"So? What do you think?"

Marlowe eyed Flux Levity with an unfair measure of apprehension. She was the most beautiful thing I had clapped eyes on since… Merdagh knew when. Her three masts rose high into the blue above us, and her decks shone in the sun. Excepting, of course, the few spots where the damp had eaten into the wood and rotted small holes in it. But her keel was strong, her gunnels wide and her sails despairingly empty.

"She looks….tired, Owen," Marlowe said carefully, delegating his weight to the cane he walked with.

"She's strong," I insisted. I thought it extremely unfair of Marlowe to judge her so quickly, before he'd even set foot on her. The second I had planted my foot on her decks, I had felt the sea beneath her and knew that she would carry me over oceans and ports, through squall and doldrums. She was stout and beautiful and she made my heart sing like sirens. I loved her with my entire soul. I wondered if every captain felt like this about his ship. Because while I had officially labeled an extremely reluctant McCrea her captain, she was mine. I felt it all the way down to my toes.

Marlowe glanced at me, his expression bordering on sympathetic. "Tell me you didn't pay too much for her, Owen."

"Half my savings," I mumbled. Resolution straightened out my spine. I would not be made ashamed of her. "C'mon. Step aboard. You'll see."

He tapped his cane on the end of the gangplank. "She doesn't inspire much. You'll have a shabby time trying to get McCrea on her."

I stepped onto the gangplank and paused halfway across, extending a hand in invitation. "You're not seeing her clearly," I insisted. What other reason could there be for him to judge her so? A gentle breeze gusted over the water, rifling through my hair. So light. So real. I could scarce recall a time where I had ever felt so alive.

Marlowe wrinkled his nose and took an awkward, shuffling step onto the plank. "I hate the in-betweens," he muttered. "I'm happy enough on land and happy enough at sea, but…" he trailed off, biting his lip in concentration. I backed off the plank to give him space, and the second my boots hit the deck, I felt it again: the inexplicable feeling of home.

"I fear I might put my stick through the deck," Marlowe said, prodding the planks with his cane. Then, stepping at last onto my ship, he shook his head. "She's not pretty. She's not hardly sturdy."

"Just give her a chance," I interrupted.

Marlowe snapped his fingers, presumably to shut me up. "I'm sure she'll prove me wrong. Women usually do. Only I'm not set on seeing Merdagh’s heart before I see where we’re going, and McCrea…” he huffed a strange little laugh. “McCrea is even less likely to board her.”

I set my jaw, looking around at the ship. If I was being all kinds of honest, I could understand Marlowe’s hesitancy. The rot spots on the deck would need to be patched, and she would need a crew to liven her up. But I was convinced. Flux Levity would carry us.

“You ought have asked me before you bought it,” Marlowe lamented, but his steps had gained confidence. “I’d have helped you haggle the price down.”

She’d done it again. Without me even saying a word, I could hear her weaseling her way into Marlowe’s heart like she’d done to mine. I’d no doubt that she’d do the same to McCrea.

Well. I had a few doubts.

“Where is McCrea, anyways?”

Marlowe snorted, picking his way toward the bow of Flux Levity. “He’s sulking,” he said, awfully matter-of-fact. “He doesn’t like it when people make up his mind for him.”

I frowned. “So why did you, then? I thought you two got along.”

A strange look froze Marlowe’s face. “Oh, yes,” he murmured. “We get along, alright. But half of times, he’s too drunk to make up his own mind, so I am…inclined to do it for him.”

That was going to have to change. My captain could not spend the majority of his time slobbering drunk. I needed clarity. I needed stability. McCrea had neither. But then, I needed pliability, someone I could fool. McCrea wasn’t smart, but if he was sober he would be able to tell the difference between southeast and northeast.

Which brought me to Marlowe. A ripple of doubt struck me. Why was I so set on having a smart navigator, and one that had been on the Jenny to boot?

“What’s playing at your mind?” Marlowe asked, snagging me from my thoughts. What a terrible time for it, too. I had been so deep in my deliberation that the interruption left me nearly incapable of forming an answer. It couldn’t be the truth, but how could I lie? He’d find out. He was going to find out one way or another.

“I’m…thinking,” I said, internally wincing at how much like an idiot I sounded.

