The barometer fell like a whisper men pretend not to hear. Lines thrummed with a note too high for comfort; canvas bellied wrong. Far off, the horizon stacked itself into bruises.
Ace stood beside Demon at the fore, watching the sea rehearse a bad idea. The shipwright tapped the rail twice—code for we fix it before it breaks us.
"Stormglass says we'll get the gentleman's version if we make the cut now," Demon said. He held up the thing he called a stormglass—a narrow bottle with crystals dreaming inside, their edges fuzzing like thoughts that wanted to be weather. "If we miss it, we're dancing with the kind that writes songs about your mistakes."
"Cut where?" Ace asked.
"Between those two shoulders." Demon pointed at a pair of swells steepling into a V, dark within dark. "Looks like a door. Doors don't like being doors, but they pretend if you ask nice."
Pelly arrived with the quiet that made decks feel watched over. "We take the door," he decided. "Grae?"
Grae had already made peace with the choice. "We take it," he echoed, which is different from agreed. "Ace, forward with Demon. You'll warm the air in the teeth of the cut. Not hot—dry. Two hands above the rail, one hand shy of wood. Think: fog with manners."
Ace nodded. He drew his heat like a map across his palms, split it into thin Ember Threads, then braided those threads into a veil that smelled faintly of rain remembering sun. The air ahead cleared by inches. Wind curled in, curious.
The Blackflame bore down on the V. Canvas cracked—once, like a joint popping back into place. Water turned from silk to muscle. The bow rose into a question and came down with a punctuation mark large enough to be heard in the bones.
"Hold," Pelly said, and the crew obeyed by not disobeying.
They slid through the door just as it chose not to be one anymore. Behind them, two waves argued and shook hands badly. Ahead, the sea flattened in that suspicious way liars use to win friends.
Demon grunted. "Polite storm," he judged. "The kind that asks your name before it robs you."
"Names cost," Pelly said. "We'll pay with other currency." He scanned the water, then the sky. "There."
A signal buoy bobbed where the slick met the swell, a little pole with a tin hat and a ribbon of oil like a halo. It wore a bell that had lost its courage and a flag chewing on itself. Paint peeled around a stenciled message that the sea hadn't yet stolen: AID.
Grae looked at Demon. Demon didn't argue. "We pick it up," the shipwright said. "Or we pick up a body tomorrow."
They came alongside with the kind of care that looks like indifference from a distance. Andrew hooked the buoy; Ace steadied it with a palm-warm shimmer that convinced iron to be less slippery. Demon cut the lashings, opened the tin hat, and pulled out a message jar stuffed with oilcloth.
Pelly cracked the seal. Oil smell became a story. He read plain. "Cutter Myrtle. Hull breach. Drifting northeast by north. Crew alive morning last. Powder wet. Request relay to nearest station or assistance if found within mercy." He glanced at the horizon where mercy negotiated its fee. "Station is three days wrong. We are one day right."
Grae's eyes made a decision sound like weather. "We fetch them," he said.
Andrew scratched his jaw with a sigh. "I hate feeding Marines. They're worse than sailors."
Collin didn't look up from the satchel he was already packing. "Men drown the same," he said. "Their uniforms just pocket water different."
Pelly spat his cigarette into a pocket tin. "Set a search line," he ordered. "Demon, chart the most likely drift with the wind being a liar."
Ace stood on the forepeak and let Observation unspool. It came easier now, thread by thread, until the sea's surface felt like cloth under his fingertips. The world's noise separated into useful lies: foam where a ship had no reason to make it; gulls circling where bait fish would not; a taste of powder in the air where no cannon had spoken today.
"There," he said, pointing to a smear of white three points off their nose. "Not wave. Not whale. Wrong kind of patience."
Pelly glanced once and trusted. "Helm," he said, and the Blackflame leaned that way as if the wood had been listening too.
They found the Myrtle hunched low in the water, deck awash, dignity worse off than the hull. Her mast had done a handwriting nobody would have signed. Men moved aboard her with the slow economy of those who had argued with panic long enough to win small concessions.
"Permission to come aboard?" Pelly called across the old language of distance.
A thin officer with sleep-starved eyes waved a hand that meant we're past ceremony. "If you brought miracles, you can keep your hat," he said. He looked like a man who had learned the names of all his men and had been trying to arrange the alphabet back into bodies all night.
"Miracles are thirsty work," Andrew muttered, already swinging a line with a sling.
"Demon," Grae said, and the shipwright dove into the Myrtle's wound with professional insult. "Ace," Grae said, quieter. "Powder."
Ace descended into a hold that smelled like yesterday's ocean and fear. Kegs had taken on water and opinions. Powder sulked in their bellies like a wronged god. He set both hands to the air and called heat into lattices, a pattern like netting—warmth woven fine enough to dry, not cook. He passed it over the kegs in slow sheets while the Marines passed buckets like prayers.
"Don't scorch," the Marine officer said, stating the obvious because obvious needed leadership too.
"I'm persuading," Ace said without looking up. The lattice did its work: moisture sneaking away, powder returning to itself like a story retold correctly.
Above, Demon braced beams and swore at angles. Pelly moved men like pieces on a board, except his board fought back, and the pieces were grateful. Collin triaged bruises and pride. Andrew taught three Marines the recipe for not fainting.
The storm decided it had been patient long enough. Wind arrived with its sleeves rolled. Rain bared its teeth. The sea changed key.
"We move now," Pelly said. "Lines across. Tow or drown."
"Tow," the officer said, because he was a man who preferred the verbs he could help with.
Ace climbed into air that refused to be polite. The Blackflame's deck took on a gloss, then a skin. Crew threw lines. Marines caught them with hands that had earned their calluses. The ships slurred toward each other until they were close enough for curses to sound like advice.
