What are pirates but just a bunch of men in different phases of screwing one another over? This isn't any different. This is politics. Alliances are all well and good, but the only person a pirate can trust is himself. Ed isn't even certain he can trust Izzy, at this point. He's still uncomfortably confused by him.

Cursed bones, fine. Ed has spoken to people without faces, people who can phase through walls, seen the poltergeists aboard the ship. Everything here is out of a fucking sailor's tale. The shanties write themselves.

"What's the nature of that relationship?" Ed asks, watching Izzy play with his little bone shiv. He thinks he knows a thing or two about giving up everything for a man he's known for no more than a few weeks, for love-- but this sounds too easy.