Before them, Riki lay unmoving on the deck.

  “Try this.” Marianne said. She pulled out a small bottle, popped the lid and waved it under his nose.

  Riki stirred and groaned. Instinctively he pulled away from from whatever it was Marianne was holding. “Uggh, what the fuck is that?”

  “Perfume,” replied Marianne.

  “That’s perfume?” an incredulous looking Ferret peered over her shoulder at the bottle. He wrinkled his nose. “You witches like some weird scents.”

  Marianne shook her head. “Oh, it’s not for liking. This is what you put on when you want to keep the wandering hands away.” She smiled.

  Riki started to sit himself upright.

  “Careful,” Amanda told him, worried he shouldn’t be moving but also feeling the pressure of all the others who needed healing. It wouldn’t do if he passed out before he could help though.

  Riki looked at her and then he looked down at his stomach. Then he smiled and before her eyes, Amanda watched as the rest of his wound started to heal over until nothing was left but perfectly smooth skin. Not even a scar.

  Seeing he was looking better, Morgan wasted no time. “Get him to his feet!” She ordered.

  Riki was helped upright and directed to those most in need first. Soon many of the injured were back on their feet, or near enough to, including Randy.

  Sirius was left to nearer the end since he wasn’t as injured as some of the others. Amanda worried Riki was going to get tired before he got to Sirius.

  But Sirius reassured her. “Don’t worry. Riki’s efficient. He’s not even close to being tired yet.”

  “He was just stabbed and healed...” Amanda started but then she stopped and frowned as she registered his words. He sounded too sure of Riki’s state, not like he was guessing but like he knew. She turned to Sirius and eyed him carefully. “How can you tell?”

  He held up a necklace. A sliver chain. A decorative knot. One of the mindwalking infusements.

  “You were using that?!” she exclaimed with surprise. “What about the borrower?”

  Sirius shrugged and gave a weak smile. “I was being subtle, I think. I just did like how you showed me on the beach but real careful. It wasn’t too different from dreamwalking in a way. I figured if I just read little bits that would be useful. And I kept it quick, each time. Didn’t do it for long enough to give him time to react.”

  She took the necklace from him. He’d done better than she’d thought at his first attempt using it. It wasn’t an easy thing to use an infusement so loosely made. Suddenly the weight of the day hit her and she could feel tears gathering in her eyes. Not wanting to cry in front of Morgan or any of the rest of the crew she turned her face away to look out at the sparkling sea which seemed weirdly calm and beautiful.

  “What’s wrong?” Sirius asked.

  She shook her head, not sure she could answer him without the tears falling.

  Luckily, Riki arrived then. “Your turn.” He said to Sirius.

  It was enough to allow Amanda to swallow her tears back down, although Sirius gave her a worried glance.

  She gave him a reassuring smile.

  He reached out and took her hand. He squeezed it gently and she squeezed it back.

  She watched Riki. “Don’t you have to get the bullet out first?” she asked. Her father always had to, well, he didn’t have to. A wound could be healed with a bullet in it but it generally wasn’t recommended unless necessary.

  Riki shook his head and gave a cocky smile. “No, watch this.”

  Somehow, the man had enough skill that as he healed the wound it pushed the bullet out of the hole. A moment later it fell to the deck with a soft thud.

  Amanda could see Sirius gritting his teeth. Healing wasn’t without pain. But he didn’t make a sound other than for a slight grunt as the bullet emerged from his skin.

  Elsewhere on the deck, a scream tore through the air.

  “ARRRRGGGGHH!”

  “What are these things!?” Morgan cried as she stabbed her sword through yet another zombie that hadn’t quite been killed properly the first time. Some of them were proving a bit slow to rise.

  “Side effect of necromancy,” Riki explained.

  “Toss them overboard,” Morgan instructed to a different sailor as yet another newly risen zombie tried to take a bite out of a passing ankle. Then she turned to Riki with a puzzled expression. “Necromancy? They were using necromancy? Didn’t seem to help them very much.”

  “No. We were,” Riki explained. “I was.” At the look on Morgan’s face he quickly added, “It worked didn’t it.”

  Morgan shut her mouth and gave a sort of harrumph of concession.

  “It made a right mess,” commented Larska.

  “I dunno, I thought it was quite effective,” countered Stinger. “They spent more time fighting themselves than us. Every man we took down was like gaining one at the same time.”

  “Not just that but the borrower couldn’t turn that strategy back on us,” Riki added.

