Dawn shaved the dark from Briar's Tooth in careful strokes. The cove kept its promise of quiet; gulls stitched their quarrels into the air; rope creaked like a house settling after a long argument with wind. The Myrtle nursed her wounds against the rock wall, men moving on her deck with the grateful slowness of the newly spared. The Blackflame floated in the calm like a blade in its scabbard.
Ace woke with the cove's first breath. The ache behind his sternum had become a citizen rather than a tyrant—still present, still voting, but content to be outvoted by morning. He swung down from the hammock, splashed his face, and stepped into light that felt like a decision the world was proud of.
Pelly was already at the rail, because Pelly had opinions about dawn that bordered on a religion. He handed Ace a cup that might have been tea and might have been a dare. "You've got education on the schedule," he said. "Don't be late to verbs."
Ace snorted into the steam. "What am I learning to conjugate?"
"Borrow," Pelly said, and nodded toward the quarterdeck where Grae stood like punctuation.
Grae did not teach like a captain. He taught like weather—by proximity, by insistence, by making the air different until a man learned to breathe it. He had a brazier set on a tripod; Demon had rigged a cradle for it so the heat wouldn't bruise the deck. A handful of charcoal coins sat in the pan, sullen and cold.
"Fire has two habits," Grae said without preface. "To take and to give. Men learn the second first. It feels like power. It is. But you'll drown if you don't learn the first."
Ace stepped closer until the air around the brazier respected him enough to grow warmer. "Borrowing," he said, testing the word. It fit his mouth; it liked his ribs.
Grae pinched a charcoal coin and dropped it back as if he had decided to forgive it. "Heat is a crowd. You can pull some out without letting the crowd riot. You can move it where it does work and where it won't do harm. If you only ever add fire, you are a sword without a sheath. A ship with canvas and no anchor. A promise with no patience."
Pelly arrived with a bucket of water and Collin with a skeptical eyebrow. Andrew leaned on the rail because cooks cared about heat more honestly than anyone. Demon folded his arms like a man ready to approve of good engineering.
Grae gestured to the coal. "Light it without flame."
Ace let breath gather under his tongue and slid warmth forward, thin as thread. He did not ignite; he reminded. The charcoal remembered it had a job. Orange licked the edges; an ember like a patient eye blinked itself awake.
"Now," Grae said, "take it back."
Ace stared, unsure. He had learned restraint, learned how to not let heat run; he had never tried to ask it to return. He offered his palm over the brazier and willed his skin to be a harbor rather than a wind. His hand drank the air. He pictured the glow moving up, through space, into him.
At first nothing. Then a coolness like a mouthful of water on a hot day flowed into his palm. The coal's orange dulled a shade. Ace pulled another sip. The ember blinked slower.
"Careful," Collin said, not alarmed, just attentive. "Bodies aren't kettles."
Ace nodded. The coolness wasn't cold; it was absence of heat, a river running the wrong way. It gathered in his palm and then up his forearm, not frost, not pain—density. He swallowed, surprised at the taste of it in his throat. With a small push, he flattened that borrowed heat inside him until it joined the rest of him and stopped being a visitor.
"Again," Grae said.
Ace took until the coal was reluctant to glow. He released a breath across it, not hot, not cold, and the ember steadied into a modest red.
Andrew whistled, low and impressed. "If you can borrow heat from a pan, you can borrow it from a skillet. Imagine onions that listen."
"Imagine fuses that won't," Demon countered, eyes bright. "Or a rope threatening to smoke. You could quiet it."
"Quenching," Grae said. "Borrow, then place. Not into air. Into you—and then later, from you. Heat doesn't like to be nothing. It wants to be somewhere."
Ace considered the opposite. "And if I borrow from a man?"
"Then you'd best mean mercy," Collin said evenly. "Pull too much and you'll shiver his heart out of rhythm. Pull a little and you can drop a fever or save a finger. Medicine is only a polite word for strategy."
Ace nodded, filed it under only if necessary, the drawer where he kept knives with names.
