Bethany was not asleep but had been in a sort of trance, listening to the rain beat against her cabin window. It was past four bells in the mid watch, though how past she did not know. A gentle knock on her cabin door caused her to roll in her bunk to face it, “Who is it?”

“Me,” Threlfall answered.

“Do you know how late it is... never mind, you may as well come in out of the rain.”

Threlfall did so.

“Were you asleep?” He inquired.

“Here and there, but not just now,” Bethany murmured, “What do you want?”

Threlfall struck a match and haltingly found the lamp. In the new light Bethany saw he was wearing an oilskin boat cloak and had another in his hands.

“There’s not a living soul on deck right now except for the helmsman. I thought we might practice with your sword. You said you would like to if only nobody could see it.”

Bethany sat up, “You’re mad, but I admire that.”

When she stood she reached beneath her bed for the rapier, then donned the boat cloak. Together, they stepped into the warm rain. Threlfall led her to the fantail, where, before the deck gun, an empty water cask stood.

“I thought you might aim at that,” he explained.

Bethany drew the old sword from beneath the cloak. Drops of rain dappled the blade, magnifying glimmering inlays of moldavite. Backing up to the mizzen she held the rapier loosely, and, upon reaching it, let go. It began to fall to the deck but stopped, hovering a few lines from the ground.

“Without fear to drive it you’ll require speed, in your motion, I mean. Have you ever thrown a ball overhand? Try something like that.”

Bethany had not, but she had seen it done. She made a swift motion with her right arm and the rapier responded, moving quickly down the deck until it glanced off the cask. It had not been fast enough to bury itself in the soft wood. Threlfall began to approach the sword.

“No, no,” Bethany protested, “let me try to bring it back.”

With her right hand at first, and then, with a grimace, both, she called on the rapier. It sat still, moving only when the deck pitched. Bethany began to walk towards the sword to collect it herself, when, in a flash, it returned to her hand with a shining cloud of moldavite gathered about it.

Bethany eyed Threlfall, “Did you do that?”

“Not at all.”

Bethany repeated her motion with the sword but more smoothly. This time it did not fall far but hurtled toward the center of the cask. The tip of the blade wedged itself between two boards with a twang.

Threlfall retrieved it before he could be stopped and walked over to her. Handing her the sword he drew his own, a plain officer’s saber. “What’s that for?” Bethany wondered.

“Balls and parades, mostly. Tonight, however, I think we might fence.”

“Why?”

“You say an orc knocked the sword from your grip. Fair enough of course, they’re as strong as five men, but if I understand moldavite half as well as I think, there may be a way around that.”

The pair stepped away from the mizzen and so out of the protective lee of its sails. Bethany ran a hand through her soaked hair, pulling it away from her eyes.

“Guard yourself, I’m going to try to knock the sword away. This is theory on my part, but if you hold in your mind the thought of keeping it, you probably shall,”Threlfall instructed.

The seer was an awkward swordsman but he brought the dull side of his saber against Bethany’s blade with considerable force. Bethany tightened her grip until it hurt and then reflexively let go. The rapier clung to her open palm as if glued there, alight with moldavite. She closed her fingers again and went after Threlfall, striking his blade once without warning and again as he attempted to parry. Soon his back was to the deck gun and he could go no further. Panting, he asked, “Who taught you that?”

“Professor Eckert, when I was 11. I went to a martial school, or haven’t I told you?”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Threlfall gave a wry smile, “Problem girl?”

“Yes, but my sister is a lamb and she was sent to. Tradition. There’s a dormitory named after our family.” Bethany replied, though she suspected the dormitory had been renamed after her last adventure in fencing. At that, a great weight fell on her. She was pleased with herself and when the rush fell away she felt deeply sick for it. She was beginning to recall things other than Angeline’s limp body when she thought of the sandy fencing ground at Zellum. Thoughts of driving girls older than her all the way into a corner and then placing the tip of her rapier just above their hearts, the victory condition, came to her wrapped in a pleasant glow. She had no right to enjoy it, no more than a man who murders his wife should look back happily on his honeymoon. Yet, basely, she did.

Wordlessly, Bethany sat on a capstan. She wanted to drop the sword, be rid of it, but loathed to noise it would make and so laid it against the deck gently before shutting her eyes. She felt a few tears and heaved bitterly to preempt sobbing. Before Threlfall could reach her she wiped her eyes and nose on the tall collar of the boat cloak. He tried to sit on the capstan with her but found it too intimate. Standing over her instead he whispered, “What’s the trouble?”

Bethany looked up, her gray eyes shining, “I shouldn’t have agreed to this, it’s much too late.”

“That may be, but is there anything beyond that?”

Bethany gathered the boat cloak about her. She contemplated going back to her cabin but the rain was somehow comforting, “Mrs. Luft instructed Mr. Luft to instruct Mr. Granger to instruct me not to go aboard Tess anymore. Clotilde, the eldest daughter, I told her I was a witch. She thought it was delightful but she was the only one apparently. Granger didn’t know what to make of it, he would barely believe I was a witch, but Mr. Luft is the owner of his ship and we have to respect his instructions.”

“We could always press Tess into the Navy proper, then you’d certainly outrank him and his harpy,” Threlfall offered, lightly.

“No, I can’t blame her. She’s not ignorant, I think, only cautious. She, or, at least, I was told, she cited her daughter. Not Clotilde but the young one. The little thing is threatened constantly by dangers she cannot control, she was certain to act on one she could. She’s a mother, after all, and is practically alone out here. No servants, at least none that would look after a child, and her husband doesn’t seem fond of reality.”

