There is no night darker than a moonless one at sea under low clouds. The horizon falls away and ships become little worlds, seeming to float in three dimensions. Darkness takes on a physical, seeping quality, as if the vessel has been dropped into pitch. So oppressive was it for Bethany that, though she meant to sleep, she burned her lamp at her bunk-side. The ship’s bell rang midnight, she lowered the wick until the light nearly perished before turning in bed and shutting her eyes. She was not yet asleep when excited footfalls bounded past her cabin door. A lantern bobbed just outside her window, casting the shadow of a small party of men onto the curtains. She stirred, hiding her face in her pillow, only to sit up when it struck her that she had no way of knowing if the men were friendly. She had heard no shots but she had read of crack boarders, borne on boats with muffled oars, taking ships in the night without a single casualty to either side. Reaching for the 4.5 line automatic beneath her bunk felt absurd, but she did so anyway. By this time the men had moved off but she could hear them down the deck. She unlatched the door then lifted her lamp by its base, holding it opposite her pistol, and went out.
She felt a cold touch on the top of her head and more on her shoulders. Large, damp snowflakes glistened in the lamplight. Looking down the deck she saw the men on the fantail now, cavorting in the snow. With a faint smile she slipped back into her cabin and replaced the gun, keeping the lamp if only for its warmth, and went to look closer. She found Threlfall standing a few paces in front of them with a cup and saucer in hand.
“What’s this?” Bethany asked him.
“They’ve never seen snow before. I’m surprised you’re not equally excited, being from Bray.”
“I’ve been up north, not very far, mind, but far enough to see snow.”
“Ah.”
“I take it this is old hat for you.”
“Yes, I didn’t have a year without snow until I went to the Academy.”
“Did you miss it?”
“Once in a while. It is lovely like this but after a few days, when it's hard and dirty, it’s only a nuisance. It’s more exciting when you’re a child - I do remember once my father going to the seat of our province to conclude some contract. He brought me along and we took the train, which had only just reached our town. It started to snow just as we set off, the first of the season. The carriages were the newer sort, heated with steam, so they were wonderfully warm.”
“That must have been very pretty,” Bethany observed.
“It was. The railway line had been cut into a forest, a tunnel almost, with great trees on either side for most of the run. Watching the flakes go by and fill the woods was very fine. It made me want to go on the train whenever it snowed, but we never had cause to. In fact, after that trip I did not ride a train again until I set off for the Academy, though that was in summer.”
A poorly packed snowball whizzed past Bethany’s head and dashed itself on the superstructure. A young sailor turned to her with saucer eyes, “oh no! I meant for that to go towards the helmsman! I am so very...”
“It’s alright,” Bethany replied. The sailor, relieved, spun back around to toss another snowball at his friend, who had taken cover behind the mizzen.
“Would you like to get out of this weather?” Threlfall asked.
The snow was lovely but Bethany’s dressing gown was growing sodden, “I should, yes.”
Threlfall ambled to the rear of the superstructure, where the overhanging upper deck stopped the snow.
“I’ve be meaning to ask you something,” he began when they were both settled.
“Go on.”
“Since we left Holman Quay, have you felt it?”
Bethany turned, “felt what?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“You haven’t then, if you had you would know what I mean.”
“Fair enough, but you have my curiosity now. What have you felt?”
“A general sort of dread. It puts me in the mind of that boy from the Academy I told you of, who saw his grandfather’s death.”
“Is it troubling you often? I didn’t wish to say anything, but you do not look quite right. Are you sleeping?”
“Not well. When I told you on the boat train I had not slept I lied about the reason, I had wanted to, in fact, but could not. It has been the same every night since.”
“Have you any idea of the cause?”
Threlfall paused for a while, sipping his tea. “I do,” he finally announced, gesturing towards Tess, whose glowing great cabin windows were just visible through the blowing snow.
“What could Tess do to us?”
“Not Tess, her master. Mr. Luft.”
“Truly? I have actually found him less of a fool than he lets on.”
Threlfall looked grave, “he’s still a fool, Bethany. Every encounter with that trawler, both his and the others we have heard of ends in a rout for our side, yet he is rushing toward it even now.”
“She is wounded, though, that has changed.”
“I do not think we are that fortunate in this case. It will turn out wrong for us.”
“Why are you so sure? You have told me so many times that you cannot predict the acts of man, and that trawler is guided by men.”
“That is why I have told only you. I know how it sounds, half-mad. I cannot rest on my authority as a seer for this.”
“You should tell Granger. He may not be very committed to this little mission, he is skeptical of Luft I can tell.”
The snowfall had grown more intense. Threlfall raised the wick of Bethany’s lamp and warmed his hands before it. “Not yet, I hope in time it will grow more concrete and I can come to him with evidence. He is that sort of man, he will want evidence.”
