Page 39 of Valour

She lay listening to the familiar creaking of the ship, the occasional grinding of wood on ice.

After a while, she had a yearning to see Fliss and the rest of the crew, and surfaced from the sleeping bag, looking around the cabin with bleary eyes. And she sat up quickly. Someone had removed her dressing table and replaced it with a desk, and lined the entire far wall with books, logs and charts. She was dressed in a woollen jumper and breeches that were far too big for her, the fabric pooling around her wrists. She rubbed at her face, trying to make sense of it all.

The door burst open.

Septimus.

Hester spluttered, “You?!”

“You’re awake,” he said, standing in the doorway, his black hair unbound for once, falling to his shoulders.

She stared at him, flashes of a very odd dream coming back to her. “You…wait. Hang on…”

Incredibly befuddled, she could not piece together the hazy memories.

“The surgeon said you might be a little confused. Lack of oxygen to your brain. Do you remember what happened?”

Hester hummed, frowning. What had happened? It was a good question. “Wait. This is your cabin?”

“Yes.”

“I want to go back,” Hester said quickly, shucking out of the sleeping bag and jumping down from the bed. The too-big breeches dropped to her ankles, and she scrambled to pull them up, holding them around her waist. “Take me back.”

“Hester, you need to rest. Get back in bed.”

“Your bed! Oh—no, thank you. Take me back to my ship, my crew.” She scrabbled around, looking for her boots, her head pounding. Damn it, she didn’t need boots. Just needed to be home. She darted forwards, trying to push past Septimus, but he held her shoulders and led her gently back to bed. A black wolfhound trotted at his heels.

Septimus wrapped her up in blankets, and the dog curled up at the end of the bed, soft brown eyes fixed on her. “Later on, maybe,” he said.

A flash of a black monster came to her mind. “The orca! What happened to it?”

“So, you do remember.” He pulled up a chair and sat in it, crossing an ankle over his knee.

He was being infuriatingly calm about all of this.

“Answer me! Are they all safe?”

“Your crew is safe. The orca disappeared after you shot it,” he paused. “It was twice the size of any orca I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes.” Hester shuddered, remembering its cold voice within her skull, the jaw lined with teeth that gaped open, ready to swallow her whole. And now, it was either dead, or mightily enraged. “And then what happened?”

Septimus hesitated, stroking a hand along his jaw. “Victor saved you.”

Hester frowned. She rubbed at her forehead and the lines that formed there. “No…that’s not…”

She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes as memories hurtled back to her, and she gasped. “It was you! You saved me. Victor refused.”

Septimus folded his arms. “How could you possibly know that? You were dead.”

“Why did you just lie to me?”

He tapped his fingers on his thigh, his brow furrowing. “To save your feelings.”

“You would rather have me believe that Victor was the hero? When it was, in fact, you?” Hester’s mind whirled, a pain pounding at her temple. Why would he want her to believe that?

Septimus waved a hand. “How did you know it was me?”

“I saw it.” She paused. Should she divulge the next bit of memory that crashed back to her mind? She saw no reason not to. “I was an angel.”