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C how marked the days of Captain Boukman’s absence in little slashes across the top of the logbook.

As quartermaster, Chow was responsible for the ship in the captain’s absence: keeping records, tracking supplies, and maintaining order among the restless men.

The pirate crew was a good one when they were sailing, with few disputes and even fewer acts of insubordination, but the longer they stayed in the little Fortune Island lagoon, the rowdier they became.

On the captain’s fourth day away from the ship, Fearsome Fred poured rum over a boy’s head for some disrespect; the next night, Fred found a steaming bucket of shit dumped on his hammock.

Chow ordered everyone to swab the decks, even though they had only just done so, to keep away any further “harmless fun.” There was no such thing on a ship like theirs, not when he still heard the crew grumbling in hidden whispers about the captain’s decision to leave three of their mates behind in Grenada last month.

The captain had claimed the pirates failed to return to the ship before it sailed and therefore deserved to be deserted in the British-owned town.

The crew felt that the captain had retaliated because those three pirates had argued with him about the decision to go to Grenada in the first place.

Chow didn’t know who was right. He didn’t care who was right.

He only wanted order on the ship so that they would be poised to sail as soon as they had a whiff of a slaver.

When the decks were clean, he set everyone to rat catching in the hold.

Then they inspected each line and sail and gun.

By the captain’s eighth day away, Chow had ordered so much work that old de la Cruz convinced him they needed a day of rest. “The crew will fall ill with exhaustion if you keep us working like dogs in this heat.”

Chow was tempted to ignore the advice. In the course of his life, he had learned the value of hard work to distract from one’s inner demons.

So, too, had he come to trust in a hierarchy with a clear leader, and there was no clearer demonstration of who was in charge than seeing who set the tasks and who followed them.

But in the almost-decade that he had been on the Ghost , he had also learned to trust de la Cruz’s instincts. Reluctantly, he ordered everyone to observe the day as if it were the Sabbath, with no work except the necessary.

The crew made no complaints. De la Cruz was right about one thing: the day was hot, hotter than it had a right to be, and they all appreciated the chance to rig the sails into sunshades and loll about on the deck.

Long Tale Lee took up his ropes, which he turned into intricate artwork, while the musicians set to fiddling.

By the foremast, Liberty Johnson brought out his kit of needles and gunpowder ink to finish young Fuego de la Cruz’s tattoo.

Chow planned to stretch out on the quarterdeck with the book of folktales he had purchased at a market stall in Casablanca—until he saw Liberty Johnson wave the woman over.

Rebecca Smith. In her first few days on the ship, she had proved herself willing to help in any task.

She caught on quickly to tying knots under Lee’s tutelage, so then the boys started teaching her how to climb the masts and manage the sails.

She helped Cook prepare the mess, and in the evenings, she made sure every dish was clean before joining the men above deck to watch the sunset.

The crew had already nicknamed her Ave Rebecca—a Catholic reference Chow didn’t completely understand—and invited her to sing along with their ballads.

When Fred turned that rum over Pip’s head, she was the one to clean Pip off.

Chow knew he should be feeling easier about her presence on the ship.

Instead, he felt more on edge. Captain Boukman, for all his good, was an unpredictable man.

If the crew loved Rebecca Smith too much, he might decide she was a liability and send her ashore.

Or he might decide she had to stay forever—and play some game to keep her with the crew even when she was ready to leave.

Whatever her fate on the Ghost would be, Chow found himself crossing the ship now to stop her from falling into Liberty’s trap.

“How is it done?” she was asking as Chow approached them. She had dropped to a crouch, and her skirts caught on her knees so that he could see her bare ankles leading to bare feet leading to bare toes.

Fuego held out his arm to display his almost-finished tattoo, an anchor sitting proudly atop his bicep muscle. Meanwhile, Liberty explained the process of dipping the needle in gunpowder ink and then poking it through the skin.

“It’s not for you,” Chow interrupted.

Rebecca looked up at him with amusement dancing across her dark eyes. “I didn’t see in the articles where it says that the quartermaster decides who gets gunpowder spots.”

“You’re still new. Better wait until you’re sure you want the pirate’s life.”

She rocked back on her heels. “I want it.”

