Freezing rain quickly became snow. High waves broke over the bow, a mercy, sidelong waves would easily roll the battered ship. Bethany was in her cabin. The door was broken and water rolled down the deck and gathered inside, rising up to her ankles. She sat on her bunk with her hands around her knees, trying to stay dry. Somebody had placed a coarse navy blanket about her shoulders and she clutched it tightly. A sailor stumbled through the door, picking up her desk chair and placing it in front of the stove without a word. He reached toward it, and, feeling it cold, looked around the room. When his eyes landed on Bethany he started and sprung up from the chair, standing straight.

“I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t expect... I thought you were dead, dead and gone from the ship with the last shot... I will go...”

“It’s alright,” Bethany murmured, “do stay, only light the fire if you can.”

The sailor relaxed and hauled the coal scuttle across the floor. As he pitched a few chunks into the stove Bethany saw his right arm hung limp, he could use only his left, and was not very good with it. A poorly tossed piece of coal dashed itself against the bulkhead and as he fumbled about the desk for the paraffin and matches Bethany stood.

“Sit,” she instructed, and lit the fire herself.

“Where did the bastar - pardon me miss I forget my manners - where did the enemy get you?” the sailor asked Bethany as she returned to her bunk.

“I do not think they did,” she replied, looking herself over.

“Really, you look to be suffering of the anemia or something like it, you look ready to drop off.”

“I think that’s the cold,” Bethany assured him, “you may wish to consult with the steward, though.”

The sailor stifled a scoff, “ah, there’s no hurry here, I got this two hours ago at least, if I was going to bleed to death it would’ve happened already. Granted, it’ll have to go under the saw I’m sure, now that may well kill me.”

“You mean amputation?”

“Yes, miss.”

“In that case you seem rather calm considering, it is your dominant arm, is it not?”

“Aye, it is, but I look around me at the fellows who will be saying goodbye to their legs, or are quite dead altogether, and I can only be thankful.”

Boyle’s bosun’s whistle shrieked, followed by his cry of “I need every able body on deck at once to set the mainsail!”

The sailor stood.

“With all due respect you are not an able body,” Bethany protested.

“I will go and try,” the sailor replied and splashed out of the cabin. Bethany watched a mass of men move forward, answering Boyle’s call. Rising, she peered forward from her doorway.

The foremast was heavily damaged but the boom for the mainsail was intact, though holed, the mainsail looked as if it could carry some wind. Boyle and a small group of sailors were on their hands and knees, splicing and knotting rigging so that it might be raised. Their progress was interrupted and set back with every wave the came over the bow. After an eternity they seemed ready and the men were ordered along the halyard. As they began to hoist it another wave slammed into Fletch, striking her several points off the bow and breaking badly. It pitched the ship sharply, dunking the port gunnel into the sea and rolling along the deck. Bethany ducked into her cabin in time for the water to burst through the open door, throwing her against the bulkhead and dousing the stove.

“Man overboard!” rang out from the forecastle. Shivering, Bethany went to the railing to look, though her eyes were beginning to knit shut with freezing tears. Several men were in the water, clinging to the halyard and bits of sail. Boyle quickly saw them pulled aboard.

“Is that everyone? Do we have here all the lads that were on the line?” the bosun demanded.

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The sailors counted amongst themselves until one haltingly reported, “Struthers is gone, sir. He was just in front of me.”

“Enough of this! Don’t waste anymore men trying to get underway, it’s no use,” Badrine barked. He had come on deck directly from the engine room, and stood behind the clump of sailors. “Our pumps have stopped, we are well behind the flooding. I have taken three measurements in as many minutes and I find this: we have 15 minutes until this ship founders by flooding alone and she might capsize at any moment.”

The sailors murmured alarm but none contested Badrine’s estimate. Fletch’s port gunnel was underwater, where the last wave had left it, and the sea was gathering about their legs.

Badrine strode toward the bridge. Farley was there, minding the sailor who he had hastily made helmsman, “Mr. Farley, as the chiefs of our departments we are of equal effective rank, in these circumstances. As our ranking officers are dead or incapacitated, I submit to you that we now have command of this ship. Do you agree?”

Farley stepped to the bridge rail, “I agree, Mr. Badrine.”

“Then I submit to you that we must immediately give the order to abandon ship. I give that order now, if you concur it will be executed.”

Farley began to speak but Boyle beat him out, “Mr. Farley, Mr. Badrine, sirs, there’s no good to be had in abandoning ship. Our boats have been holed by shot, they could be patched but not in fifteen minutes, and this water will kill us, quick as a knife in the heart.”

Farley gripped the bridge rail as if he was trying to wring water from it, “I welcome your counsel, Mr. Boyle, but I do not see a choice, the ship will abandon us in short order. Mr. Badrine, I concur, proceed with the order.”

Boyle lifted his bosun’s pipe and gazed at it as the snow gathered on its silver barrel. At last he blew a long call, “All hands! Abandon ship!”