Grae motioned toward the brazier again. "Borrow. Hold. Then return to a different place." He pointed to a patch of tar seam where yesterday's storm had puckered the pitch. "Warm there. Leave the coal alone."
Ace inhaled, soft as a thief. The ember's glow lifted toward his hand like a thread unspooling. He took what he could without making the coal sulk, turned, and pressed his left palm to the seam—not touching, only near. He pictured heat moving through him like a courier changing routes. His skin whispered. The tar sighed, softened, and settled. No scorch. No smoke.
Pelly's eyes permitted the smallest pride. "You're learning to pay with exact change."
Grae nodded once. "Again, faster."
Ace obeyed. Borrow, hold, return. He learned how long he could keep heat before it asked unpleasant questions. He learned that if he kept it too long, a trembling started in his forearms, a tiny betrayed shiver—the body's politics reminding him it had a vote. He learned that returning heat could be gentler than sending it, a matter of setting it down rather than throwing it.
By the time the sun had declared itself in full, the brazier was a classroom that had admired its student. Ace's palms tingled with the sense of traffic well-managed.
"What's the verb?" Ace asked, wiping sweat with a rag Andrew tossed him. "Borrow, yes. What do you call the whole sentence when you borrow and return?"
Grae thought, which meant the world gave the moment a little extra gravity. "Temper," he said at last. "You take edge, you give edge. You make a thing worthy of use."
Ace held the word on his tongue until it tasted like decision. Temper. He liked it. He liked what it made of flame.
The day turned itself over to repairs and bargains. Lieutenant Haddon from the Myrtle paid with respect as if it were coin and kept his men away from Grae's men out of courtesy rather than fear. Demon worked a brace into a frame that insisted it had made good choices and should not be corrected; Demon corrected it anyway. Andrew invented a stew that forgave storm water. Pelly inventoried the cove with his eyes and declared it honest.
Ace practiced Temper quietly. He walked the Blackflame with warm hands and borrowed from rope that had seen friction and returned to knots that required persuasion. He borrowed from the sun off the rail until the wood cooled to grateful, then returned the heat to damp patches where yesterday's rain sulked, turning them kindly dry. He borrowed a fever from a Marine's split knuckle under Collin's supervision and returned it to a wet blanket to chase damp out.
He discovered a limit near his ribs—a place where too much borrowed heat made breath feel like lifting weight. He learned to unload into air in wisps—a useless trick except that it kept him from being the wrong sort of furnace.
Near noon, Demon clapped him on the shoulder. "Your hands are a better tool today than yesterday," the shipwright said, satisfied the way men get satisfied when wood does what it promised.
Ace grinned. "Today I can make onions obey and ropes not insult us."
Andrew, passing with a ladle men should salute, snorted. "Onions don't obey. They negotiate."
"Then I'm learning politics," Ace said.
"Start with carrots," Andrew advised darkly, and left before someone made him explain.
News travels oddly along rock and water. By late afternoon, Briar's Tooth had acquired spectators that weren't gulls. Two skiffs drifted at the cove's mouth, low and neat, their oars quiet, their owners pretending to be curious about geology. Observation threaded the day through Ace's skin, and the skiffs glowed in that way trouble does when it hasn't decided whether to be bold.
"Salvage rats," Pelly said softly, appearing at Ace's elbow like a period at the end of a sentence. "They smell wounded ships the way cooks smell lies."
"The Myrtle's still tender," Ace murmured. "They could peel her at night if they're patient."
"They're patient," Pelly said. "But they're not careful. Careful men don't carry that many fuses."
Ace let his palms warm by habit, then reminded himself the verb was borrow. "We can make a night that is not friendly to fuses," he said.
Pelly's mouth liked the sentence. "Quiet is cheaper than violence. See what you and the new verb can buy."
Night came theatrical, all stars and intention. The skiffs grew in number—three, then four—at the cove's lips, just beyond rudeness. Torches winked once and then hid, men checking their tools the way cowards hold hands: squeezed too hard, let go too fast.
