THE ICE MASTER

your shipmate. what a simple, silly phrase to speak — what a limiting way to summarize nyima. ( yet a phrase he would say himself. what use were words made of gold and silver? what use was saying her name aloud here, in the place that would keep her body? ) teo took the words ephraim offered, and it was the first time, out of all the crew of the promethean, that he believed them. strange, wasn’t it? that sorrow might bring this too, this inkling of something he might call trust one day. 

“no, it isn’t,” teo returned. not a clip of anger to the words, just simple truth. what use was saying sorry aloud here, in the place that killed her, that demanded blood for blood? 

“when the promethean sails on, will you be onboard?”  will you sail to the ends of the world with them, or will you stay here instead? or, or, will you choose something else entirely? 

———

All the while, Ephraim watches him steadily, something grounded in his eyes despite the way the earth falls out beneath them each morning of late. It isn’t. It doesn’t bear repetition, either. There’s no words for the lost, now. Only those for the living, and Ephraim’s all but spent of them.

“Question of the hour,” he grunts as he swirls his glass between callused hands. On and on. Watches the draught whirlpool into its own depths. “I’d hate to be away from her, Teo,” the Promethean, he admits. His charge. His home. “Aye, though,” and these next words he chooses carefully— no, painfully; as if each syllable snags as barbed on his tongue, “far as I can see, I haven’t got the choice.” Knuckles flash white as he seizes his glass in place, sends the draught on one last spin before it settles out and bears no trace of the disturbance.

“An Icemaster holds his Captain in confidence. I held mine down the end of a barrel,” he recounts through grit teeth. Captain Estrada, as he’s conduct-bound to call him; honor-bound to. At the time, bending the knee to him felt like so many before it. At the time, he had moved without thinking. “Could’ve had Estrada between the eyes.” He taps his right trigger finger to the cool curve of his glass, as if to recall the way that metal had kissed the crook of it when loyalties split. When the skirmish boiled over in that breathless moment at landfall. The only thing stopping him, Malachy’s stepping in his way. Did you mean to? Did you want to? Ayla had asked of him at port. Yes, he’d nearly cried, then. A confession both salt-brined and saccharine to the taste. I wanted it so badly it near gnawed me through. But the budding question, the seedling doubt: why? Had it been different, would he have joined him? Had it not been reuniting with his family, seeing Canning Town once more on the line, what of Estrada’s siren song then? 

Any good Captain. Any good Ice Master. And they are; the pair of them- they’re the best. She can’t imagine anything different. Can’t think to any possibility that doesn’t respect them the same as her. “Say you both knew then. It doesn’t make a difference.” Not now. Not when she knew too. If she did. Ah, but she’s not a member of the crew, she doesn’t belong, she doesn’t have the experience. And yet she knows people better than anyone, knows the beasts too. Always looks right at everything to prove that she sees it. She fucking knew.  They all knew.  Didn’t have to be Estrada, could have been a guest, could have been the deckhands, could have been the ship itself. Just a reversal, or some full stop in the water. A declaration that it’s done. Done with all of this. Tired. Fear and uncertainty either freeze you or push you. And they’ve had the freezing. They’ve had the trap. So of course they’re springing forward now, of course they’re rushing to the unknown because it’s better than being without any control of movement at all. 

“I left you without a choice.” The Ice Master could not bear the cost of any life, of doing nothing. He had to find them on the island. The Captain the same.  Leaves it at that. He’s right about the wound. Only salt might heal it faster, and there’s no time for that. She’s not deserving of that.  He even gestures to it, with the mention of Laurents. The thought that she hasn’t been to see him since her return, hasn’t been to check on him. There’s nothing to say there either that makes a difference. Pippy is gone. 

“You’re here.” Looks to his hand, the retreat of it. “We’re all in a cage just the same. There’s a lot you can do with the extra space, so try to keep it. Convince Jules of the same. I know you can do that.” If anyone can. Even manages a smile for it. Just the soft edges of one. How far they’ve all come, how much has changed and might change again. “It might take the pair of us, fair enough.” Tips a wink to him then, for no one is watching, for it’s harmless enough. Just awareness, the challenge of keeping calm. Fuck. “Nobody can be out for blood. However they justify it.”

———

𝑨 𝑭𝑬𝑾 𝑫𝑨𝒀𝑺 𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑬𝑹. 𝑳𝑨𝑵𝑫𝑭𝑨𝑳𝑳

It might take the pair of us, fair enough. The same pair that now walks the cobblestone paths of this port city that defies all maps, all reason, as far as Ephraim can discern. He’s lost count of which turn through the streets this is, but somewhere after the first several he’d come upon Ayla stepping from a storefront.

Speaking of fair. What of all this, then? There’s little fair about the rift that’s split the Promethean and its passengers down the middle. Little fair about the loss of Nyima while others walk free. But the Icemaster knows fair has nothing to do with it; that ice never bent to no such whimsical notions, after all. Only knows the living, or the dead. Fair’s got nothing to do with it.

