The Man Who Was a Woman, and Had a Number for a Name

Part 1

~ Thanks to Kevin E. for the Arabic; it's perfect. ~

His voice was ever slow and patient, as though he had all the time in the world--and to talk to someone so insignificant that she was nameless. That he took seriously a hesitant and shy request from the lowest of the low was another odd thing about him, but she was so grateful that she hardly cared. She listened carefully as he spoke.

"I have observed you for some time, little one, and I begin to see something about your approach to the art of war in miniature. See, here, how you begin by advancing the outermost pawns just two spaces, to give your knight and your rook room to maneuver. And then, as the rest of your pawns move slowly toward the battle-line to utter destruction, you bring out all of your more powerful pieces, save the King himself. And so the attack comes in this manner: the back row, the King alone immobile, and then the two outermost pawns, which makes nine in all. I find the framing of the battle curious and inventive: you play with attention to nine pieces, and close attention only to seven of them. You asked me for a different name. I think that this would be an excellent one."

* * *

Mlle. Gingembre Tavernier, otherwise known as "Brandy", the keeper of the excellent tavern "Bonny Anne" in the port town of Haven, was doing her best to run herself out of business. First she had dismissed the patrons two hours early on Saturday, her big night; next, she had methodically cleaned up the place, sweeping and scrubbing and drawing water to wash the barware, and, when that was done, had taken to gripping pieces of crockery and eyeing possible trajectories for flight. She looked forward to the satisfying smash of glass and ceramic against the back walls of the tavern. At this moment, she was indifferent to the possibility of damage to the clean white walls; in fact, she rather relished making a huge mess, at which point she was determined to walk away from the shattered tavern and throw herself, laughing, into the majestic and uncaring sea.

She hefted a tankard experimentally, gauging the distance to the far wall. Perhaps they'd wonder later. Perhaps they'd gather at the tavern after she was gone, talking to Mistinguette in low voices about how shocking it was, such a lovely young girl, everything to live for--

Hah! The tankard was launched before she quite realized it, and the crash as it disintegrated into fragments was balm to her sore soul.

She picked up whatever was nearest to hand, this time a painted plate she'd never really liked, and nearly tore her shoulder out of the socket sending it at the plaster. It hit the wall flat and separated into jagged chunks before spinning to the floor.

At this rate, she'd have the floor covered in four inches of glass in no time. Excellent.

She had followed the tankard and the plate with three small glasses, a pair of beer bottles, and a damaged platter when she heard rapid footsteps approaching her. Heedless, she lifted the heavy serving-dish in two hands, raising it above her head.

"What the devil do you think you're doing, girl?" a voice hissed, and two much more powerful hands wrenched the serving-dish from her grip. She spun, face alive with fury, to give Mistinguette the rough edge of her tongue.

Instead, the co-owner of the "Bonny Anne" set the serving-dish on the bar gingerly, then handed her a cheap ceramic mug. "Here," Mistinguette said in a brisk voice. "I hate these things."

Brandy felt the weight in her hands as she stared at Mistinguette, stupefied. Mistinguette put her fists to her hips and made an imperious gesture with her head. "Go on, less for me to wash."

Helpless, Brandy began to laugh, passing the mug from hand to hand and looking at Mistinguette.

"Well," Mistinguette said, seizing the mug from her and taking up aim at the wall, "if you're not going to help--"

"Mistinguette," Brandy said, stopping her with a hand on her throwing arm.

"Oh, all right, then," Mistinguette muttered grudgingly, as if she'd really wanted to throw the mug. She set it onto the bar next to the serving-dish and went behind the counter to unlock the cabinet they kept the hard liquor in. She took out a substantial, elaborate glass bottle, and Brandy's eyebrows went up in astonishment.

"What's this?"

"As long as you're doing your damnedest to reduce our inventory," Mistinguette shrugged.

"Not Mother's private stock...!"

Mistinguette pulled out two thick little glasses. "I see no reason why not. Without mugs we can't sell beer." She unstoppered the bottle and poured two fingers carefully into each glass. "Without beer we'll have to close the tavern. And I'd like to toast her successful run." Her hands swooped up the two glasses with the efficiency of an expert, and Brandy found herself with a glass of the fragrant liquor before she was quite aware of what was happening.

"I had thought, though," Mistinguette said reflectively, staring into the deep rose-gold of the brandy, "that this day wouldn't come until both of us had married well."

Brandy set the glass on the counter, wiped her hands on her apron, and reached for the broom, not looking at Mistinguette. She walked to the back of the room and began to sweep up the shards of glass and ceramic. Mistinguette placed her own glass gently onto the bar without tasting the liquor and picked up the sweepings-pan. She crossed the common room and knelt beside Brandy, who swept the mess into the pan and leaned over to take it from her.

"You're right," Brandy said in a low voice.

"Come, that's nothing new," Mistinguette said, her voice warm and her eyes full of friendly sympathy. "If you use that as an excuse not to talk, we'll not get another word out of you till Doomsday. And you'd explode."

Brandy laughed again, and the hand that held the pan shook slightly. Mistinguette got to her feet and took it from her. She set the pan down gently on the table, then pulled out a chair and set her into it. Brandy folded her hands on the top of the table and stared at the glitter of the shards in the sweepings-pan. "She's gone," she said absently, to no one in particular.

"Who?" Mistinguette asked. "Emilie?"

"No," Brandy replied in a low voice.

Mistinguette's hands descended gently onto Brandy's shoulders, and the comfort flooding through her from the touch threatened to spill from her eyes.

"You know," Mistinguette said casually, "I don't like that woman."

Shocked, Brandy turned, setting her arm over the back of the chair and staring at her dark-skinned friend. "Mistinguette!"

"Well?" Mistinguette said reasonably. "She sails into town on her pretty yacht, turns our lives upside down, provokes a murder, brings the Watch down on us, seduces our innocent Mingeaux into all manner of deviltry, makes you into a ladies' maid, spits in Aristide's eye, steals your heart, and then sails out of town without the decency to bid you farewell."

Brandy started to protest, but Mistinguette held up a warning finger, and Brandy shut her mouth.

"It's a good thing she's such a beautiful woman that she doesn't need a speck of charm," Mistinguette remarked. "Not that she'd have the first idea how to develop such a thing."

Brandy tried to take a breath to jump into the conversation, but Mistinguette was remorseless. "And now she's induced you to smash the tavern to bits. See, your heart is one thing, but now she's hit me in the pocket-book."

Brandy shook her head, laughing, then buried it in her arms. For a moment, she wondered if she were going to begin to weep. Then she wondered if, once she began, it would be possible to stop. It was safer not to start.

"And I see," Mistinguette remarked dryly, "that realizing the strength of my argument has convinced you to take off that pretty necklace she left you."

Brandy twined a hand into the heavy silver chain with the locket, and her heart twisted.

"Brandy," Mistinguette said.

"Go to the devil," was the encouraging reply.

"Brandy," Mistinguette said.

"Would it help if I quit hinting?" the girl mumbled into her elbow.

A hand came down tenderly on her hair, sweeping it away from her face, which was pressed into her arm. "Oh, my darling," Mistinguette said softly, "if every girl who lost her heart to a lover threw herself in the sea, the race would come to an end within a generation."

"And good riddance," Brandy grumbled, her heart heavy in misery.

There was a momentary silence, and Mistinguette continued to stroke her hair. Brandy shivered slightly with the pleasure of it, but didn't raise her head.

"You know what you haven't done in a while?" Mistinguette murmured.

Brandy shook her head.

"Write," Mistinguette replied, her voice a purr.

Brandy picked up her head.

* * *

From the Captain's Personal Log

April 22, 1810 - Discovery

We are to sail to-morrow, finally. After the excitement of the past few days, it will be a distinct relief to be between the serene blue sky and the quietly restless sea. It is almost as though our sleepy, comfortable Haven, the place to which we return for rest and refreshment of the spirit, has turned to reveal a startling new face to us, and not at all a nice one. And here I had thought it so aptly named! All is what the Germans describe as durcheinander, a condition so alien and unsettling that I fancy it would not be out of place to find ourselves sailing Discovery through the emptiness of the sky rather than her accustomed home, the sea.

That this ruckus coincides with the arrival of the singular Captain Carlisle in Haven cannot be accidental. She appears to trail disaster in her wake: a murder, an investigation in which suspicion centres on her, a summons from the magistrate, M. Dennikott (if that is how he spells his name--I must work on my French, for Emilie's sake), and our much-loved, much-abused Brandy quite lovesick and bereft. For some reason, Carlisle spent an evening supping with Genevieve Saint Clare and Aristeed (I must remember to ask Emilie for the spelling-rules again), and then went immediately to port and sailed, none knows whither. The night watch were most stupefied to stand on the deck of Discovery in the middle of the night, watching Intrepide in the next berth readying frantically for departure; by the time our party arrived with Emilie, she was gone.

Our poor dear Emilie was by turns soul-glazed in shock and sobbing with grief that night, and so we had quite a time trying to console her inconsolable sorrow. Eventually, her overstressed nerves quieted to the point that she was able to snatch a bit of sleep, and when I raised my head, it had quite gone to morning.

The sadness of that next day is hard to relate; we buried Etienne, that capable, infuriating, and wholly lovable man, on the flower-bedecked and breeze-caressed hill next to the church that afternoon. To see Emilie, swaddled in a shawl despite the heat, stooping to whisper a last farewell and place a hybiscus-blossom on the fresh earth of his grave was a sweet soreness my heart shall carry for some time to come.

Brandy was at Etienne's funeral, to offer her sorrowing friend an arm, but she herself was reeling in distress, so pale and unseeing that I wondered if she'd be ill. The shocks of the last few days, most of which I hold squarely to the account of the infamous Captain Carlisle, have unhinged her, and I can only pray that the effect is temporary. I have faith that she will forget the captain in time--although she is far from forgettable, as I have found to be the case with the truly beautiful--and find someone who is more suitable as a loving and reliable companion. (At this point, there are few persons I should not prefer to the captain as Brandy's lover; she has that thoughtless, arrogant assumption of privilege that goes along with being of full purse and great comeliness. Perhaps it would do her good to lose half of that money or half of that beauty, but that harshness of opinion may be prompted by envy; God is well aware of the multitude of sins which can be charged upon my willful soul.)

Maximilian was there at the graveyard, and his father as well, and the old man vibrated with fury at the dashing of his dynastic hopes. Well, he wanted Emilie not as an engineer, but as the mother of his grandsons, and, as it happens, I have been the beneficiary of that genteel dog-wrangle. I cannot help but feel that Maximilian's father's misfortune is largely rendered irrelevant by the great chance that attends the partnership of Torres and Emilie. I await and expect great things from my twin-pillar engineers; who knows what we may not be able to accomplish with these two working together? Torres, although uncertain, is already far gentler with Emilie than I could have had any reason to--

Jameson raised her head, lifting the pen a fraction from the paper. She had been concentrating so hard on the lines in her journal-book that the steady glow of the candlelight swam before her eyes for a moment. She blinked and cocked an ear toward the corridor outside her tidy little cabin, and there it was again: the muffled sound of sobbing, a heartbroken but subtle grief.

Her heart shattered afresh, and she set the pen down carefully in the holder bolted to the desk and got to her feet. Poor Emilie; she would not show them her grief openly, as she had some idiotic notion that she should exhibit nothing but cheery gratitude for her post aboard Discovery. Could she think them such inhuman monsters as to ignore her loss? Well, we would see what comfort she might accept.

Before Jameson could open the door of her cabin, however, she heard footsteps in the corridor, and a subtle knock on Emilie's door. "Emilie," the nocturnal wanderer hissed, and Jameson recognized Torres's voice, which gave her a momentary start, before she began to be intrigued.

"Torres?" Emilie whispered back, sounding as shocked as Jameson felt.

"Open up, you've got a visitor," Torres said in a voice far below her usual bellow.

"I--I'm not--"

"Damnation, woman," Torres growled, "d'you think I care what you look like in your night-gown? This is important!"

Jameson hid a smile with her hand and told herself that it was difficult not to eavesdrop on a tiny ship like Discovery. Besides, surely God had a number of other sins to punish her for first.

After a moment, the door opened, then closed. "Shove over," Torres whispered. There was a flummoxed, breathless sort of protest from Emilie, and Torres repeated, "Shove over. I'm not here to seduce you. My God, who do you think I am, Captain Carlisle?"

That got a laugh from Emilie, and the next sound was the rustling whisper of bedcovers being rearranged. After a few moments, Emilie said, "So what was it you wanted?"

"I had an idea about the ether evaporator, and I wanted to talk it over with you."

"You're right," Emilie murmured after a moment. "You're not here to seduce me." Jameson imagined her facial expression, and had some trouble controlling her snicker. "Shall I get up and light a candle?"

"No. Here--diavolo, these bunks are too small for this foolishness," Torres whispered gruffly. "Look, I'll lie down next to the wall."

"Your feet are in the way," Emilie said, sounding too sensible for a girl who had been weeping for her father a moment before. "Shall I get up?"

"Look, I just wanted to tell you about this idea--well, damn it, it's your bed. Here--"

There was another fumble of bedclothes, and Jameson, leaning within an inch of the polished wooden door of her cabin, clamped her hand over her mouth, forcibly holding back her reaction.

"Oh, never mind," Emilie said, sounding suspiciously merry herself. "Just--just lie there, and I'll lie down next to you so we can talk without waking the others."

Good idea, Jameson thought. Engineers. They woo with slide-rules and seduce with sextants.

"Ughff," Torres grunted.

"Well, move your arm, then," Emilie said, not sounding apologetic. Jameson, studying the gleam of the candlelight on her cabin door, was vastly entertained by the pictures going through her head.

"Maybe you'd better just let me hang on to you," Torres said. "That way, my arm will be out of your way."

Jameson knocked herself softly in the forehead with her fist. Torres, you utterly unromantic idiot--

"All right," Emilie agreed instantly, and Jameson's head snapped up. There was a final shuffle of limbs and pillows, and Emilie sighed.

"What?" Torres whispered.

"Nothing," Emilie said. "What was your idea?"

"Oh. Well," Torres said, sounding a bit distracted. "I thought about how to clamp the rubber tubing on the water-circuit."

"Mm-hmm," Emilie said. She sounded a bit sleepy.

"If we cut grooves in the spigot, we can use some of the coarse sail-twine to pinch the rubber into the groove."

Emilie sighed again.

"Am I hurting you?" Torres whispered.

"Mm-mm," Emilie replied, and her voice sounded a bit muffled. "This feels nice."

"We haven't got time for your rampant lust, woman. Keep your mind on the evaporator, will you?"

Jameson bit the inside of her cheek.

