A Premonition

Surely no one coveted Serenica now as she was puking her guts out. The taste of bile just wouldn't go away, and each retch hurted her muscles more than the last one.

Gadfly had left her alone, but soon a hand appeared in her line of sight, one that was as dark as it was soft, sliding its fingers on the back of her neck.

"You need to wisen up," Myorka whispered to her. "The men will think you're insane, or worse, weak."

"But I am weak," Serenica lamented and wiped her mouth.

"Shut your mouth, I will get you something that helps," the bookkeeper said, stroking Serenica's hair.

Shutting her mouth was easier said than done. She managed to stop vomiting once she had thrown up everything, though, and she followed her friend to the captain's cabin.

Myorka loaded something into a tiny pipe and gave it to her. "This stuff is used for morning sickness. I always give it to new men."

The smell was in some way familiar to Serenica, but in her inebriated state she could not name it. Nameless or not, the smoke helped her keep her insides where they properly belonged - inside.

"Thank you, Myorka," she said. "I don't know where I would be without you."

The bookkeeper smirked. "Or maybe you do know, but you're afraid to say that the place would be down under the waves, with crabs nibbling at your emptied eye sockets."

"Are you both always like this?" Serenica raised an eyebrow.

"I guess his morbidity is catchy. Now, off you go. Pretend to have fun with the boys. It means a lot more to them than you think."

Perhaps the men got something out of their drunken shouting, mumbling and play-fighting, but Serenica didn't feel the energy they were clearly connecting with. Soon she had a dozen shanties ringing in her head at the same time, and though she didn't dare to touch the rum, she could still feel its aftertaste.

The Admiral was right. It was a disgusting drink and it got into a man's head like a single, well-aimed shot. Seppei was screaming into Heike's ear that he had not made love to anyone while visiting the Island of Lumberjacks. Said island sounded like some forsaken place in the wide West, where there was little more than the trees and the men who cut them down for a living. Serenica didn't want to hear any of it.

She went to seek the company of Gadfly again. While he could be annoying, he was sane in an occultist kind of way and held his liquor a lot better than the rest.

Serenica expected to find him in the middle of the party, but instead, he was smoking his crudely made pipe at the helm, shaking his head with every drunken yell echoing on the deck, groaning his apparent discomfort.

"What is wrong?" Serenica asked. "I thought you liked a free drink as much as the next pirate."

"There is no such thing as a free drink," the boatswain said. "I thought you'd know, as a lady..."

"Indeed," Serenica said. "Is there something besides my ill health that is spoiling your mood? I will not ask this anymore, so you'd better spit it out, in case you want to talk about it."

The man seized the movement of the helm with some effort. He was one of the three people Serenica had seen operating the great wheel, the two others being the captain himself and the Admiral.

Gadfly looked at her, squinting his eyes as if concentrating deeply. "I dink somebody's a-gon-die soon."

"What?"

Southern dialects were often hard to follow for Serenica, who had been raised in the swamplands of the coastline. She was glad, of course, that the man trusted her enough to show off his true heritage. Gadfly was a Southern man, it was apparent from his tough constitution and his speech.

"Somebody will die on your watch," the boatswain said, now more intelligibly. "I don't know when it's gonna happen, but I do know it's gonna happen with you on board. I know it in my bones. As I walked into your little office in Neul, my blood froze, and that blood said you're gonna be the one to put fancy oils on my brother's skin and slip a gold coin into his stiff mouth."

Serenica shuddered at this morbid image. On the high seas it was customary to send some gold under the waves with the deceased. Not because the dead would have needed it for anything, but because the living had to make amends for soiling the bottom of the sea with their bloodshed.

Serenica didn't know how to feel about this revelation. Sure, it was statistically likely that some of the men would indeed meet a quick and violent end. They were on some sort of a suicide mission, after all. She didn't want to think of Gadfly as a better scrier than herself, so she attributed his ominous remark to him being intuitively in touch with the harsh reality.

"You don't like it, do ya?" the boatswain asked, but Serenica thought it was a rhetorical question.

"You don't like it when people just die on you, I understand that. But why you had to jump on the one boat where it will certainly happen...it beats me."

"What should I have done? Go to the West? I don't think I would last one second there," Serenica said, stifling a mighty yawn. She was getting tired of this party. "I'd rather be here, at least something is actually happening and I can be a part of it."

"Here, here's something happening," Gadfly said and let go of the helm.

Serenica screamed. She knew the ship could screw itself up in a matter of seconds if the helm was left unattended during a strong wind. She jumped to take it into her hands, but lacking muscle, she could not even slow its motion down.

She did her best to deaccelerate the wheel, but the structure was too heavy for her lithe arms.

The masts and the rest of the ship groaned in unison.

"What the heck?" someone yelled from the party on the deck.

The boatswain grabbed the helm again and stabilized the ship in seconds. He looked at Serenica and laughed.

"Here's your bloody action. Go to sleep, Surmica. You're of no use here."

Serenica was woken from her slumber by the simultaneous appearance of a mighty headache and a frantic knock on the door. She was angry and tired and she didn't know what day it was.

"He's dying! I was right!" Gadfly screamed.