Coal dust hung in the air, stirred by every movement. Fletch had gorged herself on the supply at Hegalia and little had been done to wash it away. The sailors, exhausted from loading it, had not been ordered to clean the decks but favored with rum and sent to their hammocks. It was good coal, likely from the mines in the heart of Bexar, and Fletch was burning it as fast as she could. The stokers worked to the point of collapse, the throttle at its widest stop. Far more sparks than usual rushed up the funnel, streaking past the reefed mizzen to be snuffed in the wake. With each turn of the screw, Holman Quay, or the airship, perhaps both, drew nearer.

Bethany slid Granger’s watch from her coat, reading it by moonlight. There were two hours left in her turn at watch. It was her first time at the duty and she had taken it at Badrine’s suggestion, though she had proposed it as if it were her own idea. With Granger dead and many of the reliable sailors dead or wounded she was needed, lest the other officers be robbed of sleep, but, as Badrine had explained, neither man would ever ask her outright.

She rose from the taffrail, making a circuit of the deck. The sea was not calm but posed no real threat, what waves broke over the bow drained at once. There was enough wind to use the sails but with ample coal and half the sailors in slings and bandages the effort could not be justified. Bethany checked the pocket watch again and scaled the ladder to the bridge. The helmsman saluted her quickly before returning his gaze to the binnacle. Bethany tolled the hour on the ship’s bell.

“Why do we bother with that? They are all asleep, surely,” she remarked when it was done.

The helmsman opened his mouth to answer but turned sharply away from her and stared down at the deck on the starboard side, “look there!”

Bethany did, she first saw a streak of white cloth rustling in the breeze against the gunnel. It was a nightgown, Clotilde’s head, almost as white, peaked from the collar. Without a word to the helmsman, Bethany shot down the ladder and to her. She could not have been there long, she had not been present before Bethany rang the bell, that was certain, but dressed and sick as she was Bethany feared she had frozen already. She looked the part, her head lolled against the rail, the rest of her body stiff. For her to wake and move at last only to die this way was so cruel that Bethany was certain it might be true. Kneeling beside her, Bethany saw her chest rise and fall with a breath - good enough.

“Can you hear me,” Bethany asked, followed by, after a long silence, “Clotilde, please wake up.”

She did not until a sidelong wave broke over the gunnel and doused them both. On that, Clotilde started, taking a sharp breath.

“Can you stand? Come along, you need to get out of this cold,” Bethany insisted. She did not reply but, with Bethany’s help, managed to rise. With Clotilde leaning heavily against her, Bethany returned to her cabin. She sat Clotilde on the bunk. The girl’s arms clung to Bethany’s shoulder and neck until Bethany gently pulled them away.

“Are you alright? Alright enough for me to go? I have to stand watch,” Bethany asked, softly. She moved to the stove, it was lit already, she had seen to that, but she threw more coal in and stoked it until, with her coat on, it was too warm for her.

Clotilde was shivering, Bethany tried to dry the places where the wave had hit her but that was not enough.

“You should lie down,” Bethany urged. When Clotilde did not, Bethany draped a rough blanket about her. She turned, making for the door, wishing it could be locked from the outside. Clotilde stood.

“Can you stay?” she whispered.

“No, but I will be back soon, before you know it, if you sleep,” Bethany replied.

“I’ve slept enough, I...” Clotilde began, almost lucidly, before her face blanked and she began to weep softly. Bethany moved away from the cabin door, pulled the little chair before her desk toward the bunk and sat. Clotilde sniffled and wiped her eyes with a corner of the blanket, murmuring, “I’m sorry.”

“For what? You’ve done nothing wrong,” Bethany assured her.

“Just now I’ve detained you, moreover, I’m a murderess.”

“A murderess? What? That Bexarian Colonel? We forgave you before the revolver had cooled.”

“That is kind of you, kind, but it does not help,” she whimpered.

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“I am sure he deserved it, after what he did to you, you have no more guilt than a soldier in a firing squad, less even,” Bethany insisted.

“He did nothing to me,” Clotilde intoned.

“His men, then?”

Clotilde shook her head.

“You needn’t answer, but, why then?”

“For my father, and Mr. Holeck and LeCompton.”

“Your father survived the sinking?”

Clotilde nodded and ran a trembling hand through her damp hair, “he and the other men I named, and myself. I cannot say how, the first I remember was waking up, nearly naked, wrapped in a blanket in the bottom of a launch. It was one of ours with a sail, thank heavens, or we would never have survived. Father said he had stayed near the wreck, looking for other survivors, but by the time I waked we were already moving south. He knew there were whaling stations near the pole. He did not know they were all held by the enemy. In the end he only delayed his death, he would have done better to drown, we all would have.”

“That’s not true, Clotilde, we’re all pleased you’re alive.”

Clotilde stared at Bethany, meeting her eyes, then gazed at the floor, and went on without looking up, “I’m not.”

Bethany leaned in, brushing her cheek, “there’s much to be said for death, I am only here because I have never had the courage to finish things myself. And it does take courage, and confidence. They say there’s cowardice in it, maybe so, if one is escaping some deserved punishment, but pointless suffering is another matter. I cannot begrudge you those thoughts, though you will be fine, you’re gone from there now and here with us. Now, we will have breakfast in the morning but for now please...”