"Anyway," Torres went on, "that way, we could get a water-tight--"

"Torres," Emilie interrupted, her voice slow and dreamy.

"Hm?"

"You told me about this this afternoon," Emilie pointed out.

There was a moment of silence, and Jameson raised her eyebrows, giving Torres points for cleverness, but deducting a few for lack of planning.

"Well, but now I've figured out how to get it to work," Torres said hastily, and Jameson could hear her blushing scarlet through the impenetrable darkness and two wooden doors.

"We'll do it in the morning," Emilie said.

"Very well," Torres said. "Let me up and I'll go back to my cab--"

"Mm-mm," Emilie said. "Stay right there." There was another muffled sigh, which might have been Emilie yawning. "We can't possibly untangle ourselves in the darkness; one of us would surely end up hamstrung."

"Will you concentrate on your work?" Torres demanded, sounding peevish. "I swear to God, you'll be a good engineer only as long as you don't get woolly-headed with fleshly desires."

"I'll keep that in mind," Emilie whispered, her voice almost inaudible.

"See that you do," Torres grumbled. "Is that better?"

"Perfect," Emilie said, and Jameson heard the ragged edge of exhaustion in her voice for the first time. "Don't move. Don't move a muscle."

"Not till morning. I promise," Torres whispered back.

"Thank you," Emilie murmured.

After that, there was silence, and Jameson stood at the door, thinking for a while. Then she turned back to her desk, cupped a hand around the candle, and blew it out.

* * *

"Mingeaux," DiFalco said in a low voice.

Mingeaux turned her head from the view across the deck of Intrepide, speaking with patience. "What is it now, DiFalco?"

"Cook says the midday meal is fifteen minutes away."

"Yes," said Mingeaux, in a voice both pleasant and encouraging. She could read the time in the sky as well as any of the others, and this was not much of a surprise.

DiFalco ran a grimy hand across her chin. "And he'd like to know if you'd serve Captain Carlisle yourself."

Mingeaux turned back to the gunner, quirking an eyebrow decorated with blue dots. "He does, does he?"

DiFalco clenched her fists and waved them a bit, momentarily incoherent, and Mingeaux could see the frustration. "Mingeaux--please! You know none of us wants to go within a hundred paces of her--"

"This ship," Mingeaux pointed out, giving the wheel a bit of a correction, "is not a hundred paces long."

"Believe me," DiFalco muttered, "we're beginning to think about putting that distance between her and us, ocean or no ocean."

Mingeaux turned the wheel a fraction again, and the sails caught a bit more of the breeze. "As there is only one person in all of recorded history who could walk on water, and as you are not he, I can only conclude that you're serious." She sighed, hoping it was silent, and gestured toward the wheel. "You steer. I'll play diplomat."

DiFalco was by no means happy with this compromise, but her face lightened a bit. "We'll give you a great funeral, my friend," she vowed.

Mingeaux studied the top of the mast, feeling that a display of levity would not be good for anyone on the ship. The lookout was burning out his eyeballs scanning the horizon, not that there'd be anything in particular to look at for the next day or so. They were all petrified, and Mingeaux began to think that perhaps shipping with the volatile Englishwoman was not such a sterling idea after all.

Well, she had selected the crew herself, and so it was her responsibility to try to talk Captain Carlisle into some civility before the terrified crew threw her--or worse, Mingeaux--overboard.

The wind ruffled her shirtsleeves as she crossed the deck, scanning, as was her habit, for anything that needed fixing. The ship was remarkably sturdy, for all her sleek, fragile-looking beauty, and the crew was proud of her and kept her up well. They'd been on the sea in her for many weeks, and the ship still looked as she had that day Mingeaux first laid eyes on her, tossing in a freshening breeze in the harbor at Marseilles, a fretful racehorse, all fire and spirit and dark, fine looks.

Like the woman who stood at the prow in her accustomed place, her hand loose around a foremast shroud, blue eyes narrowed against the matching blue of the sea, her long dark hair streaming sideways in the breeze. She held her hat in her other hand, staring out to sea, and when the ship hit a series of waves crosswise, she swayed gently with the motion, keeping herself steady, as if the entire ocean were no more than a temporary inconvenience to her.

Mingeaux wished that she had taken a moment to go below and light her pipe; it would've given her a weapon, feeble though it might be, or perhaps a bit of reassurance. As it was, she tried to make a little more noise with her boots than was her usual practice, to warn the woman who resolutely refused to turn that she was no longer alone.

She stood there for a moment, looking past the captain into the profundity of the Caribbean, trying to see what she saw. She imagined that, where the light blue of the sky met the deeper blue of the sea, Giuliana Carlisle saw only the face of the woman she had left her home and her secure life to find. Now, perhaps, they were only days away from her (although Mingeaux was cautiously pessimistic about the chances), and Carlisle was by turns livid and fearful.

Her attitude was catching; the crew were tiptoeing as it was, and it showed no signs of getting any better unless Mingeaux did something.

What came out of her mouth was a surprise to her. "Do you recall," she began, "the day we met?"

Startled, the captain turned her head and looked at her first mate through narrowed eyes. It seemed to take her a moment to remember where she was, and when she spoke, it was courteous enough. "Yes. Marseilles. I was looking for an expert in yachting."

"And you found me instead," Mingeaux said with a smile, reaching for the pipe in her vest pocket and remembering, as soon as her hand touched it, that there was no way she could light it on deck. "You strode into the coffee-house in those boots, your face like a thunderstorm, and you swept your hat from your head and announced, 'I want a mate.'"

She saw a flash of a smile light the captain's face as she turned to look out into the sea again. "I hadn't spoken French in a long time," the captain replied, pitching her voice over the rush of wind and wave, "and I wasn't particularly graceful about how I put it." She turned back to Mingeaux, tossing her hair out of her eyes, and looked at her steadily. "As I recall, you were the only one in the coffee-house with the courage to stand and volunteer yourself."

"The rest of the women were married," Mingeaux answered, "and the men didn't dare get to their feet just then."

The captain laughed, white teeth flashing in her face. Something tense in her relaxed just then, and Mingeaux thought that perhaps they were going to live through this after all. The laugh settled into a gentle smile, and the captain looked Mingeaux up and down. "You told me," the captain said, "that you'd be delighted to take on the role, and I wondered just what I'd gotten myself into."

"I cannot believe a moment's self-doubt of you," Mingeaux commented.

Carlisle shrugged, the movement an exhilarating counterpoint to the play of sea and sky over her square shoulders. "Nevertheless."

"It wasn't as though I had many options," Mingeaux reflected. "The Marie Celeste had burnt to the water-line just two days before."

Carlisle nodded. "I could smell the smoke on your jacket."

Mingeaux was taken aback. "Indeed? You must have thought me a very devil."

The captain shook her head, waves of dark hair shuttling in the wind. "On the contrary. I trusted you on sight. You see, I knew who you were." Mingeaux's expression must have betrayed her confusion, and Carlisle went on, "Surely you don't think a bunch of gossipy sailors could resist telling a story like that all over the port? It was very dramatic--everyone off the burning ship safely, then a tall, tattooed woman rushing through the flames, going back again and again to look for something. That something being the ship's dog." Carlisle's eyes roved the wide sea again. "Which she found," she added.

"You never said anything about that," Mingeaux muttered, feeling a foolish blush creep over her ears. "And I'm glad."

Carlisle looked back out to the sea, reflecting on the past. "I thought that any woman who would put her life in danger to rescue a rat-terrier had the type of dedication I could count on."

"Hm," Mingeaux said, reaching in her pocket again for her pipe and giving up in despair.

"Oh, go below and light the damned thing," Carlisle said affectionately, gesturing with her hat. "I promise not to kill any of your sailors before you return."

Mingeaux opened her mouth to say something, but the lookout hallooed just then, and they were all very busy after that.

* * *

Mr. Thomas stuck his head into the doorway of the captain's cabin. "Good morning, late though it is," he remarked.

"Good morning to you, my friend," Jameson replied, leaning back and stretching her arms wide. She had been careful not to be anywhere near the corridor when Torres left Emilie's cabin early in the morning. She was determined to let the Barbary pirates have her tongue sooner than let Torres or Emilie know that she'd overheard their conversation the night before. Trapped in her cabin without recourse to gossip, she'd been at her desk since dawn. "I've been working on a set of protocols for our experiments in Ballard's Chase."

"Indeed," Thomas said, taking a step inside her cabin without self-consciousness to lean over her shoulder and look at the list she had on her desk. He scanned it, then commented, "This is ambitious, Captain."

"Yes," she said reflectively, toying with her quill. "But I believe we can finally get reasonable water-temperature readings from the Chase."

"Emilie," Thomas said, without elaborating.

"Emilie," she agreed, picking up the list and handing it to him. He turned to let the light from the port-hole fall onto the paper and went over it again, while she leaned back, resting an elbow on the back of her chair. "You know, Mr. Thomas, I do believe this unfortunate occurrence is going to have a positive outcome for Discovery. Two engineers, their ideas sparking off one another, each capable enough to go to the stars without assistance."

He raised an eyebrow at the hyperbole.

"Yes, I know what you think," she said indulgently, getting up to pace the length of her cabin. As it wasn't very broad, he had to crowd into a corner to give her enough room. "I'm banking a great deal on having both of them aboard. But I trust I'm shrewd enough to see how those talents fit together like a lock and a key."

"Your shrewdness," he remarked, "has been our salvation on more than one occasion."

She turned to give him an eager look. "My mind has been spinning since daybreak," she told him, measuring the length of her cabin with deliberate strides. "New experiments. New approaches. New equipment." She reached the end where he was standing uncomfortably and turned again. "Exact measurements of the stars. The ether evaporator, allowing us to chill specimens for precise sectioning. The aeolipile to drive the machine-shop. Collection areas for specimens. A processing-bench in the laboratory."

She was pacing back and forth now, in full swing, and with each circuit he was closer to sitting on the upright chest of drawers in the corner. "Think of it, Mr. Thomas!" she exclaimed. "A floating laboratory. Emilie said once it was the parsing of the natural world. And so it is!" As she got more excited, her strides got longer, and Thomas found it more difficult to avoid interfering with her enthusiasm. "What wonders can we not find, with such a capable group?"

"I can suggest one improvement to consider," he said, and she noticed that he was squashed uncomfortably in the corner.

"What's that, my friend?" she said, smiling at herself as she offered him a hand to help himself unwedge from the tiny space beside the chest of drawers.

"If you continue to ruminate on possibility," he replied with relief, laying the list carefully on the desk-blotter, "we shall have to expand the floor space in your cabin."

* * *

She sat beside his bed in the cabin, listening in quiet agony to his ragged breathing. She had held his hand through the worst of the shaking, and now that he was again resting quietly, she did not dare disturb his tattered sleep by touching him.

It was hot in the close, shuttered cabin, and she longed to loosen the restrictive collar that hemmed her in, to draw a free breath. Just for a moment. Surely she could have just a moment. She knew it was impossible, imprudent, too easy to be discovered, and she knew she would not; but that made the heat only more difficult to bear.

Well, she could always turn to the game. Her accustomed attack, the seven-of-nine he called it, to which he had devised every possible response and to which he had yet to find a reliable defense. But even her consolation, the well-known patterning of men and horses in a war stripped of horror and devoid of death, had deserted her, and all she could do was think of what he had told her when they boarded in Tripoli.

"Listen here, Tessa," he had said, and as always, she had given him her grave, courteous attention. "Come a little way away. I have something for you."

Had he known? Had he had any suspicion that he would not leave the ship alive? They settled by the stern, little noticed in the comings and goings of departure, and he had reached into his tunic and brought out a piece of parchment, sealed, she saw, with the caliph's own sigil.

"For a long time," he began, "you have been not my servant, but my friend." He smiled, the crooked tooth she knew so well and had seen so often over the board, the chin-whiskers he could not keep neat flaring as his mouth stretched. "And my nemesis in chess, but we'll consider that just the chief delight of the friendship." He put a tender, fatherly hand on her shoulder, and she almost missed the significance of what he said next. "So when we conclude our business in the Caribbean, I am taking you to Boston, where you shall be free." He handed her the parchment, and she felt the blood hammer in her ears and she had to lean against the rail to keep from falling.

"Here, my lad," he said brusquely, holding her elbow, "that's no way for a free man to behave. Fainting like a girl." She had shaken her head clear and given him a tremulous smile, and he smiled back. "That's better, boy."

He never forgot, never, not once, since we decided it was safer to travel disguised. Never once had he slipped or forgotten; it was like watching his approach to chess, never a wrong move, never taking a pawn down the path that belonged to a knight.

"Here," he said said, pressing the parchment into her hand with urgency. "Put this into your pocket and do not let it from your person. It's your freedom."

And because she was in the habit, she had ignored the faint feeling, the world spinning off-balance around her, and she had put the parchment into the inner pocket of her jacket, and it had not left her since. Because she listened to him. She listened. She always had listened.

And now she was listening to him die.

There was a soft knock at the door of the cabin, and she said, "Come in," pitching her voice as low as she could, to avoid disturbing his rest. The door opened, and a woman slipped in, the cook's wife--was her name Serafina?--and took one pitying look at the man struggling for breath on the bunk.

"Tessa," she said, her voice warm and sympathetic, with the flavor of Egypt, "how goes it with him?"

She wondered how to answer that, and the cook's wife looked around at the walls of the cabin. "By the Holy One, it's hot in here," she said, and moved quickly to throw open the shutter over the bed.

"But I just got him to stop shiv--" Tessa protested, holding up a hand, and the cook's wife ignored her. As well she might. A cook's wife wasn't much, but she outranked a wealthy man's catamite, that was certain. She opened all the shutters, and as the cool air circulated through the cabin, the man on the bed began to tremble again.

Tessa tried to keep the tears from her eyes and reached for the heavy, brocaded camel-blanket that was all they could find to keep him warm enough. She hoped he wouldn't throw it off again--it had an uncomfortable air of its original purpose, and she didn't blame him for not wanting that perfume in his nostrils.

"The captain says," the cook's wife remarked, "that he's going to stop any passing ship he sees. It might be that they have specifics for the ague."

This isn't the ague, it occurred to Tessa to say, but she kept her mouth shut. It wasn't likely that anyone would listen to her. "Thank him for me, would you?" she murmured.

The cook's wife took courage and patted Tessa on the shoulder. "You know, Bassel Al-Hassein has already asked several times about how you are. He would make you a kind master."

She was too stupefied to do anything other than stare at the woman.

* * *

They had been under canvas for four hours when Torres and Emilie finally made their way to the laboratory directly beneath the deck of Discovery. Torres moved easily through the equipment, despite the sway of the ship. Emilie hung back in the doorway, looking around, half in wonder and half in apprehension.

