Three Fates

the floating palace, was sinking in front of his eyes. Dangling from it were lifeboats, useless as toys. Somehow it astonished him to see there were still people on the decks. Some were kneeling, others still rushing in panic from a fate that was hurtling toward them.
    In shock, he watched more tumble like dolls into the sea. And the huge black funnels tipped down toward the water, down to where he clung to a broken crate.
    When those funnels touched the sea, water gushed into them, sucking in people with it.
    Not like this, he thought as he kicked weakly. A man wasn’t meant to die like this. But the sea dragged him under, pulled him in. Water seemed to boil around him as he struggled. He choked on it, tasted salt and oil and smoke. And realized, as his body bashed into a solid wall, that he was trapped in one of the funnels, would die there like a rat in a blocked chimney.
    As his lungs began to scream, he thought of the woman and the boy. Since he deemed it useless to pray for himself, he offered what he thought was his last plea to God that they’d survived.
    Later, he would think it had been as if hands had taken hold of him and yanked him free. As the funnels sank, he was expelled, flying out on a filthy gush of soot.
    With pain radiating through him, he snagged a floating plank and pulled his upper body onto it. He laid his cheek on the wood, breathed deeply, wept quietly.
    And saw the Lusitania was gone.
    The plate of water where she’d been was raging, thrashing and belching smoke. Belching bodies, he saw with a dull horror. He’d been one of them, only moments before. But fate had spared him.
    While he watched, while he struggled to block out the screams and stay sane, the water went calm as glass. With the last of his strength, he pulled himself onto the plank. He heard the shrill song of sea gulls, the weeping prayers or weeping cries of those who floundered or floated in the water with him.
    Probably freeze to death, he thought as he drifted in and out of consciousness. But it was better than drowning.
     
     
    IT WAS THE cold that brought him out of the faint. His body was racked with it, and every trickling breeze was a new agony. Hardly daring to move, he tugged at his sopping and ruined steward’s jacket. Bright pain had nausea rolling greasily in his belly. He ran an unsteady hand over his face and saw the wet wasn’t water, but blood.
    His laugh was wild and shaky. So what would it be, freezing or bleeding to death? Drowning might have been better, after all. It would be over that way. He slowly shed the jacket—something wrong with his shoulder, he thought absently—and used the ruined jacket to wipe the blood from his face.
    He didn’t hear so much shouting now. There were still some thin screams, some moans and prayers, but most of the passengers who’d made it as far as he had were dead. And silent.
    He watched a body float by. It took him a moment to recognize the face, as it was bone-white and covered with bloodless gashes.
    Wyley. Good Christ.
    For the first time since the nightmare had begun, he felt for the weight in his pocket. He felt the lump of what he’d stolen from the man currently staring up at the sky with blank blue eyes.
    “You won’t need it,” Felix said between chattering teeth, “but I swear before God if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have stolen from you in the last moments of your life. Seems like robbing a grave.”
    His long-lapsed religious training had him folding his hands in prayer. “If I end up dying here today, I’ll apologize in person if we end up on the same side of the gate. And if I live I take a vow to try to reform. No point in saying I’ll do it, but I’ll give doing an honest day’s work a try.”
    He passed out again, and woke to the sound of an engine. Dazed, numb, he managed to lift his head. Through his wavering vision, he saw a boat, and through the roaring in his ears, heard the shouts and voices of men.
    He tried to call out, but managed only a hacking cough. “I’m alive.” His voice was only a croak, whisked away by the breeze. “I’m still alive.”
    He didn’t feel the hands pull him onto the fishing trawler called Dan O’Connell. Was delirious with chills and pain when he was wrapped in a blanket, when hot tea was poured down his throat. He would remember nothing about his actual rescue, nor learn the names of the men whose arms had hauled him to safety. Nothing came clear to him until he woke, nearly twenty-four