“Still reckon we’re in a cage?” He opens with this over hello. They’ve known one another long enough to exchange the formalities for a simple offering of the elbow. He steps to the curb and offers his. A puff of frosted breath chases the words from his chapped lips— could’ve been a laugh all stopped up in the throat. “It’s only the bars ‘ve gotten bigger,” he supposes dryly. Nevertheless.  Another turn through the streets, then. Another lap as if the act of retracing will mend their geography into a sensible form. Into patterns as recognizable as the ice he finds himself missing, now they’ve reached solid ground. 

There’s comfort to be had in the ice, after all. He’d first courted it as a youth, fever-ravaged and dunked to his collar in an iron banded barrel of the stuff. Courted it again when grown— each time a different vessel, approaching the same vast thresholds. Each time like meeting an old companion, whose curves and ridges he could read from the horizon out. 

There’s little comfort to be had in strange ports. No law to their structure but that which man makes— and Ephraim knows men to be fickle things, after all.

location: the siren’s sorrow. time: after landing. with: @glaciations​

the ice had come for them, the ice had abandoned them. the ice had shed itself of their pain and their loss, and the ice had given way to something else — all with little influence from the ice masters. the title felt like something of a stranger here; it fit on teo’s shoulders more like memory than truth, for they had entered a new world. a strange world. one that he could not worry about or ponder on. there was only this: the surviving. there was only this: what comes next now that my feet have found land once more. 

and so he sat in the little tavern, his head tipped low in a grief fire had not fully burned away, glancing up only at the approach of a pair of steps that had become familiar to him. ( although he usually only heard them swallowed by snow, gliding on the frozen surface. they were expected. )

“seems we’ve served our purpose then.” he slid a drink to ephraim and offered a seat. teo had never been one for company, but he had heard what the other man did in those moments before nyima was shot — and while teo guessed it had little to do with the agathe crew, he respected it all the same. for there was us and there was them, but ephraim was carefully walking the space between. “i can’t imagine another freeze.”

———

As he drifts through the port, he finds each step forward sends him further back. Finds himself thinking of the strangest things. Like how the groan of the dock’s planks underfoot sings a wholly different pitch back home. Like how when he and Hetty dangled their spindly legs off the side of it when they were small, and leaned over just to the tipping point, they could glimpse minnows schooling round posts whose wood was woolly with algae. Blinking in and out of creation as the sun caught their silvery scales, only to be whirled off by the current of the next collier ship cruising into port, bringing with it that coal-stench and chalky lungfuls of air. 

This is how they must’ve felt, Ephraim thinks. Those minnows. Scattered from their schools by slow goliaths moving in the dark behind them, beneath them, around them— whose pull they’re only aware of once it’s swept them into its current. 

As the Promethean’s shape blurs in the haze behind him and the town, once more, sharpens ahead, he’s acutely aware of his own crew’s absence. And yet he can’t stop the pull of Siren’s Sorrow. How its current drags him in.

 Somehow, the back of Teo’s head, the shape of his slumped shoulders at a far table, appears to him as a mooring line. Ephraim drifts in and takes his seat. Accepts the tankard and drinks deeply for one, two minutes— so that the room falls away and leaves only space for his enjoyment. When the glass clinks back to the table, the room rushes back in.

“Seems we have,” he finally says, turning his chair so his good ear’s to Teo. Notes how unthinkingly he’d sat down with the other icemaster to his right side, the one Mal or Jules or Jaya always covered in the field. When had he started trusting him so implicitly? Or had it been a slow thing, growing while their shared attentions were on the unnatural ice. “I can’t either, but then again, I couldn’t’ve imagined half of what we’ve seen.” He remarks, lips twitching as if to attempt a smile, but flagging before the mark.

highwayman’s rest open to all 

the north wind murmurs with rumours, gossiping with the sea breeze and bringing home whispers that slip through the cracks of the city and into the ears of its people. they leave the windows open for exactly this reason: the north wind will come with news, the west with secrets, and the stray tabby needs a way to come in once its done with it wanderings. 

prepared, they are, since the first mutterings of a foreign ship started to mumble some days ago. the rooms have been ready for quite some time now, and as the wind speaks louder and louder outside the hotel, they know it is only a matter of moments. 

the door opens and they are nothing if not expectant. the wind stills and the stray tabby lifts its head from its curled rest on the countertop, the receptionist behind it already smiling in a way that is both warm and distant. 

“haven’t you come a ways to reach me? come in, come in - it’s cold and there is nothing but space here.” they beckon. the cup of tea in their hands is freshly brewed, waiting for you. 

“tell me, what is your home to you? i promise we will do our best to replicate it.” large gold hoops dangle from ears as they tilt their head coquettishly, eyes surveying the stranger with lips split into rosebud smiles. “or perhaps you tire of home? tell me what kind of place you wish to be in and we can see what strings we can pull for you, how about that?”

———

Come in, come in. 

The Icemaster's a wise enough man to hesitate— one foot through the door and greatcoat pulled tightly ‘round himself, gloves bundled toward his mouth so the heat of his breath might abate the chill ( now seeping through his layers in unfamiliar ways. ) But he’s a tired man, too. Man who’s just watched the pack behave in ways nature seldom does. Man who’s just witnessed more blood wet the decks. The Icemaster’s a wiser man than to answer to such a beckoning. But he isn’t the Promethean’s Icemaster any longer, is he. And so, Ephraim Orestes Greene is a tired man. And so he answers, enters, and takes the tea.