Lightning wrote its name in the sky badly and kept trying. Thunder argued back.
"Ace," Grae said without turning. "That trick you learned with tar? Teach it to rope. Keep our lines supple, theirs obedient."
Ace wrapped Heat Shroud around both palms and walked the tow like a priest giving last rites to a bridge. He kissed knots with warmth until they remembered their jobs. He bled excess heat into rain that reheated as steam and got out of everyone's way.
"Keep the air dry by the blocks!" Demon shouted over a crack of thunder that wanted to be a sermon. "Friction hates water!"
Ace stretched a narrow Heat Veil in the lee of the main boom, and ropes stopped making the music of regret.
The Myrtle lurched, then settled into the wake like a reluctant student. The storm watched, offended by the calm men were forcing onto it. It reached for grander gestures.
The wave came not as height but as shape—a heave under the heave, a muscle under a muscle. The bow rose, the tow line drew harp-string tight, and a sound like a violin being taught by a blacksmith ripped across the deck.
"Slack—SLACK!" Demon roared, already cutting a half-hitch free with a movement so clean it looked rehearsed. Ace threw heat into the line at the precise span where fibers would rather stretch than snap, warming just enough to convince them they were made of better myths. The line whined, considered tragedy, then chose embarrassment instead. It held.
Pelly's eyes flicked to Ace once. Approval as rations: sufficient, not extravagant.
They bought a mile. The storm sent an invoice: lightning that didn't care about invoices. A forked bolt came down with the malice of law and chose the mainmast because masts are celebrities in the sky.
Ace did not think. He laid an Ember Thread straight up the mast's heart—heat with nowhere to go but up—a path. Lightning likes paths. It took the invitation, raced the heat, and spent itself into the air like a drunk finishing a story on the wrong doorstep. The mast smoked only as much as pride does.
Demon whooped once, then pretended he hadn't. "Do that again if we live," he shouted.
"Preferably without lightning," Collin added.
They bought another mile. The storm decided to send a monster instead of weather. The sea humped to starboard—no wave; a back. Then the head broke the skin: eyes like old knives; a mouth like an opinion. The thing tasted the air and found it wanting.
"Sea-drake," Andrew said around dignity. "I don't have a recipe."
"It's already angry," Pelly said. "Let's not teach it new flavors."
The drake surged. Its wake torqued the tow. The Myrtle slewed and showed the storm her broadside. Men shouted truths and lies at the same time.
"Ace," Grae said, and this time there was weight in the name—as if Grae were saying not just who Ace was, but what he was allowed to be. "Mark its eye."
Heat gathered under Ace's skin with a pleasure that frightened and comforted him. He narrowed it to a pin finer than a needle, a note so high only instinct could hear it. He pointed—not with arm, but with will—and drew a bright line across the drake's left eye.
Not burn. Glare. A white-hot flash that bit sight but not flesh.
The beast screamed in the key of anchors. It dove, outraged at the concept of offense. Water boiled where its anger needed witnesses.
"Go," Pelly ordered, and the Blackflame went. Lines sang their song of staying. The Myrtle followed like a sober promise.
When the storm grew tired of its own theater, it let them buy the last half mile without charging double. Clouds thinned into regret. Rain forgot itself into drizzle. Thunder worked on an exit speech and then decided to leave on a laugh instead.
They made a lee under a shoulder of rock the maps called Briar's Tooth because men had a sense of humor about things that tried to eat them. The Myrtle kissed the cove with gratitude and new leaks. The Blackflame eased in after her like a chaperone.
Lines over. Hooks set. Men collapsed into the work of relief: the talky, fussy labor that happens when everyone has decided to live again.
The Marine officer found Grae with a face that had had to learn humility quickly. "I have nothing to offer you that you want," he said. "But I have a pen and a voice and a ledger. If you ever need a favor where law pretends to be useful, send for Lieutenant Haddon. I will make law useful for one hour."
Grae nodded once, which meant I heard you. "Feed your men," he said.
Andrew was already doing that, despite previous criticisms. Collin had turned a cask into a clinic and the clinic into a lecture that kept three Marines from making the same mistake next week. Demon flirted with the Myrtle's wounded timbers without shame.
Ace sat on the cove's low wall and let Observation map the quiet: men laughing too loudly because loudness is cheaper than therapy; ropes relaxing; rock returning heat to the evening; the slow rewind of adrenaline in a hundred bodies. His chest ache had gentled to a memory rather than a petition.
Pelly joined him, offering a tin cup of something that refused to decide whether it was tea. "You marked a drake and didn't cook its eye," he said. "You convinced lightning to take the stairs. You warmed rope without teaching it bad lessons." He drank. "You did not try to look like a story while doing any of it."
"I didn't have time," Ace said, honest.
"Good," Pelly said. "Store that habit. You'll need it when time pretends to be generous."
They sat awhile as the cove forgot what storms were. Grae walked the wall like a man measuring future trouble. He paused, looked at Ace, and for a heartbeat the air noticed itself—a pressure, not from weather, not from fear. Something inside Ace flexed in answer, like a muscle remembering its purpose.
He blinked. It was gone. Or sleeping. Or politely waiting for a day with different colors.
Grae's mouth moved in a way that might one day be a smile. "Tomorrow," he said, "we teach your fire a new verb."
Ace nodded. He didn't ask which. Language comes when you need it, not when you demand.
Night crawled into the cove and found it friendly. Stars gathered above Briar's Tooth and decided to forgive it for its name. The two ships anchored like arguments that had agreed to pause.
Ace lay back on the wall and felt the stone's heat go into his shoulders. He thought of a plaza a lifetime from now, a boy with a hat, a debt to a difference. I was dead. I am not. The sentence had made room for others: I can make storms choose different doors.
He slept without bargaining, and the sea, for once, let him.