Badrine laid a cigar on Granger’s table and cut off the tip of the narrow end with a penknife. Reaching for the lamp, he lifted the glass chimney off, raised the wick, and rolled the broader end about in the large flame, taking a few puffs. Farley stood across from him. Both men were turned out in the best uniforms they could piece together, had brushed them, and bathed themselves. Seeing Badrine moving about on deck so attired before the meeting Bethany had also made herself as officerly as she could. She had mended bits of the uniform Walkinshaw had made her and replaced what was gone entirely with the most upright, dour civilian clothes she had.

The steward clattered in with coffee. Farley waved him away before he could serve it, pouring it himself for the three. Badrine openly added rum to his, enough to brim the delicate cup, on account of his wounds. He looked well enough at a glance, but his sleeves and tunic were misshapen in many places by layers of bandage beneath. “Right,” he began, “my proposal is simple enough. We sail north at best speed, at least as far as Holman Quay, beyond it if the airship has attacked there already, heaven forbid. There is both a naval scribe and a public one there. We can alert the admiralty to the presence of the new enemy, then refit well enough for the voyage to the mainland.”

Bethany gave Badrine a barbed look, “to the mainland?”

“Yes, the Admiralty will almost certainly order us to steam there directly from wherever we report in. We are far from fighting fit.”

“Is that the extent of it then? A retreat?”

“It is, miss,” Badrine replied, ashing his cigar in a saucer.

“With all due respect, do not ennoble what the Chief Engineer proposes by calling it a retreat. On land it would be rightly dubbed a rout. A retreat I would support, but a retreat is a coordinated action, with a high chance of preserving the retreating force. A rout is a blind run in which one may well be cut down. That is what fleeing would mean for us. Steaming north, into the shipping lanes, where we must assume the airship hunts is offering ourselves up to it dressed, seasoned and ready for the pot.”

“So, instead you propose what? You cannot argue for simple inaction,” Bethany questioned.

“I could argue for inaction, but I do have a specific course in mind.” Farley brushed the detritus on the tabletop to one side and produced a roll of charts. He spread the first on the table. Among the charts were a few documents, water stained and written in Bexarian.

“After Mr. Granger’s grand death I took up the task of reviewing his papers. Not to pry, mind, but to ensure there were no secret orders or private signals that we needed to now be privy to. In the course of this work I came across this information, which Granger himself appeared to be studying with keen interest. The communique to the right was taken from the purser’s safe on Dux, the manifest on the left from Strator’s master by Mr. Luft and conferred to Mr. Granger for his review, may the both rest well. Now, I cannot claim to read Bexarian but there are certain words in common with our language, place names especially. You will note that the communique instructs Dux to sail south - the course is notated plainly in degrees - to meet with a certain freighter so her cargo of munitions might be transferred to be landed at Hegalia. The destination of the cargo is clear enough and the fact that it is munitions is made clear by the notation for shell weight, charge, and caliber, in the columns there. Further, fully half of Strator’s cargo, including all of the food, was bound for Hegalia as well. If we hold to our prewar understanding of Hegalia, a scanty island just above the pole, an abandoned Bexarian whaling outpost then these shipments are absurd. We must accept then that the Bexarians have placed a sizable garrison there. To what end, I ask you? There is nothing to defend. A placeholder force, to show the flag, I will accept but not that. Miss Esterhouse I submit to you the notion that it exists as a station of sorts for the airship, the shells being delivered are too large for field guns but are consistent in my estimation with what that contraption fired. It follows, logically, that they would conceal a weapon of such power until the last possible moment, and Hegalia is virtually the end of the world - the waters around it are half-charted at best. It also explains why it has only operated in these distant waters and not near the equator or the mainland, not even to defend Kjell.”

Badrine took a long draw on his cigar, “I do not have the knowledge to cast doubt on what you have deduced from the documents, and I would caution Miss Esterhouse that they are but one man’s deductions, Mr. Farley. Supposing you are correct, even then, as I said before, I cannot accept how you plan to act on this information.”

“What is your plan, Mr. Farley?” Bethany inquired.

