___

I

t was quiet on the bridge when Hermia walked in cautiously.

Hara let her settle before she said anything. “Worried?” It wasn’t really a question as it was late and Hermia had been up all the night before.

For her to be here now meant she hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Dark shadows ringed her eyes.

Hermia fiddled with the hem on her shirt before she answered. “It is all my fault. I mean him being taken and all that.”

“I thought we had clarified that the whole mess is the Duke’s fault.”

Hermia shook her head. “The Duke really wants me. I thought if we could talk to him and somehow get him to trade Demetrius for me, then everything will be alright.”

Hara wanted to sigh but was afraid that she would offend the girl while she was in her tired state. “Everything wouldn’t be alright. We would still have to rescue you. The Emperor won’t pardon us of piracy if all we do is swap you for Demetrius.”

Hermia turned angry and the emotion surprised Hara. She had thought the girl a bit of a mouse until now.

Hermia dashed to her feet and moved her arms violently to express herself. “You would let him die! Just for your pardon. What kind of people are you to condemn a man like that? He might be an arrogant lord but he didn’t ask to be drawn into this mess. If I hadn’t fallen into this trap, he would be fine. He wouldn’t be a prisoner and probably being tortured and hurt.”

Hara let her rant for a while and then said in a calm voice, “We aren’t leaving Demetrius. But we aren’t leaving you in the Duke’s power either. You are tired and you are worried. It is understandable that you will be upset but things will seem calmer in the morning. Trust me.”

Hermia gritted out. “How do you know? You have never been in this situation before. You don’t know what it is like.”

Hara leant on the helm, so she was a little closer to Hermia as she said, “When I was seventeen, my father was using me for his cons. We had these fake mines that we were convincing people to invest in. I was making these digging machines to show off to the clients. One day, during one of these demonstrations, one of the client’s friends burst in with soldiers. He had been to the place my father insisted had a mine and had discovered there was nothing there. He had returned to arrest me and my father. My father set my machine to blow. I knew if it did, it would take out most of the building. So I stayed to stop it from blowing up.” Hermia’s eyes widened with surprise as Hara told her story.

“My father escaped and I stopped the main explosion, but I messed up and something blew anyway on the machine. It knocked me out. I woke up the next day in a dungeon. They didn’t know that I was a girl, so they threw me into the general population. I got into quite a few fights that first day. But when the guards came to check on us, I told them I was a girl. It was a risk as I was still guilty of the crime I was in there for. I was lucky, though and the warden was curious. He had me brought to his house. He had heard of my grandfather, you see and knew that I had inherited his skills. He made a deal with me. If I worked in his house to modernise it, he would keep me out of the general population. I slept in his house. He was a better man than I knew as he spoke to the judge who was trying my case and convinced him I was better off working for my crime than spending it in a jail. So when my case was heard, I was sentenced to create engines for the navy for three years.”

Hara’s voice grew fierce as she continued, “So don’t tell me I don’t know. I know what it means to not know what is going to happen and the nicest thing is still a terrible future. I know what it feels like to blame yourself when it really isn’t your fault. It took me years to even get over what my father did to me and even talk to him. Okay, he isn’t in my life now but that is his choice, not mine. I have moved on and I’m better for it. So let time pass and stay calm. Things will come right if you focus on what you can do rather than all that went wrong.”

Hermia was pale as she rolled on her heels and mashed up the hem of her shirt in her fists.

Eventually she said, “I’m nobody. I might be related to the Empress but really I’m nobody. I have four brothers. No one cares what happens to me. The only reason I got any education was because they told the tutors to teach all the children because they were too cheap to get me my own tutors. And the tutors only knew how to teach boys so they taught me what they were teaching the others. I don’t know what to do with all this—attention.” She struggled to find the right word.

Hara gave her an enigmatic smile. “We never know what to do with all this attention.”

Hara meant Gideon. She hadn’t known what to do about his attraction to her and was still afraid of what it all meant.