"After food: steel."
The words were still drying in the logbook when the galley door swung and heat and spice welcomed them like regulars. Bowls hit the table with Andrew's casual precision. Pelly parked the ash dish at his elbow as if good manners were a weapon.
"Eat," Andrew said. "Then do something impressive where I can see it."
"We do not perform for the kitchen," Pelly said.
"I do," Gray said, already stealing a sliver of something sugar-glossed. "It claps the loudest."
Ace took his bowl and the water Colin pressed into his hand. He ate, not fast. Fuel, not spectacle. He didn't thank anyone; he let the debt sit where it belonged.
The nail lay on the table between Gray's fingers, narrow and bright. Every time the captain's hand moved, the point winked as if eager to be a problem.
"Steel first," Gray said. He tapped the nail once. "Coins are for learning. Steel is for living."
"You planning to let him put a hole in your palm," Pelly asked, "or in my deck?"
"Neither," Gray said. He tilted his head toward Damon. "Clamp."
Damon was already up, dragging a small wooden vice from a locker. "Don't scorch her name," he warned the deck, which was as close as he came to prayer.
They rose together. Chairs scraped; bowls stacked; Andrew folded a cloth over his knives as if tucking in unruly children. The walk back to the deck was the same corridor of wanted posters and photographs, the same old faces and loud laughs hammered to wood. Ace's reflection dragged through the varnish like a stranger trying to keep up.
Sun took the planks. The ship breathed. The square of sanded deck waited like the patient page of a book.
Damon bolted the little vice to a brace by the rail. He set the nail in its jaws so that the head faced the sky and the shaft pointed down at the ocean like an accusation. He cranked once. The wood complained. The nail held.
"Rules," Pelly said, ticking his chopsticks. "Deck stays a deck. Clamp stays a clamp. Captain keeps his hands. Doctor keeps his sanity."
"And I keep my dessert," Gray said. "Begin."
Ace stepped in. The nail's head showed him a warped piece of his own face. He brought the wire up and stopped with it a breath above the steel.
"First test," Gray said. "Give me a dot the color of straw. No burn, no bubble. Temper color only. If you see purple you widened."
Ace blinked once. "Straw," he repeated.
"Yellow-brown," Damon supplied, happy to be useful. "Steel's first whisper."
Ace set his breath. He remembered coins screaming and didn't aim for that. He pulled the flame to a pin and laid it near the center of the nail's head as if setting down a grain of sand. The air around the point tried to warp; he tightened until the warp stayed inside the dot.
Silver went away. Pale gold seeped out of the metal like memory surfacing. It nearly slid into brown.
"Stop," Gray said.
Ace cut the heat. The dot held its color as if proud to have been named.
Pelly leaned in without letting ash fall. "Acceptable."
"Again," Gray said. "Smaller."
Ace narrowed the wire until the edges fuzzed and the center stayed clean. He felt the ship's breath move under him and made the dot listen to it. Straw-yellow arrived faster this time, without dragging the rest of the head along.
"Good," Gray said. "Now bite."
"How deep," Ace asked, "before the clamp complains?"
"Bite until the steel remembers you," Gray said. "Not a hole. A hurt."
Ace let the needle heat soften and then harden, the way he had learned on Gray's palm. The dot darkened through straw into brown. He pinched the line smaller and pressed. The steel resisted in that stubborn way coins never did. He kept the angle honest so heat didn't leak into the clamp.
The nail's head sighed. A tiny crater formed, glossy at the bottom, not proud enough to be a hole, exactly. Damon made a pleased noise low in his throat, the sound shipwrights made when joints seated home.
"Deck unscorched," Pelly said. "Continue."
[LOGBOOK][STEEL TEST: STRAW, THEN BITE. HE RESPECTED THE CLAMP. HE DID NOT PERFORM.]
"Motion," Gray said. He put two fingers on the vice and rocked it, just enough to test Ace's knees.
Ace didn't chase. He leaned into the ship's breath and dropped the wire back into the crater until the gloss dulled. Not wider. One thing.
"Andrew," Gray said without looking. "Air."
Andrew's rope sighed. A small cloud wandered near, then over, then lightly past the vice and settled at the rail, offering nothing but the promise that falling things would be forgiven.
"Mist?" Andrew asked.
