"How have you been feeling?" Jade asked.

Oliver sat on the edge of the coffer and extended his hands towards her. "I don't know Jade, like—"

"Stop moving," she said. Oliver always did an awful lot of squirming. He had a lot of energy. Had trouble sitting still. Even now, he couldn't help his leg bouncing up and down. She untied the bandages and looked back at him, waiting for him to speak. He didn't look good. He looked too sallow for her to assume that he felt okay.

"Like shite," he said. He parted his lips and ground his teeth back and forth. Jade unwrapped the bandages. There had been a halt in the repairs of the ship. Oliver couldn't make repairs with his hands all loused up nor could Jade do the entire lot by herself. Jade was starting to get impatient with it all. Every time she thought about leaving, her feet felt like they needed to move and run faster and farther. She stomped her feet quietly instead, but the weakness in her legs was still there. It was just as stubborn as she was.

She put the bandages aside and bit the insides of her cheeks. Oliver's hands were still torn from the rope burn. The open wounds were yellowing and bruised. Jade recoiled inwardly at the sight of the infection. "Okay, this is fine. I can fix this," she lied.

At the notice of worry on Oliver's face, she cut herself off, then swallowed hard and continued. "I can fix this." She got out of her chair and pulled open her nightstand drawer. Despite being secured to the floor, it rattled about as she rummaged through it. She thought she heard someone yell, but after stilling for a moment, the sound went away. Jade pulled open the bottom drawer. With both hands, she dug through it.

"Did you hear someone?" Oliver asked.

"I don't care right now. Let's keep going."

Jade found the bottle of alcohol and brought it back to Oliver. She uncapped it. The smells of the ship had brewed into something rather vile--Oliver's infection, the soup Jade had been cooking since 2 o'clock, and the open bottle of medical alcohol in Jade's hands. She stifled a cough.

"I don't want that." Oliver pulled his hands away. "It burns."

Jade set the bottle down. She reached out and pulled his wrists back towards her. "I think this will disinfect it."

"It didn't the first time!" He shook his head, scrunching up his eyes tight.

"Well I'm the one taking care of you, Ollie." Jade picked up the bottle of alcohol again and tilted it over Oliver's hand. He shouted and tugged his hand away. Jade pulled his hand back and dabbed it with a clean towel. She stared at the hand. She had no idea what to do with it. She threw alcohol over his other hand and then turned around. She tugged a blanket off of her cot.

"For the love of Neptune, Jade. Get this off me." Oliver pushed the blanket off of his shoulders. His teeth were clenched tight from the burn of the alcohol.

Jade wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. "We're going to the clinic. Come on."

Oliver shook his head. "We can't afford that."

"Yeah? We'll we're not going to pay." Oliver refused to stand up. "Ollie, don't you dare have land morals now. I can't bear to see you like this." Jade's panic whelmed. Oliver's eyes widened, fixed at something behind her.

There was a knock on the door frame. Jade spun around and turned toward the threshold, but before she could even look, the man walked in and sat on her white desk chair in front of Oliver. He pulled at Oliver's hand to look at it, but Oliver violently tugged his hand back. The man had a tight grip on it. He pulled it back towards him. "Please stop," he said. Oliver stopped fighting him. The man looked up at Jade. Jade dropped the blanket.

"Oh, hello," he said. He must have been a year or so older than Jade. Or maybe older. It was hard to tell. He certainly wasn't Durantan. If his thick accent didn't give him away as being a foreigner, his skin was golden--brilliant compared to every ashen fellow she'd seen walking the streets of Longport, that including her own reflection. His hair was full and wavy and just as dark as his eyes. His eyes fixed on Jade's for a moment longer than they should have. His mouth twitched.

"Do you have a canteen?" he asked Oliver.

Oliver stared at him. "Wh-who are you?" He asked in a whisper. Jade rolled her eyes. It was like Oliver had never seen a handsome man in his life.

Jade pulled up the blanket. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "What are you doing?"

"My job," he said. Oliver handed him the canteen with resistance. "I am Dr. Sabik Nejem." He pried the canteen out of Oliver's hands.

