The unsinkable, Lonely Calypso.

The first week, the excuse was illness. Possibly the plague. Week two, was sea sickness.

By the time week three reared its ugly head, Alessina knew she couldn't avoid it anymore. So finally, Princess Alessina Warsaw received a clean bill of health and her first tour of a ship.

The ship was spotless, a writhing, breathing, groaning, squeaking mass of metal and wood. All the Princess knew about them came from stories about pirates and adventure.

Now she had to command the Lonely Calypso, a combination of hissing metal and wavering wood. The wood strained and ached where the metal protruded from it, and Alessina frowned at it, reaching out to touch the glistening, shiny pipe.

"Princess, please don't." The alchemist Sivvar said sharply, swatting her hand away just as it grazed the hot metal.

Alessina glared at him as the ship gently listed to the side. So what if she'd been hiding in her quarters? She was the damn nepotism granted commander of this ship.

Alessina decided to be an adult about it. "It's a marvel." She declared, clasping her hands behind her straight back, continuing to walk the tour the alchemist was leading her on.

The alchemist's distracted eyes looked up from a notebook. "Hmm? Yes, nothing like the old, unreliable ships of the past. Just wait Princess, and these ships will be entirely made of metal." His voice was both bored and tired.

That made no sense. "Metal? Wouldn't they sink?"

The alchemist gave Alessina a look she knew well. Her tutors, suitors, and servants wore it often, especially after stupid questions. Asked by stupid, inbred princesses.

The alchemist buried the look in a mocking smile. "Yes, it's quite the mystery."

Politely, Alessina muffled her rage in a clenched fist. Nails dug into her palm, the stinging pain a reminder to stay composed. Throwing a tantrum on a ship far from her guards and her home could be lethal.

However, letting one of her subjects mock her would definitely get her killed. Alessina fixed him with a withering stare, and refused to move. The alchemist eventually turned, raising a grey eyebrow at her.

"Tell me how they float," Alessina demanded, continuing to bore holes into his wizened skull.

"Well," The alchemist looked bewildered, and faintly chastened. "At present, the wooden parts help them float in water. In the future, the boats will be built with less density, or have air-rooms to keep them afloat." He ran a gloved hand through what was left of his silver hair.

Most of that explanation was meaningless to Alessina, but she nodded quietly.

This time, the alchemist waited, treating her less like a spoiled moron.

Alessina gestured ahead, eyes narrowed. "Proceed."

"The Lonely Calypso is one of the next generation of ships for your father's empire. It will conquer seas in his name, and defeat his enemies. The ship is also the fastest in the world, and one of the best defended." The speech was dutiful, bordering on mutinous.

Alessina despised proclamations like the fastest or the best. They reeked of complacency, and usually got empires to fall rather than fight to stand. And Father's ever expanding, perpetually warring realm needed to keep standing.

"Your accent. You are from the colonies?" Royalty had to phrase everything like a question they knew the answer to.

The alchemist ducked his head when they passed bowing sailors. "My mother was a colonial woman." The shame in his words was something Alessina also knew a lot about.

"Mine too." Alessina sighed, earning a surprised look from Sivvar.

She placed her hands on a metal railing. The galley was below, a rambunctious, bustling space of sailors and alchemists.

Some of them looked up at her, some bowed. The mutiny and cannibalistic hatred festered here too.

Alessina refused to look away, rubbing a hand over her twisted fingers. They'd never healed after an assassination attempt; a good reminder of the sword hanging over her head.

Alessina forced herself to look calm and unaffected, but it turned her stomach to think she'd lead these people soon.

Her father had sent her to the best defended, important ship to make sure his orders were given. But everyone else in the galley had earned their position.

"Any other questions, Princess?" The alchemist asked, pausing in his monotonous explanation of the slowly developing aether engine.

The Princess brushed imaginary dust off her fingers, eager to ask the one question she'd carried from the shore. "How does the ship stay safe from sea monsters? Sirens? Every ship that has ever set sail has come under attack."

Now the alchemist grinned, true interest finally flickering in his eyes. "Excellent, my lady, so you're familiar with the creatures of the depths?"

Alessina didn't share it often, but it was her only true interest in life. "I know about all of them. I was also under the impression that aside from wax in the ears, or speed, there was no way to survive an encounter."

The alchemist was intently listening and he beckoned her. "My lady, a tour of the ship's mechanisms can wait." He turned and Alessina followed at a more stately pace, intrigued by what the answer could be.

"The Lonely Calypso contains the most alchemists anywhere in the empire, and one of our missions is solving the puzzles of what make the various sea creatures tick."

"An example?" Alessina asked, intrigued. She started walking faster, keeping up with the alchemist.

"Sea dragons are vulnerable to sun star blood." The alchemist grinned and Alessina stared at him. "We found out when we fed some captured hatchling sea dragons."

"Could you train them as hatchlings to defend the ships?" Alessina asked and Sivvar stared at her, impressed.