"Since you saw it last, we've bolted in the ether evaporator," Torres began, then turned as she sensed that Emilie wasn't at her shoulder. "What are you doing all the way over there, goose? It's only ether; it won't bite."

Emilie lifted a fold of her skirt with one hand, then let it drop.

"Oh, that," Torres said, impatient. "Yes, I meant to talk to you about that. We've damnable little space down here, and when the Captain gets a notion for a new thingamajig, we lose more of it. I'm sorry; I've had to set it up as a skirt-free zone." She went to a cabinet in the wall and opened it, then slid out a drawer and rummaged through it. "We'll have to make you some trousers. Moleskin works well. I keep a couple of pair down here; you can never tell what's going to land in your lap when the ship gives a list. Ah." She pulled out a pair of trousers carefully, then closed the cabinet. She threaded her way past the magnificent brass box bolted to the floor and the benches with their carefully-stabilized glassware. "Put these on."

Emilie looked behind her, then into the lab, where there was no room to change. "I'll be right back."

"Have to get over your modesty some time," Torres said, with a noticeable lack of sympathy. "Stay right there; we've some ground to cover, and I don't want to lose you. Tell you this: if you're built like nothing the human race has yet produced, keep it from the Captain; she'll be looking to dissect you."

Emilie laughed and unfolded the trousers. "I'll keep that in mind, thank you, Torres."

Torres was in the far corner of the lab, pointing at a row of substantial cabinets that took up the length of the wall. "Supplies, glassware, chemicals--I trust I needn't tell you to take care with those--gloves, aprons, goggles. It gets damned stuffy down here sometimes, especially when we have to close the vents, and that makes the gear twice as heavy. I'm not the type to say please about the clothing, but we work with acid on a regular basis, and you'll need all your fingers."

Emilie winced and stepped into the trousers, pulling them up under her skirt. "I'll use them, I promise."

Torres passed under one of the thick glass pyramids set into the deck. It cast a wintry light onto her face as she looked up at the cabinets, putting two fingers to her lips and staring thoughtfully. "I really ought to think about reorganizing the specimen-cabinets, especially if we get the ether evaporator working. We'll be producing thousands of glass slides then, and it's going to be a challenge to handle them carefully."

Emilie fastened the trousers around her waist and eyed the crowded space with suspicion. "We'll need a bigger ship."

Torres turned to her with a rare, brief grin. "No, just a joiner. Harry Metternich at Haven."

"So that's why!" Emilie exclaimed, reaching behind her to undo the skirt.

"That's why what?"

Emilie laughed easily, pulling the skirt away from her waist and folding it up as small as she could make it. "Why Harry always groaned when he saw Discovery coming into berth."

"What's he got to complain of?" Torres asked brusquely, sitting on a bench by the dissecting-table, which was covered in gleaming, spotlessly white enameled sheeting. "The Captain always pays him well..."

"And you always make him insane redoing the partitions," Emilie replied, setting her now-compacted skirt onto a workbench and stepping into the laboratory for the first time.

"Insane?" Torres asked, with an expression of disbelief. "I only insisted that he fit the partitions into the space we had available. It's not like he had to do it a fourth time, and I wasn't discourteous; it's a big job. I was right there with the plane and the square in my hands the whole time too, you know." She thought about it for a moment. "Well, all right. I'm sorry he had to stay shipboard for that week, but we had to catch the currents for--"

"Insane," Emilie interrupted, with a smile. She turned to the bench and caught her breath in delight. "What's this?"

Torres got to her feet and ambled toward the workbench. "Don't tell me, miss, that you have no idea what that is."

"Oh, I know what it is," Emilie assured her quickly. "It's an aeolipile. What are you doing with it?"

"It's only a model." Torres smiled again, rocking the little brass sphere on its axle with one finger. "I have..."

"A plan. And it must be a cunning one," Emilie said.

Torres happened to look up just as she was speaking, and they were so close that she could see the glimmer of the light from the glass pyramids in Emilie's blue eyes. "Ah--" she said, not certain how she'd follow it up.

Emilie gave her an inquiring glance over the model, and Torres felt something in her chest seize like a stuck valve, then open suddenly.

"The plan?" Emilie asked softly.

"I--I've forgotten it," Torres whispered.

Emilie's smile was both encouraging and uncertain, and Torres looked beyond her to the doorway, where the light had changed. Jack Sere was peering into the laboratory, his eyes curious and hungry.

"Ten paces from the door," Torres bellowed suddenly, as Emilie whirled to the doorway, "or, by God, the sharks will know the taste of Englishman by noon!"

"Oh, Torres," Emilie said, going to the doorway to put a comforting hand on Jack's arm. "How can you be so terribly inhospitable? It's all her fault, you know," she said, looking up at Jack.

"My fault?" Torres yelped, her voice going up an octave.

"She's made this place too fascinating to stay away from," Emilie said, as if Jack were the only person in the hemisphere. "I feel it pulling me already."

He smiled down at her, and Torres found her neck growing hot with rage.

"Yes, it's a grand place, isn't it?" Jack told her. "You can almost feel the secrets teased out of the fabric of life."

Emilie nodded respectfully at him. "That's a good way of putting it."

"Emilie," Torres interjected, "let's get one rule straight right now. He is not to set foot across the threshold of this laboratory."

Emilie had perfectly good ears; why wasn't she paying any attention? "I had meant to ask you, Mr. Sere, if you were married."

"Emilie," Torres growled.

"Jack," the man in the doorway replied, a blush creeping over his ears. He leaned in the doorway, trying to look nonchalant. "And no, no, I'm not married. Why... er... why do you ask?"

"Because having a lover can teach a man to treat other things gently."

For a moment, Torres and Jack were speechless, the only sound the creaking of the ship as she swayed between the wind and water. Then Torres guffawed. "Emilie was the one who put Mr. Thomas's sextant back together after you had done with it," she told him.

His mouth worked foolishly, and the blush became less theoretical by the moment. "I apologize for making you repair the damage to the sextant," Jack said to Emilie with stiff formality.

"Not at all," Emilie told him, her voice warm and musical. "It gave me a chance to see my good friends Captain Jameson and Mr. Thomas once more."

"Before I throw up all over this workbench--" Torres began.

"Oh, Torres," Emilie said, turning back to her. "Surely we can work on a way to allow Mr. Sere to assist? He's so obviously eager."

"So is a mastiff puppy," Torres pointed out, settling into a seat on the low bench at the dissecting-table. "Except a dog is far more deft than this clot-poll."

Emilie gave Jack one last, assessing look, shoving her hands into the pockets of the borrowed trousers. "Well, Mr. Sere, she's very protective of her little Utopia, but I think, given what she's built here, that we can understand. Don't you agree?"

He nodded.

"Don't fret," Emilie said. "I have a plan for the increase of your... deftness."

"Emilie," Torres said, leaping to her feet, "I forbid you to create a decent laboratory assistant by marrying this idiot."

Emilie and Jack turned to her, Jack obviously in shock and Emilie with a merry smile that held more than a touch of wickedness.

"Or anything less formal," Torres added hastily.

"That wasn't precisely what I had in mind," Emilie said gently. She turned to Jack. "That's her scientific mind hard at work, isn't it? But you might not care for that approach; I snore dreadfully."

"You do not," Torres said, before she could help herself.

Jack stared at Torres, and she could see his Adam's apple move.

"Oh, get out of here, Jack," Torres said, flapping a hand at him impatiently. "We have work to do."

Emilie gave him a conspiratorial wink. "My plan," she whispered to him. "Be ready."

Flummoxed, he nodded, then turned and stumbled up the steps to the deck, proving to Torres's satisfaction that she was completely correct in her assessment of his essential worthlessness. Still, she couldn't help smiling as she looked at the young blonde wearing her trousers. "You have a plan?"

Serenely, Emilie leaned against the bench and put a finger to the side of the aoelipile. "Where were we?"

* * *

Over the course of half an hour, the tiny speck floating in the sea had resolved itself into first a plank, then a raft, then a coracle, then a rowboat. Mingeaux, trying to match its aimless pace, had caused the crew to take in sail until now they had barely any canvas aloft. Spinelli, the pilot, swung the ship into the wind just shy of their quarry, and now Intrepide bobbed with a sullen sluggishness some twenty yards behind the rowboat.

Mingeaux stood at the prow next to a taut and furious Captain Carlisle, who kept her hand on the foremast shroud with such tense concentration that Mingeaux could see the cords standing out in her knuckles. As much to avoid that livid strength as anything else, Mingeaux lifted the spyglass again, trying, against hope, to see if the rowboat was empty.

The camaraderie of an hour before had vanished, leaving in its place this cold, implacable goddess of pain. "You delay me, Mingeaux," Carlisle growled softly beside her.

"Please, Captain," Mingeaux whispered, hardly knowing why this was so important.

"Another quarter-hour, no more," Carlisle murmured, the menace evident in her voice.

DiFalco, her gunner's eye keener than any other's, announced quietly from the foredeck, "It's occupied."

A swell hit the rowboat broadside then, heeling it just enough for the rest of them to see it: over the gunnel of the little boat, a hand dangled, slack and lifeless.

Mingeaux handed the spyglass abruptly to the captain and turned. "Steady. Steady! Pull up alongside slowly." She made her way back across the deck and took up a position by the starboard rail amidships, keeping an eye on the rowboat as she crouched to pick up a coil of rope. She straightened, not looking away from the little boat, as she wove the line around a belaying-pin. When it was fast, she handed the rest of the coil to the sailor beside her. "Adelaide. Here. When we're even with it, get into the water and get a painter onto it."

"Aye," said Adelaide readily, turning to hand her pipe to a comrade.

"You too," Mingeaux said, not turning. The woman behind her nodded, picked up another coil of rope, and secured it to the next belaying-pin in rapid figure-eight passes.

They were ten yards from the little rowboat, and Spinelli twitched the wheel this way and that, more for something to do than any expectation of efficacy. Intrepide moved with glacial determination toward the boat bobbing gently on the waves. The bow came even with the little boat, and the sailor behind Mingeaux pulled her shirt over her head, careful not to let go of the line in her hand.

Adelaide kicked her shoes off and threw one leg over the rail. Mingeaux took a step backward to give them room. DiFalco took the shirt from the woman in back, and she clambered up over the rail, waiting.

As the rowboat came even amidships, Mingeaux said, "Go." The two sailors dropped into the blue-green swells, one before and one behind, trailing ropes that uncoiled in the air behind them. As they surfaced, each flung the sea from her face and swam for the rowboat.

In a moment, Adelaide had made the painter-line fast to the front of the rowboat, and Mingeaux and DiFalco hauled gently on the other end, pulling the little boat closer to the side of Intrepide. Mingeaux twined the slack of the painter around the belaying pin.

The other sailor took a few strong strokes toward the stern of the little boat, her arms flashing water in the sunlight, and the stern line dripped in a stream as she knotted it into place. "The ladder," Mingeaux said, her voice hoarse, and another sailor hastened to get the Jacob's ladder as DiFalco snugged up the stern line.

The shirtless sailor heaved herself into the boat, a sudden gush of seawater catching a glint of light as she slid like a dolphin over the side. In a trice, she was crouching over the contents of the rowboat. Adelaide joined her an instant later, and the two of them peered down at the unmoving figure in the bottom.

Mingeaux looped the ends of the Jacob's ladder over the bottoms of the belaying-pins and began to let it down the side. All that she could see was that the figure in the bottom of the rowboat was a woman.

"She's alive!" the shirtless sailor called up to the deck, and the rest of them caught their breath.

Mingeaux was over the rail and onto the ladder. As she went down the side, she saw the Captain, face shut and angry, pacing slowly toward the ladder amidships from her position at the prow.

Mingeaux stepped lightly into the rowboat and murmured to the sailors, "Well done. Up you get. Say nothing to the captain, unless it be to refer her to me."

The shirtless sailor nodded, squinting up at the rail of the yacht, and went nimbly up the ladder. DiFalco caught her at the top and helped her onto the deck, where she swept the seawater from her face with one hand and took her shirt from DiFalco's shoulder.

Mingeaux crouched next to the woman in the rowboat. She could see the slow rise and fall of the woman's breast, and her knees threatened to go watery. "Back up," she whispered to Adelaide, who replied, "You'll need help to get her aboard."

Mingeaux swept her eyes rapidly over the rowboat. A good fifteen-footer, larger than a canoe but not something that would've come from, say, a ship of the line or a whaler. And in excellent condition, as well. She turned back to the lady in the bottom of the boat.

She was a white woman, with dark hair shot through with gray, and it floated in a puddle of seawater that had collected in the bottom of the boat. Her eyes were closed, and the angry, blistered red of her skin meant that she had been out for some time, days perhaps. She wore only a thin linen shirt, and it was doing little good keeping her from frying in the sun.

"Can you help me get her onto my shoulders?" Mingeaux asked.

"Aye," Adelaide replied, and carefully, balancing themselves against the pitch and sway of the sea, they picked the lady up and set her crosswise onto Mingeaux's shoulders. She was as unresponsive as a sack of flour, but at least she didn't stop breathing. It took a long time, and Mingeaux refused to look up at the Captain, who stood by the rail with the rest of the raptly-watching crew.

Mingeaux turned with great caution, settling the woman's body onto her shoulders, and began to make her way up the ladder. Adelaide was right behind her, holding up a hand to keep the woman from sliding off Mingeaux's shoulders.

Finally, she was at the top, and a dozen hands reached out to take the burden from her shoulders. Mingeaux popped over the rail, feeling her legs shake, and turned to offer a hand to Adelaide as she reached the top of the Jacob's ladder.

"Over here," DiFalco murmured, jerking her head aft, and four of them carried the unconscious body of the lady over to a patch of shade cast by a fluttering sail. Mingeaux followed, and as they laid the woman's body down, she crouched to put a hand to her cheek.

"Now that you are finished with your rescue," said the captain, an exquisite sarcasm in every syllable, "may we again be under way?"

Mingeaux pulled her hand away and looked up into DiFalco's concerned face. "DiFalco, will you see to it?"

"Aye," said DiFalco with relief, turning to bellow orders to the others.

The sailor who had leapt shirtless into the sea crouched next to the lady, and Mingeaux felt a wave of helplessness dash over her.

"What is it you need?" asked Adelaide.

For a moment, staring into the lady's slack face, Mingeaux was certain she couldn't save her. "A barrel of drinking-water," she murmured, and the two sailors shot to their feet.

The sails rattled up the masts, and the ship began to pick up speed.

Adelaide and the sailor with the wet trousers returned, rolling a water-barrel carefully across the deck. One of them pried it open and the other went to fetch a cup.

