[AFTER FOOD: NO CLOUD. THREE KNIVES. CHOOSE ONE. MARK IT AT THE BLINK. THEN KNOCK ON THE HINGE.]
Steam curled over bowls and vanished into laughter. Andrew slid plates the way some men dealt cards—sure, amused, a little proud.
"Fuel," he said. "Miracles later."
"We don't do miracles," Pelly said. "We do rules."
"Rules that look like miracles," Gray said, stealing a sugared edge from the plate, "to people who forgot to practice."
Ace ate without rushing. Fuel, not spectacle. Colin set water at his elbow and didn't ask if he was thirsty; thirst wasn't a democracy. Ace drank; he did not say thank you. He let the debt sit where it belonged.
The logbook lay open beside Gray's bowl. The bracketed line on the page looked like a commandment someone had knocked off the wall and left on the table by mistake.
Pelly finished first because he always did. He tapped the ash dish with chopsticks once, twice, exactly fifty heartbeats' worth of warning.
"Time," he said.
Gray closed his mouth around one last sugared shard, forgave the plate for being empty, and rose. "Back to work."
They filed out. The corridor's nailed photographs laughed the same way they had an hour ago. The deck met them with sun that had decided to be kind, wind that had decided to be honest.
Andrew came to the rail and then stopped. He wrapped his rope twice around a cleat and tied his hands behind his back with a bow he could untie in a heartbeat.
"No cloud," he said, cheerful. "By order."
"Deck rules," Pelly said, ticking his chopsticks. "No scorch, no sag, no show-offs. Captain keeps both hands. Doctor keeps all patients alive. Helmsman keeps us where we meant to be."
Alder's hum sat low in his chest, steady. "Course holds."
Abel leaned and didn't seem to; his eyes measured horizon for nonsense. "Clean. Two lines that don't matter. One distant island pretending to be poetry."
"Let it rhyme with 'elsewhere'," Pelly said.
Charles sat cross-legged near the coil, a cup and beads in his lap, listening with his head tilted as if the sea had a mouth on the far side of the world. "Door still a door," he murmured. "Hinge near enough to smell if you want to brag about noses."
"Words, not poetry," Pelly warned.
"A hinge," Charles said obediently. "Soon."
Gray rolled three knives from Damon's toolbox across his fingers until each had decided how it wanted to feel about gravity. One heavy and polite, one middling and moody, one slim and mean.
"Three," he said. "No cloud. Choose one. Mark it at the blink. The others are for people who like drowning."
Ace set his feet where the ship's breath could find them. The ache behind his sternum sat where Gray had tapped it earlier, smaller now, more obedient. Not wider. Smaller. One thing.
"Ready," Ace said.
Gray flicked his wrists: one-two-three. Steel climbed, three lines arguing about faith. Sun caught them and threw them back; wind tried to be clever.
Ace killed the reflex that reached for everything. He chose the mean blade—the one that loved to lie—and let the other two be problems for gravity. He listened for the quiet between up and down where pride had nothing to say. He put the wire there.
A dot bloomed, clean. The other knives fell into Gray's hands like arguments he could win later.
"Acceptable," Gray said. "Again."
[LOGBOOK][TRIPLE TOSS #1: CHOSE MEAN BLADE. MARKED CLEAN. DIDN'T APOLOGIZE TO GRAVITY.]
Pelly did a slow walk of the square, eyes on wood, not men. "Deck uninjured. Continue."
Again. Gray added speed without adding noise, the way a good liar adds detail without adding truth. Three knives became a braid of light; the blink grew narrow and went a little shy.
Ace took the polite blade this time because challenge had a different face at that speed. He met it at the top and bit. He didn't follow the other two with his will; he didn't let wanting become widening.
"Better," Gray said. "Again."
On the third set, something in Ace's shoulders remembered old habits, old arenas. His hands wanted to perform. He aimed to look good in the sky's eyes and hit late, cleanly wrong. The mark skimmed rim instead of heart.
"Name it," Gray said, catching all three and making it look like a party trick he hated.