“We steam to Hegalia and assault the garrison there, capture or destroy the provisions for the airship, and gather information - papers, the reports of prisoners, and so forth - about how the ship itself might be destroyed.”

“How do you propose to do that with only five marines?” Badrine demanded.

“I do not. There are 23 able-bodied sailors on this ship and I estimate 15 to 20 could be readily trained and join the attacking force. If we land under cover of darkness, with gunfire support from Fletch, I believe that should be enough to overwhelm the garrison.”

“You believe,” Badrine repeated snidely, “that is all you can do. You have shown nothing that indicates the size of the garrison, how many men you would have to fight off. There might be very few under arms if it is merely a depot for the airship, or, if they are in a state of paranoia about it and have forces to spare you could face 200. It is a terrible gamble.”

“As is your option, Mr. Badrine. You are gambling that we can pass through, first, 500 versts of open sea where the airship is known to hunt to reach Holman Quay and then many thousands to reach the mainland. If the airship happens upon us it will kill us outright, and what if there are more, many more, lying in wait in Bexar, they could be staging for an invasion even now. If we tell the Admiralty merely that they exist what have we done but inform of the method of their inevitable slaughter. To truly honor or oaths as officers we must come to them with some knowledge of how to fight against the new threat. It is one thing to ring the fire bell, quite another to carry water.”

Bethany piped up, “Mr. Farley you say that Hegalia is a depot for the airship, what if it is there when we attack, or on its way there and encounters us?”

“I cannot guarantee that it will be absent when we arrive, but I can ensure it will be absent when we launch our attack. It is very large, with a spyglass I am confident it can be detected from ten versts distant on a clear day. When we first approach Hegalia we will sight on the depot and confirm the ship is away. If it is present we will leave at once, of course. As for the risk of it finding us during our voyage to Hegalia, well, that is difficult to mitigate, I can only say that is more likely to spend its time near the shipping lanes, to the north, and not ‘in port’ so to speak. There is a risk nevertheless, I am gambling too, my hope is that it is with better odds than what Mr. Badrine submits.”

Badrine was about to speak again when Bethany put on her hat and turned for the door, “I am going to take some time to consider this, but not long, I know we are practically adrift.”

Clotilde looked back at her from the paper with cool, withdrawn eyes. It was the same expression she had worn in the now ruined painting. Bethany was not attempting to remake that but did wish to have some record of her face while she could still sharply recall it. She realized after some time that she was drawing her as much from life as from the icy vision of her that had visited night after night. It took some care to render her looking alive and healthy enough. What she had seen at night, in the light of that non-existent lamp, was not ugly but she would never dare commit it to paper. She wondered how much of her face, her body, survived now. She was surely dead, but in the cold water, decomposition would be stalled. Did she float, frozen, to one day startle some poor whaler or did she keep company with Granger and Threlfall at the bottom of the sea - that is if she was intact at all. Bethany’s mind’s eye insisted that she was but there was no guarantee that she had been clear of Tess’ final explosion. She might be dust, or, far worse, several pieces of battered flesh and bone. That sent Bethany to her rum and she put the paper and pencil aside. Clotilde’s friends and relations entered her thoughts. Few of the latter survived but there must be a few, an aunt here, a cousin there, and so forth. She knew how it would play out, first they would cease to hear from Mr. Luft, then they would read that Tess was overdue. The Navy would mount no search, ‘exigencies of war’, and eventually, perhaps before the war was over, perhaps soon after, they would read the line “Tess of Northwark, a merchant raider, lost with all hands” in the maritime dispatches. A few days later the dispatches would be used for kindling or to wrap fish. That would be the end, nothing except memory would stand for the ship, for Clotilde and her family. Memory and a few of Bethany’s poor sketches unless the Bexarians sent them to the bottom as well. Even less could be said for Threlfall, he was truly gone. His little family had died before him and, though a few men from the Academy might remember him, they would forget in time, if they had not already done so.

Stolen story; please report.

Bethany left her cabin. It was a little past dusk and snowing lightly, muffling the movement on deck and the creak of the rigging. She moved to the engine room skylight. A pale glow rose from it, split by the cracked and missing panes - casualties of the airship’s shelling. She saw Badrine seated before the table where he sometimes played cards, just in front of the vast engine.