"Thank you, Adelaide," Mingeaux said in a low voice. The other sailor returned with the cup, and Mingeaux reached behind her without looking to dip out a cupful of water. For a moment, she held it in her hand, ready to laugh with the ridiculousness of the idea of getting water into a woman who was unconscious. Then she put her other hand carefully over the lady's face, shielding her eyes, nose, and mouth, and poured the water over her head.

Adelaide got to her feet and pattered off, returning with a scrub-bucket. She filled it with water and poured it carefully in a stream over the lady's shoulders. Instantly, her shirt was soaked, and it became transparent, and Mingeaux thought in despair, The sun--we've surely killed her now. A couple more sailors joined the group around them, as they were concerned and as one did not see every day the sight of a lady in nothing but a wet, clinging shirt. Soon she was ringed by a curious crowd.

They kept pouring the water over her until she was soaked, and little rivulets of it were running off her body to puddle here and there on the deck, glittering in the bright, menacing sunlight. Lying in the shade, her wet shirt clinging in thin folds to her body, the lady looked fragile and vulnerable, and a surge of tenderness went through Mingeaux's heart. Mingeaux put a finger to the lady's arm, and the redness flashed into white in an instant. She would be very ill for a long time, if they succeeded in saving her.

The lady's eyes opened and fastened on Mingeaux's face, and Mingeaux's eyes riveted to hers in shock. Alive. Creator Spirit, let us save her--

"Angel," the lady whispered in English.

"Mermaid," Mingeaux replied, distracted, and the sailors clustered around them laughed.

The lady's eyes closed again, and she sighed.

"Get DiFalco for me," Mingeaux murmured to Adelaide, and the pipe-smoker leapt up again and went for the gunner.

"Captain," Mingeaux said, feeling the eyes boring into her back and not turning around.

"Yes?" said Carlisle, politely enough.

DiFalco crouched beside them. "Mingeaux--"

"That stuff you put on your hair," Mingeaux began. "How much of it do you have?"

"Aw, Mingeaux," DiFalco protested. "That stuff's expensive!"

"I'll buy you more," Mingeaux shot out, nailing her with a furious eye. She dared not conduct this little spat before the captain.

DiFalco got to her feet with a sigh and went below.

"You wanted to speak to me?" Carlisle said.

Mingeaux didn't feel like turning. "There is an island about half a day's sail west of here--"

"No," Carlisle said instantly.

"On it grows an herb called aloe-vera," Mingeaux went on.

"No," Carlisle repeated.

"It's sovereign for burn--"

"I said no."

Adelaide put a hand to the lady's shoulder, trying to pretend that she hadn't heard. Mingeaux turned her head and looked up into the furious, cold blue eyes. "Captain, please--"

"Damnation, Mingeaux, must I remind you at the end of a lash who commands here?"

Mingeaux couldn't believe it, and she half got to her feet, her shock keeping her from watching what she said next. "Captain," she hissed, "it may well be that this lady is also someone's sister."

Carlisle grew pale and drew a breath, and Mingeaux knew she was to be put off the ship, possibly in the little rowboat, possibly in moments. "I'm sorry," Mingeaux murmured, clenching her fists and damning her temper.

Carlisle, however, was looking anywhere other than at her first mate. She reached for the collar of her shirt and wrenched at it, then whispered, "Divert the ship, then." All Mingeaux saw was one flash of agony in her face before the captain turned on her heel and walked away silently, shoulders bowed.

Mingeaux got to her feet as Carlisle went back to the prow, then turned, a bit disoriented, and said to Adelaide, "Let's get her to my cabin."

Mingeaux picked up the lady to take her below, calling the pilot to her to give her a new course. Neither of them saw Carlisle at the prow, head bowed, one hand on the foremast shroud, the other moving over her shattered face.

* * *

It was late afternoon, the ship well out of the harbor and into the open sea, before Jameson could get away to see what her two engineers were up to. She knew right where to go.

"Why am I unsurprised to find you two in here?" she asked, leaning into the doorway of the laboratory. As always, it was lit with a ghostly-looking radiance from the glass pyramids set into the underside of the deck, and the light streamed onto worktables and benches. In the center, the ether evaporator held prominence of place, its brass sides catching stray glints from the pyramids, and two low workbenches stretched on either side, glassware and experimental apparatus securely fastened to the sturdy surfaces. Along the far wall was a row of cabinets, and the other walls held more workbenches, a couple of minuscule desks, and miscellaneous cabinetry. Every surface held some fascinating, complicated construction in glass or brass or enamel or wood, and she recognized only a portion of the marvels Torres had wrought.

Emilie looked up with a pleased smile from the bench at which she was sketching, and Torres set the length of brass tubing she was fiddling with onto the workbench and nodded politely to the captain.

"Captain," Emilie began.

Jameson held up a hand in protest. "You have always addressed me as 'Kathryn', and I dearly love the sound of it on your tongue. Don't change it. That's your first order." She took a step into the laboratory, looking twice at the tightly-bound up skirt lying on the bench, and put a gentle hand beneath Emilie's chin. "How are you this evening, dear one?"

"Better," Emilie answered bravely, smiling into her face. There was little sign in her eyes of the solitary tears of the night before. "Torres has already put me to work."

"Oh, aye, I can imagine," Jameson said easily, looking at the other engineer. "Listen, Torres, you are to let her sleep occasionally, d'you hear me?"

"Where do I get this reputation?" Torres asked, spreading her hands and beseeching the glass pyramids in the under-decking.

"I'll ask Harry the next time I see him," Emilie offered, and Torres shot her a glare from beneath a furrowed brow.

Jameson didn't quite follow that, but thought perhaps a change of subject was in order. "So what are you working on?"

"The ether evaporator," Emilie said eagerly, getting to her feet with cautious quickness and laying her sketch-book in front of the captain. "Torres has had a stroke of genius about how to keep the water-circuit from leaking."

Jameson studied the drawing. "Ingenious. A series of grooves in the tubing, and the rubber pinched tight with cord."

Emilie was a bit startled, but Torres took up the story without a break. "The only thing we have to worry about is how to cut the grooves into the tubing without having to use the bench. I want something a bit more exact than a hand cut; I'm not that good at metalwork."

Jameson nodded. "So how's the aeolipile coming along?"

Torres shrugged. "I wanted to get the ether evaporator secured first."

"Quite right," Jameson said, placing a hand on Emilie's shoulder. "Has she explained what she wants to do with the aeolipile?"

Emilie shook her head. "We've only just started working on the water-circuit tubing."

"We're going to build an alcohol-fired steam-jet engine," Jameson explained to Emilie, "and we'll mount it up on deck and run a belt from it down to the laboratory."

"To run a metal lathe," Emilie said, a growing excitement in her eyes.

"Not only that," Torres said, on her feet and gesturing toward the front wall. "A drill-stand. A compressor-station. A rotary cutter. Anything we can run on an axle. Maybe even the ether evaporator."

"Will it give you enough power?" Emilie asked, sensibly enough.

"Depends on the gearing," Torres said, leaning on the workbench on one fist, studying the brass tubing in the other.

Emilie turned to look around her, a light in her eyes. "A mechanized laboratory," she murmured, in wonder.

"If we can," Jameson said, feeling it incumbent upon her to inject a note of realism. "We're not certain any of this will work."

"If I have anything to do with it, it will," Torres muttered.

"Both of you," Jameson said, looking from one to the other. "You see, Emilie, why I have to warn Torres to let you sleep." She clapped Emilie on the shoulder and looked at Torres. "In the meantime, you have an excellent resource for your hand metalwork."

It was obvious that Torres hadn't thought of that. She'd have some adjusting of her own to do, it seemed.

"I can cut the grooves in the tubing for you now," Emilie offered, and Torres nodded toward the metal-smithing bench, looking more relaxed, yet more excited, than Jameson had ever seen her.

* * *

Mingeaux carried the woman down the steps to the cabins, feeling her way carefully, as she couldn't see her feet. The lady's hand dropped from her lap, and Adelaide squeezed around Mingeaux to hold the lady's arm away from anything that might cause her another injury. With her other hand, she opened the door of Mingeaux's cabin. The door whacked ungently against the wall, and Adelaide turned to apologize to Mingeaux, who shook her head brusquely, not having the breath to speak.

"What first?" Adelaide asked, and Mingeaux stood in the doorway of her cabin, looking around and trying to think.

"Strip the feather-bed from the bunk," she said, and Adelaide whipped the thin mattress off Mingeaux's bed, bundling it with heedless haste into the corner.

"Next?"

"There's a blanket in the chest yonder," Mingeaux said, gesturing with her head toward the stern. The woman she held was getting heavy, and her arms were starting to shake.

Behind her, she heard feet clattering down the steps. "I've brought the pomade, Mingeaux," DiFalco called.

"Put a sheet on top of that," Mingeaux directed Adelaide, and the sailor nodded and pulled the bed-clothes out of the chest.

DiFalco leaned in the doorway, reaching around Mingeaux to set the pomade jar carefully down on her desk, snugging it up against the lip around the rim so that it wouldn't fall.

It was difficult to balance against the sway of the ship, especially with a heavy burden in her arms. "More water," Mingeaux said through clenched teeth, trying to breathe against the exertion, and she heard DiFalco's boots clomping rapidly back up the steps.

Adelaide had the bed made up just as Mingeaux was certain she was going to drop the body she was holding, and she lay the woman gently down on her bunk, reaching up swiftly to brush the tangled hair out of her lobsterish face. The woman didn't stir, and Mingeaux thought in desperation, We've got to get some water into her.

She heard DiFalco grunting with effort, and turned to see the gunner with a heavy water-barrel in her arms. She let it thud to the floor and rubbed her arms with relief, looking at Mingeaux.

Mingeaux turned to the chest and pulled out another bedsheet, then pried the top off the water-barrel and plunged the sheet into it. It was sodden in a trice, and she pulled it out with a bit of effort, turning again to the bunk. The sheet dripped little streams of water onto the floor of the cabin as she unfolded it over the silent, still occupant. Adelaide reached for the other end, and together they spread the wet sheet over the woman's body.

"Try to get her to drink something," Mingeaux murmured to Adelaide, and the sailor nodded and reached for a cup on a shelf over the bunk, hesitating for a moment. "Yes, use that," Mingeaux said.

"It's Anne's cup," Adelaide pointed out in a low voice.

"Use it," Mingeaux repeated. She turned, suddenly heartsore and exhausted, and stepped over the water-barrel to reach with a long arm for the jar of pomade. When she looked up into the doorway, six of the crew were standing there, watching with concentration.

"If you're not in here helping," Mingeaux said gruffly, "then pray for her."

Paying them no more mind, she straddled the water-barrel again on her way back to the bunk, where Adelaide was doing her best to pour some water down the lady's throat. At first, the still figure lay like a statue in the bunk, and Mingeaux's soul was seized with fear; then, the lady's brows contracted and she began to choke. Mingeaux set the jar down hastily in the corner of the bunk, and she and Adelaide pulled the lady up without thinking. Mingeaux got an arm around her shoulders, moving onto the bunk to hold her up as Adelaide snatched up the cup again.

The lady coughed up the water, trying to reach up with a hand entangled in the wet, clinging sheet. She hadn't opened her eyes, and her head lolled onto Mingeaux's shoulder as her hand went slack.

"Listen to me, mam'selle," Mingeaux murmured, drawing the lady closer to her chest. "You must drink something, or I fear we shall never have the pleasure of your acquaintance."

She was surprised when the woman in her arms nodded weakly, and Adelaide raised the cup to her lips again. She looked up into the doorway, and saw that the six sailors had been joined by three more, many of whom were staring in fascination at the wet sheet molding the body of their unanticipated guest.

"Who's steering this ship?" Mingeaux growled, and their eyes snapped up like a military review. They stayed in the doorway for a moment, and Mingeaux lost her temper. "Get back to your posts!" she shouted.

The crowd scattered, making their way up the steps at a run, leaving a pair of empty blue eyes boring into Mingeaux's. She met the captain's gaze steadily, not saying anything.

"Adelaide," Carlisle remarked, not looking away from Mingeaux, "your clothing is soaked through. It will do us little good if you're down with a chill."

Stubbornly, as if she hadn't heard, Adelaide raised the cup to the lady again. Mingeaux reached for the cup gently, taking it from the sailor's hand. "Go on," she said softly. "I'll take care of her."

The rebellion flared briefly in Adelaide's shut face, turned away from doorway, and then she wheeled, flinging drops of seawater from her shirt onto the floor, and stalked past the captain. As she made to pass the tall woman in the corridor, Carlisle put out a hand. "Thank you, Adelaide," she said courteously, and Adelaide nodded briskly, not replying. Mingeaux heard the slap of her wet, bare feet as she went up on deck.

Mingeaux's eyes finally faltered from the captain's gaze, and she held the cup to the woman's mouth again, gratified beyond telling when she took a sip without trouble.

"Spinelli tells me," the captain remarked, "that we will arrive at your magical island by eight o'clock in the evening."

Mingeaux nodded, concentrating on getting another mouthful of water into the lady.

"That is," the captain went on, "if the weather continues fair, for they tell me it looks like storming."

Mingeaux wasn't certain what to say, and decided that saying nothing might keep the captain from putting her off until she could try to do something--anything--as much as possible--to save the life of the woman in her arms.

"May I help?" the captain asked softly, and Mingeaux's head shot up in astonishment.

"I should be most grateful for your assistance," she murmured, getting the half-awake lady to take one last mouthful. She nodded at the corner of the bunk as Carlisle took a step into the cabin. "Would you fetch that pot of pomade to me?"

* * *

Jameson stepped softly into the laboratory, where, by the light of a spirit-lamp, Emilie sat at the machining bench, methodically carving slivers of brass from the tubing of the ether evaporator.

"Can you see?" Jameson called in a low voice.

The girl nodded without turning, her blonde hair catching the feeble glimmers of light.

"I was expecting you at supper," Jameson went on, when she saw no answer was imminent. "You missed Torres boasting about you." She smiled and approached the workbench. "She kept it up during the entire meal."

Emilie turned with a brief smile, then went back to her work.

"I was expecting you to show up any moment..." Jameson said, trailing off in invitation.

"I haven't made the channels wide enough," Emilie said, and her voice sounded rough. "It needs--"

Jameson placed a hand gently over the one that held the file. "Emilie," she said.

Emilie turned away from her, and Jameson knew why instantly. She knelt on the floor and put a hand to the girl's chin. "Child," she said, turning Emilie's reluctant face to her. "I thought we were friends. Why do you hide your tears from me?"

