"Hey, boss, go down and get some rest. I've got things here."
A drunken voice approached from behind. Alcohol had twisted its owner's steps and swollen his tongue; in the night wind of the Ice Sea, he was like a clumsy bear that had stored too much fat, liable at any moment to slip away on the thin ice covering the deck.
"You? Just don't fall overboard and go winter swimming." William licked his dry, cold lips, pulled the hand feeling for his flask from inside his coat, and refused the second mate's offer to take over. "This isn't the Iceberg. Hauling someone back up would be a real pain."
Every inch of his mouth urged him to twist off the cap and wet his throat with liquor.
But these were spirits meant to ward off the cold. Indulging his craving would mean skipping half a day—or even a full day—and missing the best stargazing opportunity of the coming week.
For the seventeenth time tonight, he raised his head toward the patch of sky indicated by the compass.
Thin clouds had lingered for several days and nights, like frosted glass or a dancer's gauze skirt, always hovering just out of reach as they disturbed his vision and obscured that tiny yet crucial point in the sky.
That star in the far north, the axis of the heavens, seemed to be behind some wisp of cloud, teasingly leaking threads of light that made one believe it would reveal itself the very next instant.
Yet even when the arm holding the sextant had grown sore and his eyes dry and itchy, that vague, blurry glimmer had never truly appeared.
A few days earlier, they had finished loading the last batch of cargo almost on the toes of a blizzard, then set sail