3 Ash 115
Grand Central Station, Zaichaer
Franz could not have known what he had ordered her to do. That was what Vanessa told herself as she ascended the airship dock. Burn her ship? She had spared his child only for her own to be condemned.
Just the thought of it had made her senses deaden. She no longer felt the cool Ash air as it brushed across her face, nor did she appreciate the crisp cleanness of it when so high above the city. Her stomach twisted and churned, but even the nausea was merely an echo compared to how vile this act ought to have made her feel. She had not felt such a void in herself since she had first cut a man down.
Under either arm Vanessa carried the tools of the trade. A crate of turpentine carried casually in glass jars that clinked and jangled with each step. She no longer cared if anyone heard her or noticed. The necessity for that had ended when she had delivered the mage to that noble's crippled son. The father's name was hard to recall, but the son's was clear and fresh in her mind.
Anton.
Anton was the reason she was sent to scuttle her own vessel, and yet she could conjure no fury for him. For he had not treated her like a monster, so nor could she treat him as such. The Queen Bitch had been made Vanessa's by taking a life, so it was fate that saving one would mean her losing it.
Up the ramp and out across one of the longest piers, Vanessa finally saw her airship. Once a mere merchant vessel, the Queen Bitch had since been repainted and refurbished to serve as a scourge of the skies. The hull was painted a deep blue, and the deck itself was black as well as the gun ports. The sizable gasbag had recently been replaced entirely, leaving Vanessa with ever more sunken costs. But that did not matter, not now. Now she stepped over the gangplank and prepared to say goodbye.
She set down the crates on the main deck, and then begun to untie the airship from her dock. There was many knots, and Vanessa went down the line working them free with her calloused and bleeding hands. Her beating from Franz's men had been severe, but she had repaid them in kind. Cuts lined her palms and the outside of her forearms, the wounds having since begun to dry and scab over.
The deliberate work split the scabs and her blood smeared over the ropes. To keep them from being discovered, after untying each one, Vanessa pulled the rope over onto the deck of the Queen Bitch rather than letting it hang down from the pier for the next airship that was settling into dock. Her head throbbed as well, but that only slightly managed to cut through the wave of enforced apathy that she now felt.
Everything hurt, but only in the most abstract of ways. The pain restricted her movement, but she did not truly feel it. It was not due to adrenaline, Vanessa did not feel that invigorating rush. It was simple mental resignation.
With the ropes cut, Vanessa wiped her hands on her jacket and stepped over to the wheel. Without a full crew, the last flight of the Queen Bitch would be slow and labored, but Vanessa knew the ship would not falter now. Vanessa cranked the wheel hard to starboard with one arm and eased forward a lever with the other.
Deep down below, the engine rumbled to life, and the Queen Bitch eased away from the pier in a lazy, lilting drift. The vessel seemed to know its fate, but only approached it with lethargy rather than true resistance.
She had been a good vessel. She raced the wind and had never failed her crew. Storms split around her, and cannonballs always found their mark. She had never protested the bloody work they did either, and had always been given care after each battle before the crew would tend to their own wounded.
The vessel knew of Vanessa's love for her, the captain was sure. One could not love something so deeply, so truly, and bear the thought that it was a mere object. It was a cruelty to envision the Queen Bitch as just something to be owned, nothing more than the sum of its parts. She was no mere ship, she was an extension of Vanessa, the very way that the pirate had made manifest her will upon the world.
And now Vanessa would kill her.
Vanessa sailed her love out far away from Zaichaer, and high above the dense clouds that blotted the sky. The air was still now, and time itself lost meaning as Vanessa spent her last moments with her vessel.
The reality was beginning to set in, a familiar pain blooming in Vanessa's stomach as she looked out over the one thing that had been truly hers in life. Something that no one had been able to take from her, try as they might. She was going to lose it now, and not just that. She was going to lose the Queen Bitch and live on.
She had always envisioned her death as a glorious one, riding out in a desperate charge against a foe too vast to be opposed. A short life, and a merry one. She should have been happy to live out her days under the watchful eye of House Michaelis, deemed too useful to kill but too informed to be left to herself. Vanessa was instead left unsure.
There had never been a life for Vanessa outside of piracy, she had learned. She had loved the thrill of it, and darkening Zaichaer's eye most of all. Now all of that was going to end, and she was expected to slip back into civil society. She knew not how she might do it, but only that she would.
For she was loyal, despite her faults. She had agreed to a job, and had agreed to do this as part of it. She would not betray Franz, though she was not so sure he would feel the same way. Such it went with her loyalty. She extended to others what they often refused to reciprocate. If a blade did come for her in the dark, then she at least believed Franz would be noble enough to ensure that she did not feel its bite. She had earned that much, at least.