Ephraim’s fingers flex around the cup as he sinks a hip against the counter to bear his weight. Tilts his ear toward the keen lilt of their voice and watches their mouth move. “Oh, Home’s a far way off, by now.” He grunts, peering down then into the cup. Eyeing the stillness to the dark brew that belies the faint tremble in his hands. Not a ripple in sight. Not a drop spilt. “Could never tire of it. All I’ve done,” his breath escapes in a measured huff ( steady, now, Eph, ) “—I’ve done for Home.”

And this thought exercise of theirs— what’s the harm in playing along? No Jules nor Jaya, no Mal nor Ayla, to play the glacier ‘round— to play the immovable mountain. So perhaps he plays the fool, then; either way, he finds he’s much too tired to care. 

“I’d like to be with my family,” that’s all he means to say. But once the thought’s seeded, it throws down roots already. Starts springing long stalks in his skull and swaying like cattails. “Sitting ‘round with the kettle on, with brothers and sisters, and my nieces and nephews on my knee. And while I’m at it—” he scoffs. “I’d like to be where I haven’t missed my Father’s last days, or the best years of the little ones’ growing-up. I’d like to be where the money, the company, doesn’t fucking matter, aye?” Where the long arm of the Dock Company isn’t trying to wrench tenement roofs right off, isn’t trying peel them back from their walls like tin and covet all the people inside they’ve made live like sardines. 

With the ice frozen so suddenly, packs several feet thick at their thinnest parts, the Promethean isn’t going anywhere. For once, leisure in its many forms isn’t just an option to spirit off to on a spare moment; it’s the only one, if any of them are to keep their sanity. The ice master stands aside the guest’s cot, getting dressed again, the brunt of his layers still in a heap on the floor. Noemie’s cabin’s as much of a reprieve from the hustle above decks as it has been each visit prior. Quiet, too. A nice quiet. He fusses with his collar, movements languid with the afterglow of the visit.

Almost leaves his head behind in the bedsheets before he minds his good manners; the small talk always forgotten through the threshold— left along with all of the other pretenses to be gathered up later, when they’re well and spent. Pleasantries like right, how are you? Faring well? Steady? and all their other bedfellows.

“You’re quiet,” he observes, eyes roving from her shape amidst the covers to seek her face— well, quieter than what discretion typically demands. Imagines she’d have said something by now, otherwise. “You’ve got this focus t’you, I mean. Something on your mind?” Gives a half-roll of his eyes to the ceiling, a mock heavenly plea as he remarks “—beyond the obvious.” Beyond the state of things.

And so the vice-admiral has become the captain. the captain made a fish trawled in for the trapping, and the ice master’s but the gill-netted bycatch. Surely feels like it— as if his lungs had dried down there in the brig, the sea ice reduced to a mere rumor beyond the creaking wood hull. Something he could feel and not taste. And the hearing alone was worse. Every telling vibration— every creak and moan through the timbers a warning bell for the man versed in reading them. Ice shifting in ways he could feel but not see, the ice now the behemoth that lurks beyond the veil. That stirs in the dark. Ephraim thinks he would’ve preferred the stillness. Would’ve preferred not to feel it at all.

It’s a relief when he learns he’ll be permitted back to his duties within the new order. A relief that flash freezes when he learns the conditions that be.

Unbelievable. He could mutter it for good measure as he works with Teo on the ice. No– works under Teo. Now the second to the very same that was his. Anyway. No use in aching over it, now. No use in giving Foltier further reason to relish it. Could be worse, he thinks. Could be hitched to a man with no clue what he’s in for. If nothing else, the groundwork has held; they’ve built a rhythm since beginning to work together. Fell into step like they were lashed together at the ankle— an inexplicable three-legged race. 

So he can swallow it, for now, Ephraim thinks. Can choke down the pride and the insult of it because he trusts the skill of the hand that points as his once had. Furious as he is, he trusts it.

“We ought to make quick work of it,” he says, adjusting his gloved grip on his pick. “Breaking up these pressure bands. If the brunt of the pack gives before we release the likes of ‘em, God knows what stress it’ll put on the hull.” Teo already knows all this, surely. He reminds him anyway.

“Steady?” Ephraim had first signed across the mess. He can hardly fathom answering any notion with more conviction to it. Steady is all they can manage at the moment. Steady is how they hold in the mess, in these blurring days since the mutiny. Steady, is how the hand of the old order brings the forkful of rations to the mouth in the mess, so the new doesn’t take it as an incoming strike.

It grates on the nerves, every second of it. Steady is all they have. Having found a break in attention, Eph had nodded to Jules and Jaya across their tables. Jaya within arms reach; Jules separated from them by several tables and a half dozen heads bowed into their drinks. The guards that mind the ice master, the quartermaster, and the gunner are preoccupied with their own meals. Their own noise. They hardly mind the trio’s lack of it as Eph silently snickers. They’re a little ways into their quick and loose conversation, now. Eph Nudges Jaya near him, first, before he catches the quartermaster’s eye across the mess:

She nods, it’s a small thing, easy to be missed. Acceptance perhaps, a solemnity, that of course he hasn’t had the chance, it shouldn’t be the priority. It’s his safety he should be worried about, holding on to that as best he can. 

