"Oh stop squirming, you giant baby," Anita said indignantly, as she wrapped a piece of cloth around Leslie's knuckles.

They were sitting in their ship's still unused mess hall, a room that combined a kitchen, pantry, and dining room into a single space. Anita had the captain's medical supply bag open, its contents spread across the long table.

"Not sure this will help anything," Leslie replied, but he kept his hands still.

"I see the captain do this often enough," Anita replied, as she folded another layer around his hands. She gripped his wrist to keep him from pulling away, admitting to herself that she had no real chance of keeping him in that spot if he decided to move. The man was only slightly weaker than the pistons that turn an airship's propellers. "And it didn't look any stranger than engine maintenance. Apply antiseptic, cover with dressing. Simple enough."

"Not sure engine grease counts as an antiseptic," Leslie said. He raised one of his hands so the bandages were facing her. As he moved his hand, she could smell the soap he carried in his personal stores. Rosemary and mint, a smell Anita always found comforting. It was a smell that kept her thoughts on her recent years, the best of her life. "And the dressing is clean when the captain does this."

"That ain't engine grease. It's gear lubricant," Anita insisted. "Not at all the same thing. And I'll have you know engineers near never get infected, no matter how many times we get injured."

Leslie opened his mouth as if he were going to respond, but didn't share the thought as he looked at her. The hand she was now wrapping another bandage around was idly tracing her forearm with his thumb.

Anita closed her eyes for a moment, caught up and carried away in a gale of her own emotions. She was nervous, tense, anxious, her breath was caught in her throat. Part of her wanted to run away suddenly, and part of her never wanted this moment to end.

Leslie had that effect on her, sure as coal in a furnace. And the years she had known him had not dimmed it in the least.

"Anyway, the risk was worth it," Leslie said, as he slowly drew his hand away. Her arm felt bitterly cold for a moment, as his caress was replace by the breeze. "I wasn't enjoying the prospect of living off half-portions of canned beans and peas for our first few weeks of sailing."

"It wasn't that bad, was it?" Anita asked.

"We didn't stock cured meat or butter," Leslie replied, and Anita shuddered. The idea of rationing food took her back to earlier years of her life, a time she'd prefer to never again recall. "Two hundred drachmas goes a long way to keeping us fed while we do whatever job the captain found for us."

"You mean you ain't going to be cooking for a while? My waistline might thank you."

"Ought to thank you for your waistline," Leslie said, almost too quietly for Anita to hear. His eyes widened, and he coughed once. Anita felt the blood warming her cheeks, and looked down at the table.

"Can't cook much until we get a proper stock of things like oil, eggs, and such," Leslie said. "Was looking forward to trying something I learned from some of the folks here at the Roost. They call it a sun bowl, and you can only make it in the weak pull of the far skies, when we're practically in free float. It's a lot like a pot pie, but you make the crust into a ball."

"You'll have to make it after we finish the job, to celebrate," Anita insisted.

"Rather doubt we'll have the time to be celebrating. Saw that ship that berthed here a few days ago?" Leslie asked.

Anita didn't need to ask which ship Leslie was referring to. "The Interdiction? Hard to miss a Volante frigate in a Wayfarer harbour, especially one that big. Is Commodore Nottle still in command?"

"Couldn't say. But I'd be willing to bet all my winnings that our new job has something to with our old navy," Leslie said.

"No bet." Anita laughed and waved her hand. "But I'd be surprised if they'd hire the captain. They openly discussed putting him to a firing squad during his trial."

"That was all posturing. Captain saved a Monastery vessel that day. You can't execute someone for saving them from a diplomatic calamity," Leslie insisted. "But you can't keep him, either. I might almost suspect that Volante was trying to make amends by finding him work, if I thought the Volante Navy were a sentimental sort."

"The navy's generosity went into negotiating the favourable prices we got for the observation window," the captain's voice came from the door. Anita had to force herself to keep her seat. She had spent years hopping to attention at the sound of that voice. "And only a fool wouldn't be suspicious of this job we've been hired for."

Vincent Locklear stepped through the open doorway, and stopped at the end of the table. Despite no longer wearing the dark blue uniform of the navy, everything from his coat to his rapier to his boots was clean and polished. As far as Anita was concerned, Vincent Locklear was the captain people hoped an officer could become. "Anita, at some point I'll go over the particulars of wound treatment. But for your first lesson, best to clean your hands before you go touching bandages or someone else's injuries. Metal bits and dust aren't great for wounds. Leslie, take that grease rag off and go wash your hands in the sink. Use the red bar of soap."

"Why the red bar?" Leslie asked, as he got up and walked over to the kitchen sink.

"Carbolic acid in the soap. It'll kill most of the microbes you picked up from slugging that poor kid in the face," Captain Locklear said. He sat next to the spot Leslie had just vacated. He then set a cloth pouch on the table, which made a distinctive ring as it struck the table.

"Is that the money we're being paid for the mission, captain?" Anita asked.

