Bethany knew they were safe even before opening her eyes, for she scented clean linens, fresh paint, and pitch. She could tell also that they were clear of the storm, Fletch ran very slowly but calmly. Her cabin had received considerable attention. The door was mended, the scant furniture dried out, polished, and neatly arranged. She, too, had been looked after. Her bloody, sodden dress was gone, replaced by clean nightclothes. She blushed at the thought of the steward - and it would certainly have been left to the steward - blushing himself as he stripped, washed, and dressed her. It was more than a nicety, and likely he had only done it because leaving her in icy, wet clothes would have meant leaving her to die. It was light out, beyond that she had no notion of the time. The fire in her stove was nearly dead, a long while must have passed since anyone had looked in on her. She sat up in the bunk, which sapped almost all of her strength. She remained there, upright and motionless, until the terrible chill compelled her to leave the bunk to tend the stove. Crossing the tiny room she noticed a tray with a teapot and cup on her desk. She found the tea cold - they had evidently expected her to wake sooner than she had. Surely, though, they had not set it out upon putting her in her bunk. Judging by her cabin alone the work to repair the ship must have been days, perhaps a week, in the doing. Feeding the stove she recalled flashes of consciousness, but could not be certain they had come after she had collapsed on the deck, or, somehow during it.
The sun glinted off something in the far corner and when the stove was stoked up again, Bethany turned to see what it was. She saw her washstand hosted a different basin and pitcher - hers must have been smashed in the combat - and, finally, a mirror. The first had been lost at Kjell. This one was not new, indeed a bottom corner was badly cracked. After a moment, she recognized that it had been appropriated from Threlfall’s cabin. Somehow, that was terrible. She stumbled back to her bunk, stricken. The reality of his death did not need to be emphasized to her, she had touched the wound, deep as the width of his razor, across his throat, yet the mirror was a new horror. His possessions were being distributed, if they had given her the mirror, some sailor had claimed his sword, his coat. Whatever respect had been afforded his cabin, his things, had died away, and who remembered him well - only her, perhaps Badrine, if only because he seemed to have an excess of sympathy. To the other men he was a strange, temporary visitor, who may or may not have been good in life, and died badly. His prize money was likely being bet even now on clandestine games of cards and dice.
She reproached herself for the relief she had felt upon waking alive and unhurt. Clotilde, too, came back to her. Her end was worse than Threlfall’s, for she had no choice, she had not dragged a razor across her throat, she had not even volunteered to sail aboard a raider. She had been born to Florian Luft and that, only that, had condemned her. Bethany regretted waking, and lay down, rolling onto her stomach to block the sunlight. Doing so she saw that the pillow was bloody. In fact there was a sort of imprint of her face, a mask of blood, marked on it. Rising, she looked in the mirror to find that there were traces of blood around her nostrils and lips. It wiped away easily enough, but in the water of the basin it separated, particles of moldavite falling like sand to the bottom. She saw them in her eyes as well, though not as concentrated nor alight as they had been in Threlfall’s cabin. A few seemed to swim about, moving or disappearing when she blinked. She had rolled her sleeves to avoid wetting them in the basin and now, where her skin was particularly pale near her wrists she regarded very faint trails of moldavite, marching like ants through her veins. Threlfall would have explained to her that it had always been there, and that was true enough, but it seemed terribly excited now. Would she be this way forever now, having summoned so much to patch the ship, she did not need that, did not need to be somehow branded.
She drew the little curtain across the cabin window. By the light of the stove she regarded her painting of Clotilde, it was ruined by seawater, only a few of her features remained recognizable. Nathaniel’s too was wrecked, as was Boyle’s, but at least the latter could be repainted from life. Bethany pushed all three beneath her bunk and reached for the case of papaver. It was sodden but its contents, two lonely syrettes, were intact. She injected both, the horror at running out quickly subsumed by papaver’s embrace.
Bethany shut her eyes but could sleep only in fits. When she woke it was always from a dream, which she did not entirely leave. She would rise from her bunk and do something - tend the fire, drink the cold tea - only to find, on waking again, that she had done nothing, had not moved. She was not alone, the steward appeared, looking in but never going beyond the threshold of the cabin. Threlfall and Clotilde were more intimate. They sat on the edge of her bunk, or in her desk chair, or hung in the air. They never spoke and Threlfall never showed his face, nor, mercifully, his slashed throat. Clotilde, however, came very close, looking right into Bethany’s eyes even when they were closed. Her lips were blue, her skin deathly pale, and her eyelashes tipped with frost. Sometimes she held a lamp which shone only on her, cutting her shivering, drooping body into the blackness of the cabin.
Days passed, the steward thought she had fever, but Bethany knew better. Her dose of papaver had declined as the voyage progressed, rum taking its place at times, but it had never entirely gone away. Even on a very fine days she needed half a syrette to sleep. She had not counted on running out but she had, and it was not leaving her quietly. She had endured this before, when she was too short of money in the city, and had watched Marah go off papaver of her own accord. She managed it, though it nearly killed her, and struck with a particularly severe fit of melancholy had returned to it a month later. Bethany had the advantage this time of a declining dose, she was not dropping, as she had before, from her greatest need, when she floated about the garret and the street entirely consumed by it. A year or more of her life had passed that way, she recalled almost none of it. She had nearly starved to death, too poor and preoccupied to find food. That scare had precipitated Marah’s attempt to quit, she had hoped Bethany would follow, and she had in part, never giving it up but declining her usage such that her mind was usually clear. She had lived at that tenable level ever since. Now she may well die.