  “He could have if he’d done it to our men,” replied Larska.

  It was Gulliver who interrupted this time. He shook his head and replied, “Maybe he could have if he’d realised what Riki was doing earlier but he couldn’t do that without us first doing this and having a head start is what gave us the advantage of numbers.”

  Morgan looked thoughtful.

  Amanda watched with worry as a sailor threw a body overboard. She said to Sirius, “They probably shouldn’t just throw them overboard like that. The water won’t kill them.”

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  He looked at her and she could see the horrified realisation growing in his face.

  “They need to squish the brains,” she added.

  Quickly, he turned to Morgan. “Morgan! Get them to destroy the heads first before they toss em, unless you want underwater zombies.”

  Morgan passed along the order with a disgusted look on her face.

  “Messy,” remarked Larska again.

  A now dressed, very tired looking, Randy slapped him on the back. “You’re a pirate, what are you worried about? Getting a little blood in your fur?”

  “Well, if your fur was white…”

  Amanda smiled as the sound of the two men falling about into a playful teasing faded into the background. All was well, or at least as good as it could have been, and she was very tired.

  She didn’t realised exactly how tired she was or that she’d lost her balance until she felt Sirius’s hands steadying her.

  “Easy,” he remarked. “Maybe you should go lie down? Or…” He looked about the deck, his gaze soon fixing on Riki.

  “No, I’m alright,” Amanda protested before he could call Riki back over. “I just feel like I’ve been awake for days.”

  “Well, perhaps you should get some sleep then?”

  “What about…” Amanda looked around at the mess the deck was in. There was a lot of work to do cleaning up.

  “Let the rest of us handle it,” Sirius told her. “You’ve done enough. I get the sense that time travel is not easy.”

  “But…” she started to argue as Sirius swept her off her feet and carried her toward the lower decks. “You’re the one who got shot.”

  “Not shot anymore. Riki healed me,” he said simply.

  She gave up and laid her head against his chest. “I can walk,” she mumbled even though at this point she wasn’t entirely sure she could anymore. Bed did sound lovely.

  Amanda awoke in a panic. What day was it?

  At her jolt, Sirius stirred beside her. He sat up. “Hey, hey,” he cooed comfortingly.

  “What day is it?” she asked. It felt too much like that morning again. It couldn’t be could it?

  “It’s still the same day as The Slicer attacked us. That was this morning. You’ve been asleep for hours,” Sirius quickly reassured her.

  Amanda relaxed. For a second she’d worried that she’d time travelled again. “And you’re okay?” she asked as her gaze swept him up and down.

  He cocked an eyebrow and gave her a concerned look.

  Seeing he was fine, she relaxed again. “It’s just, sometimes time travel has unforeseen consequences. I’m not entirely sure we’re out of the woods yet.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, the sorcerer who explained it to me got all mathsy so I didn’t completely understand all the details but basically he said it’s hard to change big stuff, that the universe resists somehow. I saw you die. I saw others die twice. The sorcerer said going back in time to save a life usually just results in the person dying in a different way.”

  Sirius gave her a skeptical look. “That sounds like something a sorcerer would say to discourage someone from using time travel.”

  “No really, he had a poem and everything.”

  “How’d it go?” Gently, he reached a hand up and tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

  The act threw her, her heart did a double jump, and for a second she wondered if she was wrong. He didn’t seem worried after all. But then, he was often calm in terrifying situations and she had seen for herself how easy it was to mess up time travel the last time she’d tried to fix something.

  She recited what she could remember of the poem.

  “A step through time to save one, will lose you two before the day is done.

  A step through time to save two, and you’ll forget just what was true.

  A step through time to save three, and you’ll see what was meant to be.

  A step through time to save four, will have you knocking on death’s door.

  A step through time to save five, and you will start to question your own life.

  A step through time to save six, will triple the things you have to fix.

  A step through time to save seven…”

  She trailed off. “I don’t remember the rest, something about heaven and friends or something like that.” She shook her head. “Plus he gave a whole bunch of examples of people trying to use time travel to save someone they loved only to have them die anyway.”

  Sirius still didn’t look worried. “That’s probably just cause people who die young are just statistically more likely to die in general, like being accident prone or living a high risk life.”

  “Are you going to get all mathsy on me now?” she teased.

  He smiled. “If it stops you worrying.”