Emilie's eyes swept erratically over the lab, not that she could see anything; except for the light from the spirit-lamp, the lab was impenetrably dark. "Work helps," she said finally.

"So does weeping," Jameson replied. "And when you're done with the one, you start on the other." She smiled sadly, remembering. "And you do that over and over until, one day, you wake up and it's not the first thing on your mind."

"I'm sorry, Kathryn," Emilie said, subdued. "I--I didn't mean--"

"Emilie." It was like the crack of a pistol, and Emilie raised her eyes to Jameson's face. "I won't have you dishonoring your father's memory by pretending that his loss doesn't unsettle you. That's an insult to a fine man." And a damned good way to burn a promising engineer to ash, she added to herself.

Whatever Emilie intended to say next dissolved in a flood of tears. Her shoulders started to shake, and she slumped toward Kathryn, who swept the girl into her arms and held her as she cried, crooning comfort that had no words.

* * *

Giuliana stood in her cabin, balancing herself in the center of the floor and staring into the glimmer of the waves through the half-wall of glass at the stern as the ship pitched and swayed through the foaming waters of the sea. Although it was nearly dark, she had little trouble perceiving the waves, which were a glossy greenish-black, tinged with lacy white, smacking up against the windows. The water looked cold and lonely, and vastly more powerful than herself.

Well. Of course. Wasn't that always what they said about the sea? That whatever you did, no matter what puny strength you brought to bear on the oceans, they could swat you aside without as much consideration as one would show to a gnat? Impossibly vast. Indifferent. Uncaring.

The sea has no heart. But you did. Once.

She could tell it still beat, far, far below the layers of ice she had tried to coat it with, for now it was so sick and so sore that she wondered if she had ever felt it before. The enormity of it hit her all at once, and she asked herself, Why, as long as you were at it, did you not just demand that Mingeaux throw her back into the sea?

The possibility that someone would treat Lucia that way--she felt the dizziness hit her suddenly, and she moved quickly to the wall, holding herself up with one hand and pressing a fist to her mouth, to avoid either tears or nausea, she wasn't certain which. The wood beneath her hand trembled and shivered in the assault of wind and wave, and she felt suddenly as though she were falling from a great height.

Hands pressed to the wood, she slid to her knees against the wall of her cabin. A few stray splinters, lifted from the smooth surface by weeks on the implacable sea, caught in her palms on the way down, little pinpoints of pain. She opened her eyes, not realizing that she had shut them, and turned her head to the glass window, where the waves continued to beat with controlled ferocity against the stern of Intrepide.

A rough night.

The light glowed a graveyard color through the window, and she felt the ship shudder, fragile and brave as she fought her way through the waves, on her way--where? In a moment of sick clarity, she realized that she had followed a chimera, believing a woman she should have known would not tell her the truth. And in so doing, she had almost killed someone right here and now, solid and needful, here in front of her and reliant on her for continued existence.

Mingeaux, far wiser, had realized what she had not.

The sea does not care for us. So we must care for one another. Because, if you do not, then there will be nothing for Lucy to come home to.

Wearily, fighting the pitch of the ship, she got to her feet, moving slowly to her desk to light a spirit-lamp. She worked with deliberation and patience to lay a sheet of paper down on her desk, then opened the little box that held her quills. As if in a dream, she watched her hand prepare the ink-bottle for use, and then she bent over the desk to write, slowly and with great care.

Mingeaux, in her cabin, was similarly occupied. The sunburnt lady, perfumed and pomaded, was sleeping gently in the bunk at her back. The ship was pitching in a sea a bit more rough than was usual, but Mingeaux had had plenty of practice writing in ugly weather, and the lines were firm and straight, as if she had drawn them on a chalk-line.

So, too, were her words. Captain: It has become apparent that you require a first mate both ruthless and obedient. I have no interest in the former and no talent for the latter. When we reach Santo Domingo, I shall attempt to find a replacement who will be suitable for the supremely important mission at which I have failed.

This crew is experienced, capable, and dedicated, and they deserve great courtesy and recognition for it. Any of them would serve you well, to the highest degree of devotion, if you were to treat them with the respect and consideration that has characterised your behaviour since we began our journey. I shall recommend to them that they--

A soft knock on the door interrupted her in the middle of her writing, and she slipped a blank sheet of paper over the one she was working on, then got to her feet and opened the door gently.

In the corridor was the Captain. They stared at one another for a moment, the troubled blue eyes in the sculpted face squaring off against the tattooed swirls of the other, and Mingeaux thought, Well, then, I did not have a chance to be eloquent, but I will not give up my courage.

"How is she?" Carlisle asked, in a low voice.

Mingeaux was faintly surprised. "Still asleep. She appears to be comfortable enough."

"Good." Carlisle's eyes faltered for the first time, and she looked past Mingeaux's shoulder into the cabin, where the castaway slept. The captain seemed to be casting about for some conversational gambit, and Mingeaux leaned back on one heel and crossed her arms, enjoying a moment of pleasure not entirely unmixed with cruelty.

The captain's eyes strayed back to the face of her first mate. "I was writing," she began flatly. "In my cabin. To you."

Mingeaux raised an eyebrow, over which was a tribal tattoo only faintly visible in the light of the spirit-lamp on her desk. She did not reply.

"Then," the captain went on, "it occurred to me that telling you what I have to say in a letter is--somewhat lacking in courage."

"Your courage is not in question," Mingeaux told her quietly. "To anyone."

The captain glanced back over Mingeaux's shoulder at the quiet figure in the bunk. "Perhaps myself..." she murmured, then seemed to shake herself back into awareness. "May I come in?"

Mingeaux swept her arm in a welcoming arc, hoping her sigh was not audible. The captain took a cautious step into the cabin, and her glance fell to the desk, where the edge of Mingeaux's letter was just visible beneath the blank sheet. Giuliana's eyes snapped back up, and there was a glint of humor in them. "I see I wasn't the only one who had that idea," she said to Mingeaux.

"You first," Mingeaux answered, indicating the chair at the desk.

Giuliana took a seat and stared into the flame of the lamp, shaded but strong in the dimness. The ship shuddered and swung in the strengthening weather, and she looked up to Mingeaux, a question in her face.

"Nothing that need concern us," Mingeaux told her. "There is a sheltered cove on that little island, and we'll be able to wait out the storm there."

"So..." Giuliana mused, turning her attention to the flame again, "if we had continued on our course to Santo Domingo, we might have run into the fullness of the storm?"

Mingeaux shrugged. "Perhaps."

"And she," the captain murmured, resisting the temptation to look behind her at the sleeping woman in the bunk, "would most assuredly have been lost."

Mingeaux shrugged again, pretending a diffidence she didn't feel. "I think it likely."

"I know so little of this," Giuliana said, as if to herself. "And yet I challenge you."

"You have precedence of place," Mingeaux pointed out.

"But not of expertise," Giuliana replied. "That kind of thinking is what lost Jena for the Prussians."

Mingeaux wasn't sure what to say, and her first reaction--to laugh--would most decidedly have been disruptive to everyone else in the cabin. "We are hardly at war with the Emperor," she pointed out.

"Nor yet," Giuliana replied swiftly, raising her eyes to Mingeaux's face, "with one another. I hope."

Mingeaux studied the flawless face, which the light of the inanimate spirit-lamp seemed to caress. Until this moment, she would have thought it impossible to be jealous of a bottle of alcohol with a twisted length of wick stuffed into it. You cannot be diverted by her beauty, she reminded herself. You do neither of you a service if you lie to her.

She looked away, considering her words carefully. "Not a war," she said reflectively, "more like a difference of opinion. But one that has rather more serious consequences than a disagreement at the chess-board."

"I understand that now," Giuliana said, looking away. "You recall me to a humanity I had thought lost. I was ready to commit a monstrous--"

"Captain," Mingeaux interrupted, not realizing that she had leaned forward until her hand came to rest with urgent lightness on Giuliana's forearm. "Please." The captain stared at the hand on her arm, then looked up at Mingeaux's face again. "You made the decision to show mercy," she went on, "and we are not yet in a situation in which we have been forced to choose otherwise, thank the Creator Spirit."

In the silence that followed, Mingeaux began to feel quite awkward, although the captain's steady gaze and stillness betrayed no self-consciousness. Mingeaux drew her hand from the captain's arm and said brusquely, "I shall hear no more of this mutinous talk from you."

Giuliana's perfect features quirked in a smile. "Is that what you'd tell one of your sailors?"

"With a threat of three watches in a row, if necessary," Mingeaux replied, wondering what had gotten into her.

"But not a flogging," Giuliana said with a sigh.

Mingeaux wasn't certain what to say to that; her heart grew sick.

"I think," Giuliana said, her spirit withering before Mingeaux's eyes, "that Mam'selle Ste. Claire has lied to us."

You must not dissemble, not when she needs you so badly. Mingeaux's soul went heavy as lead. "I am afraid, Captain, that you are correct."

The silence stretched out this time, and Mingeaux felt beneath her feet the first of a series of long, rolling swells. They were near the little island with the herb that might save their passenger from an agonizing death. She would have to go to the wheel soon and help Spinelli pilot the yacht into the cove.

"Then," Giuliana said, her voice somber in defeat, "Captain or no, I defer to you to guide me from here on out."

Mingeaux moistened her lips and wondered how to answer. Finally, she nodded, and there was another silence. She felt the swells through the floor of the cabin and knew the little island was not far off: good piloting. She would have to commend Spinelli.

"May I ask you a question?" the captain murmured.

"Of course."

Giuliana's voice was more hesitant than Mingeaux had ever heard it. "How did you survive the loss of Brandy's mother?"

For a moment, the heartsick sense of grief came close to bringing her to her knees. She fought her way through the cloud of pain and knelt beside the chair, gripping the back of it hard with one hand. "I--I think..."

Giuliana waved her hand. "I'm sorry, Mingeaux, I shouldn't have asked you that."

"I think," Mingeaux went on, clutching at her sanity, "that there is only one difference between your grief and mine."

"Only one?" Giuliana inquired, lifting an eyebrow, a Mona Lisa smile on her face.

"It is this," Mingeaux said, reaching for the captain's arm again, this time deliberately. "Time... is no longer my enemy... but my friend."

Giuliana swallowed convulsively and covered Mingeaux's hand with her own. "I shall endeavor to remember that." She sat up, looking into the lamp with a sigh, and Mingeaux could see her attempting to control herself. She nodded toward the concealed paper on the desk. "But you had something to say to me?"

Mingeaux took her hand from Giuliana's arm and reached for the paper, which she crumpled gently into a little ball. "It is nothing. I am due on deck."

"I should be honored," Giuliana said, glancing at the bunk behind them, "to sit with her while you make landfall."

* * *

The usual crowd filled the "Bonny Anne" that evening; if there were one or two absences, they went largely unremarked on by the crowd of sailors and dockhands who filled the tables, eating and boasting, drinking and singing. Mistinguette and Brandy were hard at work keeping the tankards filled and the wine-bottles supplied, and so they didn't notice when the door opened for the twentieth time that night.

That is, until the boisterous crowd went silent. Mistinguette turned toward the door and froze, and Brandy, occupied in setting down some fragrant bowls of fish stew, didn't get a chance to glance in that direction for a moment.

When she did, her skin felt as though someone had dashed a bucket of seawater over it.

In the doorway, resplendent in a low-cut gown, stood Genevieve Ste. Claire.

Behind her was the liveried footman who had guided Giuliana Carlisle into Ste. Claire's carriage only a few nights before. He swept a light cloak off her shoulders, an event of which she took no notice. A silly little grin, as mindless as it was incandescent, animated her face.

Brandy felt the hackles rise on her neck as the blonde swept dark eyes over the crowd. She wiped her hands on her apron and opened her mouth to speak, but Ste. Claire, damn her, beat her to it.

"I had thought this place renowned for its liveliness," she said, turning deceptively innocent eyes on Brandy. "An off night, perhaps?"

"Mam'selle," Brandy replied, determined not to be baited. "This is... unexpected." She ran through about six different wordings of her first question, trying to find one that was neither servile nor in any way encouraging, and settled finally on, "Can I get you something to drink?"

Ste. Claire kept the idiot smile plastered on her face. "I'd be delighted!" she exclaimed.

Mistinguette harrumphed, and the sound was loud in the still-quiet room. Ste. Claire shot a furious glance her way, and Mistinguette raised an eyebrow in challenge. Ste. Claire jerked her head at the footman. "Outside until I call you," she murmured, and he inclined his head respectfully and stepped out the door.

Ste. Claire turned back to Brandy, the smile firmly back in place. "Why don't we find a quiet table, and you can have your servant bring us something?"

Brandy felt the anger surge up in her and told herself to watch her temper. "I have no 'servant', mam'selle. I don't believe in slavery."

That was a bit blunt, even for the watching reprobates, and a murmur went round the room. Brandy was still ten feet away from the well-dressed blonde, and it looked to the watchers as if they were set in place for a duel.

"Honestly," Ste. Claire said, turning her luminous smile with intimate warmth on one of the sailors nearest her. "These impossibly virtuous Quakers. What can one do?"

Mistinguette was by Brandy's side in a flash, whispering in her ear. "For God's sake, get her to the garden and find out what it is she wants."

"I know exactly what it is she wants," Brandy murmured back. "A good arse-kicking."

"Have you a table in the back?" Ste. Claire inquired, with all the grace of a thoroughly infuriating aristocrat.

"After you," Brandy said, indicating a table with a sweep of her arm, and Ste. Claire moved with airy assurance toward the back of the room.

"Let me bring you some wine," Mistinguette said in a low voice.

"I will be God damned if you'll serve her so much as a drop of warm spit," Brandy whispered, going to the bar in a fury and picking up a bottle and two glasses. "'Servant', indeed," she muttered to herself, livid, following it up silently with every bit of invective she could think of that could possibly apply to a woman, even if that took some imaginative thought. She strode to the back of the room, and the noise level in the tavern began to rise.

Ste. Claire was occupied in dusting the seat of the chair with her handkerchief. Brandy levered the stopper out of the bottle forcefully and poured two glasses, setting one with a clunk in front of the blonde. Ste. Claire settled herself into the seat with gingerly care, then reached for the glass with some hesitation.

"Poverty isn't catching," Brandy said, fed up.

"Neither, apparently, is common courtesy," Ste. Claire shot back.

Brandy felt her mouth going a funny shape as several rejoinders went through her mind. "You are correct, mam'selle," she said finally. "I've treated you with scant politeness. What is it that you wished to see me about?"

"I thought," Ste. Claire said, "that we might discuss a mutual friend."

It was on the tip of Brandy's tongue to riposte, You have a friend? She reflected that it was both impolite and far too obvious a joke.

"Who?"