The Myrtle's watch changed as quietly as Marines can manage. The Blackflame's watch didn't change, because Pelly had a watch that never ended. Grae stood at the quarterdeck shadow like a punctuation mark the dark respected.
"Ace," he said, not loud.
Ace went, because that was the gravity of the name from that mouth.
"You know the assignment," Grae said. "Our charity has a limit. It is not our job to hurt hungry men who are trying to be wolves. It is our job to make theft unrewarding."
"Temper," Ace said.
"Temper," Grae agreed, and the word wore iron tonight.
Ace took Demon's belt of tools—picks, wedges, a coil of soft copper, a loop of iron chain thin as a story told to children. He moved along the cove's lip, each step measured to not teach pebbles how to talk. The skiffs hung where the cove's breath became hard to read. Men inside whispered their decision toward courage.
He borrowed first from stones that had drunk sun all day; they exhaled their warmth into his hands with relief. He held it in his chest until breath learned to carry it. Then, one by one, he returned thread-thin heat into the wrong places: the powder horns of the skiffs—just enough to dampen; the flint of a striker—just enough to sweat; the fuses—just enough to make them refuse to be fuses. He tempered the air over their oarlocks, adding a hint of expansion so wood swelled and bit; added cool to their iron rings so humid night kissed metal into dew.
He borrowed again from the cove's quiet water where day still hid; returned to the rope coils on each skiff so the first tug would arrive with an argument. He pressed a Heat Veil the width of a doorway a foot above the water at the narrowest point of the cove's mouth. Not visible. Felt. Like walking into a rumor that made your knees reconsider.
On the Myrtle's deck, two Marines lit a test lantern. It stubbornly refused until Ace returned a sip of heat into the wick. The light sputtered and then steadied. "We keep our own lamps," he murmured to the air.
Pelly's silhouette moved at the Blackflame's bow and then stilled, meaning continue.
The skiffs argued with themselves for an hour. Men with more tattoos than plans hissed and gestured. A torch scraped flint with sincerity and failed. A fuse took a spark and then coughed it out like a lie. An oarlock groaned like a door a house had decided to keep shut. Heat and cool moved along Ace's fingers until his forearms trembled with the weight of choosing.
One skiff decided to be brave anyway. It slid in on the slow pulse of men who'd learned patience in shallow prisons. Their oars tapped water respectful as gravediggers. They crossed the line of Ace's Heat Veil and flinched, not at pain—at wrongness. One oar kissed the dew-bright iron ring and skittered free, bumping the hull with a noise that night made into an announcement.
"Now," said a voice in the skiff, and three men stood with hooks.
Ace appeared where they would least prefer: on a low rock shoulder, hands open, not glowing, not threatening, only present. "The cove is closed," he said softly.
The men tried to measure him. One saw youth and chose confidence. One saw fire in the set of Ace's shoulders and chose superstition. The third saw the Blackflame behind Ace and chose hunger anyway.
A hook came, not fast—efficient. Ace borrowed the heat of its flight to his palm and returned it to the iron curve; the hook hit the rock with the sound of a tired bell and slipped off without bite. Another man tried to light a fuse with furious dignity. The fuse sweated, hissed, and died like a joke told to a patient audience.
"Go home," Ace said, not unkind.
"Home is empty," the fuse-man spat.
"Then go somewhere you can fill," Ace said. "Not here."
That should have been the end. Pride argued. Pride usually wins once before it learns anything. The bold one put a boot on the rock and reached for Ace's shirt, because men who cannot touch dignity try to touch fabric.
Something in Ace answered—a pressure he hadn't invited, the same polite force that had noticed itself when Grae looked his way yesterday. It was not rage; it was refusal. It stood up inside him, tall and quiet. The skiff rocked as all three men paused at exactly the same moment for no good reason. Even the night hesitated.
Ace tempered the moment, reined the pressure in hard, and let it fade. Not yet, he told the thing that wanted to be a shout. Not for this.
He guided the bold man's hand down the way you guide a child's hand away from a stove. "I won't shame you," Ace said. "Leave with your names before dawn steals them."