“That’s a remarkably charitable view.”

“You said yourself the Assembly was right to put down high wizardry. You, me, we can’t be entirely trusted.”

“Come, let’s get out of the rain,” Threlfall suggested.

Bethany departed the capstan without accepting the seer’s outstretched hand. She turned toward her cabin briefly but moved instead up the deck. Walking slowly, Bethany listened to the sounds beneath the patter of rain: sailors meant to be on watch whispering as they kept dry in the stairwell, the rhythmic clatter of coal shovels rising from the engine room skylight, the creak of rigging, the half-rings of the ship’s bell as its striker swayed with the waves, and the idle whistling of the helmsman. She had done much the same, buoyed by papaver, from the open window of her garret on long nights. Then, though the sounds had been different: the footfalls and songs of drunks and street sweepers and the distant clang of steam trams.

Bethany reached Fletch’s prow with half closed eyes. Threlfall was just behind her as if he expected her to crumple at any moment. Standing where the port and starboard gunnels met and the bowsprit protruded she put her hands on the rail. After a moment she found the ship, something reaching out to her, feeling without form. Fletch did not send the light, soaring sensation of before but instead a steady, almost warm expression. Around the edges Bethany was certain she felt a new fraying, the phantoms of the yacht’s bullet and shell wounds. Though the vessel seemed content enough there was now a pall of old agony about her. Bethany felt it in her stomach and the lids of her eyes. It was familiar enough.

“How is she?” Threlfall asked.

Bethany opened her eyes and Fletch let go.

“Fine, I think,” she replied.

“Good, now come on, you’re asleep on your feet.”

“You can go. I know the way back,” Bethany suggested with a wistful glance.

Threlfall adjusted his boat cloak but did not move from alongside her at the rail. The two looked across the sea lit by a half moon.

After a silent interval, Threlfall turned to her and pointed: “Do you see that? Just off the bowsprit.”

Bethany looked. She saw only ocean until, as a wave broke, a constellation of lamplight appeared in the distance. “I do. Is it an island?”

By way of answering the seer moved to the chartroom and, consulting the current plot, shook his head.

“Not unless we’re off course by several degrees,” he explained. From the chartroom door he addressed the helmsman: “Mr. Collins, your glass if you please.”

The helmsman knelt to pass a spyglass beneath the bridge railing. Taking it with a nod, Threlfall returned to the bowsprit and sighted down it.

“I see a streak of hull and plenty of lights in the superstructure, whatever she is she’s lit up like a liner,” he reported.

“Is she ours?” Bethany inquired.

“She may be a troopship headed for another island but I’ve received no traffic about an invasion this far south. Mr. Collins, who is the officer of the watch?”

“Badrine down below. It’s his go-round but he gets to stay out of the rain all night ‘cause of his speciality,” Collins answered with an air of indignity.

Bethany was following Threlfall now and both soon reached the engine room skylight. Cracking open a vent pane, Threlfall shouted: “We’ve got a ship sighting. Come take a look. I’m not waking Granger without the watch officer’s say so.”

Badrine looked up from a card game - he was losing to a stoker, badly - and replied: “Right, right. Good thinking he needs his rest with that damned wound.”

The clatter of the Chief Engineer’s boots up several metal ladders and, ultimately, the teak stairs leading to the deck reverberated throughout the ship. He wore no cloak against the rain yet the fine coating of oil that clung to him made it bead and roll off neatly.

“Where’s the interloper?” he began.

Handing him the glass, Threlfall stated, “Go forward, look down the bowsprit and then a bit to port. You should have her.”

Badrine did this. “That’s a ship alright and moving fast. If she’s ours she's liable to be off course, if she’s theirs, well... we had better wake the Master.”

The trio were soon before Granger’s cabin door. As the officer of the watch, Badrine knocked. They heard the old man stir and swing his legs out of his bunk, followed by the knock of his walking stick against the deck as he raised himself up.

“Ship sighted, sir,” Badrine explained as the Sailing Master approached his door.

“Disposition?” Granger asked as he stepped onto the deck, barefoot with an oilskin over his nightclothes.

“Unknown but in these waters...” Threlfall began before the Master interrupted him.

“Unlikely to be a friend,” Granger stated, continuing “Show me, please.”

Four now proceeded to the bowsprit and consulted the spyglass.

“A liner as sure as I am standing here,” Granger concluded. “If the fools still have her carrying passengers we can stop her - dealing with civilians will be like running an asylum so I would not try to make a prize of the whole ship, but we can empty the purser’s safe and clean out the larder for certain. If she’s a troopship or an armed cruiser then we must engage her lest she kill our lads.”

The Sailing Master made his way to the bridge and tried to mount the ladder. His leg wound thwarted him. Turning to Badrine he ordered: “Go up there and signal Tess to follow us as quick as she can, we are chasing a steamer and can no longer keep alongside. Then go below, gofull ahead. Those liners think speed makes them immune to raiders but they’ve not counted on us.”

Granger retreated to his cabin by way of the chartroom. Fletch’s signal lamp flickered the message to Tess, who, after some time likely spent in rousing Mr. Luft, acknowledged with “good hunting.” This done, Badrine hurried below.

Bethany looked to Threlfall: “How long will it be before we are fighting them?”

“The rest of the night for certain, maybe most of the day as well. If we are faster, and we may not be, it will only be by a knot or so, catching up will not be easily done.”

“If that’s the case then I’m going to bed,” Bethany announced.

As Bethany entered her bunk the off-duty stokers were rousted from theirs. Fletch would need every man of her black gang to have a hope of catching the liner.