"He snapped the knife vertical."
Ace didn't widen.
The blade left Gray's fingers in a fast, clean line and tried to forget it was metal. Sun caught the edge and turned it into a thin, rude flash. Pelly's chopsticks ticked once against his palm, the sound of a man timing accidents.
Ace lifted his hand. The wire woke. He refused the glitter. He listened for the second at the top when up stopped being a plan and down hadn't yet earned the right to speak. The knife reached that breath. Ace set the wire into it.
A dot bloomed on the spine, small as a thought. The knife dropped. Gray caught it, eyes on Ace's hands, not the mark.
"Acceptable," Gray said. "Again."
[LOGBOOK][MOVING STEEL: FIRST BLINK HIT LANDED. BLADE DID NOT WIN THE ARGUMENT.]
He tossed the knife the same way and then not at all the same way. The wrist lied by a degree; the spin wanted to twist; mist from Andrew's leftover cloud dotted the air just enough to make light unhelpful. Ace put the wire where the lie would end, not where the truth had started. The dot bit a little off center. The blade came back apologizing in Gray's palm.
"Angle is honest even when wrists lie," Gray said.
"Wrists lie for a living," Pelly said. "Do not marry them."
"Noted," Andrew said, offended on behalf of wrists everywhere.
Damon angled the little vice back toward the rail and checked ropes that did not need checking. Teuton stood with his back to the mast and watched the knife not as a threat but as an education. Abel's posture did not change; his eyes said he could accept a blade and a horizon at the same time. Alder hummed, the ship balanced in his hands.
"Over the rail," Gray said.
He let the knife go outward this time, a neat vertical that wanted to turn arc halfway through. Andrew's cloud shifted under the path like a waiter who had learned the table's jokes. The edge flashed; the blink came; Ace put the wire there and did not widen. Steel took a pinprick and then sat on the cloud with a dignity coins had never managed.
[LOGBOOK][OVERBOARD BLINK: CLEAN. HE USES WHAT HELPS WITHOUT APOLOGY.]
"Two," Gray said. He brought out a second knife from Damon's toolbox, lighter, a petty little thing that wanted to pick fights. "Different weights, different wrist. Choose one."
He snapped them up one-two. One went hard and high, the other smart and mean. Ace killed the twitch that reached for both. He took the mean one because it would arrive ugly and brag about it. The wire met the blink without arguing, and the mark landed. The heavy blade hit the cloud and sulked.
"Choosing is a rule," Gray said. "People who try for everything drift. Drifting is drowning that forgot to die."
"Poetry," Pelly said. "You are ill."
"Often," Gray agreed, pleased.
Ace's breath settled into the work. He learned how a blade held its breath above the blink the way a coin did not; he learned that steel tried to keep its heat like a secret, and you had to make your question thinner than a whisper. He learned his shoulders wanted to widen when knives were involved and that this was a bad joke he did not have to laugh at.
"Drop the cloud," Gray said.
Andrew let the rope sigh. The little square of white patience drifted off and sat near the bow like a sulking pet.
Ace did not change his stance. He felt the air get colder by a thought and made the wire smaller until cold had nothing to grip.
"Vertical," Gray said, and flicked. "Before it blinks twice."
Ace would have smiled if there were a spare muscle for it. He hit the first blink and let the second be a thing for gravity to enjoy by itself. The blade came down fast; Gray's hand met it.
"Acceptable," Gray said. "Again."
[LOGBOOK][CLOUD REMOVED: HE DID NOT PANIC. NOTICE: HIS HANDS BELIEVE HIM NOW.]
Pelly inspected the deck for offense and found none. "Continue minimizing your crimes," he advised.
"Next," Gray said, and his grin got smaller, which meant he was happier. He balanced a third knife, slimmer than the others, on a finger and rolled it to the thumb. "Edge work in air. Dot, then a line. If you sag the lip, I will accuse you of laziness and history will agree."
"History is petty," Andrew said.
"History is a bowl I wash alone," Pelly said.
Gray sent the slim knife up in a quick vertical. Ace tilted the wire to steal space from the heat before the edge could steal it back. The dot landed on the spine with no sag. Ace stepped the dot once, twice, three times up the narrow surface as if writing a rude confession in a language only steel would read.
The knife came down; Gray caught it and checked the line with the eye of someone who made everything a game and nothing a joke.
"Again," he said. "Faster."
Alder called from the helm, mild as weather, "Course holds."
Abel added, "Horizon clean. Two sails stayed far and made different choices."
"Good," Pelly said. "Let other people try being interesting for once."
Gray escalated because it was what he did instead of breathing. He threw one knife up, snapped a second a heartbeat later, and made the blinks almost overlap. "Two out of two. No widening. No deck crimes."
Ace took the first and ignored the second like a saint ignoring dessert. The second begged; Andrew's cloud was too far to help; Pelly's inhale did a cruel thing to time. Ace marked the first clean at the blink. He almost reached for the second with his will and did not. He let it fall. Gray caught it and didn't say mercy like a criticism.
"Choosing is still a rule," Gray said. "Again."
