The Crossing
Spare mooring lines. Burlap sacks and screws. Dozens of casks holding some chemical I could not name.
I had judged this storeroom safe for a simple reason: everything in it was necessary, and none of it was used in the ordinary course of a day. It lay directly beneath the deck, which was unsettling, but the real chance of being found was very small. They say it is darkest beneath the lamp. Burrow into some secluded pocket of the lower hull and a crewman finds you anyway, and the whole venture comes to nothing. So I still believe I made the best decision I could.
"...What are you looking at?"
One miscalculation, and only one. I had not expected the place to be a known haunt among stowaways.
Two women. One man. Far too many bodies to hide in a storeroom this cramped. But with passengers still boarding in earnest, nothing would be more foolish than throwing the door open and walking out. Minds run along the same lines, it seems.
The gaunt woman smiled gently.
"Um... shall we introduce ourselves?"
"No."
"...Pardon?"
"Names? We'll be looking at each other's faces for half a day, and that'll be the end of it."
"...I think of it as a whole half-day. Figuratively and literally, we're sharing a ship of fate, aren't we?"
As she said it, she turned her eyes on me — a look that asked, isn't that so?
I gave a quiet nod.
"Tch."
The sharp-edged woman clicked her tongue, but two of the three had agreed. The logic of the majority was absolute.
"Eugene."
"Ranya Diemann."
"Liz."
Ranya was a typical woman of the Empire, the sort one would more naturally call Mrs. Diemann than by her given name. Which is to say she was gaunt from want of food. Liz was no different from her in being typical, and yet she was strikingly beautiful, both by any objective measure and to my own eye.
Just as I had been studying them, they began to look me over from head to foot. Liz's brow soon furrowed. She must have been wondering why someone like me would try to cross the sea. Three years in the Oslo household had left me short of the Federation average for nourishment, but far better off than any imperial. And from a gaze that all but radiated loathing, it was plain enough that her reason for crossing into the Federation was no dream.
After the brief introductions and the mutual sizing-up, a cold silence settled over the storeroom.
"Oh. This the cabin? Not half bad."
"Your cabin is one deck farther down, sir."
"Loyalty!"
Outside was all clamor. The footsteps of passengers and crew tangled together in a dizzy rush, and more than once a voice passed close by the storeroom. Raise your own voice carelessly and be discovered, and you would be dragged off at once — with no telling what might follow. At the very least, you would never set foot on Federation soil.
The unease kept climbing. Mrs. Diemann's face grew paler by the moment, and Liz twisted her hair around her fingers with a paranoid insistence. To say that I was calm would have been a lie. I, too, kept secretly stroking the magic book inside my coat, trying to press the anxiety down.
How long we waited that way, I could not have said. A low rumble rose as the great steamship's engines caught.
"Cast off—!"
A deep horn blast washed every other noise away, and only then did the three of us find any rest.
A very small window had been cut into the bulkhead on my right. Through that narrow gap I could see it: the land where I was born and raised. The Empire, slowly falling away.
The sound of the hull parting the waves, and the drive of the engines, had grown loud enough to cover anything short of a whisper. We traded a few words of idle talk. Then an unexpected misery began to work on me.
"Hrk."
I clapped a hand over my mouth on reflex. Breathing deep, again and again, I only just forced the rising nausea back down.
"Didn't know I could get seasick."
And badly, at that. How would I have known? I had never been aboard a ship in my life. For hours after we cast off, the queasiness and the headache went on without a break — a kind of hardship I was meeting for the first time.
Someone patted my back.
"Are you all right?"
"...I'm all right, Mrs. Diemann."
My choice of title seemed to have been the right one. Wiping the cold sweat from my brow with a cloth, patting my back — she looked well practiced at tending a sick child. Maternal instinct, perhaps. One of the virtues hardest to find in the Empire after the war. Unlike Liz, who had gone to sleep as if my suffering were none of her concern, Mrs. Diemann kept patting my back until the nausea subsided.
"I'm all right now. Truly, thank you."
"Not at all."
A soft smile reached her eyes. She had a loveliness that need not have bowed to Liz's, but her graying black hair was brittle, and from her bloodless complexion rose the unmistakable scent of illness. A question came to me all at once.
"Why are you going to the Federation, ma'am?"
Her eyes widened a little, then slowly curved.
"...I'm going to see my family."
"Your family?"
"Yes. My husband is a Federation man."
Once she was sure my seasickness had eased, Mrs. Diemann began, slowly, to unpack her story.
Twelve years ago, when the Empire and the Federation were hardly on warm terms and yet still kept up their exchanges, Ranya, then a bank clerk, had met by chance a husband serving in the Federation forces.
"It's a little embarrassing to put it this way, but... it was a fateful meeting. The men in my neighborhood had never been enough, and then a handsome man from another country — how attractive must he have looked to a girl who was still half a child?"
Not even a tragedy fit for the stage could keep the two of them apart. Ranya broke with her family to hold on to that love, crossed to the Federation, and there built a true household. And so she became Ranya Diemann.