Chow didn’t know if she was being argumentative or if she really was so foolish. She wasn’t a young woman who could mistake folly for adventure. If the Ghost were her best hope for escaping prostitution on Fortune Island, then fine; but he didn’t see how she could believe this was her destiny.

“It’s her body to do with as she likes,” Liberty Johnson said. His tone was free of innuendo, his eyes on his needles instead of her flesh.

Still, the mention of her body—the mention of as she likes —sent an unwelcome thrill of desire into Chow’s core.

“And she likes to get one like Fuego’s.” Eyes locked with Chow’s, Rebecca unbuttoned the front of her chemise and shrugged it off.

Suddenly, her shoulders—paler than brown, nuttier than white—shone in the sunlight. Their only adornment was the yellowed straps of her petticoat, which disappeared beneath the soft structure of her short stays.

Under all of which were her breasts.

But Chow wouldn’t think about her breasts.

Rebecca offered her upper arm to Liberty. “Will it take long?”

“Depends on what picture you want.”

Chow pinched his fingers together, trying to bring some sense of reality to his body. He would not look at her any longer. What she did with her skin was her own business. He would turn around now and let her make her own mistakes.

Her eyes roved over him. “How long did your shark take?”

“Days.” That had been in his early years on the Ghost , before he was quartermaster, when he lolled about in the doldrums instead of joining the captain in worrying over course and supplies.

“Show her the whole thing,” Liberty said. “Let us all admire it again.”

He didn’t want to. Shouldn’t want to. Yet, without any further coaxing, Chow found himself lifting off his shirt—his coat long since discarded in the heat—to show his torso.

He turned, like a pig being roasted in his final fate, so she could see where the shark tail began between his shoulder blades.

“Did it hurt?” she asked, her voice husky.

The part on his back had felt more like incessant scratching.

The shark’s jaws that curled up his neck had been excruciating.

But Captain Boukman had ordered the tattoo, and Chow had wanted to prove that he belonged on the Ghost .

And so he gritted his teeth through the pain and, in the days that followed, kept up his daily work even though his skin felt like it was about to blister off his very bones.

He debated now whether to lie to make it sound even worse in order to save Rebecca from the inner demon driving her to Liberty Johnson’s needle. He turned back around, shirt balled in his hand, and answered, “Of course it did.”

She swallowed, which drew his attention to her throat, which drew his eyes down to her collarbone and the smooth slope of skin leading to her breasts.

Which he wasn’t looking at.

“That’s not why you shouldn’t do it,” he added. “There’s no removing it once it is done. It will mark you forever as a…”

Pirate. Sailor. Anything other than the housemaid she had previously been.

“I don’t plan on going anywhere. Anywhere the Ghost doesn’t take me, that is.” At last, she pulled her eyes away from him and set them on Liberty Johnson. “What do you suggest for the design?”

Chow had done his best. There was no talking sense into this woman, just as there had been no preventing her from joining the crew. He would walk away now, retreat to his book like he had planned, and get some peace.

Except he found himself standing in the same spot suggesting, “A swallow.”

It was a typical design, though not simple. It might hurt her a little.

But it was an offering to the deep power that controlled the universe, one that might be worth the pain.

A prayer for safe passage home.

Wherever her home was.

“What does a swallow mean?” Rebecca asked.

This time, Chow didn’t debate about the lie of omission. “Swift sailing.”

She smiled, her eyes landing on his again. “A swallow it is, then.”

R ebecca hadn’t meant to talk her way into a tattoo. She hadn’t known what to do with her leisure time—never had been good at quiet moments when no direct action needed to be taken—and had been curious about the needles Liberty Johnson pulled from his wooden case.

But now, because shirtless Sharkhead Chow wouldn’t stop glowering at her, she was offering up her bare arm for a tattoo.

Her bare arm—and the rest of her torso, exposed down to her underthings. And she, a nice girl who always succeeded in nice housholds!

She could feel all eyes on the pirate ship spinning towards her like a compass needle pulled towards the North Pole.

After a week on the Ghost , she knew them all.

In a pack with their feet dangling off the starboard side sat the green boys who thought they were ready to handle a woman, shoving each other amid muffled guffaws.

Fearsome Fred, who flirted with her in French over the mess table, watched from the steps leading to the quarterdeck.