Of course he shouldn’t have been to see Malachy, there’s nothing for him to say, nothing for him to hear. And making an attempt would only end in some kind of attention, some kind of trouble. That much is obvious by the enthusiasm of those who watch them, like it’s some spectator sport- see the hostages, watch how they lose their strength.  It causes her to look one straight in the eye, force him to think about it; how it’s not polite to stare, how uncomfortable it makes people. Who’s scared now. 

Her hand stills, and she can settle it against the table properly, without fear that her nails will make a noise, that she’ll provide some extra entertainment for someone.  “The Captain wasn’t to know.” She means her uncle, her father, means the true Captain, and doesn’t need to say it at all. Forgets for a moment that she should not even utter it, but it’s doubtful the goons will understand who she meant, that they’re listening well enough. “And neither were you.” Unfortunate that she can not reach out a hand, is restrained from it by several factors. Just keeps hers both neatly on the table, fingerlengths curved, but not ready to strike.  “None of us could have imagine what waited out here, what things would happen, the way they took hold, the theft of control.” Finishes her words before she turns her face, because even in the hiding of it she is not careless. “He took advantage of it.” 

Keeps her attention on the boundary of the room, to the side, just holds there for a moment, where no one can see her face fully from any direction. Not Ephraim, and not those who stand guard. Just the wall, just whatever lurks in it.  Returns then, expression no notch above mild, when it should soar far past any extreme. “If I hadn’t gone to that island…” This wouldn’t be happening. Pantea would be alive. Vladya. Pippy.  And more than that.  She had already talked of sacrifice to Iskender, had planned to make it. Would rather it be to a creature than a man. It isn’t a man they need to understand, or need to escape.  Although there’s still a trap to deal with.  “The new regime want the old to crumble. They want them to take care of themselves, to offer excuse. We need calm. More than anything.” 

———

“The Captain wasn’t to know?” Ephraim echoes, quirking a brow slowly as he looks across the table at her. “Ayla,” he can only shake his head and say her name at first. “Any good Captain would know every bead of sweat drops from his crew’s brow. Every split hair. It’s a Captain’s business to know, or he’s failed us all.” Purses his lips and sits back. Sits up straighter. “Any good Ice Master, too.” Because this is a failure on all fronts; on all seats of relative power that’d held the old order together at its seams. “What does that make me, eh, Ayla? What does that make me.”

He huffs lowly. “’Course he took advantage of it. It’s how the game goes, eh?”

There shouldn’t’ve been a window to begin with, he could say— but there’s no use on the shouldn’t haves or what ifs now. They were where they were. Only way was forward. Only thing to do was shape up and forge on. Make piecemeal sense of the remains.

“None of that, now.” Softer, now, he minds himself; minds the rough edge to his voice. “No use in that.” A reminder for them both, “You could dig for all the ifs you want and never once hit bottom. If is only going to salt the wound, Ay.”

With that he glances sidelong at the guard lingering over them, before he chances reaching across the table to lay a callused hand over hers for a moment before drawing back. Listens to the wisdom she digs up next and finds a gentle smile prodding at the corner of his mouth. “That’s it,” he agrees with a firm nod. “You’re right in that. Can’t have more blood on our hands. This place wants us dead,” as any wilderness ( though this one just seems to want it much more ) “last thing we need to do is help it on the job. Managed a moment in the chapel, earlier. Chaplain says he’ll be on the case just as well— keeping the calm. Don’t know how I’ll help from where I am,” he grunts grimly, mouth still sour from the brig’s stale air. 

His hands are on his shoulders before the thought goes up. Before it springs, or surges, or whatever word people use to make themselves cosy up to the inevitable. Before he can even pretend he’ll push it down, just this time; before he can even clench the teeth of denial on it. He pushes Ephraim into the wall. It’s boyish, at first; a pup tailing a bigger one. A parry, more than an attack - a buffer, a placeholder. Smack. A cuff like a cough inside the silence.

He draws closer, presses hell to heel. Mirrors him down to the lock of his boots. Down to the tension holding him upright, even through all the lost hours between trek and gaol, through all those fused-up thoughts he was always nursing. He can tell he’s arse-deep in it, the fire, the restlessness. Down to the space he leaves between himself and the world. Down to the jitters he remembers from way back when, those signs of running low on fuel, which always called for him bundling Ephraim and calling the day off. Shoving him against some casks, against a shielded corner of some abbey, and dozing through the afternoon. Head on his shoulder, to keep him in place. Head on his shoulder, because that was the only way it’d work. God damn it. God damn it to shit. Of all the places. Of all the names he’d had to call back on, and wring them like cloths of fever-water.

