirled around. The entire deck was enveloped in the Leviathan’s fog. Where was her rescuee?

  A sharp pull on her elbow. She reached for her bracers — empty — oh dammit, her knives! Eos sent out a panicked call, but it seemed only one could free itself, spinning deftly into her free hand just in time to pin her opponent by the neck.

  His eyes widened. Eos beamed.

  “Friend, you’re alive!”

  Eos stepped back, knife resheathed into her bracer. His pulse raced under her fingers.

  “Khenium blades,” Eos explained, still smiling. “You really shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

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  “I thought you could see me,” said the man. He sounded stressed. That wasn’t good. Hopefully had nothing to do with the sounds of battle that were concerningly close. Shouldn’t the Leviathan’s crew be maintaining a decent distance from their target? Cannons, and all that.

  “I might’ve been able to, but it seems the fog’s gotten thicker-“

  Something angry and hot whistled by Eos’s ear and she yelped, ducking down beside the man. It was suddenly becoming much clearer that it wasn’t so much that the Leviathan had started nearing the fight, so much as the fight had made its way onboard the Leviathan. Who…?

  “If anyone asks — which they won’t — say Yatpan owes you a favor,” the man said through a clenched jaw. “There’s some sort of intruder onboard. The others will toss you back into the fire if they know you’re with them.”

  “Good thing I’m not!” Eos said. Yatpan looked at her oddly. Was she any more odd than him, who was sparing someone whom he thought was his enemy? “Swear to the stars, I came alone. I have no quarrel with the Leviathan, I was just a bit hungry.”

  Yatpan grimaced. “They’d probably burn you for that, too.”

  “No goodwill for saving a life?” Eos asked, peeking around.

  “My life isn’t worth that much to them,” Yatpan said, his cracked nails pinching around bullets to load into his pistol. “But it is to me. So — take yours and get out of here.”

  “Can’t,” Eos said, reaching out. She kept her fingers tensed, but no response came. Drats. Her other knife must be stuck in the fireseal. She’d have to go without, while hoping that the fire wouldn’t escape and burn the whole place to a crisp. “I’ve got my mind made up to help you all.”

  “Help —“ Yatpan paused. A soft hiss escaped him, and Eos saw him cradle his arm. A burn. It seemed her cloak hadn’t protected him from all the flames. “… how?”

  “I have a skill or two,” Eos said. She patted his back. Once — twice. The searing pain slipped from his arm to hers, and for a brief second Eos cursed every star in the sky before curling into herself. It was never fun to be reminded of what it was like to burn. But no amount of training with her fire was going to protect her from anyone else’s. Such was life.

  When she looked up, Yatpan was standing, staring at his pristine arm in disbelief.

  “What-?” he managed.

  Eos tried to laugh, but the pain demanded her attention. She rolled her gloves down. There it was, splotchy on her elbow, already an irritated red from her lengthy gloves.

  “What just happened? The power of a name,” she said. They pressed their backs against the Leviathan's wood and Eos closed her eyes to listen. “A great gift. My Captain Anesidora has passed onto me her name. She has named me Eos Rhododactylos. Rosy-fingered. The power to give, and to take.”

  “I was going to ask what was wrong with you.”

  What wasn’t?

  “Nothing,” Eos said, though her arm hurt very much. She grinned.

  Yatpan’s face was half lost in the fog. Eos could still see him wondering. “…What else can you do?”

  “Everything,” she said. The sounds of the fight were getting closer. Eos could hear shouts being abruptly silenced by the sounds of wood snapping, blows clashing. “If you’ll let me.”

  “…everything, then.”

  Eos saluted, and plunged into the fog.

  The Leviathan was in turmoil. Eos couldn’t see it, but she could hear it. The Leviathan had curled in on itself in defense, every inch of the deck was choked up in smoke. How many times had Eos been humbled like this while raining under Anesidora’s watchful eye? If she were here —

  Focus, was Anesidora’s chiding presence in Eos’s mind. Right. Focus. Pull together. Compensate. If one was without speech, they learned to use their hands. If one was without sight, they had to learn to use their other senses.

  Air brushed against her burnt skin. Eos dove.

  There! — glint of gold, a staff swinging madly through the grey fog that clipped through the air where Eos’s skull used to be.

  Eos hit the deck hard. Splintered wood scraped against her metal bracers and Eos had to be reminded, once again, of her missing knife. But she still had one remaining.

  A shadow cast over her face. Eos turned her blade and lunged forward, letting the edge of her knife run forward, screeching down the length of the golden staff, to rest against the neck of her opponent -

  Ah?

  Something iridescent resisted her strike. Not just resisted it — reflected it, sent her whole arm shaking and her body rippling backwards. Her backside hit the deck. Then the staff hit her.

  “Hah!”

  Her opponent stood above her. She had a thickly woven braid of black hair, dancing near the floor beside her feet. Her dark skin was stark against her ivory sari, the fabric shimmering with an impossible iridescence. It suited the swirling rainbow of colors that surrounded her head. Some sort of…. Bubble helmet, its surface still shaking with the force of Eos’s strike.