"Hesitation," Ace said. He didn't dress it up. "I tried to be careful at the top instead of certain."
"Make it small," Gray said. "Doubt loves range."
Ace exhaled. He clipped the want and put the scraps in his pocket. "Again."
Gray rolled his wrists. Three lines rose and tried to become choir. Ace chose one, exactly one, and put the wire through its throat like a truth. When gravity asked for explanation, the blade came down with a complaint he enjoyed hearing.
"Acceptable," Gray said.
[LOGBOOK][TRIPLE TOSS #3: HESITATION NOTED. THEN REDUCED. RESULT: BITE LANDED.]
"Add pettiness," Pelly said. He didn't smile, which meant he was pleased.
Gray obliged. He set a flat iron washer on the back of his left hand. He weighed three knives in the right.
"Same rules," he said. "No widening. If the washer jumps, you clean the deck with your name."
"Which is long," Andrew said helpfully.
"Ready," Ace said.
The knives went up as if they'd always lived there. The washer tried to believe in gravity. Ace refused to let the word everything into his hands. He found the blink on the slim mean blade—the one that would embarrass him if he let it—and set the wire there. The dot bit. The washer did not slide.
"Again," Gray said, happy enough to pretend he wasn't.
They ran the washer set twice more. On the second, mist drifted across in a thin skin, a leftover mood from earlier. Ace trimmed the edges until mist had nothing to steal. On the third, wind decided to be curious and he robbed it of curiosity with angle and patience.
"Acceptable," Gray said, and let the knives vanish back into Damon's box.
"Kitchen," Pelly announced, purely to frighten Andrew.
"Denied," Gray said, purely to insult fate. He turned to Charles. "Hinge?"
Charles rolled the cup and listened to the way nothing answered. "A step to starboard as wide as a choice," he said. "Two degrees, then breathe."
"Words, not poetry," Pelly said reflexively, but his mouth softened.
"Alder," Gray said.
"Two degrees starboard," Alder echoed, and his hands translated language into canvas. The wheel shifted a thought. Lines lifted and settled. Damon adjusted a cleat with the tenderness of a man forgiving an old friend for a small sin. Teuton checked a brace with two fingers and the sea forgave him.
Abel lifted his chin by half a degree. "Horizon adds a line that matters," he said. "Still far."
"Let it get curious," Gray said. He reached for the logbook where it lay on the coil, open to the bracket that had dragged them out here for this very kind of rudeness.
[KNOCKED]
He wrote it the way some men fire a signal flare. He blew the dot dry.
"Define knock," Pelly said, not because he didn't understand but because rules keep the air neat.
"Small change, big door," Gray said. "If fate notices, it frowns. If it frowns, it thinks. If it thinks, it speaks. We want speech."
"I want dinner," Andrew said.
"You want people to clap," Pelly told him.
"Not untrue," Andrew admitted.
Ace stood with the nail in his pocket and the ache behind his sternum agreeing to be quiet for once. The ship's new angle felt like a promise written in a hand he was learning to recognize.
"What happens after we knock," he asked, not naming the thing he didn't name.
Gray looked at his palm where Ace had pressed a small, impolite shine into the skin an hour ago. He smiled as if the future were a dessert he intended to split with nobody.
"Next time it won't be practice," he said.
[LOGBOOK][NO CLOUD. TRIPLE TOSS: PASSED UNDER PETTINESS. HINGE: KNOCKED. OUTCOME: WAIT FOR THE DOOR TO PRETEND IT WAS ALWAYS OPEN.]
Wind shouldered the canvas a shade harder and then forgave itself. Alder's hum didn't change. Abel's posture didn't either. Charles tipped his head, listening to something learn to be a hinge.
Pelly tapped his chopsticks once. "Kitchen," he decreed, now, finally.
"Eat," Gray said. He pointed at Ace's hand without touching it. "Then we stop kissing and start hurting."
Ace nodded. Not wider. Smaller. One thing. He followed the others toward the galley, and the bracket on the open book watched them go like a door that had heard their knuckles.