He pushes him again. Flat palm, flat contact       hardly a recoil worth seizing up against. Again. It’s a sequence, now; beads on a fucking string, coins on a neckchain. Again. ❝ Come on ❞, he grits out, sneers half of wilderness, half practiced speech. Laughs somewhere in his throat until the words distort. Sounds gone to smithers, gone bloody Greek and Latin. ❝ Come on, I’ll pull up a fucking hammock, we’ll make a night of it. Come the fuck on. ❞

Again, that punch that isn’t one, that threat that sends his fingers bending backwards. He might break one. He should. It’s the only thing that can stop it, now, once whatever cork inside his head unscrews, once it flares and gives the set to. ❝ Oh, what, you’re pulling out? Come on, you kingsman, queen’s hound, you bloody fucking philosopher. You bloodied up saint. Tell me what you’re in for, really in for, tell me about the men. Yammer on about the heart of them, the heart of you and me. Climb that good old horse once more. Are you ready? Let’s go, talk up or punch up. ❞ Again, this time hard enough he feels it in his shoulder. Rattles below it, somehow, a jolt through sinew, not fiber. Force packed inside the wrist-bone, inside the joint of it. Elbow twisting like a snap around the belay; like the way the timber gives, up around the mast.

For once, why can’t you listen? Just for once, why can’t anyone fucking listen to what I’m letting on? Do I have to spell it out for you? Do you think they’d let me? We’re chasing old blood, Ephraim. Old Gods. Men are gonna die the same way they always do: for what they think matters. Do you think I forgot that? Flushed it down the privy? Get the fuck on. Catch. the. fuck. on. Then get out of my way. For Christ’s sake, get out of my way or help me.

———

A push. Another. Back to the wall. Palms flat to the chest. A dance they’ve made of it, a toothless match. A wrestling bout. First one pushed off the dock and into the water’s the loser! Only the victor’s always come splashing in after, hasn’t he. Hasn’t he?

Ephraim splashes into the water. No one follows.

Queen’s hound. Lan knows queen and country’s a subject beset by blasting powder, and he’s just struck a match. The ice master’s arse-deep in the fire, in the restlessness. He’s chest deep in it, shoulder blades pressing to the wall beneath Lan’s hands. Neck deep, now. Ducking under it. Closing overhead. “No—” It could be a laugh. A snort. It could be any number of harmless sounds, but there’s something twisting into that clipped Hah! Twisting into Ephraim’s voice the way his frost-nipped fingers twist into Lonan’s shirt. “No, you don’t get to call me that.” The next blow strikes true; rattles through Lan’s shoulder. Buckles Eph at the sternum just enough he releases him. Enough. The ice master takes Lan’s wrists and he reminds him this: you’ve only got me against the wall as long as I allow it. 

Reminds him as he overpowers him with nothing but the muscle earned from fracturing ice. From bending back the frost with his bare hands. In the end, he only uses it to ward him off from his space and back him up to where he started. Always back where they started, somehow. Eyes at a level stare. Boots squared.

“You want to know what I’m really in for?” The words splinter from his mouth, and then the names do, too. “For Joseph. For Mary, god rest her. Hiram, Simon, Isla—" each one delivered like the blunt end of a flintlock. Only the last one aims to pierce. "Hetty," with only a year more on him. Hetty, the sister that found Lonan Baird before any of the Greenes that called him family, once. Hetty, who’d looked down on him ( from her towering, gangly height ) as if that dirty face of his had hung the moon and stars. Who’d had her hands on the wayward lad’s shoulders when she’d first presented him to young Ephraim on the docks ( as he disembarked the damned Dock Company’s collier ). Presented him like a gift come from nowhere. 

You’ll like him, she’d said. And Christ, he could holler, I couldn’t help it. I did. I liked you immediately. It was as Isla told him their mother used to say: some things you just know with your blood. Sometimes he wishes he could ask her if the knowing could trickle and drain from you like it, too.

WHEN  — ｡ ‘✧ 1845. 3rd august. WHERE  —  ｡ ‘✧ the ship’s brig. OPEN TO —  ｡ ‘✧ @glaciations

There is a question, a patent, really, and it goes around itself like the chain in the windlass. It snaps, skips, snags the trawl. It makes you lose not only the bait, but also a finger or two, and Lonan likes their hands full of a catch. Full, yes, and unscathed.

The question is: how did I get here?

He doesn’t ask it. Not in his character, not on his tongue; that pith of flesh is primed to prod at other things, usually, better things. He didn’t ask it on the docks, when he watched the very unthinkable writhe itself into a steady form; skin like oil, scales like water. Gas and petrol playing in between the gills. No, he didn’t ask it in Belgravia, when he got pushed against an alleywall and had a pistol stuck in his mouth. Pursed his on the revolver, laughed with his eyes. Said, muted but still not gutted: what, are we playing? Had you meant to pull, I couldn’t suck it off first. Tipping the velvet with a handgun? That’s not murder; that’s Saturday’s best. Men don’t touch the men they’re gonna kill. No, not if they’re strangers. So cut the act. Name it.

They named it. Called their price. Lonan said, why, of course. It’ll be a grand laugh.

Some ten, twelve years later, and the laugh keeps burning up the throat. Today, apparently, is the day he has to guard what was once his best, best mate. Today he has to guard a fragment, a slice; it was still only a slice, right enough, but it was a slice he’d held rather closely. Wrapped palms around it, and all      held until they bled. Ah, shite. Twelve years, was it? Twelve, and he doesn’t ask it. Twelve, and he doesn’t know. How did I get here?

