“It is unbecoming for him to use you as his messenger,” Threlfall pronounced. Bethany took a few steps toward him until he was practically cornered in his small cabin. His eyes, glowering, shone in the murky lamplight, “why did you go along with it?”

“What else could I do? I’m almost inclined to agree with him, it’s a very troubling thing you’re doing.”

“If I am right I stand to save nearly one-hundred lives, and I feel, no, I reason, that I am. If I am not then you may all mock me forever-after.”

“You reason you are right? How can you reason about a thing so vague?”

Threlfall looked toward a mound of papers on his desk, “if you let me I will show you.”

Bethany backed away. The seer raised the wick of the lamp in the sconce above his desk and lit another upon it, making the small room as bright as an operating theater.

“I have made notes of my impressions from the second day out of Holman Quay to now. Certain things that were as you say vague have become rather concrete...” he rifled through the stack until he found three sheets heavily marked with script and sketches. They reminded Bethany of the delirious paintings she had covered her cabin bulkhead with, though Threlfall’s work was more finely detailed. The detail was not what she would call considerately used, however, it was dense, not ornate, as if he had thrown his entire overwrought mind’s eye onto the page. Bethany’s look darkened. If this is what he had shown Granger then she understood his concern perfectly.

“This is from the second day steaming, there is a lot there but it is only shadows, outlines. I think I was seeing many things, not all of them related,” he began, gesturing to the first page, “next we see how it firms up, I know for certain it concerns our ships now, I am not predicting what will become of someone else, see there that can only be Tess.”

Threlfall turned, “you believe me, at least you are willing to, I hope?”

Bethany touched his arm, “I am willing to. Can I help you? If you are going to go on you must do it shrewdly, you remind me of myself and I fear I am only ever a few dark days from a locked hospital so that is no compliment.”

“Such a place wouldn’t keep you for long. You know, you must know you’re a proper summoner now...” Threlfall remarked, striding over to a chest of books at the end of his bunk, “incidentally that is why you can help me, if you are willing.”

“I am,” Bethany assented.

Threlfall gave a small smile and opened a book, “can you read the attic script?”

“I won’t know until I try again, I could in school,” Bethany replied.

Threlfall handed her the same book, it was relatively slim but clearly quite old. She could smell rotten paper and binding, “well, try this, start anywhere.”

Bethany gingerly opened it, not daring to go any further than the first inked page, she stared at it for a long while, mouthing words, then with some excitement read aloud: “Prediction in Spiritual and Temporal Warfare in the Practice of Proctor John Massingbird and his Lady Wife.”

Threlfall looked up from another book, nodding, “quite right.” He moved back to his desk, sliding a saucer from beneath a cup of stagnant tea and wiping it clean against his shirt. Placing the saucer in the center of his desk he dusted its middle with moldavite, pausing to confirm the dose every half-second. He next poured a small amount of rum into the saucer until it formed a sort of film across it. Finally he drew out his service revolver from its holster at his bunk-side and opened it. He palmed one cartridge and brought it to his desk.

“If this explodes you have my apologies,” he said wryly. A small locking wrench came from a desk drawer and he tightened it over the bullet. He gave a tug and Bethany was surprised to see the lead portion of the cartridge move away from the brass portion, she had not known they were separable outside of a gun. Threlfall poured the powder from the cartridge into the teacup and measured out a small amount to add to the saucer.

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He stood, “right, this is a rather tin pan way of doing this, but it ought to work. The moldavite is the heart of it and that hasn’t changed. Let me see Proctor’s if you would.”

Bethany passed him the book and he leafed through it, stopping on a page near the end. “When I say so start reading downward from here, exactly as it is written. Though mind you have the choice of saying we or I and you must say we, since there are two of us.”

Bethany looked the page up and down. “Are you ready?” Threlfall inquired, sitting again at his desk.

“Yes, alright,” Bethany answered.

Threlfall held his hands around the periphery of the saucer as he did with his scribe’s pen, “go ahead.”

Bethany took a breath, “Friends, we call upon you urgently for we know an enemy intends to strike us down upon our first meeting on road or sea, but we know not when that shall be, nor his devious method. We pray you make clear the fiend’s plan in all its detail, that we may be spared.”

Bethany felt a series of pin-pricks down her back. The lamp on the bulkhead flared such that it blackened the glass around it, then went dark. Moldavite, twirling and flickering rose from the saucer. Beside it the other lamp went out without warning, leaving only the moldavite’s glow. It crawled across the desk and to the bulkhead, climbing it like ivy. An image began to form, the sea could be seen along with the beginnings of a ship.