The sailors tensed but did not move, “we’ve some life vests taken from Dux, they’re in the forepeak,” Badrine suggested.

“Very good, you lot go and get them,” Boyle replied, picking out a handful of sailors, “see that they’re distributed to non-swimmers first. The rest of you, we’re going to make a try at patching the number two boat with sailcloth.”

The sailors did not look any more hopeful, but they stirred, doing as ordered. Bethany walked up the deck until she ran out of it, stopping just behind the bowsprit. Here Fletch was the least flooded, it was beginning to rise from the sea as her badly holed stern pulled her under. Dux’s end and simple physics suggested to her that this would be the last bit to go underwater. Looking fore and aft and to both sides Bethany saw only gray sky. There was no trace of any ship that might save them or threaten them, the airship was the perfect color to vanish entirely into these clouds, and it must have done so. The choppy sea extended less than half of a verst in every direction until the low cloud consumed it. It was weather like this that gave rise to dispatches about ships sinking with all hands and leaving no trace.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see Badrine, “take this,” he advised, a life vest in his hands.

“Absolutely not, I can swim. Keep it for yourself.”

“You think you can swim but these waters will dull the muscles straight-away.”

“It’s really a choice between drowning quickly and freezing slowly, isn’t it?”

Badrine looked hollowly at her, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“This was meant to be almost a lark, this voyage, I mean to say. Your father had to send a ship but not into harm’s way, least not terrible harm - the escort to Kjell and raiding in the southern ocean, that was regarded as light duty. He didn’t wish to lose his yacht, nor you, I’m sure. We were meant to protect you. Now you’re both going to die badly.”

“So are you,” Bethany murmured.

“True enough, but I’m an old man.”

“Old?”

“Well, thirty-two. That’s older than you and two thirds of the ship’s company.”

“Mr. Badrine! Come and help with this!” Boyle requested, shouting from his position astride the upturned boat.

Badrine thrust the life vest into Bethany’s arms, “I should go.”

Bethany tried to pass the vest back to him, “might the boat actually be mended?”

“Not well enough to withstand these seas. It could be fresh from the yard and it would still go down, with so many men aboard and waves breaking in.”

“Well, good luck anyway,” Bethany replied.

Badrine got hold of the vest only to drop it at her feet, “right, you as well.”

Bethany watched the commotion about the boat for a while, then turned, looking past the bowsprit. She found a bit of line, the other of which was tied fast to the gunnel. She made a loop around her wrist and tried to tighten it but the wet, freezing rope bit at her fingers. Perhaps it would tighten when the ship started to drop - it might be enough. She did not wish to fight, but she knew she would by reflex when they went into the water, this might stop that, or at least shorten it. She felt better than she had since the morning of Threlfall’s death. Not happy, but distantly content. She had practically stolen every day of her life between the appointed hour of her hanging and today and she’d done precious little with it. Clotilde’s end was a far greater injustice, she had never hurt anyone, and had some kind of future to look forward to. No great inheritance, perhaps, but a clean name and relatively pleasant disposition. She would have done fine, a decent husband, a modest house, a few children and servants. She would have given more lives than she would have taken - she would have likely never taken any at all.

Fletch shuddered as some compartment gave out, her stern-ward pitch deepening. Bethany gripped the gunnel just in front of her to avoid sliding down the deck. It was warm. She pulled her hand away, perhaps she was beginning to lose feeling - her nerves dying out, becoming confused - she had read that could happen. No, the air was just as cold. Replacing her hand the gunnel again felt warm. She knelt, touching the deck at her feet, which was covered in snow. When her hand passed through to the teak, it was warm as well. A terrible dread came over her in an instant and she felt her self sliding aft, though her body did not move. From the gunnel where she had first felt the paradoxical heat two thin tendrils of moldavite reached out. She could not help but reach back, and they grasped her arm, guiding it back to the gunnel. The line about her other wrist undid itself and the moldavite reached for that one as well. Her senses fell away. She felt Fletch’s presence, as she had before, but she was not alone. A second, much smaller being dwelt alongside her. “Bethany,” it said, in a faraway voice. Her vision returned, though she could neither hear nor feel anything other than an insistent hum from the ship. She pressed her hands against the gunnel.

Behind her, the sailors tending to the boat stopped. They looked on as the largest hole in the deck was bridged by two shimmering lines of moldavite, then four, then eight. They were crossed, at every deck, by the same number. A quivering mass of steel, liquid as if molten, but somehow cold, clung to lattices of moldavite, spreading until the wound in the deck and hull disappeared.

Bethany’s hearing returned in time to perceive them shouting and running toward her, in alarmed glee. Without choosing to, she knelt, touching the deck directly. A column of moldative rose from her, swarmed around her, then, with a thunderclap, dispersed to every corner of the ship. Silence fell. The rush of flooding was gone, every man aboard stood dumbstruck. Bethany coughed up a mouthful of blood alight with moldavite, tried to crawl forward, and collapsed.