Vincent grinned. "Nope. This is the money I made betting on today's fight."

"Wait, you bet against Leslie?" Anita asked, appalled.

"I did. Ring-out in the second round. Bookie gave me eighty to one odds," Vincent said, and he opened the bag. "Fifteen hundred drachmas."

"Wait," Leslie said, as he stepped away from the sink. He stepped around the counter and sat down next to Anita. "Ring-our in the second round, did you suggest that to Evantes?"

"Of course not," Vincent replied, but he grinned and leaned towards Anita. "I had a talk with his coach this morning. One round to let Evantes realize Leslie was going to rearrange the shape of his face, and he becomes very receptive to even a desperate idea. After that, I just had to make sure Leslie was too busy to get fully acquainted with the rules of the Roost."

"Cunning bastard," Leslie muttered, but he was looking at the bag of coins with obvious relief. "I take it you couldn't have gotten as much betting on me?"

"Not nearly. Even the difference in the prize purse wouldn't get us over seven hundred, and we didn't have a lot of extra money to stake. Between this and the advance we'll be getting from Commodore Nottle, we might actually be able to afford to fly for a few months," Vincent said, and he pushed the pouch over to Leslie.

Mercy stepped inside just as Leslie opened the coin pouch and began counting them. She sat down beside Vincent, and rapped the table with her knuckles. "Our shipwrights just finished testing the seal on our new bridge window. The seal should hold, even if we drop the whole ship into a lake. Soon as we christen the ship, she'll be ready to sail."

"Superb," the captain said. He looked to each of them in turn. "Now is as good a time as any to talk about our first job."

The captain opened his coat, and fished out a rolled-up piece of paper. He unfurled it, and snatched up a handful of the coins from the pouch in front of Leslie to weigh down the corners. "We have an assignment courtesy of Commodore Nottle, on behalf of the Volante Navy. We've been chartered to track down a missing merchant ship, registered as the Sunward Matilda."

"The navy wants you to look for a missing vessel? I know Nottle has a hard time seeing with that upturned nose of his, but his crew isn't blind. That's eight hundred pairs of eyes on a ship no pirate lord in the sky would dare to touch," Anita said. "What are we going to manage what he can't?"

Vincent pointed at the charts set on the table. Anita looked down, at his finger now resting in the skies near the leeward side of Olencia, at a small island labelled 'Drummond's Spite'. "The Sunward Matilda was supposed to rendezvous here. It's a trading post that serves both Palost and Freeman's Hold. Nominally, it's a Volante colony, although they aren't allowed to maintain a formal military presence so close to Olencia."

"Which segues nicely into the reason Nottle hired us," Mercy continued. "The Sunward Matilda could have sailed into Olencian skies, at which point the Volante Navy can't look for it without making a diplomatic incident. That's where we come in."

"That makes sense," Anita said, with a frown. "But how do we explain what we're doing in Olencian skies?"

"Nottle was kind enough to write us an official charter to search for, and assist the ship we're hunting for," Vincent said, and he set a piece of parchment down on the table, on top of the charts. The bottom bore Volante's official stamp, and was both signed by Commodore Nottle and embossed with a wax press of his signet ring.

"That covers what we're doing, but what about the Sunward Matilda's cargo?" Leslie asked. "If they're doing something stupid like trying to smuggle Olencian silkworms, deadgrass, or weapons for some kind of insurgency, we could be in a lot of trouble."

"If we're stopped before we find the ship, we present the papers and prove we have no idea what the ship is hauling," Vincent said. "If we're boarded while or after we find the ship, I'll figure something out."

"You know how reassuring that doesn't sound, captain?" Leslie asked. "Just saying, I'm not fond of plans that hinge on 'I'll figure something out' at a critical moment."

"The Victorious might agree with you," Mercy replied quietly, the threat very clear in her voice.

"Lieutenant, I was on the deck when we did that," Leslie replied, slipping back into addressing Mercy by her old title. "I lead the gun crews when we cut that ship into ribbons. And I recall the price the captain paid for having to improvise his way through Volante's political machinations.

"Leslie," Anita said, resting her hand on his arm.

"I'm afraid the reward is a bit too rich to turn away from this one," Vincent said. Anita was surprised to see him brush off Leslie's speech so easily. He was, after all, the one who had been cast out of the Navy.

"How much is Nottle offering?" Leslie asked. Anita nodded, curious.

"Forty thousand drachmas, and access to the naval intelligence reports on pirate activity along all the trade routes," Vicnent said.

Leslie whistled, and Anita gaped in his direction. Forty thousand drachmas was an astonishing sum, fully capable of buying a small ship in its own right. And it was a pittance compared to value of those naval intelligence reports in the right hands.

But when Anita looked over to Leslie, she was surprised to see his face had had turned ghostly-pale. "Believe it or not, captain, that makes me even more nervous. What the hell is on this ship that Volante wants back so badly?"

Vicnent shook his head. "It's not so much that Volante wants it back. What they don't want, is to let Olenica learn they had it."