How did we, Ephraim?

Who cares? Who’s got any clue and still lives to turn it over? If it was any easier, it’d be too late. He has no time for lectures. And he won’t put this question on Ephraim’s back, who’s carried both their weights so often before it honestly gave him the shivers. What he does is crouch down to face level. Blinks widely, wildly, pupils spaced to capital letters. Capital words, too, capital crimes and ropes already swinging. They’ve been in the backdrop of the noose before, been at the forefront of it, too. Just never quite on such uneven gallows.

He sucks in a breath, scatters it through his teeth. Feels the sting of it somewhere low, like the air is still biting all the way down there, even in the caulked up brig. Lonan’s chin juts out. Looks over the icemaster, over and out, over and into.

❝ Ever for the underdog, aren’t you, lov’? The fuckin’ head on ya’. ❞ 

———

Even camped in the bloody brig, Ephraim will not be looking up at him. Soon as Lan comes within swinging distance he’s up, up on his feet. Eye level. Taller, even, by a hair. He meets Lonan’s stare with another. His question with another. “Laszlo and the other caulkers’ve done a fine job, down here, eh? Can hardly feel the draft.” He huffs, breath a salient fog. “Close my eyes, ‘n I could almost take it for crew quarters.” Steps in to meet him, boots planted shoulder width, as if he’s half a mind to throw that shoulder through him, through the door of the bloody fucking brig.

“Pull up a hammock, eh? Come on, then, Lan.” Jaw working as he cocks one eyebrow at the slight. “Come on.” Make yourself at home, he could say ( like he has a hundred times before a dozen years ago ), Hetty’s brewing a stiff cup. Could say, it’ll warm you right up. Though, Canning Town and his siblings feel farther off than they did last go-round. Saying their names here, as this version of themselves, would feel wrong somehow. Wrong as the thing writhing in his gut these days whenever he lays eyes on the man that darkens the doorway. Wrong as Lan’s standing between him and a door, any door.

"You used to be, if memory serves.” He finally comes full circle. Or maybe just misses the convergence, and they’re drifting wider of one another still. “If you knew me, still, you’d know It isn’t about the underdog, or the winning mutt, or who’s standing at the bloody helm. Not at the heart of it. It’s about the men, Lan. It’s about what’s left for them. For us,” because he’s not discounting his own aims; his own old home haunts he’s vying to pour the crown’s reward back into. “On the other side of this.”

post-mutiny

Beset they are. And she keeps glancing at those brutes of Estrada’s, ensuring they wont creep up on Ephraim; take to his bad side, and use it as excuse to say they were provoked, Nods to him across the table as she settles, as though to say ‘I’ve got your back’. Gaze cast to those behind him, as she imagines Ephraim to look to those in front. Only he can not realise yet that she’s one of them, technically.  She’s not there to watch him, she’s there to see him, to keep him if she can. 

The walk back over the ice had been… In truth she couldn’t really assess, couldn’t really remember much, except trying to hold to August, and trying to seek out the warmth from Pippy’s breath, the curl of it in the cold. Peering and peering, imagining it in waves, and panicking at the crest. The only thing soothing was the sound of Ephraim’s voice, or the memory of it, explaining the ice and where to step. Is sure to think of some other moments, of Edward, of comfort, but she refuses to look to it. There is no time. They’re more rushed now than they were in return, pushed upon by the thawing. 

Of course it’s Malachy as well, beyond all else. Only now that is covered in fog, in ice, obscured, for he is somewhere she can’t imagine him. Not yet, not quite- has not been allowed to witness.  “Did you see him yet? Get a look at the logbook?” She dares to keep her voice level, for there is no time- let them hear her, so long as Ephraim does.  The cup she has set -her pretense for being in the mess, for taking to the seat across- rattles against the table, and it sounds to her like a blast. So she lets it go, folds her fingertips against palm instead. “Could this have been predicted?” She means to place blame with herself, for whatever way she can. If only she had been better, if only her father or Edward or any of them could confide in her. If only she knew. Maybe she did. Had even expressed to the Vice-Admiral how lonely he must be, to not be trusted, to be seen as villain from the start. 

———

“I haven’t seen shit past the heads ‘o these deckhands,” he replies, eyes creasing almost in mirth as he jerks his chin toward the guard ( this one, a fidgety lad Eph’s had spot him more than once on ice break-up duty. )  Almost. Looks more like a wince; like the pain of a sore molar than anything. To think so many of ‘em were ready and willing to prod his back with a barrel— after all they’d been through. He sucks his teeth at the shame of it all. At the disappointment in more than a few dozen good men. 

And yet, he isn’t angry. No, not with them. Only for them. The ice master’s rage is a thing he tends quite careful like. Fillets and salt-cures it like a cod; wraps it up in butcher paper and twine: postmarked for Captain Estrada. He’s angry the man’s made a war of this. Taken his boldfaced desertion and imposed it ship-wide, marked them pariahs, all of them, by virtue of being strapped down with him. Where’s that Greene family honor gone, now, then? What would Joseph think, were the old man alive to only hear the papers’ side of it ( should they not disappear entirely before the Gazette catches wind? ) Does the crown even pay derelicts of duty what they’re due? Will they survive this, let alone retain their claims to returning home in peace instead of pieces?