"Dry," Gray said. "Let him feel how heat behaves when air is honest."
Ace let honesty work for him. He taught the dot to accept pressure without raising its voice. Heat stayed where he put it. The clamp stayed pale. The deck didn't learn a new color.
Gray rapped the vice with his knuckles; the nail trembled. "Again."
Ace set the wire and felt the tremble try to make him widen. He refused it. He felt the steel under the dot give half a breath, then another. The crater deepened by the width of a thought.
"Enough," Pelly said. "You are shaving manners off my day."
"Next test," Gray said, delighted. "Edge."
He angled a second nail into the jaws so that only a sliver of its head showed above the wood. "Dot the edge without melting it. If the lip sags, you were lazy."
Ace drew the needle down with a smaller patience than before. The temptation to slide off the edge was strong; he robbed it of weight by approaching at a slant that stole space from the heat. The dot arrived. The lip didn't move.
Gray smiled with his eyes. "Now make the dot a line."
"Line is range," Ace said before he could stop himself.
"Line is a sequence of bites," Gray corrected. "Hurt one thing, then the next, then the next, so fast the world calls it a line because it can't count that quickly."
Ace nodded. He stepped the dot along the edge in tiny, rude kisses. The steel accepted each as if surprised to be so politely wounded. By the fourth kiss the marks looked like a sentence in a language he wanted to learn.
[LOGBOOK][EDGE WORK: HE UNDERSTANDS THAT A LINE IS MANY POINTS AGREEING.]
"Overboard," Gray said, because escalation was his hobby.
Pelly removed the ash dish before anyone forgot it. Damon loosened the vice and carried it three paces to the open water of the rail. He set it again and cranked. The ocean looked up like a witness.
Gray tapped the head. "If it goes, Andrew catches. You do not widen just because the sea asks you to panic."
"I don't panic," Ace said.
"You panic politely," Pelly said. "Which is worse."
Ace put the wire down on the same dot he had bitten before. Wind licked the flame. He tucked the edges in until wind had nothing to steal. The bite deepened. A curl of dark scale lifted from the lip of the crater and stuck to the wire for a heartbeat before it let go and fell into nothing.
Teuton made a quiet approving sound. "You could sign a cannonball with that."
"Someday," Gray said, as if ordering a dessert for later.
"Speed," he added, and his grin put teeth on the word. "Before I finish a sentence."
He rocked the vice in a tiny, rude rhythm. Ace set his breath to the beat and put the needle where the crater wanted to be next, not where it had been. The bite landed. Gray hadn't reached the verb.
"Acceptable," Gray said. "Again."
They worked the head until Damon called a halt out of respect for the clamp's temper. Damon backed the jaws off. The nail came free. Gray plucked it up by the shaft and weighed it in his palm.
He flipped it to Ace. Ace caught it, careful not to burn or pretend he couldn't. The crater looked like a moon a small god had pressed a fingertip into.
"Souvenir," Gray said. "Don't admire it. Use it to be offended by how much work remains."
"I am always offended," Pelly said.
"Good," Gray said. "Stay that way."
[LOGBOOK][STEEL: BITE LANDED. EDGE LINE LANDED. OVERBOARD WITHOUT PANIC. NEXT: MOVING STEEL.]
Andrew nudged the cloud back with his rope so the rail had its personal space again. Colin handed Ace another cup; Ace drank and let the water rewrite what his hands thought fatigue meant.
Gray glanced at the galley knives under Andrew's folded cloth and then at Pelly's expression, which forecast litigation. He chose a compromise: a narrow spare knife from Damon's toolbox, not the cook's pride.
"Moving steel," Gray said, weighing the knife. "Same rule. One thing. No thread to blame. Before it thinks it is a bird."
Pelly walked a slow circle and checked every angle as if trying to anticipate stupidity. "If you cut a rope, you tie ten."
"If he cuts a rope," Damon said, "he ties twenty."
Gray studied Ace's stance, the way the ship's breath traveled from ankles to shoulders. He flicked the knife up once, easy, showing the path without committing to it.
"Any questions," he asked.
"Only one," Ace said. He lifted his hand. The wire woke. "Ready."
Gray smiled without teeth. "Good."
He snapped the knife vertical.
Ace didn't widen.