Ste. Claire glanced at the table, then looked up at her, mischief in her eye. "Won't you sit down?"

"I prefer to stand, mam'selle," Brandy replied, weary of the pointless sparring. "My partner may require my assistance."

"Ah, yes," Ste. Claire said, and the mischief in her eye grew murderous. "You are skilled in assisting your... partners, are you not?"

Brandy tried to decide if she could kill Ste. Claire with one hand and manage to hold off the eager volunteer assistants with the other; she wanted the pleasure to be hers alone, and Mistinguette had both reach and a couple stone on her. Then she thought that the gaol might not be the best place for a reunion with the Captain, should she ever decide to notice a common bar-maid again in her life, so decorum won out. "Mam'selle Ste. Claire," she said finally, "surely you came for something other than a verbal fencing-match with the poorly armed."

"Indeed," said Ste. Claire, glancing at the tabletop as if she did not approve of its cleanliness. She flicked her handkerchief delicately around the rim of the wineglass, and Brandy regretted not having doped it with nightshade. "I want to buy that necklace you're wearing."

"No," Brandy said, her response immediate.

"I'll give you a good price," Ste. Claire said.

"No."

"A very good price."

"No!" Brandy hissed, leaning over the table on her fists. The locket with Giuliana's initials engraved on it swung into space from between her breasts, catching the light from the lamps, and Ste. Claire fastened her mad eyes, quiet for once, on the gleam of the silver.

The silent standoff took one breathless moment. Self-consciously, Brandy lifted a hand to the necklace, settling it back into place, then straightened.

Ste. Claire looked away again, raising the wineglass and studying the color of the liquid inside. The idiot smile had vanished. "A thousand pounds," she murmured.

Brandy felt for the chair and lowered herself into it gingerly.

"I take it there's nothing wrong with your hearing," Ste. Claire commented, swirling the wine in the glass.

"Why?" Brandy gasped, too taken aback to parry.

Ste. Claire raised the glass to her lips, finally. She took a sip of wine, then held the glass up and crooked an eyebrow at it, with evident respect. "Come, mam'selle," she said, not looking at Brandy. "That's more than my horses cost."

Brandy looked around her. That was more than the tavern was worth. Hell, you could've made a decent bid for all of Haven for a thousand pounds. She looked to Ste. Claire again; the well-dressed blonde refused to meet her eye. "You cannot possibly be serious, Mam'selle Ste. Claire."

Ste. Claire's head snapped toward her, and Brandy recoiled as though a snake had lunged at her with fangs bared. "You can have little idea, mam'selle, how serious I am."

"It's only a piece of silver," Brandy whispered, her hand stealing up to the locket again.

"Which she gave you," Ste. Claire hissed, and Brandy's eyebrow went up. Heedless, Ste. Claire went on. "I seek only to spare you embarrassment, mam'selle. For when she returns to Haven, she won't be pursuing the promise of the pretty trinket that hangs about your lovely little neck."

Brandy's mouth went dry. "And why would that be, mam'selle?"

"Because," Ste. Claire replied, as Brandy thought she might, "the bed she will be warming is mine."

"I don't believe you," Brandy said steadily.

"You think not?" Ste. Claire whispered in a fury, her eyes glittering. "Why d'you think she sailed in such haste? Without bidding you farewell? Could it be that she's found an adventure that thrills her more than your kisses?"

Brandy clenched her jaw so hard she thought her teeth would shatter. "She wouldn't," she said, steadfast.

"You know her better than I, I suppose," Ste. Claire shrugged, tipping up the wineglass and then reaching for the bottle. "Believe me, mam'selle, I know how tempting it is to believe the promises one hears whispered on a caressing tropical night. But not all of them are carven in stone; it is more likely that they are things of the moment, a warm night wind and the darkness."

Brandy shook her head, knowing that the tears were only a few moments away. "She wouldn't."

Ste. Claire lifted an eyebrow. "I truly regret this for you, mam'selle," she said mildly, "but if one cannot have the romance, money can often be a consolation."

"Are you going to need this table all night?" asked an imperious voice behind them, and Brandy whirled to see the implacable form of Mistinguette, hands on her hips, a furious glare directed toward the blonde in the beautiful gown. "Because if you don't," Mistinguette continued, "I have some paying customers who could put it to good use."

Ste. Claire raised her head with a brilliant smile. "Ah, Mistinguette. How lovely to hear your dulcet tones once again."

Brandy thought Ste. Claire had rather missed an opportunity to be insulting; she was faintly surprised. "She reminds me of my obligation to my patrons, mam'selle," she said. She got to her feet, feeling the courage flood through her veins, and stood for a moment looking down at the blonde in the expensive dress. "Mam'selle, since you know Captain Carlisle so well, perhaps you will carry her a message for me."

"Yes?" said the mad blonde, trying to conceal her eagerness and not being entirely successful.

"You may inform her," Brandy said courteously, "that this locket leaves me only when her hand removes it. And when it does, we shall have no talk of money." She turned and nodded to Mistinguette, who jerked her head toward the back; Brandy swept past her into the back of the tavern, heading for her bedroom, with the tears stinging her eyelids.

Thus it was that she was spared the memorable, but subdued, departure of Mlle. Ste. Claire.

* * *

Intrepide arrived at the little island at a dusk that came early, too late to gather the aloe-vera, and spent a restless night moored in the little cove that provided what Mingeaux told herself was perfectly adequate shelter. She was up much of the night tending to the lady in her cabin, and she had quite used up DiFalco's expensive pomade.

The storm had persisted into the next morning, and Mingeaux and Adelaide were out at dawn into a watery and unappetizing-looking light. The rain dripped from the crown of Mingeaux's old-fashioned tricorne, but its deft way of keeping the water from her face made her wonder why the world had given them up. She trudged up the hill from the little cove, her boots sucking into the mud, wondering if any of the aloe-vera would be left alive after the pounding of the storm.

"Mingeaux!" Adelaide called, and the first mate turned her head, a fountain of water sluicing off the hat. "This way!"

Mingeaux fought her way through the mud to Adelaide, who shook the water from her cloak in a spatter of drops. "Down yonder," Adelaide said, pointing down a difficult-looking path to where the little plants were standing up bravely against the rain. Mingeaux's discouraged sigh was obviously audible, for Adelaide clapped her on the shoulder instantly, sending a fan of rain over Mingeaux's face.

"Now, boss," said Adelaide indulgently, "you know that both of us have gotten a good soaking over the lady, and once more won't hurt. Sailors don't bathe often enough as it is."

She was having to raise her voice over the noise of the storm, and Mingeaux cast an apprehensive glance toward the harbor, where Intrepide tossed against her lines, safe but not comfortable.

"Don't worry, boss," Adelaide hollered, her voice stout. "I'd put you up against a storm any day."

"Don't strain your voice," Mingeaux said absently. "At this rate we'll both end up with the ague."

Adelaide gave her an encouraging smile and started down the hill, far more limber than the taller, heavier Mingeaux. She had four of the little plants in her haversack before Mingeaux was able to kneel in the sandy soil the plants grew in.

The blades of the plants, unused to rough treatment in the mostly gentle tropics, were battered and sickly-looking. Mingeaux looked again toward the ship in the cove, wondering if she'd made the right decision.

"She rides higher in the water than most yachts," Adelaide pointed out, hauling a stubborn plant out of the rapidly soaking earth. "She'll be fine."

Mingeaux sat back on her heels. "Adelaide," she began, "is there nothing you cannot turn into an excuse for cheer?"

"Nothing," Adelaide said, and a merry laugh rang out of her. Mingeaux reflected that she didn't know her well; they had met in Marseilles while Mingeaux was putting together a crew that wouldn't mind shipping under a woman's command. Adelaide was a cook on a trading ship that had made the Caribbean circuit, and she had approached Mingeaux openly one day by the wharf, offering to accompany Intrepide to the ends of the earth if Mingeaux would teach her to navigate. Something in Adelaide's sun-speckled face and frank, open eyes had inspired trust, and Mingeaux had hired her on the spot. She had not had cause to regret her impulse.

Mingeaux tugged at another plant. It might've been more prudent just to snip the blades, but she reflected, looking about her, that the plants hadn't long to live, not in this tempest, and that they might as well use them before they were broken to fragments by the pounding of the water.

The plant proved stubbornly rooted to the earth, and Mingeaux had to set her boots in the unreliable, sandy soil to work it loose. Adelaide, without saying a word, wrapped a hand round the plant, and it popped free, with what Mingeaux interpreted as ill-concealed resentment at having a term set to its life.

"I am grateful for your assistance," Mingeaux told, her a bit breathless, and surprised at that.

Adelaide turned a smile on her that looked peculiar, what with the rain dripping from the skimmer perched on her head. "My pleasure, mam'selle."

Her French was terrible, not surprising in an Englishwoman, and Mingeaux grinned before she could help it. Adelaide gave her an expression that combined a determination to find the best with a hint of decidedly unangelic wickedness, and it occurred to Mingeaux to ask, "Why d'you ship with an odd first mate and a crazy captain?"

Adelaide looked away with an unfamiliar shyness, and Mingeaux regretted her question, but did not withdraw it. Adelaide pulled two more aloe-vera plants, not looking at Mingeaux, before she murmured, in a voice Mingeaux could barely hear over the rain, "This is my destiny."

"Destiny?" Mingeaux answered softly, wrenching another aloe-vera from the soil. "What woman speaks of destiny and sailing in the same breath?"

Adelaide scrabbled at the plants before her, not answering for a moment. She looked like she knew her way around a field of plants, and Mingeaux wondered if she hadn't spent a great deal of her life doing just this.

"I think," the sailor said finally, tucking the end of the canvas flap into her haversack, "'tis because you've made me welcome." Her steady English eyes, so like and yet unlike the Captain's, bored into Mingeaux's brain. "Unlike most shippers," she added, her voice low.

Mingeaux had no trouble hearing her. "Yet it's the Captain who's approved of your crewing, women as well as men," she said.

Adelaide seized Mingeaux's canvas sack suddenly, then picked up three plants and packed them into it. "So, then," she said, "I owe two of you my gratitude. For more than the lessons in star-shooting."

Mingeaux studied her as best she could through the rain. Adelaide continued, stolid, loading plants into the sack Mingeaux had set on the inhospitable soil. "And nothing else?" Mingeaux called finally, across the rain.

"Well," Adelaide replied, her mouth crooking in a grin she wouldn't share, "there's one thing gives me hope."

"And that is?" Mingeaux inquired with patience, remembering to seize a few of the aloe-vera on her own.

"That on our next rescue of a damsel in distress," Adelaide called, "the Captain might be the one to shuck her own shirt and hit the water."

* * *

The captain had fixed the door open and lit a lantern. She was trying to read by its light, but the pitch and sway of the ship, and the uncertainty of the light, made it a difficult proposition. Mingeaux carried the little pitcher of aloe-vera gel in one hand, steadying herself with the other as she made her way into her cabin.

Carlisle got to her feet. "You found what you needed?"

"Aye," Mingeaux said gruffly, then added, "Thank you."

Giuliana nodded and put the book aside, then glanced behind her to the bunk, where their passenger still slept quietly. "She's not stirred."

"She'll have to get up eventually," Mingeaux commented, looking about for a place to put the pitcher where it wouldn't spill or break. She didn't dare annoy the cook again so soon; it was a morning lacking in promise anyway, and he wasn't happy that his galley had been invaded by odd-looking and completely inedible plants. His last muttered comments were to the effect that Mingeaux, not he, was going to clean the wringer she'd used.

Giuliana reached for the pitcher and took it from her gently. "May I help?" she asked, her voice almost too quiet to hear.

Mingeaux glanced her way. None of them had gotten much rest the night before, but where weariness simply made most people look haggard, the effect of sleeplessness on the captain was both unexpected and far more disturbing; she seemed not as tall, not as commanding, more inclined to doubt herself. She'd had reason to, if it came to that.

It was unlike the Giuliana Carlisle she had come to know to admit to any weakness, any uncertainty, and the woman whose face invited the lantern-light to adore it struck her suddenly as small and lost, in pain and not knowing when--or if--she'd emerge whole.

Strength waxes and wanes, after all, and it will hurt me none to show a bit of it. "Aye," Mingeaux said.

"How do we begin?" Giuliana asked.

Mingeaux moved toward the bunk, gesturing to Giuliana to follow.

* * *

Brandy had awakened late the next morning, as was only understandable in a woman who ran a late-night business and had spent much of the previous evening soaking her pillow with bitter tears. Now, she was sitting at a table in the front of the main room of the tavern, a mug of coffee close at hand, the account-book open before her next to a fan of papers, some of which were blank. The sunlight streamed through the wide front windows, and she took advantage of the brilliant illumination to study critically the pencil-point she had just sharpened, wondering half-heartedly if it were now capable of plunging through her breast straight to her heart.

Ah, she didn't much feel like making the effort to do herself in; the morning was languid, and she was weary, and the coffee was particularly soothing. A cooling breeze swept through the open door, and she welcomed the caress on her burning forehead. For a moment, she watched the green fronds of the palms along the road swaying in the gentle wind, and her mind bobbed like a cork on the wide sea.

She turned her gaze back to the account-book, which was hardly tempting, and swept her sore, swollen eyes over the row of figures she'd already summed three times. In a bit, she'd have to get up and wash a load of towels.

She was certain it would be difficult to keep her eyes from straying toward the harbor.

Give it up, girl. She's not coming back.

Restless, she tapped the unsharpened end of the pencil against the account-book, looking out the window without seeing anything.

Or if she comes back, it won't be to you.

She was going to have a long talk with God about the advisability of making eyes in a particular shade of blue. She, personally, could have told him that she didn't consider it one of his better ideas. It was, in fact, markedly below kittens and not much above cholera.

And yet that color, like a flash of lightning striking her soul, had never impressed her until she saw it in the infuriating, guarded, tempestuous face she knew her mind would be able to summon up on her death-bed without hesitation. Even if, as she began to suspect would be the case, she never saw it again.

She pulled a sheet of paper toward her and began to scribble idly on it, humming a little tune she barely remembered. Her thoughts began to drift with quiet and sleepiness, and she sank into a reverie that might have led to a sorely-needed nap, were it not that the unwashed towels popped into her head from time to time.

Finally, she sighed herself back into wakefulness, staring out the window through grainy eyes one last time before she got up to do the laundry. She lowered her gaze with another sigh to collect the books and papers, and her hands froze.

There, on the paper, were the words:

And would I know I'd had a heart
Had she not taken it from me?
It seems I never saw the sea
Until I saw it in her eyes,
That air of slumbering tempest
The blue the very soul of God

Astonished, she snatched up the paper and read the lines again in disbelief. Her eyes darted over the tavern, the road, the tossing palms, and then she blinked her tired eyelids and looked again. The lines were still there.