Gone, with it, then. Before they are. Does little good to dwell on it, now. There’s only the now.

“Sure, by someone less blind than the likes of us,” he grunts. Because in hindsight, it makes a sensible sort of shape, this. Fear does that to you, and they’ve seen things liable to scare any marine straight out of his skin. Things Ephraim can’t even put name to, by now. Knows there are things you understand in your bones, in your marrow, or not at all. 

there was a hand at his shoulder. there was a knife at his throat. there was a threat in his shadow. we are here in them. they were already lost. they had been since they first sailed north. 

“walk. we could walk.” abandon the ship, give themselves to the journey of hundreds of miles. even then, he knew it was a pointless thing to ask; it would not happen, it could not happen. they were here in the ice for as long as it would hold them. ( until death, until death. ) “the agathe was captured by water, the promethean by ice. do you think it’ll crush the ship or raise it to the skies?” a breath, a breath. “there’ll be use for the blasting supply, even if there’s not use for ice masters anymore. remember that.” 

“we make it to my own, next one, the one after, whichever brings us home first—i’ll let ayla host me the grandest birthday party known to man. and won’t complain, not a single word.” perhaps this is what they should be doing—it won’t work completely, but maybe speaking of a future where they’re safe and sound back in england is the way to handle this; to keep oneself sane. edward needs a goal, something to work towards, a point. what’s that now? to live. it feels odd to remember his motivations from before setting sail. they’re all so irrelevant now. “after what‘s happened, i suppose i’d like every chance to celebrate life i can get.”

the hand on his back feels heavy but in a good way—not a burden, but support. reassurance; anything happens, there’s someone to fall back on. and edward will offer the same. 

“i still can’t wrap my head around this. why any of them thought it was a good idea to separate from the rest. if anything happens—” his voice breaks there, it was bound to. first edward thinks he ought to imagine a future where all ends well, but then a second later all he can think of is loss. and how imminent it seems. “it feels far from easy when all i can think about is—you know.” he’s seen it. the nightmares haven’t been kind to him. the darkness always swallows someone he cares about. and now it can do it outside of his sleep. they’ve all seen it, with pantea. “but i’ll do whatever it takes. to bring them back safely.”

It worries her, how he brushes off the questions as though they’re of little consequence compared to everything else. When truly they’re the most important considerations, or should be; he can’t very well commit to a task so vital if he’s fading on his feet. Although she doubts she can criticise someone treating their own wellbeing as an afterthought.  Thinks to ask if he needs another scarf, another layer, but reasons the cold might do the job of repetition for her; prod at him to go back below deck for either, and in doing so get a reprieve, food, rest.  “I think if things out here start to make sense, that’s really when you should be worried.” Smiles then, half-hidden beneath her scarf, but it reaches her eyes. Unfortunate but true. They’re all finding things humorous they really shouldn’t, when it’s better than bawling instead. 

Hands free, she carefully tucks her scarf again, readjusts it so her words might seem less muffled to him or can be seen in some way.  Unfair really that it’s something she usually does, but this time for the purpose of tricking him. Not even that, just miscommunicating. Makes it sound like she’s concerned about him (she is), instead of trying to learn from him. “Is it going to be difficult?” Looks to the ice and then back to him, covered elbows draping against the railing to prop her up. “is the ice very thick? Will you have to walk about it?” Casts her gaze along the length of the deck, one side to the other and back to catch on Ephraim in between, only speaks then.  “Do you think I could help chop it or melt it or whatever you have to do? Or will it only hold a single person around the ship? It looks thicker there than anywhere, but I don’t know anything. Will you teach me so I can help?”

———

“Thing is, Miss Dowling,” calls her that instead of Ayla when a sort of schooling is afoot. “They make enough sense, to the trained eye. Not sense in the way we’re accustomed to, comfortable with,” he elaborates gruffly “and certainly not predictable. But there’s patterns, eh? There’s patterns to it that lend it sense, should you know what to look for.” He doesn’t yet move to sip from the cup, just lets the tea’s emanating warmth seep through his gloves.

“More difficult than any pack I’ve yet seen.” It’s better to chalk it up to a matter of challenge than one of complete confounding; Ephraim’s not looking to furrow her brow with further concerns.

“Aye. Thick. Several meters, easily. The logbook’ll tell it clear enough, I’m sure,” knowing Ayla Dowling, she’s managed to sneak her peeks some way or another. “When a ship encounters ice, officers might jot something down like steering various courses and speeds. Just jargon for wriggling through all the nooks and crannies we can. Now, I’d imagine they only need the one word,” Ephraim sips from the cup, exhales a cold fog.  “Beset.”

“I’ll have to walk about. See about placing blasts. There’ll be no chopping nor melting ‘til we can split the brunt of the floe. It’ll hold scores of men ‘til then.”

the joke landed somewhere familiar, and it was enough for the moment — enough to move on another second, enough to give her feet some purchase in the ground. she’d punched his arm once when he’d said it, a joke of her own given back; now, she simply leaned into him, shoulder against shoulder, weight against weight. and then his hands were on her face, and she closed her eyes, and she thought — maybe we’ll be alright, the two of us. maybe this is enough.

