It began to snow around midnight. By dawn it had turned to freezing rain, sagging the rigging and making the deck impassible. When the watch changed, sailors lumbered about outside spreading buckets of sand, for traction, while others tried to break up the sheet of ice with axes and boat hooks. Their pounding roused Bethany. For the first time in several weeks she was in her bunk, still partly dressed from the dinner, laying atop a blanket. Clotilde was in the desk chair, entirely awake.

“Did you sleep at all?” Bethany asked, drowsily.

“A little.”

“Truly?” Bethany prodded. The lamp on the desk was empty and its chimney very black, it had burned all night.

“No,” Clotilde revised.

“How do you feel?”

“Well, and I do mean that. I am sorry for last night, very sorry, I’m such a terrible coward.”

Bethany sat up, “don’t apologize, you weren’t in your right mind.”

Clotilde shook her head, “I was. That’s the trouble, I should have known better, I felt I had to tell you that but I ought to have waited until we left Howl. I embarrassed you in front of your officers.”

“They’ve seen worse from me, I promise.”

“Perhaps, but you have not seen worse from me. I frightened you, I know I did.”

“I’m not worried about the airship, at least no more than prudence would demand.”

“Not that, I’ve threatened you with the loss of me how many times now? You care for me, I know, and I should not burden you with that.”

Bethany left her bunk and took Clotilde’s hand, “I cannot believe you said that with any malice, I am glad you could tell me. But, Clotilde, you do worry me. Moreover it’s terribly unfair, we should be reversed, you don’t deserve any of what you feel.”

“Don’t worry.”

“How can I help but worry?”

“I’m not going to kill myself, it was only a trick I played, I know that now, I spent the whole night on it.”

Bethany regarded Clotilde. She seemed altogether threadbare: her eyes were too wide for how tired she had to be, her movements and breathing shot through with little tics and moments of wrapt inattention.

“I hope that’s true, but don’t lie to me for my sake.”

“It is true! Yes, you see when I was in that stinking magazine, before my father died, I told myself we would all escape. That was how I managed, that was how I was able to keep his spirits up, you know I didn’t shed a tear in his sight, I could not, his wife and daughter were gone but what had I lost yet? I had no right. After though, after he was dead and after I watched his men, those poor sailors, take all day to perish, and when I was in those muddy barracks being spat on, well, escape… escape to where? Not… and never, from those scenes.” Clotilde paused, she had been speaking very quickly and took a despairing breath: “I assured myself that as soon as I could I would die by my own hand, it is a very warm feeling, truly, like the veil of sleep. That was my blanket, my comfort, my confessor, I was enamored of it like a first love. Now with time and company, I might put it aside. If we are meant to die, as we may be, I shall wait my turn, if only because it would trouble you all so. Fletch is not in want of any more funerals nor the grave of any more Lufts.”

Clotilde finished, slumping a little in her chair. She wrapped her arms around herself, gathering her clothes against the cold as if only now able to perceive it.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Thank you - you are very brave. It will all be easy from here on, I promise you.”

“You can’t promise me that, don’t say such mothering things, but...” Clotilde stopped abruptly and tended the stove before facing Bethany again, adding very quietly “you shouldn’t have to care for me like this, we are friends of three months at most, you don’t owe me anything.”

“I don’t have to, I choose to. Besides I am not merely…”

Howl’s guttural steam whistle interrupted her. Fletch shuddered, her screw stopping. Bethany shot up and peered out the window but saw only sheeting rain. Her coat still hung around Clotilde’s shoulders. Bethany reached for it “may I have this back?”

Clotilde let her take it and Bethany went on deck, “watchstander, why have we stopped?”

Farley leaned over the bridge rail, coffee cup in hand, “we’re only a few versts from Hegalia now. We cannot steam any further lest we meet the airship in this weather.”

“Perhaps the storm will wreck the damned thing.”

“If only.”

“Is it your watch?”

“Yes,” Farley nodded.

“No,” Bethany considered, “yours is always later. Oh, it’s mine, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but you’ve your friend to take care of. It’s no trouble, miss.”

“It is trouble for you, standing in this when you should not be. Go on, I will take it.”

Farley began to mount the bridge ladder but paused, “are you sure you can leave Miss Luft?”

“Yes, she’s improved”

Farley descended the ladder as he passed Bethany she added “but send for fresh coffee and my gloves, else I’ll die up there.”