Jade inhaled lightly. She rolled up the blanket and tossed it onto her cot. Sabik payed no attention as it flew over his head. Jade didn't look at him when she spoke. "I believe you are mistaken, Doctor. Captain Noble meant that we were no longer in need of your service. I apologize but—"

Sabik laughed as he cleaned out Oliver's wound with water. "I understand your language just fine, Ms. Harris." A faint smile traced his lips. "And that is hardly something to tell a doctor when you cannot afford the clinic."

Jade bit her tongue twice, once so that she didn't offer a weak rebuttal and a second time so that she would avoid asking him to not call her Ms. Harris again. She pushed her fingers into her temple. "I apologize. I hadn't the intention of being insensitive."

His mouth twitched upward again, then dropped back down. It was either the oddest hint of a smile or just an unusual tic. He turned his attention to the small haversack that was slung around his side. He dug through its contents and produced a small jar of a golden substance. With a tongue depressor, he scooped from the jar and spread it thin onto Oliver's hand.

"You're kidding me," Jade crossed her arms. "You're putting honey on his hand."

He glanced pointedly at Jade before wrapping Oliver's hands. "That should do it. We just need your hands to heal without infection. Manuka honey is antibacterial. It should keep the tissue healthy while giving it time to heal. Give it a few days and rest your hands."

Oliver drew his hands back towards himself possessively.

"Thank you, Dr. Nejem," Jade sighed. "My sincerest apologies for doubting you. Oliver tells me that I have trust issues."

"You do." Oliver looks up at her, his eyes as wide and innocent as a little puppy.

"I do not. I'm just protective because you keep getting yourself into bundles of trouble." She pinched his side. He shouted and hopped off the seat.

"Thank you, doctor!" he called as he ran off to his room.

"Um," Jade kicked her foot at the floor, trying to figure out what to say. "You should know that Captain Harris has passed."

Sabik followed Oliver with his eyes. He cleared his throat. "I know. Captain Noble rehired me."

"Oh," she crossed her arms. "I see that I am just consistently wrong today."

He occupied the silence by cleaning up the dirty bandages. He put the bottle of alcohol onto Jade's nightstand. When he stood up, he straightened out the blanket on her cot. Jade didn't need to protest. He dropped it immediately and turned away as she took a step back into the corner. The veins on his hands strained as he dusted off his foreign tunic. "I will leave now," he said.

And he did. Jade watched him walk into the middle of the mess hall. He set his bags on the table. Jade smiled. "You don't know where to go."

"No," He laughed uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck. He wore an interesting outfit—black trousers that fit perfectly and an ornate red tunic. Although she'd never seen one, she assumed it was Jhataran.

She pointed at the cabin across from hers. "You can set up there."

He nodded and brought his bags into the room. After watching him from her doorway for a few moments, she stepped out to meet him.

"My father hired you," she said.

"Yes, I met him. Um, my condolences, Ms. Harris."

Her jaw tightened at the way he addressed her. "How do you know who I am?"

He knelt on one knee to unfasten a desk from the floor. "He mentioned that he had a daughter and Silas Noble said that..." he paused as he stood up and jiggled the desk to see if he had been successful. Then he tried to pull it across the room.

"That's not to be moved," Jade said.

He stopped and leaned over the desk. He pushed his hair out of his face. "It would make for a more efficient clinic."

Jade was taken aback by his challenge. Her lips tilted. "Oh, educate me, please. Is this the clinic?"

"Why not?" he asked. "This is more than enough space and light for me to do my work."

Jade dusted off her pants. "Fine. Then let me help you with that." She took up an end of the desk. He looked hesitant, so she furrowed her eyebrows. "I'm no lady. I'm just as human as you."

"Noted."

"You were telling me about my father."

"I was?" He paused to pull a chair into the corner of the room. "Mm, I was. He hired me. I am a doctor. I spent time away from New Jhatari to learn from the best doctors and surgeons. There is no more story to tell."