“suppose it doesn’t much matter,” she admitted, exhaustion still present but room for something new, something old. she stood a little straighter when he moved away. “what’ve i got to fear when i’m standing next to the man with the explosives?” 

“we’ll survive ‘til the sun comes up. and then we’ll survive a day more.” an easy battle cry to make when she was not alone, an easy thing to cling to. “so it’s decided then. we’ll die another time, in some raging glory that inspires stories and legends. until then… you’ll stay by me, yeah?” 

———

“There she is,” It’s never missed how her spine stretches out into something like sureness when Jules regains her footing. He folds his arms as he steps back, a subdued grin creeping across his cold-chapped lips as she decrees what’ve I got to fear? “Only that you’re standing too close.” He unfurls his hands, pantomiming an explosion with a whispered mimic of the sound. Boom.

It’s an easy thing to cling to, and he counts his blessings that there are handholds enough to share. Every beat of her mantra earns a resolute nod from him in agreement, “hear, hear.” And on the last request, he quiets for a contemplative moment. Rolls his head side to side on his neck as if deliberating at length ( just teasing her, really. )

“Oh, I think I can pencil that in.” Then he chances a wry glance at her sidelong before breaking into something more sincere. “I’ll stay by you like a goddamned barnacle,” he winks. But beneath the shell of tomfoolery, just a fathom or so beneath, there are precious few things he means more.

fast enough that it was as if the ice had chosen its side, as if it had finally bent to its master. fast enough that it was as if fate had lowered her hand, touched her fingertip to the water, and spoke — your story is better told as a tale of mystery than of survival. and that awful truth was beginning to catch up to teo, the jolted adrenaline of the hunt. ( they were now the predator with its leg in a trap as the greater hunter stalked nearer. ) he tried to suck in a breath, but even that felt frozen. 

“it will not thaw until we are dead,” came his muttered reply. 

for the destruction of the agathe, the end had happened suddenly — a swallow of the sea, something ridden with horror but somehow expected. the ocean had always been hungry, so of course it might swallow them too. but the ice? it had never been a predictable thing, yet there were patterns, there were themes. 

“if you mean to tell captain dowling that we ought to wait, i will argue against you in every manner of way i can.” they sat here, their throats bared to the sky. surely, this could not be how the silent one found them, waiting and eager for its return. “this ice is meant to trap us. it’s meant to keep us here until the creature grows hungry enough to act, comprenez vous? the ice can’t go on forever like this. it might just last to the horizon. there must be something.” 

———

Ephraim turned his head to level his stare to Teo ( the bruise from the ship’s earlier lurch already giving way to a lidding of one swelling eye ). Watches him from beneath a furrowed brow. His tone thaws just enough to sustain a flicker of empathy. “Foltier.” Pull yourself together. 

He plants a palm on his shoulder as if to ground him. “I know Hell’s just chewed you up and spit you out, but think this through with me,” don’t lose sight of the truths your training taught you. “It doesn’t matter now if we’re two or two-hundred miles from safe water: the leads have closed up and we are here in them.” 

riversoaked​:

jules was already convinced the whole thing ruined. all that time on the sea, all that time baring her teeth to the menfolk who thought they might tame it, and she couldn’t even get the fucking cake right? she had just pulled out her knife, ready to stab the damn thing and send it back to the horrors when malachy and edward showed up. for some reason, being caught like this was the worst thing she might imagine, and her cheeks turn a sour red to show it. ayla ran off to greet the men, and jules slunk behind her. “glad you’ve survived another year, mal,” she muttered. a quick realization there was flour on her nose. and her hands. and her dress, her nice dress that ayla had helped pick out for the event. “and if you step one foot closer, be warned you’ll both see sights most men would quiver at.” even she couldn’t help the grin from forming at that. “ — so, happy birthday. don’t eat the cake. dear god, don’t eat the cake.”

@edwardboyne· or anyone.

with the surprise aspect somewhat ruin, edward knows that ayla won’t let him forget it anytime soon. “well, i suppose you should’ve bought me a watch for my birthday last month, maybe then i would’ve brought us back precisely when i was meant to,” he jokes, as if that was going to help his chances. he can only imagine what sort of punishment the girl is going to comer up with, she’s not going to let him off easy. “oh, then we’re definitely eating the cake now. i’m actually very curious.” hopefully, jules will choose not to stab him for the comment. “anyway, shall we go in? ruin what’s left of the surprise?”

When they enter, there’s little surprise left to ruin. Ephraim’s stayed behind to go down with this sugary ship, as it were— picking up where Jules had left off. He’s just placed the last candle, verified as pin-straight when he crouches to level his sightline with the cake, closes one eye and spreads his thumb and forefinger into a right angle. At the peak of its wick Mal’s head pops into view as the group comes through the doorway ahead. Eph’s other eye snaps open. “You can eat the cake, and perish for it, soon as the birthday boy makes a wish.” He’s produced a match and struck it as if by sleight of hand ( lord knows how many he’s got on him or the litany of places they’re kept ). By the time they’ve crossed the room he’s gotten each wick aflame.