  She returned his smile. Then she shook her head and her smile fell away again. In a soft voice, one that was almost a whisper, she said, “I’ve done it before though.”

  He said nothing, just waited patiently for her to explain.

  “You remember how I said I, or we, my friend and I, how we cost a boy his memories?”

  Sirius nodded.

  “Well, at first it wasn’t so bad. It was meant to be kind of a joke. We were messing about with the mindwalking. And then we went too far. I tried to fix it with the mindwalking and I couldn’t so then we tried time travel. You know how I said I never killed anyone with the magic meddling?” She held her breath and watched him carefully. She’d initially tried so hard to forget what she had done but eventually she’d decided it was better to remember, to keep in mind the cost of magic. And she felt she couldn’t keep this from him. It was too much a part of her. But still she feared what his reaction would be.

  But all she saw in his eyes was patience, not a hint of wariness, just something that felt like trust.

  Reassured, she continued. “Well, what I meant was I never killed anyone permanently.”

  His eyebrows met almost in the middle. “You necromancied them?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’ve never managed to pull off a successful necromancy. We tired but it just made things worse. Same with the time travel. We’d fix one thing and it would cause like a dozen other problems. And then some loops we just gave up and got shitfaced drunk which probably didn’t help because even without alcohol it got really hard to keep track of everything but even doing nothing didn’t fix anything. I couldn’t remember what had happened in which loop and when you jump you can’t write anything down. Whatever we did, we just kept making everything worse. We even started a whole zombie outbreak.”

  “So how’d you fix it?”

  “We didn’t. A sorcerer turned up. I don’t know how he knew or found out, maybe the horde of zombies tipped him off, that probably wasn’t very subtle, but he showed up and fixed everything, almost everything. Took a bunch of the infusements with him. Not everything, more because of luck than anything else I think. He read our minds but I wasn’t even thinking of the books at that point. I guess Wolf wasn’t either, because he didn’t take those. Or maybe he just didn’t think we could do much with them. And he gave us a pretty stern warning.”

  Sirius was quiet for several seconds then he said, “So how old are you really?”

  His question took her off guard. “What?” she spluttered. After all she had just told him, that was his question? She couldn’t help but give him an incredulous half-smile.

  “Well,” he started, a gentle but mischievous smile tugging at his own lips. “You time looped so you’ve lived extra days, maybe even aged extra days.”

  She laughed. “I don’t know. I mean, it wasn’t like years, more like a few weeks.” Her smile fell away as she considered the larger implications. “I can’t imagine what happens to someone who time travels for years.”

  Sirius was quiet. He looked thoughtful.

  She studied him and suddenly realised something. “How old are you?” she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, you’ve never actually told me and none of your crew seem in agreement over how old you are.”

  Sirius’s smile was like a cat that had found the cream. His green eyes glinted mischievously. He gave her no other reply.

  She poked him. “Oh come on, you have to tell me. I’ll tell you how old I am.”

  “You’re 18,” Sirius replied, smug smile never leaving his face.

  “How?”

  “Bruce,” Sirius explained.

  “He told me you were 18. I guess I’ll go with that then,” she replied deciding to give the impression that she no longer cared.

  Sirius narrowed his eyes. After studying her for a bit he said, “I’m 19. I’ll be 20 in March.”

  She grinned and brought her face up close to his. “March the what?” she asked, inches away from kissing him.

  His smile returned, not as wide or as smug as before but it was there. “The 27th,” he answered.

  “Hmm, so you’re an Aries, the bull. I hear they’re very stubborn.”

  “Astrology’s a farce,” Sirius replied.

  Widening her eyes, and inching a little closer to him she replied, “But I thought you liked the stars?”

  He snorted. “That’s astronomy…” he trailed off as he realised she was teasing. One of his hands found her belly and he gave her side a crab bite with his fingers so soft that it was more of a tickle.

  Unfortunately for Amanda, she was pretty darn ticklish. She jerked away with a grin and squeal.

  He followed, that mischievous green glint back in his eyes. “So what are you then?” he asked. “When’s your birthday.”

  “August,” she replied, knowing what was coming.

  “The?” His hands hovered over her belly, threatening more tickles if she didn’t answer.

  “2nd.”

  He paused and considered it. “Ah, the lion. Typical,” he added with a grin.

  “What do you mean typ-”

  But her words turned to laughter as Sirius’s playful fingers found her sides again and together they got lost in blissful fun that distracted them from all that had come before or might come again.