A sailor soon brought both. Standing on the slick, freezing bridge Bethany sighted through the watchstander’s spyglass at the other officers doing just what she was on or about the bridges of the other ships. The others were indoors, the benefit of not going to war in a converted yacht. They were all young men, fresh lieutenants, the older officers not deigning to rise so early and miss breakfast. Steam and breath fogged the windows and every so often they would wipe the one just before them clear, take a sighting with their glass, and then return to depleting the ships’ stores of coffee and tea.

What they were doing now had everything in common with working as provincial stationmaster or a clerk at a small shop. It was remarkably dull. Yet, as soon as tomorrow, if Clotilde was right, they may all be dead. At the least they would be fighting for their lives, some dieing and the rest witnessing death. The enormous guns that were mere saluting instruments until now would speak in anger. Bethany looked at Sophie, her ensign bearing a ribbon that announced ‘Kjell.’ As far as Bethany could tell she was the only other blooded ship of the pack, at least in this war. Bethany did not envy them, surely, if they were even a little like her, they watched Beatrix explode each time they shut their eyes. There was no physical difference between the sister ships other than the nameplate, Sophie was a living ghost.

The steward had killed and cooked his chicken. Its bones lay on the table in Granger’s cabin, surrounded by dirty plates and silverware. Farley and Badrine had excused themselves, leaving Bethany alone. Coffee was the only leftover from the meal and she drank it and rum, sometimes separately, more often mixed in the same thin, gilt rimmed cup. She meant to spend her nights here from now on and had moved the remains of her belongings in. Sharing her cabin with Clotilde was little good for either of them, as the poor girl’s sleep was desperately fitful and shallow. The storm had cleared, leaving behind a freezing mist that slithered under the door and was barely kept at bay by the stove. They were still stopped, before sunset Hegalia had been clearly visible, though there was yet no sign of the airship.

Bethany regarded Granger’s bunk. Someone had made it after his death but none had dared sleep in it. It was a little larger than hers and topped with a quilt that was certainly handmade, the work of his wife or daughter, likely. She stoked the stove, hoping Clotilde was remembering to do the same in her newly private room. Simple as it was, it seemed almost too much of a charge for her. Granger’s shelves were a shambles, the consequence of Farley’s search for intelligence. Only the book of private signals and the ship’s log were in their proper places. She took down the latter, she was, strictly speaking, responsible for it and had been all along. In practice, Granger had kept it until his death, after which Farley had assumed the duty. The point of transition was extremely evident, Granger’s flowing hand, sometimes using characters proscribed in the last reform, gave way to entries stilted and messy in style and far more direct in wording. Farley himself noted his Sailing Master’s death in a single line, “Granger, S/M, killed in combat with the enemy.”

Several pages prior was another death, described by Granger as “Scribe and Seer, Mr. Threllfall, late of Laurel, found dead by his own hand. Quite a loss, likely stolen from us by the madness attendant to his set.”

The rest, save for reports of battle with Bexarians, was dry, speaking of so many casks of freshwater and how many versts in a day. Bethany put the log aside and filled her cup with rum only. Clotilde may be right and if she was, this was her last night alive, or nearly so. Heaven help them if she was somehow a seer. Bethany had considered asking her, straight out, if her sense of coming doom was more than simple fear. It was better not to know, though. Even if she was, Locke would never believe her; Granger had not even entertained the concerns of an Academy Seer. They were helpless now. Fletch against the airship, her officers against the fleet, and Clotilde against them all. Bethany would be lower than her but for a slip of paper, stuck to the inner cover of the logbook attesting to “Mr. William Whitney Esterhouse’s Lawful Title to S/Y Fletch and his appointment, under his rights in the Maritime Auxiliary Act, of Miss Bethany Esterhouse to the position of ship’s captain. Revokable at his pleasure or, with cause, by the Admiralty.”

A sharp knock shook the cabin door and it was opened at once.

“Put out that light, straightaway,” Farley ordered in a desperate whisper. Bethany snuffed her lamp and followed the officer. He shouted to the watchstander to put out the binnacle lamp and ran aft, dispatching the stern lantern himself. Fletch was now entirely dark. All across the fleet, rippling from ship to ship, lamps were put out until there was only moonlight left. That too vanished.

Above the mist the airship slipped toward Hegalia, its vast envelope creating a starless hole in the sky. A thin wake of steam trailed behind it and a few lights burned in the bridge at its chin.

Farley extended his spyglass, gazing up at the vessel.

“It’s over, it has come too soon,” Bethany muttered, standing beside him.

“No, it cannot meet with the tower at night, Badrine confirms that, it will wait until daybreak.”

“Provided it does not see us,” Bethany added.

“If it saw us we would be done for already.”