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She knew that it could not kill her alone, that she had dropped her dosage enough beforehand, but coupled with whatever else was wrong with her, whatever the moldavite, growing dimmer each day but still alight, was doing, she felt as if it would. She coughed blood rarely but that was too often. The steward began to bring her meals and, on her insistence, a little rum. Both helped.
Fletch’s bell rang. Bethany stirred, hiding her head; the sound woke her often enough, as the watchstander rang the time each hour. This ringing was different, though, it went on too long for a watch bell and was more musical. When it stopped she heard the stamping of a great many sailor’s boots across the deck. Something out of the ordinary was happening, but they had not beaten to quarters, so whatever it was it was no great threat. After an interval the bell tolled once, and Farley’s voice, muffled by the wind and cabin wall faintly announced: “Gereon Colin, able seaman.” A splash followed instantly. They were burying the dead. Bethany wondered why they had waited so long but perhaps they had not, she could not say how much time had passed since they fought the airship. More names were read and more bodies put over. Bethany loathed it. On land, burials at sea were reserved for paupers, and no amount of ritual would make right dumping a body from a ship in the same manner they disposed of their garbage. She closed her eyes, hoping the ringing and the names would end soon. They did not. Each one was more insistent. She began to feel indecent.
She rose and pulled on her boat cloak. Going on deck she found that Fletch was at a dead stop, her funnel emitted no smoke and what few intact sails she had were reefed. The sky was clear and almost the same color as the sea, both were devoid of ships. The sailors were gathered on the forecastle, with Badrine and Farley on the bridge. Formed into neat ranks, they looked at their officers, frozen and silent. This broke when the caught sight of Bethany. They gazed at her with a sort of confused awe. It struck Bethany that they had not seen her since she had patched up the ship. A murmur rippled through them that was quickly hushed, but their motion could not be stopped. An older sailor rendered a salute and knelt to the deck. The others looked about, consulting each other, until as a mass they saluted her as well. Bethany fumblingly returned it and moved to the back of the ranks so they might not see her anymore. The sailors parted gently to allow her past. She stood beyond the last of them, near the foremast. Farley had halted the reading of names during the commotion. He looked down at the sailors, to his list, and to his copy of The Holy Writs - which lay on a barrel-turned-pulpit.
“Miss Esterhouse,” he began at last, “as has just been made clear we are grateful for what you have done. I hope you will all understand that this service is not the place, however, to go further in that line. We are thanking the honored dead now.”
The sailors recognized the censure aimed at them and looked from Farley, with disapproval, to Bethany, with reassurance. Farley appeared to be waiting for her to speak, but she could not. She nodded gently to the Marine Captain, and he returned to the names. After several Bethany did not recognize, he tolled the bell strongly several times. The Marines, standing at the head of the formation, marched off and returned from below decks with a coffin of flimsy construction. It was, nevertheless, an improvement over the hammocks every man so far had been interred in. The coffin was rested on a pair of sawhorses by the gunnel and the marines returned to their position.
“Fenimore Granger, Sailing Master, S/Y Fletch. Formerly Captain of the Assembly Cruiser Morningstar and the frigate Deluge. Fifty years in the service.”
Farley turned to face the coffin and rendered a salute with Badrine. The sailors followed.
“There is nothing that can be said for this man that does him greater credit than to recall his final deeds,” Badrine took over, unfolding a scrap of paper. “Nearly crippled by a wound inflicted some months ago and at an age at which most men do nothing more vigorous than walk from their chair beside the hearth to their garden, Mr. Granger, seeing the helmsman killed and his ship in danger of going out of control, scaled the ladder to the bridge despite his injury and took the helm himself. Upon being fatally wounded he retained control of the ship, his last act being to set her on a course to relative safety. When we reach friendly land and this tale is relayed to the Admiralty, more eloquent men than me will eulogize him, will rightly make myths. Medals will be struck, statues cast. His actions of a few moments will outlive us all. We were privileged to know him, never in our lives will we come closer to greatness.”
Farley tolled the bell. Two marines and two sailors hoisted the coffin and sent it over the gunnel. Heavily weighted, it vanished at once. The remaining marines fired a salute. A sailor began to sing a very old hymn, which the rest knew and took up. Badrine and Farley joined in as well. Bethany was silent until the chorus came around once more, then, haltingly, feeling she had a grasp on the words, she began to sing. Her voice was the highest - all of the ship’s boys were now dead - and soon the clearest. Nevertheless, she could barely hear herself over the reverent, booming formation of men. They could hear her, though, she caught several warm glances.
When the hymn drew to a close, Farley clapped The Holy Writs shut, “Thank you, gentlemen. May heaven welcome the souls we have just committed to the sea, and preserve us who are yet living. Resume your duties.”