[LOGBOOK][AIR EDGE-LINE: LANDED. TWO-KNIFE TEMPTATION: RESISTED. NOTICE: HE CAN LEAVE A BLADE UNTOUCHED WITHOUT FEELING SMALL.]
Colin arrived with water because he had never in his life missed a cue. Ace drank. The world shrank to hands and breath and the blink you could hear if you didn't try to be louder than it.
"Add weather," Gray said.
Andrew obliged. He moved the rope and a skin of mist drifted through the practice square, beading on metal, on lashes, on patience. The knives rose through it less like lines and more like arguments made of light.
Ace trimmed the wire until there were no edges for mist to steal. He marked a blink he could not see with his eyes and felt instead with the part of him that had learned to listen to coins and nails and the ache behind his ribs.
"Acceptable," Gray murmured, which was a feast.
Pelly clicked his chopsticks once. "Kitchen soon. Cook's patience is a line, not a circle."
"After one last test," Gray said, because he was still himself. He weighed the heavy knife in his palm. "Arc to vertical midair. Over the rail. No cloud. Before the blink remembers it is water."
Teuton rolled his shoulders. "I will catch you if you fall," he told Ace, "but I will complain later for a long time."
"I won't fall," Ace said.
"You never plan to," Teuton said.
Gray sent the knife out. Mid-flight he twitched his wrist and the blade turned from arc to a fast, tight vertical like a fish deciding to jump at the last second. The edge flashed. The sea opened its mouth out of habit. Wind tried to be smart.
Ace did not widen. He put the wire into the blink he could not afford to miss and did not miss. Steel took the mark. The knife dropped like a decision. Gray's hand was there when it arrived, as if gravity owed him a favor.
"Acceptable," Gray said. He flipped the knife once and slid it back into Damon's toolbox. "Now we add insult."
"That is not an instruction," Pelly said. "That is your personality."
"Correct," Gray said. He took a small iron washer from the toolbox and placed it on the back of his hand. He rolled a knife onto his other hand. "Knife vertical. Washer horizontal. Mark the knife at the blink without moving the washer. If the washer falls, you widened."
"Petty," Andrew whispered, delighted.
"Petty keeps us alive," Pelly said.
Ace lifted his hand. The wire woke and tried to be proud; he made it useful instead. Gray snapped the knife up. The washer did not care and that indifference was worst of all. Ace put the wire where steel forgot and air waited and pride could do nothing. The dot bit. The washer did not slide.
"Again," Gray said, very pleased and hiding it poorly.
[LOGBOOK][WASHER TEST: PASSED. HIS FIRE OBEYS HIM, NOT HIS VANITY.]
Alder's hum changed key by a hair. "Course holds," he said again, then added as if telling a child a secret, "Sea's manners are good."
Abel did not shift his weight. "Horizon adds a different line. Far. Uncertain."
"Let it stay poetry," Pelly said.
Gray tapped the back of his hand and the washer hopped once and sat. "Speed set," he said. "Three throws. Two knives, one washer. Before the blink. No widening. No drops."
He went one-two-three, faster than polite. Ace took the first blink clean, left the second because choosing is a rule, and saved the washer with a wire that remembered what smaller meant when mist and muscles tried to lie. The third knife got a mark that was more promise than bite.
"Name the miss," Gray said.
"Hesitation," Ace said, not excusing. "I tried to look good at the top again."
"Then stop," Gray said, easy as weather. "You do not exist to be looked at by the top."
Pelly ticked the chopsticks. "Kitchen now. Final test after. If you try to insult my table with drills, I will throw your knives into the sea and let fate eat them."
"Rude," Andrew said.
"We like him for it," Gray said.
Ace felt the itch to thank someone; he folded it away and turned it into a smaller wire. He looked at the nail in his pocket and the dots he had taught steel to admit, and understood that wanting everything was a way to get nothing.
They turned toward the galley. Gray paused at the coil where the logbook lay in its usual sprawl. He flipped it open with the back of a knuckle and wrote without ceremony.
[AFTER FOOD: FINAL SET. THEN WE KNOCK.]
"Knock where," Ace started, then swallowed the second word. He had rules about the future and the names that lived there. He held the book instead of speaking and felt the ship tip its chin at the horizon like a man agreeing to a fight no one had heard announced yet.
"Eat," Gray said. "After, we go back out. Same square. No cloud. I throw three knives at once. You mark one before it blinks. And then..."
"And then what," Pelly said, suspicious for them all.
Gray's smile sharpened. "Then we mark something that matters."
"What qualifies," Damon asked.
"The hinge of a door," Charles said softly, without being asked. "The one fate can't stop touching."
"Words," Pelly warned.
"A hinge," Charles corrected.
Andrew held the galley door open with his rope hand and his hospitality hand. "Food now. Then petty miracles."
They stepped inside. Bowls waited. Steam wrote temporary poems on the air. Outside, the deck kept their shapes like a promise it meant to collect.
[LOGBOOK][AFTER FOOD: NO CLOUD. THREE KNIVES. CHOOSE ONE. MARK IT AT THE BLINK. THEN KNOCK ON THE HINGE.]