“No, don’t go until I have finished, I keep seeing what I am telling you, in a jumble, like a lantern show with the slides mixed up, if I set it to someone, maybe, I don’t know but stay until I finish.”

Bethany checked her watch, “I don’t wish to leave you but I have a duty.”

“I will go out with you then,” Clotilde insisted.

“You’ll freeze.”

“The cabin is only a few steps away, this ship is small.”

Bethany relented and, with the blanket drawn tightly about her, Clotilde followed her onto the deck. Bethany led her to the taffrail, she did not want the helmsman seeing or hearing their conversation. It was the sort of distraction proscribed on watch and she was half-ashamed to be allowing it.

Fletch was darkened - hostile waters - but Bethany lit the stern lantern after taking it down from its post. She secreted it behind the taffrail and bid Clotilde to sit by it. She did and continued her tale: “when we landed at Hegalia, my father presented himself as just what he was, the captain of an enemy privateer. I think he expected to dine with the camp commander, a gentleman prisoner. They asked him for his letter of marque, laughing all the while, and when he said it had gone down with the ship they called him a pirate and locked us in a room in that terrible pit of a fort. They had no proper cells, it was worse, a disused magazine father said, no windows, no basin, no toilet. It struck him then, I think. His wife, his young daughters, had died and died horribly, and it was his fault. He knew it and he told me he knew it and I lied and told him to blame the enemy, but Bexar did not draw us from his house and put us under the guns of that flying abomination. That damnable airship - they were horrified to discover he knew of it, and they interrogated him and the other men for a long while. They gave up the little they knew - that was the trouble, the Bexarians were sure we were spies, and that he had learned of the airship from some other source and gone in search of it. They wanted the name, the name of the turncoat or secret agent in Bexar that had told our Navy of it. They had no name to give, and the Bexarians said, ‘very well, we will shoot you as pirates, rather than spies, but we will shoot you.’ They took the men away to be shot the next day but they never fired, they returned them alive to our room, saying they had a last chance to give up the details of the plot. They did that three more times, I never saw it, but father said that each time they blindfolded them and tied them to a post, and put bullets in the guns, but never fired. They came a fourth time and as they grabbed father he tried to fight them, finally. He had been feverish since they had shut us up in the magazine, and one stroke with a rifle butt killed him. It was a mercy for him, but not for the others. The Colonel - his name was Liprandi - was called in, he took a while to come and the guards just stood about, I tried to sit with my father’s body but they pushed me into a corner with their bayonets. He arrived, I think he came from dinner, he stunk of good food, and looked at my father and made a little sound, almost girlish, then took a few steps to LeCompton and Holeck took his revolver out and shot them both, each in the stomach. He said they would live with a doctor’s care, care he would deliver, but only if they gave up the agent’s name. They said they did not know and he became very polite, told them they were brave men, and left. They took an age to die, they did not die well. The guards left, gone to another part of the fort so as to not hear their cries I’m sure. They came back a few days later and hauled the bodies out. Liprandi was there and he offered me his hand, picked me up from the mud. I asked if he was going to shoot me too, that was what I wanted and I told him so. He laughed and said he would get around to it, but, for now he had uniforms that needed mending.”

Bethany did not reply at once, she reached for the lantern, adjusting the wick. Only after she placed it back on the deck before Clotilde did Bethany speak, whispering: “...and that was the end of it? You came to no physical harm?”

“They did not feed me well and this fever, I suspect half of it is of my head but the rest is real enough. The Colonel said that I was his prize and he would be back for me. That no other man could have me, lest they make me sick. I was pushed about, shoved from a few rooms I was sweeping when the men decided they were tired of looking at me, nothing else. I am glad of that, well, perhaps I am, if they had been harsher they might have killed me and that would have been alright.”

“You truly mean that?”

“Yes, yes,” Clotilde murmured, “I am an orphan now, a pauper and an orphan for everything we owned was bound up in Tess.”

“Poverty is reason enough?”

“No, but it is the last insult.”

“It will not be, I have plenty of prize money, I will see to you.”

“You will do what? Pay my way in some locked hospital?”

“No,” Bethany nearly shouted, “whatever you wish, a house, rooms, anything.”

“That is very kind but I was making a suggestion, truly. Put me away, or kill me. Might you kill me? I know you can, you said yourself you have killed, it was almost a boast.”

Bethany placed her hand, leather-gloved against the cold, on Clotilde’s shoulder and looked into her eyes. She could only do so for a moment as Clotilde flicked them downward, gazing at the lantern. “I could never,” Bethany whispered, “...it would be my suicide as well, I couldn’t live with such a thing.”

“It would be a mercy,” Clotilde retorted.

“You will feel different when you are warm and dry on land and this is all a memory.”

“Memory is just the trouble, but I should not have asked you that, I am sorry,” Clotilde replied. Her last few words were little more than a whimper and she began crying quietly. The wind rose, brushing them with freezing spray.

“Go back inside, please, I’ll be off watch in less than an hour,” Bethany urged.

Clotilde stood and allowed herself to be led back to the cabin.