Three Fates

and form. Fetching, he would have said, though she looked a bit too cool and calculating for his personal taste in females.
    He preferred them a bit slow of wit and cheerful of disposition.
    Tucked in with her was a paper with a name and address, and the scrawled notation: Contact for second Fate.
    Felix pondered over it, committed the note to memory out of habit. It could be another chicken for plucking once he was in London.
    He started to wrap her again, replace her where he’d found her, but he just stood there turning her over and over in his hands. Throughout his long career as a thief, he’d never once allowed himself to envy, to crave, to want an object for himself.
    What was taken was always a means to an end, and nothing more. But Felix Greenfield, lately of Hell’s Kitchen and bound for the alleyways and tenements of London, stood in the plush cabin on the grand ship with the Irish coast even now in view out the windows, and wanted the small silver woman for his own.
    She was so . . . pretty. And fit so well in his hand with the metal already warming against his palm. Such a little thing. Who would miss her?
    “Don’t be stupid,” he muttered, wrapping her in velvet again. “Take the money, mate, and move along.”
    Before he could replace her, he heard what he thought was a peal of thunder. The floor beneath his feet seemed to shudder. Nearly losing his balance as the ship shook side to side, he stumbled toward the door, the velvet-cloaked statue still in his hand.
    Without thinking, he jammed it into his trouser pocket, spilled out into the corridor as the floor rose under him.
    There was a sound now, not like thunder, but like a great hammer flung down from heaven to strike the ship.
    Felix ran for his life.
    And running, he raced into madness.
    The forward part of the ship dipped sharply and had him tumbling down the corridor like dice in a cup. He could hear shouting and the pounding of feet. And he tasted blood in his mouth, seconds before it went dark.
    His first wild thought was, Iceberg! as he remembered what had befallen the great Titanic. But surely in the broad light of a spring afternoon, so close to the Irish coast, such a thing wasn’t possible.
    He never thought of the Germans. He never thought of war.
    He scrambled up, slamming into walls in the pitch black of the corridor, stumbling over his own feet and the stairs, and spilled out on deck with a flood of others. Already lifeboats were being launched and there were cries of terror along with shouted orders for women and children to board them.
    How bad was it? he wondered frantically. How bad could it be when he could see the shimmering green of the coastline? Even as he tried to calm himself, the ship pitched again, and one of the lowering lifeboats upended. Its screaming passengers were hurled into the sea.
    He saw a mass of faces—some torn, some scalded, all horrified. There were piles of debris on deck, and passengers—bleeding, screaming—trapped under it. Some, he saw with dull shock, were already beyond screams.
    And there on the listing desk of the great ship, Felix smelled what he’d often smelled in Hell’s Kitchen.
    He smelled death.
    Women clutched children, babies, and wept or prayed. Men ran in panic, or fought madly to drag the injured clear of debris.
    Through the chaos stewards and stewardesses hurried, passing out life jackets with a kind of steady calm. They might have been handing out teacups, he thought, until one rushed by him.
    “Go on, man! Do your job! See to the passengers.”
    It took Felix one blank moment before he remembered he was still wearing the stolen steward’s uniform. And another before he understood, truly understood, they were sinking.
    Fuck me, he thought, standing in the middle of the screams and prayers. We’re dying.
    There were shouts from the water, desperate cries for help. Felix fought his way to the rail and, looking down, saw bodies floating, people floundering in debris-strewn water. People drowning in it.
    He saw another lifeboat being launched, wondered if he could somehow make the leap into it and save himself. He struggled to pull himself to a higher point, to gain ground was all he could think. To stay on his feet until he could hurl himself into a lifeboat and survive.
    He saw a well-dressed man take off his own life jacket and put it around a weeping woman.
    So the rich could be heroes, he thought. They could afford to be. He’d sooner be alive.
    The deck tilted