In a flash the moldavite fell dead to the desk. The lamps were alight again. Bethany heard the saucer shatter and, an instant later, Threlfall’s chair clatter to the deck. She rushed over to him, dropping the book. She thought at first the blood on his face was from the shattered saucer but looking closer she saw it was coming from his nose and eyes.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. The words came choking out, for she too was worse for wear. There was no blood but her head throbbed as if it had been struck and her hands were shaking. Threlfall did not move or speak. Bethany thought the worst until she saw him take an unsteady breath.

She had known his first name ever since signing his commission on the day they met, but it was not appropriate to use it among officers. She used it now: “Peter, are you alright?”

Threlfall cast about his right arm until it chanced on Bethany’s left. He grasped it and tried to pull himself up, coughing. “I will be fine,” he murmured at last.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” Bethany replied, “what happened?”

Threlfall rubbed his eyes and looked in alarm at the bloody hand he came away with. Bethany fetched the coarse Navy blanket from his bunk and dabbed at his face with a corner. When his face was relatively clear he sat up, dragging himself to the bulkhead so he might lean on it.

“I’m sorry,” he began, “I knew there was a risk of this and I ought to have told you.”

“Risk of what? What was that?” Bethany demanded.

Threlfall sighed, “what I had you read, and what I made by the guide on the preceding page, it’s 300 years old. I did not have quite the correct ingredients and it is likely that neither of us fully understood what we read. I had hoped that our intent, our good intent would carry it through anyway, for it is said that it does matter, but I went too far, it was too different.”

“I’m sorry, perhaps I...” Bethany began.

“No, your reading was not the problem. The texts make allowances for an assistant and would never spite such a person, you in this instance. It was something I did, or did not do.”

Bethany rose and went to the small wash basin in the corner of the cabin. She meant to carry some water over to Threlfall but stopped dead upon catching her reflection in the mirror. Her face was not bloodied but her eyes had changed, tiny threads of moldavite, glowing brightly, moved about the whites, parting and coalescing like schools of fish.

“What’s the matter with my eyes? Did you see this?” Bethany asked without turning away.

“Oh, I did, yes. Have you not seen it before?” Threlfall replied, far less alarmed than she.

“No.”

“It will pass in a while, a few minutes, an hour at most. It depends upon how excited the moldavite became. You, we, have a sort of permanent garrison of it in our blood and body, and when one does what we just tried it comes to the fore. I am almost certain when you brought up your sword at Kjell and again on Dux it appeared, though naturally you were too busy to notice it.”

Bethany relaxed and brought the pitcher from the basin over, wetting a clean corner of the blanket and working again on Threlfall’s face.

“If you have ever seen a portrait of a wizard, or a witch for that matter, made before the Assembly then you will have seen it before. They were almost always painted with the glow in their eyes, it spoke of power.”

“I have not seen one,” Bethany answered.

“Fair enough, I suppose it is not common to put them up in households anymore, and a great many were burned. The Academy has a gallery of them, not so that they might be venerated, mind, but for historical reference.”

“Why are your eyes unchanged?” Bethany inquired.

“Heaven knows, moldavite is fickle and, though I have no real proof, I suspect you’ve a great deal more to work with than I do.”

Threlfall stood, “you should go, I will clean this up, it’s my mess.”

Bethany replied by righting the chair and beginning to gather up the shards of saucer, “what were you trying to do, anyway?” she wondered as she picked up Proctor’s.

“Had I done it properly I would have made a picture, really a diorama for it has three dimensions, of what I have been seeing all this time, of our fate. For a proper wizard it is a very simple thing, they used to be made and consulted before any battle. I had hoped to show it to Granger. You are right, my scribblings prove nothing.”

He reached down and picked up a shard before Bethany could, “really, do go, you may not have gotten it as bad as me but I can tell you are a little ill, and I suspect we will both be very tired once the shock wears off. Go and rest.”

Bethany moved toward the cabin door but did not go through it, “you must promise me you will leave off troubling Mr. Granger. Perhaps we can try this reading again, or something similar, so that we will have proper evidence as you said. Until then don’t speak of your prediction anymore. I know that will be hard, but Granger is ready to do something rash to discipline you, I fear. He mentioned the charge of mutiny, even I know that would get you shot.”

“Don’t worry,” Threlfall replied, “I will not go to him or anyone without speaking to you first.”

Bethany left him in the tossed cabin, passing the rows of hammocks sagging with sleeping men and a few gambling beneath a lamp.