"We're still discovering that. But we have made progress with the sirens."

Both of Alessina's sparse eyebrows shot up at that. The greatest threat to the empire's expeditions were teams of vicious, beautiful, sea huntresses. No sailor, man or woman was immune to their charms. Or to their sharp teeth.

The alchemist opened a room and Alessina blinked at the light.

Then stared at the flat pools of water, that contained strapped down sirens in rows. It took another moment for Alessina to register the awful smell of the room, and the dark colouring of the water.

"What is this?" She asked slowly.

"We are confident we can figure out everything about them. What hurts them, what could kill them." Sivvar's voice had taken on a reverent, feverish tone. "Please, follow me."

He walked over to an alchemist kneeling next to the edge of a pool.

Blood bloomed in the water as a student alchemist tore apart a dead siren's tail. The siren had glassy eyes and her light hair flowed gently in the water. Almost peaceful.

There was a flurry of restrained movement next to the dead siren.

Alessina forced her eyes to move on, to the live siren, gasping and spitting out the bloody water entering her mouth.

"See how the spine continues for them too, like ours, not like a fish's." The student alchemist's goggles and face had sprayed blood all over it. She continued cutting into the eviscerated flesh. "Ah!" The student alchemist held up a small, silvery sac. "An egg sac."

"Well done, Ervina. That's the most complete one you've retrieved yet."

Half in a daze, Alessina started estimating the numbers in the room. There were at least thirty sirens here, some deceased and torn up, and others struggling and crying out in their hoarse, odd voices.

Alessina felt her stomach turn, but not from the ship's movement. They were torturing and cutting them open in plain sight of each other.

The live siren, one of many in these pools, stared in horror at her sister.

To Alessina's shock, the siren started weeping.

"They...cry?" She asked, voice shaken and numb.

Sivvar choked out a laugh. "Let it not hurt your gentle heart, princess. They do many things, but none of it means anything."

The living siren sobbed, one strapped hand straining to touch her sister. Her face was eerily, devastingly beautiful. She had honey skin and deep brown eyes.

"One day, we'll be able to rid the world of these creatures." The alchemist promised Alessina, and the student alchemist nodded eagerly.

"Do they speak...our tongue?" Alessina asked, observing the pretty, human features the live siren had. She knew immediately, that she'd never forget her face.

"Princess, they can parrot words they've heard from us. One over there," The student alchemist pointed towards a far pool. "Kept saying ship because she heard us saying it. Some of them say words they heard from sailors they drowned."

"Oh." Alessina didn't know what was wrong with her. She felt foggy, faintly underwater. "How come they aren't singing? Fooling us?" She couldn't make herself sound authoritative right now.

Damn her weakness. How would she protect the empire from attackers, if she felt sorry for monsters?

"They need exposure to moonlight and sea water. The water here is a mix of fresh water and sea water. We're also trying to get rid of their tails." Sivvar replied, eager to satiate her curiosity. "I'm very pleased, your highness, that you favour alchemy. Perhaps-"

Alessina ignored him, watching the siren, whose crying had lessened. The siren stared at her, her eyes somehow big and innocent.

Like a naughty child, or puppy playing at wolf. Alessina noted that there was an extra layer over her eye. Probably how they kept them open.

Then she was disgusted at her clinical evaluation of the sirens.

The siren was still staring at her, both forlorn and somehow steely.

Alessina knelt by her, still ignoring the alchemists. They clearly felt pain. "I am sorry." She whispered lightly to the siren, and the siren looked back, listening carefully.

The siren opened her mouth and closed it, lips chapped from the gag that floated near her neck. "I-ah-ah-" She tried.

"Sir," The student alchemist said to Sivvar suddenly. "This siren's organs were damaged in the vivisection. Is it okay if I move onto the next?"

"Siren." The live siren parroted suddenly, and Alessina winced.

"A sign of great strength, that our princess can stomach this," Sivvar said gleefully, then sighed. "Ervina, why don't we let the princess dissect this one? She seems to have an interest."

Alessina felt her heart thud uncontrollably. The alchemists watched her expectantly.

No weakness. That's what her broken fingers should have taught her.

She slowly accepted the scalpel from the student alchemist.

"This is another step towards an eternal empire." Sivvar said behind her back. "You are truly your father's daughter."

His ruthless daughter, the steely one she saw in portraits but never saw in the mirror.

The siren saw the knife and started wildly flailing in the water. She hissed, her pretty face morphing into an awful, monstrous scowl.

"I'm sorry," Alessina mumbled quietly, in the language her mother spoke.

"I'm sorry!" The siren cried, her tail writhing away from Alessina, sending water splashing.

Alessina waited, and then carefully cut a line into her tail.

The siren screamed. "I'm sorry! Please, don't do it!"

"Hey, that's a new one." The student alchemist declared.

So we're both killers; how many sailors had begged this siren for their lives?

How many people would beg Alessina for their lives?

Alessina closed her eyes tiredly. And she stabbed the scalpel down.