Pride, stubborn and trying to be practical, found an exit that could pass for dignity. The men stepped back. One made the sign of a charm against fire. Another tried to pretend the oarlock hadn't offended him. They pulled out, shoulders learning how to be smaller.
The other skiffs read the retreat and discovered they had always planned to do the same.
On the Blackflame, Pelly's silhouette exhaled. On the Myrtle, two Marines pretended not to have been watching.
Ace stood on his rock and let Observation map the quiet again. The cove breathed. The night returned to being generous to men who had decided not to steal.
When he turned, Grae was there, as if quiet had called him. "You didn't burn them," Grae said.
"They weren't tinder," Ace replied, echoing his own answer to Demon days ago and liking that it still fit.
Grae studied him a long heartbeat. "I felt a pressure," he said, unblinking. "Like a storm that chose not to declare itself."
Ace considered lying. The Blackflame did not reward that habit. "It pushed," he said. "I pulled it back."
"Good." A pause. "That's not the verb we trained today," Grae went on, tone so mild a man could mistake it for indifference. "But it will ask for its lesson soon."
Ace nodded. "I'll wait until the world I'm facing is large enough to warrant it."
Grae's mouth moved, a smile that didn't pay taxes yet. "Pelly will like that sentence." He tilted his head toward the ship. "Come eat. Andrew is punishing onions again."
"Negotiating," Ace corrected, and Grae's almost-smile widened an inch.
Morning found the cove obedient and the skiffs gone with the kind of embarrassment that keeps secrets. Lieutenant Haddon came aboard with a ledger he handled like a weapon and a face he'd taught to hide gratitude badly.
"We're patched enough to limp," he reported. "I'll take the Myrtle north to the station at Belay Shoals. If the sea remembers me, I'll pretend to deserve it. If you ever need a favor, send word."
"You still owe the port at Crook's Lantern last night's taxes," Pelly said, watching the lieutenant for the particular flinch truth earns.
Haddon flinched correctly. "Paid," he said. "With interest. They think they dreamed it."
"Good," Pelly said, and the talk turned to angles and weather and how many barrels of apology a cutter could carry.
Ace stood aside and let responsibility speak to itself. He watched Demon sign his name in braces and wedges on the Myrtle's ribs. He watched Andrew hand the Marines a sack with instructions more strict than a priest's. He watched Collin tap three men on the shoulder in a pattern only those men would ever understand, a code for no heavy lifting for a week disguised as an argument about posture.
The Myrtle pushed away at noon, leaving thanks behind like wake. The Blackflame made space for her departure and then claimed the cove as if it had belonged to them all along.
Ace went to the rail where he'd first been promised a new verb and laid his palms on sun-warm wood. He borrowed a little of that warmth for no reason except the pleasure of being able to, then returned it to the bitter patch of shade where night had lingered too long. Small correction. Small usefulness. A promise kept at a scale that wouldn't make history but might make a day.
Pelly appeared because Pelly did not like men to have thoughts unsupervised. "Quiet night," he observed.
"It tried to be loud," Ace said. "We tempered it."
Pelly's eye corners approved. "Good word."
"You taught me half of it when you said not to look like a story while doing anything," Ace said.
"I didn't teach you the other half," Pelly replied. "You stole it fair."
They watched the line of the horizon sharpen as afternoon burned off its last apologies. Grae's shadow crossed them both, a tide changing minds.
"We hunt by evening," the captain said. "Not men. Weather. There's a channel between Briar's Tooth and the Cindershelf that eats ships who haven't met us. We'll fix that mouth if we can."
"Temper the sea?" Ace asked before deciding whether it was a joke.
Grae considered. "At least teach it manners."
Ace smiled despite himself. The ache in his chest was quiet, the pressure asleep, the day honest. I was dead. I am not. A new clause appended itself, uninvited but welcome: I can take heat out of harm and put it where it becomes help.
He flexed his fingers. They felt like tools he had earned.
"Let's go make the channel polite," he said.
Grae's eyes sparked, black flame caged behind composure. "Finally," he said, "you're speaking my language."