It was a happy home. A newborn son, two capable parents — nothing could have been more harmonious. Reality, though, was not so gentle. Just as her own family had refused a man of the Federation, her husband's family had little welcome for a daughter-in-law come from across the sea. Strain gathered in her, quietly and otherwise. Quarrels with her husband grew frequent. Then, as if that were not enough, a telegram arrived: the mother she had left behind on imperial soil had collapsed. Half on impulse, Ranya boarded a ship bound for home.
"That was when the war broke out."
"Ah."
"One way and another, more than eight years have gone by. Heh... my son must be just about your age by now, Eugene."
Mrs. Diemann's eyes, steeped in sorrow, rested on the empty air.
"I want so much to see him."
The ship reached another port some five hours after that.
"We've arrived!"
Passengers glad to be home began, one by one, to make their way out for the gangway. Part of me wanted to join that joyful procession. There was no room left for romance. Arrival meant we had come up against the last ordeal.
Myself. Mrs. Diemann. Liz. Not one of us slept. We pricked our ears and fixed on every sound from outside.
My plan was simple: blend into the crowd and walk off as if I belonged there. Mrs. Diemann had said she would wait for a broker. How she meant to pass the identity inspection worried me, but that, unfortunately, was nothing I could do for her.
We were still waiting on our chance when it came. Footsteps — a slightly uncanny set of them, threading the noise. Most of the clamor was fading, or drifting in from farther off, as it should have; to disembark, one had to go up onto the deck. These steps were different. They were drawing closer.
"Hhh... G-God..."
Mrs. Diemann shuddered, then pressed her palms together and began to pray. I could not tell to whom. Only that she was desperate. I felt much the same. We had reached the Federation at last. Step off this ship, pass the inspection, and the wish I had carried for so long would be fulfilled. Had everything stayed quiet all this way, only for trouble to find us at the end?
If it came to that, I would use magic. I was just rising, closing my hand more firmly around the magic book, when—
"Shh."
Liz stopped me.
The footsteps halted directly in front of the storeroom. My unease crested, but she shaped the words with her lips alone.
"The contact."
She was right.
Three knocks.
"Liz."
Color rushed back into her face, and she bolted for the door.
"H-hey, wait."
Before I could stop her, the door opened. A blond crewman stood beyond it. Unlike Mrs. Diemann and me, still buried in the dark, Liz met him in the light spilling through and folded into a deep embrace.
"We ought to get going."
"Mm. I know."
"...Who are they?"
At that Liz was silent a moment. Then a sneer touched her mouth.
"No one I know."
"Yeah? Let's go, then."
A bright little hum, and the footsteps faded. They left the storeroom door flung wide and walked toward the light, Liz and the crewman both.
Leaving the two of us.
I turned to Mrs. Diemann. Whether her legs had given out or not, she sat collapsed on the floor. I could hardly carry her out on my back, and if she went as she was, anyone would suspect a stowaway. A smile of resignation caught at the corners of her eyes.
"The broker isn't coming. It must have been a swindle."
"Mrs. Diemann..."
"Don't worry. The Eddington usually just repatriates anyone who's followed her all the way to the Federation. What matters is this."
She searched the front of her clothes and held a paper out to me. It looked like a letter.
"Eugene. You've looked calm this whole time. You must have something to count on, yes?"
I didn't answer.
"I have a favor to ask. Please take this letter. You don't even have to deliver it to my family. Just take it. That's all."
With that, Mrs. Diemann dropped flat to the floor in a bow. I accepted the letter, then helped her back to her feet.
"I'll see that it's delivered. I promise."
"...Thank you. Oh, and—"
She took off her own hat and set it on my head. Unless someone looked closely, the gray of my hair was hidden.
"A gift."
And so I, too, stepped toward the light.
A few narrow passageways on, passengers and crew finally filled my view. In the middle of that crowd—
"Joshua. Explain. Who is this?"
"B-boss, it's not — it's not like that."
"Explain yourself. I've heard the rumors well enough. They say you've lately taken up the trade of brokering passage."
Liz, and the crewman called Joshua, stood under restraint and plainly at a loss. With them was a middle-aged man one would not soon forget: a magnificent mustache, and a suit of unmistakable quality.
No question of it. James Eddington.
I forced my heart, which felt ready to burst, back down where it belonged.
So what if the man was both captain and owner?
Whatever that scene meant, it did not matter. I only had to walk. One step, and then another — and I was just brushing past Sir Eddington's very shoulder when—
"Hold on."
He thrust out an arm and barred my way.
"Is something the matter?"
"Pardon the intrusion, sir, but might I see your identification?"
Without a word, I drew from my bag the papers I had secured before.
"Here."
"Hmm."
He looked from the papers to my face and back again, several times, before he slowly opened his mouth.
"Welcome to the Federation."
I answered him with a smile and quickened my steps.
"That bastard! That bastard's a stowaway too!"
A shrill cry rose behind me. I paid it no mind. I followed the corridor and climbed the stairs, came out onto the deck, and looked around.
The Federation, which I had never seen in my life. Not a single building stood broken or collapsed. Towers rose past counting, and the city and its avenues seemed to flaunt themselves as one continuous beauty of form. Above all, there was no night in that place. The stars embroidered across the sky had embroidered the earth as well.
I took the cold wind off the sea full in the face and settled the hat more firmly on my head.
"At last."
The Federation.