"I sometimes think my father was keeping his secrets from me. If you know of any, you should tell me." She nodded. Whatever he knew, he wasn't about to tell her yet.

She turned back to the threshold to leave, but he cleared his throat. "What time should I be ready to work tomorrow?"

"Doing what?"

Sabik huffed a laugh that he didn't want her to see. "I am a doctor and a sailor. I have been on and off ships all my life."

"Merchant?"

He dropped a book that he was holding and a bunch of papers fell out. "Rhukkti il," he muttered. Jade bent down to help him pick everything up. They were botanical papers with medicinal recipes and pictures on them—at least she thought they were recipes. They were written in what she assumed was Jhati. She wondered if he had made the drawings himself. He gathered all his papers together and helped Jade off the floor. "I am sorry," he shook his head, "I apologize, Ms. Harris."

"Please just call me Harris."

He paused to look over her face. "What is your first name?"

"Jade," she said. He waited for her to say more. "Jade Elizabeth Antares. It's a silly name," she laughed softly. "My father loved the constellation Scorpius. Since my parents split, my mother gave me a traditional middle name and he gave me...that."

"I am named after a star too—my parents knew that I would be a doctor just like them. That is the way of our family caste. They named me after the constellation Ophiuchus." He quirked an eyebrow. "But that's not as uncommon as you make it sound. We all turn to the stars for answers."

Jade shook her head "No, but I'd rather you just call me Harris."

"Absolutely." Sabik took a heavy wooden box out of his bag and placed it on the desk. He opened it. It was full of powders of reds and blues and greens. He turned towards her. He reached his hand around the back of his neck. "You and the boy both have marks on your face," he said.

Jade touched her cheek. "You mean our freckles?" She smiled incredulously.

"Fre-ckle," he split the word in half with his heavy accent. "I have never seen these before. They were your mothers?" He turned back to his cot.

"Mine are...You know Oliver isn't my brother but...I guess you know that already." She drummed her knuckles against the doorframe, her cheeks filling with air in the awkward silence. She released it all in one breath. "I'll leave you to it, then." He still had his back turned to her, so she took her own moment to admire him. Even from the back, he was quite something to look at. Slim hips, broad shoulders. Even though he was covered from head-to-toe in Jhataran fabrics, it was clear that he was all muscle. Jade had had her own crew romances before, and she certainly wouldn't be making that mistake again. Before she left, he looked over his shoulder and caught her staring. Too awkward to play it out and see his reaction, Jade left immediately.

Repairs from the morning were postponed until she could get more blacking for the rigging. The shops weren't open today, but first thing tomorrow, she'd step out to get some. For now, she planned to thoroughly comb through her father's room. She was finally ready to see what else he'd left behind.

Jade lifted up the mattress on its side and checked the wooden frame of his bed. Nothing. She ran her hand underneath it. She even crawled into the small space and checked, just to be sure. There was nothing that shouldn't belong in a crawlspace, just a couple of squeaky floorboards. She ran her hand under the desk and the chair. A key dangled under the desk on a string. Blazes, Leon was weird. She left it there and collapsed into the chair. There was nothing important in that sodded room. Just keys and useless papers and--

Her eyes were drawn to the underside of the mattress. There was a hole cut into the fabric. Bilge rats, she thought, but it wasn't possible. The line was perfectly straight. She stepped forward and lowered the mattress. As she dug her hand into the incision, she squirmed at the thought of finding a rodent.

Her fingers grazed what felt like a paper. She tugged it out the bottom of the mattress. It was exactly what she was hoping not to find, especially after John Baine's accusations. But maybe he wasn't so wrong. There are only a few good reasons to hide a bundle of letters from the Tranan Union.

Jade flipped the mattress back down and took a seat on it. She stared at the letters in her lap. The curiosity bubbled over in her until she found her fingers untying the length of string. She flipped through all the envelopes.

What was her father thinking? Could he see the doubt in every inch of her body? Could he feel her disappointment? Was he on the other side of the room trying to explain himself, his ghostly voice never quite making it past the barrier that separated him and her?

Or maybe Jade was just as alone as she felt.