“I can see that,” Marlowe chuckled, granting me a window into a time where his laugh had been the ugliest and most frivolous sound I had ever heard. It had aged with him, unfortunately. Things had changed ever so much. “What about?”

The truth clouded my throat, but I couldn’t quite force it out, so I lied around it. “We need a crew. And a cat.”

“A cat?”

“Remember the rats on the Jenny?”

Marlowe shuddered. “Vividly.”

He would have. I did, too. I remembered throwing sacks of meal overboard because rats had chewed their way into it. I remembered McCrea leaving a dead rat in my boot while I slept, the bastard. I remembered shooing them away from Marlowe’s festering leg and trying to boil their vile little carcasses so we didn’t starve while we repaired the Jenny. I also remembered spending a night being violently ill over the railings as my body refused the sad attempts at nutrition.

“Cat,” I repeated.

Marlowe nodded. “Cat.”

“We’ll patch the deck,” I said. “D’you think she needs a coat of paint?”

Marlowe raised a fair eyebrow in my direction. “I don’t think a coat of paint is going to convince anyone that she’s more than an old whaling ship, but you could try.”

“She’ll outlast the end of worlds,” I said stubbornly.

“But will she outlast your endeavor?”

I froze. That was a very direct question, and one that implied Marlowe suspected my motives. “What do you mean by that?”

He waved me over, leaning on the railing overlooking the harbor. I joined him, my heart drumming erratic beats against my breastbone. Marlowe was quiet for an unjustly long moment, and then he turned to face me. “You’ve been all manner of secretive with this venture. I agreed to it because I thought perhaps I could… but I need to have the truth, Owen. I have a hunch, but I need to be sure. What are we really after?”

I swallowed. The tides rocked Flux Levity beneath me, and I weighed the decision before me. Marlowe would discover the truth. From my mouth? It was that, or my silence would equate with betrayal and I'd have a full mutiny on my hands.

"Gil'he-moahr," I admitted.

Marlowe closed his eyes very slowly, as if he had been desperately hoping I'd say something sensible and had been bitterly disappointed. "I suspected as much," he said finally.

I cleared my throat. It did not remove the feeling of guilt that had begun to build there.

There was something raw and broken in Marlowe's voice when he asked me why.

"I want to return to the north," I said. "Face the past." Or whatever drivel people did to come to grips with their failed childhoods. I was not going to give myself to the history I had with the gil’he-moahr. At least, that was the story I would tell.

Marlowe tapped his palm on Flux Levity's railing, still fixing his gaze far away over the harbor. "It's been years since the Jenny," he noted. "Things have changed. McCrea and me aren't good people anymore, and the second we enter the territory of the 'moahr, they will waken."

"I need no help beckoning them," I said. My brain reeled through every fashion in which I was not an angel. I could feel the blood rushing to my face. "I need help killing them."

Shit. My idiotic mouth. I'd had no intention of telling anyone that before it was too late to turn back. Marlowe's stunned stare was more than an adequate reminder why not.

"You're mad," he hissed. "Stark raving mad."

I could have pitched myself into the sea and drowned. My stupid, stupid mouth had run away again. Now what? The breeze suddenly felt less like being alive. "I suppose you'll want to back out of the deal, then."

Marlowe slid his palm over the railing, which was worn smooth by winds and the salt of the sea. There was a spot right under Marlowe's hand that was worn a little darker and a little smoother than the rest, as though some great captain had stood before where he stood now, performing the same mindless, near-loving gesture.

"Marlowe?"

He took a sharp, sudden inhale and turned away from the sea. "Excuse me," he said abruptly, and I listened to the tik, scrape-thump of his footstep as he walked away.

Merdagh's tit. That had gone poorly. I had spent more than I had admitted on Flux Levity, and now I had lost the entire foundation of my endeavor. Because without Marlowe I had no McCrea, and without the pair of them I had no one with experience to take on the northern seas. Seafarers were a superstitious lot, and nobody would willingly sign onto a northerly expedition with a captain like me.

I cursed sourly under my breath and stormed toward the ship's cabin. I had moved my few belongings here immediately after purchasing her. At least, if I had nothing else, I had a place to stay. The bunk was narrow and hard and did its very worst to cradle me as I flopped onto it. Furious, defeated tears blazed their trails towards my mouth, and I scrubbed them away.

Yes, the bunk was wicked heartless, but Flux Levity rocked me sweetly until I was asleep.