“May I speak with you?” she called down.

“Of course,” Badrine answered, rising.

“Stay there, I will come to you.”

As Bethany descended stairs became narrow ladders, increasingly cold and choked with coal dust. Her feet touched water when she reached the stokehold, it ran nearly to her ankles. Badrine’s lamp was a miniature lighthouse, its rays glistening on the black, stagnant floodwater and leading her to him. When Badrine caught site of her he stood crisply, “Miss Esterhouse, you did not have to come down here, but welcome.”

“It was time I saw this place properly, rather than looking down into it as if it were a bear pit.”

“It’s far from its first condition,” Badrine observed.

Bethany looked about. The room was a shambles, coal floated in the floodwater, spilled from an overturned trimmer’s wheelbarrow, and the engine itself was so cold that ice clung to its frame and rods.

“Why do you stay down here? You’ll die of cold.”

Badrine shrugged, “it’s my post. I cannot stand watch in my cabin.”

“How long would it take to light the boilers again?”

“Minutes to light them miss, 12 hours or so for decent working pressure.”

“See it done, please. We are steaming for Hegalia.”

“Right away,” Badrine replied.

“You will do it then, in spite of your objections?” Bethany questioned.

“Of course, I’ve been overruled,” Badrine assented.

“That’s very good of you.”

“It’s simply duty, miss. Mr. Farley does not outrank me, you do.”

Badrine lifted his lamp and meandered toward the port-most boiler. Opening the firebox door he peered into the blackness with a scrutinizing look. He removed his overcoat saying, “please would you put this on my chair.”

As Bethany did so the engineer righted the wheelbarrow and trundled it through the water to the bunker, opening one of the several small hatches on its face to release a load of coal. He returned to the port boiler and cast about in the floodwater for a shovel. Finding one he lifted it and set it atop the wheelbarrow, extracted a pair of thick leather gloves from his trouser pockets and donned them. He began to shovel coal into the boiler’s cold furnace with a fastidious air. The motion, spreading the coal evenly about the grate, reminded Bethany of watching her family’s fields being sewn. The activity sent a great of coal dust into the air and Bethany coughed.

“Hadn’t you better return to your cabin?” Badrine suggested without looking up from his work.

“It’s alright, this is rather interesting.”

“It’s about to be more so,” Badrine replied. He put the shovel aside and stepped to a locker, extracting a can of paraffin and greasy rags. He took a shovel full of coal from the wheelbarrow, arranged the rags atop, finishing it off with a large helping of paraffin. Resting the shovel head on the edge of the furnace door he struck a match and lit the concoction. It ignited with a whoosh, the fire spreading quickly from the rags and paraffin to the coal beneath. He allowed the fire to rise on the shovel head for a moment, then, with a heave, cast the flaming pile deep into the firebox. The blaze spread across the even bed of coal and warmly lit the stokehold.

“Wonderful, perhaps the chill will finally be driven out,” Bethany observed.

“For certain the men sleeping above will be glad to have it,” Badrine concurred.

“Will you be lighting the other boilers next?”

“Not yet, this will be enough to run the pumps, I’d like to dispel the rest of this water before I rouse the stokers, too much working in it and the toes are liable to freeze right off.”

Badrine moved while he spoke, returning to the locker. He took down a short, thick iron rod and wrapped one end in rags covered in pitch.

“Is that a torch? Whatever is that for?”

“All the machinery down here is too frozen to even take a proper oiling. I’ve got to free up the pumps if I’m to use them,” Badrine answered, lighting his makeshift torch. By its glow Bethany saw more of the room than she ever had before. It was all pipes and shafts and vents and filth save for a little pedestal in front of the engine. Mounted to a clean steel plate were a few gauges framed in shining brass, their faces clean and legible, beneath them, just above where the waist of a man on the pedestal would fall, was a brass wheel.

“Is that another helm?” Bethany wondered - it would be a strange place for one, given it was impossible to see where the ship was going.