She brought the vessel to rest now, and stepped back over to the main deck of the ship. She unlatched one of the lifeboats from the side of the ship. It was just a gas balloon and sails connected to a bare wooden raft by ropes, and it drooped off the side of the ship, slowly rising to rest alongside its older sibling.
Vanessa then begun pouring the turpentine over the deck of the ship. She splashed it casually, and made sure she slicked the lower decks as well. It was as fine excuse as any for a farewell tour of her vessel, empty now it was. She walked through cargo hold, and for the first time in nearly a decade it had been empty. No racks of wine, bolts of cloth or crates of spice. Just a vast emptiness to match Vanessa's own.
Her crew had been told to clear out their belongings, and Vanessa had only left a single pair of clothes aboard, hanging off a hook in her quarters. After spreading the fuel to every surface she could find, Vanessa stripped down and changed into the spare clothes and left her prior outfit on the floor in a heap. Franz had wanted all evidence to be destroyed, and he got his wish. When this was done, there would be no evidence that the Queen Bitch had ever existed, aside from the songs and stories she would hold in her heart evermore.
The smell of turpentine was strong now when she came back above decks, but still Vanessa waited. She shared a silent moment with her vessel, just enjoying her proximity to the ship that had given her life meaning. Her throat was tight, muscles tense and jaw set. She had killed men more easily than she did this. Men fought back. Men chose their fates. Ships merely were.
It hurt.
It hurt so much.
Vanessa crossed the deck over to the side of the ship, to a simple plain ship's bell fastened to one of the rails. It was nothing fancy, and had been plundered from a ship years ago. Still, she had always been fond of the little metal thing, and now gave it the most prestigious honor of all.
Vanessa rang the bell eight times, restraining the urge to weep. A hollow, mournful tone resonated from the bell with each clang, breaking through the silence to write an epitaph for the Queen Bitch.
End of watch.
Vanessa then stepped over into the rescue boat and kicked herself away. The entire raft shifted under her, nowhere near as steady as the Queen Bitch. Still Vanessa stood proudly, one hand on the ropes and the other reaching into her pocket for a box of matches.
Once a safe distance away, Vanessa set her love alight. The deck went up in flames, and the sight broke Vanessa's heart. She wanted to sob, or weep, but that was not what the Queen Bitch deserved. The Queen Bitch was strong, she was powerful, and she did not suffer such displays of weakness. If she was to die, then it was to be at the hands of the grim captain she had helped make.
Vanessa forced herself to watch as her life went up in flames. The paint peeled and cracked, the deck groaned, popped, and splintered under the growing heat. Flames ran up the ropes towards the gasbag, and it was then that the Queen Bitch made her exit from this mortal coil.
The gas caught all at once, and the force of its ignition sent Vanessa's raft pitching on its side as the main ship cried out its last defiance. The main balloon of the Queen Bitch was now subsumed by fire, the sails quickly joining in the inferno. As the fuel burned, the vessel begun to sink, drooping down from high aloft in the sky and breaking through the clouds.
Vanessa followed the burning ship down, watching it as it gained speed and streaked through the air like a stone. She remained high above it, and even from her vantage she could feel the heat.
Her soul sank when she finally saw her vessel smashed upon the rocks below, hull splintered and burning away to embers. The Queen Bitch's hull split open, support beams and planks spilling out from the opening like a man's innards. Nothing was spared the fire's wrath as it greedily consumed all that Vanessa's life had been. The sails themselves eventually broke away from the masts, blankets of flame dancing out across the sky until they too were little more than ash sinking back to soil.
As she looked out over the wreckage, a surprising wave of calm finally overtook her. The job was done, the ship laid to rest. It still ached to witness, and the memory would never leave her, but there was a peace in knowing it had been done. That part of her life was over, as much as she wished it could have happened any other way.
Maneuvering the small raft back towards Zaichaer, Vanessa slowly directed herself back home through the darkness.
Home. It was so strange to think of this city as her home. It had never felt that way until now. The Queen Bitch had been her home, and stints at port were vacations at best. But now it would be the place in which she lived, toiled and died.
Vanessa was not looking forward to that. Of all the ports she stayed at, Zaichaer ranked among the worst. Military crawled over every damned surface of the city, and most were so zealous they couldn't even be bribed. Still, Vanessa would survive. She always had.
Hours later, Vanessa slipped back into port and stepped out of the rescue raft. Instead of tying it down, Vanessa merely turned it to the wind and kicked the vessel off so that it would drift to the endless skies above until it too joined its sibling in ruin.
Vanessa then found an inn that was still open so late into the night, and collapsed into bed, too tired even to drink.
The morning would come as it always did, and Vanessa would need to navigate the long, cold dark that had become her life.
But for now? Vanessa was content to sleep.
