Bilge Water

Serenica treated her nerves to a vast display of different injuries and infections. The crew sure knew how to acquire them. The four Johns were but a prelude – with Gadfly fully and completely healed, there were still many with syphilis symptoms, a few who had had a mild fever for days, and of course, plenty of those with scurvy. Serenica wondered how that was even possible as the kitchen was armed with magically preserved lemons.

"They taste awful once they've been put in jars!" Seppei defended his poor life choices.

Serenica considered tying him into a chair and forcing the fruit down his throat.

She tasted the lemons. It was true – Spade was no master of preservation. Perhaps all of his magical capabilities were spent on getting the dead to chat nicely with him.

"If you're having difficulties with them, I can give the boys some advice," the Admiral said. He had walked in without knocking, a pipe in hand, blowing smoke into her little workspace. "They will listen to me."

"They will listen to you or I'll make them weep," Serenica said. "I am done. I have spent all my strength trying to not run away from a moving corpse."

"He showed you?"

"I'd have preferred if he didn't," Serenica muttered. "Will you please close the door after you? I am paranoid."

"He'll find out everything you say regardless," the first mate said, but closed the door nonetheless. "I promised I'd help you calm down."

"Sit down with me," Serenica said. "Sit down and give me a handful of that good pipe tobacco. I need a friend right now."

Serenica found out many things that night, some of them things she'd preferred not to know, like intimate details of how deep the well of Spade's madness went.

"And we had to stitch him up," the Admiral finished a particularly gruesome story and looked at her. "But this isn't what you want to hear, is it? You want to think it's all an elaborate hoax. I wish I could say that. But it gets us what we need and we need to accept it."

"If you told him to quit, would he?"

The first mate gave no answer.

"What you need to hear is that Myorka talked to me about you."

Serenica was confused. "Why didn't she reach out to me herself?"

"I think she's afraid of you."

"Why would she be afraid of me? I have more reason to be afraid of her."

"Perhaps the feeling is mutual. Fear can lay the foundation for something better."

Serenica shook her head. "First the fear must go away, if we're talking about respect."

"You don't want to know what she said?"

"Of course I do. I'm sorry."

"She's got an offer for you. Frankly, I wonder why she even hopes to succeed anymore…"

"She's a woman in her prime reproductive years. I think if anyone has hope, it's her."

"She has a written permission for the Medical Institute of Western Sennas."

The words hit Serenica like a cannonball in the chest.

A permission to study to become a doctor.

"Is it general or specialized?"

"It's a specialized one, yes, meaning that you could take advantage of it."

"What are her terms? I'll do anything."

"You will help her bleed."

There had been an awful lot of bleeding lately, but this was one of the few situations where it was a positive thing. As a woman and as a human being Serenica felt deeply for the bookkeeper, not because she would have wanted to procreate herself, but because it felt so wrong to have that choice taken away. She had no idea if she would have been a different person in Myorka's shoes. Some people did not get the chance to find out for themselves. That was the crux of the problem for Serenica, and even if it hadn't been about her own future, she would still have wanted to help.

She breathed in as deeply as she could, trying hard to conceal her excitement.

"You will do it?"

"I will," she said. "I will help her bleed if it's even possible."

"You are the best Neul has to offer. If you can't do it, no one can."

A huge rocking motion of the ship caught them off guard. Serenica almost dropped her pipe.

"Mother of worms! When I was on the deck, the seas were calm!" she yelled. She was not accustomed to the roughest that the ocean had to offer.

"He's done it again," the Admiral said, looking very annoyed. "He's done it to the weather. This happens every time he messes with the winds."

"Spade? A Karshaan man? Unable to command the winds?"

"He's the worst at it. Come, let's see if he has cooked up a proper storm."

The storm had appeared so suddenly and violently that Serenica instantly recognized it as a magical one. The skies had darkened and only the light of distant lightning strikes illuminated the waters around them, waves as high as houses, rocking the Princess with a restless fervor.

The lamps were lit and Serenica almost regretted seeing the depths into which they could be swept by the water.

"The water belongs…" she muttered.

"But we're not in it. Not yet. Spade!" the Admiral yelled.

The captain was at the helm with Gadfly. He didn't hear his first mate, or if he did, he didn't reply.

Serenica grabbed the nearest rope and dragged herself towards Spade.

"You go and stay with Myorka! You have no business here!" the captain yelled at her.

"Don't go!" Gadfly screamed. "There is a ghost! It's safer up here!"

Serenica looked at the Admiral. He looked right back at her.

"Is there something I should know?" He asked a man who was running across the deck, trying to keep all the lanterns lit.

"John saw a stranger climb from the hold moments before the storm begun."

It was clear to Serenica that there was an actual freeloader aboard. Spade said he had seen someone, too, and he didn't seem like the type to see ghosts. Serenica didn't know what explanation made her feel more scared.

"They'll find him and kill him, and then Spade will interrogate him," the bookkeeper said. "This stuff happens. There's no reason to panic."

When an hour had passed and no intruder had been found, Spade consulted Serenica about the search for the freeloading man who was apparently frail-looking enough to pass as a ghost to John and Gadfly. Serenica didn't know which John was the crazy one, but she could well imagine that a place in the crew would be heaven for a poor sailor, and again, no signs pointed towards an actual ghost being aboard.

The captain wanted Serenica to search the hold as she was as small as Myorka and somehow more expendable despite being the healer.

"You have some skinny boys who can do it for you," Serenica said. "The damn ship is already rocking like it intends to tumble over and leave us all at the mercy of the waters. I'm not doing it."

"We can handle a storm. But if we have a saboteur aboard…"

"Then send one of your men. You need me too much."

"I was hoping that you'd go. You're ferocious yet small enough to get past the barrels and boxes."

Serenica rolled her eyes, took a lantern and went into the hold.

Bilge water splashed around her boots but it wasn't as bad as her adventure near the river.

She eyed the contains of the hold. There was one spot that could have theoretically hidden a man.

She crawled next to the wall past a barrel and tried to protect her lantern.

A box was in her way.

Serenica squeezed herself a few inches further. The box was so close to her that she couldn't breathe properly.

Suddenly a jerking movement pushed her in such a tight spot that she feared for her ribs. She wondered if she would make it out alive. The box was crushing her, she could not move.

The mother of all panic attacks came upon her and she thought she would scream for help soon.

"Boys!" she hollered, finding her voice strained from her shallow breathing.

"What is it?" the low, comforting voice of the Admiral replied.

"The boxes! They're crushing me!"

"Which ones?"

Serenica heard someone pull whatever cargo they could move from her way. They didn't budge much, but they could be shifted just enough to let her crawl ahead, not comfortably, but without the fear of being crushed. There was a narrow gap ahead, though, and Serenica would have to do the rest on her own. She thanked the first mate and sighed.

She pushed further with all her strength and as the lantern illuminated the last hiding spot, she saw someone she had not expected to meet again.

It was the young man she had headbutted in the Blue Girl.

Serenica pointed her gun at the scared face with hollow cheeks. The man or the boy looked downright miserable. He had a black eye and a split lip, and he hadn't been eating too much either judging by how thin he was.

"There's people who want to talk to you," Serenica said. "I'd recommend you follow me."