“No, no,” Badrine tamped down a chortle, “it’s the throttle, it controls a valve that lets steam into the engine.”

He knelt, holding the flame to the moving parts of some little device - Bethany suspected it was one of the pumps. As he rose he dropped the torch, swearing as it snuffed itself in the water. He fished it out, his hands trembling from the cold.

“Might I help?” Bethany asked.

Badrine looked fixedly at her, “are you certain you want to or are you simply being polite? I don’t mean to say you are insincere, but this is ugly work.”

“I have, quite sincerely, nothing better to do.”

Badrine shuffled to the locker and made up two more torches, lighting both, he handed one to Bethany. “Follow me,” he instructed.

Methodically they warmed the pumps, which Badrine then oiled. They were started as the watchstander rang midnight. The water level in the stokehold slowly fell as Badrine scaled a ladder to the heat and oil the smaller parts of the engine itself. He refused to allow Bethany to try this, but did show her how to tend to the bearings on the crankshaft which were near the deck.

Dawn broke. Standing beneath the skylight, Bethany found that she looked almost as filthy as a stoker after a long watch. Her red hair was now nearly black, her hands and arms stained with grease and dust. Another boiler had been lit and the room was now pleasantly warm and humid. Badrine stood before the gauges, watching one intensely.

“We’ve enough pressure to turn the engine a few times, get the oil flowing about,” he said, almost to himself. He started when Bethany replied, “very good.”

“You really ought to wash up and get some sleep,” Badrine admonished, “but actually, there is one thing you need to do for me.”

“What is it?”

“Give the order - you are our captain, after all.”

“Which is?”

“Well if you’d like to be exactly correct, you should say, ‘Mr. Badrine, dead slow ahead.’”

“Mr. Badrine de...” Bethany began.

“Wait,” Badrine interjected and approached the speaking tube that led to the bridge, “helm, we are testing the main engine but expect no change in course or speed.”

“Aye, go ahead.”

“Alright,” Badrine nodded.

Blushing - the little ritual suddenly felt absurd - Bethany said the words.

“Dead slow ahead, aye,” Badrine chirped and spun the throttle open gently. The hiss of steam began near the boilers and barreled down the pipes toward the top of the vast engine. It entered and the machine creaked, its pistons moving almost imperceptibly downward then stopping. Badrine frowned and gave a touch more throttle. With a ringing thud the first high pressure piston made a full stroke and the others followed at once. Badrine adjusted the throttle finely, giving just enough steam to keep the machine turning. Its movement was slow enough that, rather than the constant hum Bethany was used to hearing on deck and in her cabin, the fall and breath of every piston could be heard.

“It really is very clever,” Bethany mused.

“It can’t think at all,” Badrine said flatly, studying some gauge.

“Not the machine itself, the idea. I mean to say, how long did men watch kettles whistle before thinking, ‘why, there’s some power there?’ Surely we’ve known how to boil water long enough, but only in the last century was it put to use, for anything but tea, of course.”

“They’ve found little round boilers that vented steam at each end and spun on an axle, from at least 2000 years ago, so it’s said, I’ve not seen them. At any rate, they were merely toys, novelties. Think where we would be now if it had been taken further then.”

“Why was it not? Were they so lacking in vision?”

“Well, setting aside the concerns of metallurgy, tooling, and so forth, I suppose it was a matter of economy. Every engine is a labor saving device, the work this one does was done, ages ago, by rank on rank of rowers. Such men came much more cheaply then, taking slaves in warfare was commonplace, and, if foreigners were not to hand, the wizards could put whoever they liked in thrall.”

“That was cruel of them,” Bethany winced.

“It’s no reflection on your kind, then or now. Take Bexar, virtually devoid of wizards or witches and more unjust by half, then and now,” Badrine added, diffidently.

He made a circle of the engine then shut it down, “there’s nothing more for you to do, but thank you, you are fine company, but the stokers would be too confused to work if they saw you down here, I fear. Incidentally, if you could tell the officer of the watch to wake them at once on your way topside I would be very grateful.”

“Of course,” Bethany assented, and moved to the ladder.