  But the thing that made Eos’s heart writhe and twist in all sorts of agonized confusion was the fact that the person that stood above her couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

  Eos was dimly aware of her throbbing cheek — how it might look. Probably beginning to turn purple. That kid did that to her? Eos touched her cheek, like at any moment the burning sensation would disappear.

  The girl tapped her staff to the deck smugly. “They let girls onboard now?”

  “They certainly don’t,” Eos said, absentmindedly. “Sorry, how old are you?”

  “Twelve,” said the girl, chest puffed out. “And three-eights.”

  “You’re a child.”

  The girls’s face instantly twisted in disgust. “I am not!” The girl paused. “But if I was, you totally got your butt kicked by a child.”

  Eos was prepared to do a lot of things today for breakfast, but fighting a child — even a highly-capable, extremely-kickable and very rude one — was not one of them. Eos twirled her knife, slotting it neatly back into place. “Okay,” she said. “Where are your parents?”

  “I — wh — that’s what you’re worried about? My mom's on the ship you're attacking, and I’m gonna arrest you!”

  “The only thing getting arrested is your poor mother’s heart—“

  “Don’t talk about my mom—“

  Another white-hot flash of light. The girl shrieked in shock, and it was all Eos needed to lunge.

  If one was without speech, they learned to use their hands. If one was without sight, they had to learn to use their other senses. There was the silky fabric on the girl’s right shoulder, so then there was her wrist — and there was the shout of echoing men, searching for them.

  Eos yanked the girl down behind her, and then the both of them down behind the first dark shape she could find in the mist. Some stray barrels, full of something foul-smelling. The barrels sloshed and groaned as the thunderous aftershock of cannon fire hit the ship, and Eos threw her arms over the girl as debris flew over them both.

  “Let me go—!”

  Eos grabbed the girl by the shoulders, blinking the stunning lights out of her eyes.

  “You’re good, bug, you’re very good,” Eos said. “But good can be overcome by many. Understand? And we are very, very surrounded.”

  “My name isn’t bug! It’s Iris! And what do you mean we? You can’t even see through the fog! And why would they attack you?”

  “I got a little hungry,” Eos admitted. “Didn’t have breakfast. Decided to rob them.”

  Iris stopped struggling. “Wait, really?” Was that a hint of respect in her voice? Eos didn’t know how to feel about inspiring awe in this child through burglary, but if it got her to listen, she’d take it.

  “If your mother is on the ship below, why are they attacking you?”

  Iris stuck her lip out petulantly. Eos stared.

  “They don’t know you’re here.”

  Eos grabbed her as the world pitched and tilted. The Leviathan was listing. She could hear, distantly, the directed shouts of the men surrounding them.

  Iris’s fists curled. “They’re attacking my mom!” she said. “I had to fight!”

  There wasn’t anything to suggest she wasn’t capable. All she sported were a few bruises and cuts. None of it read as more concerning than the fierce furrow of her brow, the angry set of her shoulders. Iris probably didn’t even feel her wounds. There was something chewing her up inside more painful than anything on her skin. Eos’s eyes lingered on Iris’s scraped knuckles. How hurtful, to look at someone so little and see a reflection of her younger self?

  “… it’s a noble thought.” Eos said. “You are strong, and you are quick, I can see that much. But just because you can fight doesn’t mean you should have to.”

  “I do have to,” Iris snapped.

  It would be hypocritical to argue, wouldn’t it? Eos sighed. “I suppose now you do. Judging from the mess you’ve made aboard, those men have no qualms about fighting you, and I can hear them coming.”

  “Let me go!” Iris said. “I can take ‘em!”

  “Let me try, first,” Eos said. The footsteps were very close now. Eos kept her foot on Iris’s staff and reached for her knife. This really seemed like a two-knife sort of situation, but she couldn’t do anything about that. Talk them down to one knife. No knives, even.

  “I have the favor of Yatpan!” called Eos over the barrels. “And a rather young girl here, so I don’t see the need to fight.”

  “Who are you?” The man’s voice calling back was coarse, rough, like his throat was coated in soot and salt.

  “I think of myself as a friend,” Eos called. “This girl lost her way. Let me return her home.”

  “You’re with the girl?”

  “We just made acquaintances,” Eos said, kicking at Iris to stay down from where she’d started to crawl up to peek over the barrel. “She’s just a child. If you would—“

  “Get back!”

  Eos choked as a sharp yank on her cloak sent her to the ground. Iris stepped forward, and Eos saw her swing with all her might. Her staff pushed the clouds back, her swing struck against a saber cutting through the mist, and the sharp, melodic cry that left her mouth was followed by an arc of a long, beautiful bubble that swallowed Eos whole.

  Tumbling. Just like rocks being smoothed in a stream. Eos felt her stomach sit on top of her throat and her feet fall over her head as a force shoved her back. Her back struck against something rubbery, something that wobbled violently and shook all the air out of her lungs. A dozen howling faces of the Leviathan’s crew pushed out of the mist, planting hands on their door, shoving them back and back and back.

  Their world slowed. The bubble fell down the deck stairs and knocked into the fireseal. Eos caught a glimpse of her missing knife. It was falling. Falling from its corner, falling from the fireseal door, falling with them into the flames of the storeroom.