She slapped the account-book closed, shuffling the papers together and stacking them on top. Then she picked up the pencil and bent over the papers, settling herself so that the sun would light what she was doing. She began to scratch out words, and fiddle, and ponder.

The towels could wait.

* * *

It was past noon, two hours since the lookout's bellow "Sail ho!" had caused Jameson to raise her head from the microscope. Now, all of them were ranged along the rail, staring at the approaching ship. She was a two-master, all sail aloft, and she seemed to be trying to reach Discovery with an urgency that bordered on desperation.

"Any further speculation, Mr. Thomas?" Jameson asked quietly.

"I am hopeful," Thomas said, his voice neutral, "that this ship is merely a brigantine and not a brigand."

Jameson stared at him in disbelief. "Mr. Thomas," she said. "That sounded remarkably like a joke."

He was about to answer when Torres and Emilie came up the stairs from the laboratory. The two of them made their way to the rail, studying their rapidly-approaching neighbor.

"All secure in the laboratory, Captain," Torres reported, and Jameson nodded her thanks, her eyes still on the two-master.

"Well, Emilie," Jameson murmured, "it looks as though you're about to have your first adventure." Emilie gripped the rail, her knuckles standing out, and Jameson dropped a reassuring hand on hers.

"Contagion flag aloft," the lookout reported.

Jameson and Thomas exchanged a serious look. "Sickness aboard?" she asked softly.

"Or a ruse," Thomas replied, his voice low.

"Right," Torres said firmly, turning from the rail and moving to go below. "Muskets." She seemed to think better of it halfway across the deck and turned back to Jameson. "Er... that is, Captain, with your permission?"

"Good of you to anticipate my orders, Torres," Jameson said, reminding herself that she would not help the situation by laughing aloud. She turned to the pilot. "Keep us ready for a quick move," she said, and the pilot nodded.

"Is there no way," a subdued Emilie asked the captain, "to reason with them?"

Torres spun on one heel. "Oh, no, you don't, mam'selle," she said, wagging a finger at Emilie. "I finally have the ether evaporator and you in the same hemisphere, and I'm damned if I'm going to let anyone have either of you without a fight." She turned again and grabbed Jack by the shoulder. "Let's see to the guns."

The two of them disappeared below as Emilie turned to Jameson, a question in her eyes. Jameson raised an apologetic shoulder. "It's best to be prudent," she explained, and Emilie grew pale.

As the ship approached, they could see that she looked like a luxury cruiser. She didn't match the description of the pirates they knew to be working the waters, but brigands seldom issued an announcement to the authorities after seizing a private vessel.

Soon she was close enough that they could make out the details. The people on the deck of the brigantine, the sailors and onlookers, were darker of skin and more exotic of clothing than one normally saw in the Caribbean. What Jameson had thought a painted design on the bow was an elegant and ornate script she recognized, but couldn't read. "An Arab ship," she murmured, her brain alive with curiosity. The contagion flag was the yellow one she recognized; wherever had they acquired it? A luxury yacht from another continent, on a pleasure cruise thousands of miles from home?

It couldn't be. "Has she cargo space?" Jameson asked.

"Spices?" Thomas inquired.

"Rare wood?" Emilie asked.

There was one thing they wouldn't bring up, and one of the sailors by the rail crossed her arms and announced grimly, "She hasn't the smell of a slaver." She spat over the rail in the sudden silence.

A little rowboat came around the side of the yacht, carrying two sailors, only one of whom was rowing, and a tall young man in an expensive-looking Western suit. As the rowboat drew up to Discovery's side, the young man looked up, directly into Jameson's face.

The shock of it went to her marrow. He had blue eyes, clear, steady, and direct, and his face, while guarded, had a sculpted fineness. The hair that curled under the brim of his tall hat was the color of straw, glossy and smooth. A Swede, she thought, but could not have told where the thought came from.

"Français? English? Deutsch? Español?" asked the young man.

"Take your pick," Jameson called back. She was rattled enough by the young man not to watch her words as closely as was her wont. "But most of us speak English."

"Ah, God is good," said the young man, and something about his voice caused Jameson to cock her head to the side. "We have a very ill passenger. May I come aboard?"

Jameson heard a metallic noise behind her and turned her head. Torres and three of her peaceable scientists were holding muskets, and Jack, near the stairs that led below, had another.

Jameson turned back to the little rowboat tossing in the water. "Permission."

Two of her crew let the Jacob's ladder down the side, and the rowboat moved in close. The young man seized the end of the ladder and began to climb. One of the sailors called to him in a language none of them recognized, and the young man hesitated for a moment, then turned his head and nodded to the sailor.

Jameson held out a hand when the young man came over the side, taking his elbow and steadying him. The young man straightened and bowed to her, one hand over his chest. He was wearing a gorgeous, precisely-cut suit with a rich blue coat; the hat had obviously been made for him, and was new and fine. "My name," he said, "is Sabamin Tessa."

Jameson bowed slightly, before she remembered that she was an American and that bowing wasn't something she did. "Kathryn Jameson, captain of Discovery, a science vessel out of Dartmouth. A pleasure, sir." She was still a bit unsettled by the presence of the tall blond stranger.

"My master," said Tessa in precise English but with a pronounced accent she couldn't quite place, "is very ill. Have you a physician aboard your vessel?" His speech was rapid, and he seemed to be controlling a great distress.

It was in Jameson's mind to reach out a hand and place it on the young man's. Come, come, Kathryn, she told herself firmly. What is this nonsense? "I'm afraid not," she answered gently, and the young man before her seemed to wilt. "But we are skilled at tropical medicine. It may be that we can be of service to you."

"Have you, perhaps, a stock of medicines?" the young man asked, and Jameson could see a barely-concealed desperation in the steady blue eyes.

"Yes," she answered, relieved. "That we do. And we'd be happy to do what we can."

She glanced over his shoulder to see Torres, scowling with a distinct lack of welcome over the side, where the little rowboat held its stalwart position next to Discovery.

"There is little time, if we are to save him," Tessa began, and the truth burst upon Jameson instantly. This young man was anything but what she had taken him for. Tessa must be the only one aboard who speaks a European language... perhaps they doubted our intentions, but had no other choice.

She had little time to reflect upon her discovery; a woman burst onto the deck of the other vessel, shouting in what Jameson thought might be Arabic; the only word she could distinguish was Tessa.

The figure in the blue coat turned to grip the rail with both hands, looking sick and lost. On the deck of the other ship, a man came pounding up behind the woman, drowning out her voice with his, and in an instant all was pandemonium.

Discovery's boatswain snapped a series of orders to the sailors, who took positions at the ready all over the ship. Torres lifted her musket and aimed over the side at the little rowboat, and the panicky sailor went for the oars to pull it out of range. Jameson called to Torres to stand down as Tessa, listening in apparent disbelief to the argument on the deck of the other ship, began to shake his head.

The man on the deck of the other vessel switched suddenly to English. "Dogs!" he shouted. "That boy belongs to me now!"

"Pull the ship away," Jameson directed, and Discovery's sails leapt up the mast. The ship began to move, and a man on the deck of the other vessel turned to shout orders to his own crew. Jameson had no doubt that they were orders to pursue.

Tessa, standing at the rail, made a sudden move that looked like the beginnings of a leap, and Thomas and Emilie grabbed his arms, wrestling him away from the rail. Jameson spared half a breath for surprise at Emilie's participation in the scrum.

The struggle brought Tessa to his knees, and Jameson went down on one knee before him, reaching out for his shoulder with a firm hand. "Don't fight us," she said. "We just want to know what's happening."

The youngster looked up, tears running down his face. "My master," he gasped in agony, "is dead."

"And do you now belong to that other man?" Thomas inquired.

Tessa shook his head. "No," he said, his voice ragged with pain. "My master and I--we were on our way to Boston, where he was going to set me free."

"Have you proof of that?" Jameson asked with an urgency she couldn't quite explain.

Tessa nodded and patted his jacket pocket. "A paper. He told me never to be without it..."

"And he was right," murmured Jameson, getting to her feet. She looked toward the Arab ship, already a gratifying distance away, hauling the rowboat aboard. She would have to come about to pursue them; they had a decent lead already, and perhaps, with a bit of good fortune and a fair wind, they could get away.

She looked at Discovery's deck. Torres, gripping her musket, glared at the receding ship; Jack, behind her, looked almost as fearsome (except that it was Jack, of course). Discovery's pilot was gauging the wind and murmuring to the boatswain, who turned to pass orders to the sailors. Emilie kept a gentle hand on the shoulder of their unintended guest, who was staring at the Arab ship, weeping without shame. Thomas glanced toward Jameson briefly, then turned his attention back to the boy on the deck.

Except that "he" wasn't a boy.

And now they had a large group of people whose language they didn't speak furious with them.

And they'd probably interfered with someone's property rights.

"Oh, Kathryn," Jameson murmured softly, "what have you gotten yourself into now?"

* * *

Oddly, it was the cessation of the pitching of the ship that awoke Mingeaux from an uneasy sleep in the chair in her cabin. She had checked on her invalid and gone up on deck for a few minutes, taking some air, working the kinks out of her joints, and staring through a ragged patch of cloud at the clean-washed sky.

The storm had left everything looking freshly bathed and new, and she returned below shortly after noon to re-apply the aloe-vera gel, wondering when--or if--the lady in her cabin would awaken. Surely, even in the deepest sleep, she was bound to notice that strange hands were removing her bed-clothing periodically to smear some sticky substance on her naked skin. That would've caused Mingeaux some sleeplessness, she imagined.

She took the cloth away from the bed, crossing the cabin to wring it out over the utilitarian porcelain the shipmates used. Perhaps this was more than sleep. She sighed, willing herself more courage, reminding herself that there was no call for despair. Not yet.

Soon, perhaps. But there was time enough--

"I would have thought angels had no need of a chamber-pot."

Mingeaux whirled at the voice, but covered her startled reaction with a laugh. "You are very confident of your location, mam'selle. I regret to tell you that this is not heaven, but the Caribbean. Not that one can always tell the difference."

"My angel speaks English!" the visitor exclaimed, sounding delighted.

"I just learned it last week. I knew you were coming," Mingeaux said, too giddy to worry about feeling foolish. She set the cloth down gently on the side of the pitcher and began to cross the cabin with slow steps. For some reason, she approached the bed with caution and movements like silk, almost as if she were afraid that the lady in the bed would flit away if she didn't glide.

"Very well, I shall give up on heaven, but I refuse to do without the angel," said the lady.

Mingeaux reflected that it might take her some time to become lucid again. "No angel, I regret to say, but flawed and all too human."

"Like myself." The woman in the bed was studying her with weary but lively eyes, apparently paying little heed to her blistered, angry skin. "Well, then, in that case, I am compelled to say that I need to get up."

For some reason, her voice held her spellbound. It took a moment for Mingeaux to figure out what she was saying. Ah, yes, of course. "Let me help," Mingeaux offered.

"I would rather you left the room--"

"Mam'selle," Mingeaux said firmly, trying to get herself under control, "this is one task you will not be able to perform on your own. I vote that we not even exchange names until the business is concluded."

"But I already know you," the woman countered. "You are my angel."

"And thus completely unconcerned with matters of the body," Mingeaux replied. "I should be most relieved if you were to permit me to assist."

"Not half as much as I," the lady commented, smiling as best she could.

* * *

Jameson lowered the spyglass. "Far off, but still in pursuit."

"Aye." Thomas, standing beside her with his hands clasped behind his back, nodded in understanding. "They are quite determined."

"Can you blame them?" Jameson asked, sounding more sensible than she felt. "We've sailed off with a valuable piece of property."

"Tessa's master," Thomas pointed out, "issued a manumission before his death."

"Believe me," she told him grimly, staring out over the featureless sea to where the Arab ship followed, "nothing would delight me more than to spirit Tessa away from them. But does maritime law prevail, or can we appeal to the colonial authorities? Is this kidnapping, or piracy, or was Tessa freed automatically when the ship sailed out of its home port, wherever that is? And how can we validate that manumission document?" She sighed and leaned against the rail, straining her eyes in vain for an unmagnified glimpse of sail. "And not having an international court of inquiry in my vest pocket, I haven't the answers as yet."

Both of them turned to look at the object of their rescue. Tessa stood at the rail, coat and hat still on, staring back at the Arab ship with an expression that held neither grief nor bitterness. Jameson gave Thomas a significant look and moved down to the rail to where the tall figure stood.

"Mr. Tessa," Jameson began. "Would you care to tell me how you came to this pass?"

Tessa swallowed, but didn't reply.

"Were you always a slave?" Jameson asked. She regretted using blunt language before Mr. Thomas, but she really didn't know how else to go about it.

Tessa shook his head, not looking at her.

Jameson gave Thomas a look that said, If I have to stand here until the sun turns to ash. "Who were your parents?" she inquired.

"Missionaries in the Holy Land," Tessa said, sounding reluctant.

"Missionaries?" Thomas asked, as if he were puzzled.

"Lutheran. From Sweden," Tessa answered shortly, and Jameson felt an irrational surge of pride. I knew it!

"I take it you're now no longer Lutheran," she said dryly. It worked; Tessa turned to her, startled.

"Captain," he said in desperation, "give me back to them."

"No," she said, stretching out the syllable.

"They won't turn back!"

Jameson noted how low and musical Tessa's voice was, what depths and richness it possessed. Was he a singer? For the first time, her certainty vanished. She resolved not to run her eyes over the figure in front of her, trying to decide; after all, it was none of her affair.

"I know the man aboard that ship," Tessa told her, evidently forcing himself to be reasonable. "He won't rest until I'm back there."

"I'm not going to do that, Mr. Tessa," she told him forcefully. "He'll have to learn to live without you."

"But--"

"Your master freed you. It's my duty to find an authority who can vouch for that document. And no, I'm not letting them have you back until the matter is settled." Torres, Emilie, and Jack Sere had come closer to listen to the discussion, and Jameson didn't think it advisable to shoo them away.

"You don't comprehend. He can be..." Tessa's voice had dropped to a lower register, and finally he concluded, "very dangerous."

"So can we," Torres said, her own voice low and filled with menace, and Tessa gave her a searching look.

Finally, it was Emilie who cut through the fog and got to the heart of it. "M. Sabamin," she asked, in accented English, "do you wish to return to them?"

For one breathless moment, Tessa stared at her, then he shook his head in negation.

"Then that's settled," Jameson said, dusting her hands.