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The coal scuttle was dragged into Bethany’s cabin, scraping the deck. With a grunt the steward circled round and shoved it into the far corner, where it came to a stop against the remains of a packing crate. The small, army type stove that had come from the crate now sat near the writing desk, its flue not yet assembled. Bits of piping lay all around as the steward attempted to thread the stack up and out of the room via a small, square vent meant to draw the breeze in. Fletch, though commendable in a storm, was still a fair weather yacht, and certainly not equipped for these cold latitudes. Tess was in a similar predicament, while a merchant she was built for balmy, equatorial runs. Accordingly, Luft had procured the stoves at the Naval Depot for both ships, making a gift of four to Fletch. Knowing fitting them would be a mess, the crew had waited until they were nearly frostbitten in their hammocks before giving in. Nominally as a show of respect, though Bethany suspected it was so they could wreck someone else’s living quarters as they figured out how to rig the stove, she was to be the first to have one installed. Badrine had begun the process but had been called away to address some incipient leak below, leaving the steward and a few sailors to solve the puzzle. One man had a piece of paper and a pen and was attempting to draw out the most likely routing for the flue. Another stood behind him, grousing about some issue that he saw in the plan.
“How does the Army manage this? Everybody knows we’re the smarter service and yet here we are, going to ruin,” the one with the paper wondered.
“It’s because all they’ve to do is route it right up out a hole in their tent, ya dullard,” the steward replied.
Another man arrived in the doorway, his advance blocked by the sailors. He peered over them, squinting, “is Miss Bethany in here?”
“Aye,” the steward replied before Bethany could.
“What is it?” Bethany asked.
“Mr. Granger would like to speak with you if it is no trouble.”
On deck it was bright but freezing. Bethany hastened to Granger’s cabin on the opposite side of the superstructure. It was slightly larger than her own. In lieu of a writing desk he had a map table and a small bookshelf that played host to manuals of seafaring and navigation as well as the ship’s logs and ledgers. A woodcut of Zealous was tacked to the far bulkhead, above his bunk. Granger stood when she entered then quickly staggered back to his chair, his wound giving him trouble.
“Miss Esterhouse,” he greeted.
“Mr. Granger,” Bethany returned.
“I hope you’re well, I regret I do not see very much of you. I see too little of anyone on account of this leg, they say now it will never quite heal. I would complain but if a man has to be shot there are worse places to take the bullet.”
Bethany fleetingly considered offering him some papaver. His was a case where a regular dose would be justified but she supposed he was the sort that would never take it. His walking stick suited him but the limp did not. Before Kjell he had led by moving about and looking over shoulders, occasionally tying a knot or scraping the deck himself - a practice that may as well have been calculated to win loyalty even if it was totally earnest.
“There’s coffee there,” he said, motioning toward the map table, “you’ll forgive for not pouring it for you, I hope.”
Bethany took some coffee and cast about for a chair only to find that Granger was occupying the only one in the room. “You wanted to speak with me?”
“I did, yes. It concerns Mr. Threlfall.”
“How so?”
“You speak to him often, and while you are not quite alike in age you are certainly closer to his than any of the other officers. Further, if I may say it, you have a shared condition. Therefore, what I feel you would be qualified to answer is this: has there, in your view, been a change in him?”
Bethany did not answer at first. She felt she had a duty to say nothing, or lie. Threlfall had changed, since they left Holman Quay he had been restless and skittish, mentioning his fears about what they might be sailing into to her several times after he confessed them during the first snow. She stirred her coffee as long as she could before finally speaking, “he has not been himself, but I am not terribly worried for him, we have been so idle these past weeks.”
“The sea has been a blank, I will grant you, but he came to me the evening prior with some writings that, if I did not know him better, I would call half-mad or worse.”
Bethany put her cup down and took a step forward, “regarding what?”
“He is under the impression that we are steaming into our graves by going after the trawler.”
“How did the writings relate to that?”
“It was... I might call a description of sorts, a rambling thing at any rate, of what he claims to have seen of our fate.”
“Claims? Do you doubt he is a seer?”
“Not usually, his weather charts are first rate, but I know for a fact, he has said himself, as has every seer I have ever sailed with, that what he claims to predict cannot be predicted.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him I would take it under consideration but that we would not be changing course. I do have my doubts about Mr. Luft, I would not be pleased to sail under his command, but we are an equal partner in this, we can break off whenever we like.”
“Is there anything you would like me to do?”
“Warn him off further. I cannot get very brusque with any officer of this ship, we are colleagues and gentlemen, but someone must tell him that should he breathe a word of his concerns to the crew there would be shades of mutiny in it.”