Tessa turned the blue eyes, as rich with depth as the sea, full on Jameson. There was despair and grief and uncertainty in those eyes, but also a determination as strong as steel. Such a young life, so rich with promise and yet filled with--what? Tragedy? Triumph? Some of each? Suddenly, she wanted very much to listen to Tessa tell her all about his life. Jameson, struck into speechlessness by the expression in those eyes, almost missed it when Tessa whispered, "Shachkmat."

Jameson was about to ask for a translation when a sudden noisy flurry caught her attention. She turned to see her chief engineer with her fowling-piece in her hands and a stubborn, just-try-it look on her face. Jack Sere was loading his pistol, which he handed to Thomas for safekeeping, and checking the blade on his sword. Jameson found her hand curling around a belaying-pin, not really having too many other options, and the three of them turned to face the still-distant, but now visible, Arab ship.

Finally, reason won out, and Jameson commented, "Stand down. They're hours away, if they catch us at all." Torres looked disappointed, and Jack took his pistol back from Mr. Thomas with a sheepish expression.

"He will follow you until the earth runs out of wind," Tessa commented.

"Then he'll find a hurricane waiting for him at the end," Torres growled.

"Torres," Jameson said patiently. She studied the water running under the keel, the rush of the wavelets and the bubbling white froth. "Tessa," she said, raising her head to look into the blue eyes, "do you really think we could turn you over to a man who would ignore your master's dying wishes?"

Tessa didn't appear to have much of an answer; he appeared puzzled, in fact. "This area, I am informed, is one in which a system of slavery is the norm."

"And not all of us approve," Jameson said in a low voice. "Especially not when someone claims as property a young man who has a manumission paper in his pocket."

Thomas was staying out of the discussion, and Jameson would not involve him without his consent. She wondered if he found this painful to hear; his expression, however, was as neutral as it could be. She didn't wonder at that.

She moved thoughtfully to the chair pegged into the deck and took a seat, staring momentarily out at the sea, where the Arab ship hung maddeningly still between the sea and the sky, not drawing closer, but not receding either. Jack began to unload his pistol, and Mr. Thomas took it from him before he could blow an unintended hole in the deck or himself.

For a moment, no one said anything. Jameson swept her eyes over all of them: Torres quietly livid, Thomas busying himself with a careful unloading of Jack's pistol, Jack watching him with curiosity, Emilie studying the tall, still figure in the blue coat and tall hat. Why didn't Tessa take his hat off? And his coat? He must be stifling.

"What is it," Jameson commented, and in the silence all heads swiveled toward her, "that you did for your master?" She turned to reach out with one hand to grasp the end of the belaying-pin, then looked back, directly into Tessa's eyes. "Concubinage?"

The shock that succeeded this word told her everything she needed to know. Tessa flinched, and a horror came to root in his face. "No," he said in a near-whisper. "My service never included that."

It would if you went back, Jameson thought, not pointing this out. And are you prepared to comply?

"Then..." Jack asked Tessa, fumbling for the words, "what?"

Tessa turned to Jack with courtesy. "I kept his accounts."

This grew more and more curious. A slave keeping the books? A gorgeous, exotic, accomodating creature who could have enriched his master considerably in any brothel? And Tessa merely worked sums all day?

"Anyone else," Thomas pointed out, "would surely be able to pick up the accounts where you left off."

"In my head," Tessa replied, by way of clarification.

There was a brief silence, and Jameson gave the tall young man an admiring look. Thus it is that life contrives, not merely to continue, but to thrive.

"Smart girl," Torres commented bluntly.

The people on Discovery's deck were stunned into silence, and every head whipped toward the stiff, silent blue-coated figure at the rail. Tessa got, as if it were possible, paler than before.

"Tessa," Jameson said formally, getting to her feet, "please allow me to introduce Belinda Torres, my chief engineer and least manageable blabbermouth."

"Ah--I do apologize, mam'selle," Torres said, and Jack's head snapped toward her in utter shock.

Tessa nodded, a trapped look in her eyes.

"Come, Tessa," Jameson said gently. "Can it be that none of them had any suspicions? After all, men are seldom so beautiful."

"You must be ready to roast in that coat," Emilie pointed out, pragmatic and warm, and as Tessa watched in disbelief, Emilie took the coat gently from behind and helped her out of it. Jack gestured toward his head, and Tessa took off the hat, handing it to Emilie, who turned and went below.

"Have a seat," Jameson said, indicating her chair. Tessa moved as if in a dream and sat, and Jameson glanced back out to sea, where the Arab ship still pursued.

Jameson went to one knee to look into Tessa's downcast face, the shape of it so strong and yet so soft. How could she have had any doubt? "Tessa," she said gently. "If no one has yet told you how very lovely you are, surely your... erstwhile new master has thought of it. He may not want you for himself; he might long for the extraordinary amount of gold you would represent." After all, it can't be often that a tall, beautiful Swedish virgin comes on the market in Tripoli, she thought, the bitterness of it a surprise.

As the sun began to sink in the West, Tessa buried her face in her hands.

* * *

The lady had been made more comfortable and a bit more presentable, and she and Mingeaux had managed to remain cordial through it all, which was a mild surprise to both. It was difficult to tell anything about her; a tattered linen shirt gives few clues as to the identity of its wearer, and when the shirt is all a lady is wearing, the clues one gets might well be misleading.

She had thought that her guest might be burdened by modesty, and was relieved to discover that she had a level-headed practicality about the body that had been so battered by what must certainly have been an ordeal. Despite her curiosity, Mingeaux had not so much as asked her name, nor offered hers in return. She thought they might welcome a bit more formality before they exchanged pleasantries.

When the lady was settled into clean sheets, wearing an old, soft shirt Mingeaux kept aside for difficult days aloft in the rigging, Mingeaux handed her a cup of weak tea and announced that she thought it high time their guest met the captain.

"I should be delighted," the guest answered, taking a cautious sip. Her lips were terribly sunburnt, and even the aloe-vera was unable to stop her skin cracking. It was going to take a long time for her to recover, Mingeaux thought, but then a dizzy sensation of triumph shot through her, and she had to clutch at the doorway to keep herself upright. She leaned out the doorway to bellow, "DiFalco!"

The gunner was at the door so quickly that Mingeaux suspected Carlisle had stationed her at the head of the stairs. "The captain?" DiFalco asked eagerly, and Mingeaux nodded, wiping off her grin with her hand.

DiFalco pattered back up the stairs, and in an instant Carlisle's form blocked the sunlight from above. "Is she awake?" the captain asked in a low voice as she made her way below.

Mingeaux nodded. "Aye. And looking forward to meeting you."

"I'm certain," Carlisle answered dryly, "that it will be the high point of her week."

Mingeaux preceded the captain into her cabin, and the lady made shift to sit up a bit, which must have been painful. Mingeaux gestured to her to relax as Carlisle held out a hand.

"Giuliana Carlisle," she said, in a flawless, beautiful English accent that made Mingeaux's knees go rubbery somehow. "Captain of the Intrepide, out of Marseilles."

The lady took Carlisle's hand in a grip that was as strong as she could make it, considering. It still made Mingeaux wince. "Hester Brundage," the lady replied, "captain of nothing, God be praised."

"And you know Mingeaux," Giuliana said, turning courteously to the tall, tattooed woman behind her. "My first mate and primary conscience."

Mingeaux opened her mouth to protest when the lady said, "Mingeaux? Is that your name?"

She had turned dark grey eyes, alive with a birdlike curiosity, on Mingeaux, and for a moment, the first mate forgot what language they were speaking. I never even knew what color her eyes were. And yet she's been here, in this cabin, a day and a night...

She came to herself to see Giuliana and Miss Brundage looking at her politely, waiting for her to speak. Both of them looked as though they'd wait patiently until Doomsday. "Yes--ah--that is--"

"You'll have to forgive us, Miss Brundage," Giuliana said, a warmth in her voice. "We're not entirely accustomed to hearing you speak."

"You'll get tired enough of that soon enough, I'll warrant," said Miss Brundage with a laugh. She turned her head and fixed Mingeaux with great dark eyes, the only thing that looked alive in that blasted, blistered face. "Mingeaux," she said, pronouncing it perfectly. "Is it French?"

"Maori," Mingeaux replied, feeling her face grow as red as Miss Brundage's.

"I should have thought seraphic," Miss Brundage said.

"Still seeing angels in unlikely places, mam'selle?" Mingeaux turned to Giuliana. "I'm certain this mania will depart with the fever."

"I'm not so certain she isn't right," Giuliana said, giving Mingeaux a smile that made her very uncomfortable.

There was a spark of tempted fascination in Miss Brundage's eyes, but Mingeaux could see her putting it away for later. For something to do, Mingeaux picked up the cup of tea and handed it across the foot of the bed to Miss Brundage, her long reach for once an advantage in the small cabin. Miss Brundage took the tea with a murmur of thanks, and Giuliana moved out of the way, to stand by the door, where a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight threaded its way down the stairs to rest along her shoulders.

"I suppose you would like to know," Giuliana remarked, "how we found you and how long you've been asleep."

"And I'm certain you're equally curious about what I was doing circumnavigating the globe with no oars," Miss Brundage replied.

Mingeaux laughed, and Giuliana gave Miss Brundage a broad, unselfconscious grin, settling herself into the chair by the cabin's tiny desk. "I'm not much more experienced as a sailor myself, I assure you," Giuliana answered, the liquid accent running over Mingeaux's skin in waves. She must be more tired than she thought.

"So you recall being on the sea?" Mingeaux asked, curious.

"Indeed," Miss Brundage replied, turning to her, which must have been a bit painful. "I was aware of everything, the first two days. After that, I must have drifted a bit."

"Seeing angels," Giuliana commented to Mingeaux, her voice bland. She turned back to Miss Brundage, holding up a hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight. "You're fortunate we saw you, Miss Brundage. For a time, Mingeaux here was very busy keeping you alive."

Mingeaux couldn't take it any longer. "Mam'selle Brundage--what were you doing out there?"

"Escaping," she said simply.

Mingeaux's eyebrows shot up, and she glanced at Giuliana, who looked startled. "Escaping?" the captain asked.

"Escaping," Miss Brundage repeated, taking a sip of her tea as if this were an everyday thing.

"Pirates?" Mingeaux inquired, at a loss.

Miss Brundage looked at her over the edge of the cup. "Slavers," she replied.

Giuliana and Mingeaux exchanged a serious look. Giuliana, out of patience with the sunlight, moved the chair a bit, then settled back. The sunlight hit the captain's face, and Miss Brundage's eyes grew wide. As well they might, Mingeaux thought. 'Tisn't often that your rescuer is also the most beautiful woman in the--

Annoyed, she shook her head. This was getting them nowhere. "Slavers, you say," she said, trying to keep her mind on things. "May I ask, mam'selle, where you're from?"

"Massachusetts," said Miss Brundage, and Giuliana nodded, as if this explained something, but Mingeaux didn't know what. "I was running a Quaker school for native children on an island known as 'L'Île Mouette'."

"I've heard of it," Mingeaux said, nodding to her to continue.

"You're a Quaker?" Giuliana asked.

"An imperfect one, I'm afraid," Miss Brundage sighed.

"So are we all, unfortunately," Giuliana told her softly. "Will you go on?"

Miss Brundage looked at Giuliana again, seeming to hesitate before she continued. "The slavers swept over the island one day. They took all the children--" For a moment, Miss Brundage's gaze dropped to the bedcovers. She looked up at Mingeaux again, her eyes dry, and picked up the story. "And took me to write up records for them."

"Records?" Giuliana asked, baffled. "Records of what?"

"Name, age, height, weight, sex, lineage," Miss Brundage replied. "Buyer. Price."

Giuliana looked a bit sick, and again Miss Brundage watched her with unnatural attention, her clear grey eyes fixed on the captain's face as if to memorize it.

"How long were you at your desk?" Mingeaux asked, and Miss Brundage turned back to her attentively.

"Almost a year," she said. "I've kept careful records." For the first time, Mingeaux could see the weariness under Miss Brundage's carefree cheer.

Giuliana ran a hand over her face, looking away. Mingeaux had little trouble guessing what might be passing through her mind at the moment. The daylight was fading, and Mingeaux got up to light the lantern. As it caught, she turned to see Miss Brundage staring at the captain again.

"How did you contrive to escape?" Giuliana asked.

"I stole a boat from them," she said forthrightly. "I rigged a sail of my dress, but it was swept overboard while I slept one night. After that, I drifted."

"Right into our path, thank the Creator Spirit," Mingeaux commented.

"How did you know you would be rescued?" Giuliana asked.

Miss Brundage studied her again by the light of the lantern. It was almost as though she were fascinated and yet strangely resistant. She must have been exhausted; perhaps it was time for her to sleep again, unlikely as it seemed. "I didn't. I begin to think that God is not done with me yet; He's held me in the palm of His hand until now, and perhaps I may yet do Him a service..." Mingeaux could see her fighting a yawn.

"You have Mingeaux here to thank for your rescue," Giuliana told her, her eyes shadowed, and Mingeaux held her breath lest the captain say anything more.

Miss Brundage turned her head stiffly to look at Mingeaux again, the sober grey eyes dancing. "I knew you were an angel," she said unexpectedly.

"I thought Quakers didn't believe in them," Mingeaux replied.

"A very imperfect Quaker," Miss Brundage told her, and Mingeaux finally laughed.

"Where is it that you want to go now?" Giuliana asked, and Mingeaux was touched by the implied offer of assistance.

Miss Brundage turned to look at the captain, and again there was that odd hesitation, and the distracted stare. "I--I suppose you could let me off at the nearest port... I should like to find my children, if God permits, or spend what remains of my life in the attempt, if He is so gracious as to allow it."

"A laudable goal," Mingeaux said cautiously, reflecting that she didn't care to spend the next half-century sailing the Seven Seas, eradicating the evil of slavery one unfortunate at a time.

Miss Brundage didn't appear to hear; she was lost in thought, her eyes locked on Giuliana's face.

And Giuliana had had enough of the stares, evidently. "Miss Brundage," she said politely, crossing her arms, "does your fever convince you, perhaps, that I have sprouted wings?"

Mingeaux was a bit surprised; surely this poleaxed reaction of stupefied inattention wasn't new to the captain. And their guest had been ill, and was probably very tired.

Miss Brundage seemed to shiver a bit, then she tried to smile as best she could through her cracked, sore lips. "I do apologize, captain," she said hastily. "It's just that--" She seemed to hesitate again, and then whispered, "You look so much like her..."

The shock went straight to Mingeaux's heart. For one moment, Giuliana was frozen in her seat. Then she crossed the cabin slowly and leaned in as close as she could to the battered woman in the bunk, making a visible effort not to place her hands on the burnt skin. "Who?" she asked softly.