"Next time it won't be practice," the captain said.
They did not sit with the promise. They carried it.
The galley's steam hit their faces and let them go; bowls emptied; Pelly's chopsticks kept time for a crew that pretended not to need clocks. The corridor's photographs watched them return to the light, and the deck received them with a sun that had decided mercy could be bright.
The logbook lay open on the coil, the last line drying like a dare.
[KNOCKED]
"Status," Pelly said, because rules make air breathable.
Alder's hum was low and even. "Course holds."
Abel leaned at the rail without admitting to it. "Horizon adds a thin line. Fast. Port side. Low hull, tall teeth."
"Teeth," Teuton said, which was his way of saying "someone else's problem soon."
Charles tilted his head, cup and beads quiet for once. "Hinge woke up," he murmured. "It grinned."
"Words, not poetry," Pelly warned.
"Hinge is listening," Charles said obediently.
Gray smiled like a man who liked being overheard. "Let it learn our names."
A shadow split the light to port—lean hull, mean sail, a sloop that had learned to sprint before it learned to speak. Its prow wore spikes like a bad habit. Men crowded the rail with grapples ready and a harpoon on a stout line cocked toward the gap between decks.
"Don't widen," Gray said softly, amused. "Nobody fall."
Andrew tugged his rope once and then folded his hands behind his back like a schoolboy at inspection. "Cloud on order only," he said, cheerful and aggrieved.
"Deck rules," Pelly said, ticking his chopsticks. "No scorch. No sag. No show-offs. If you burn my deck, you marry a mop."
Damon set a brace with a flat palm. "Lines tight. She'll forgive us if we don't lie."
The sloop's first answer was iron. Two grapples flew together, black hooks yawning, ropes curled like promises. A breath later the harpoon kicked—a thick shaft with barbs like an argument—line humming, intent to bite and hold.
Ace didn't widen.
He set his feet where the ship's breath could find them, lifted his hand, and let the wire wake. He didn't look at the glitter; he listened to the second when a hook, having done its proud arc, paused before choosing the next sin. The blink, he told himself. Not wider. One thing.
He chose the left-hand grapple line—the one that would bite a fairlead and tie their ship to stupidity. He set the wire at a slant that stole space from the heat and let the line arrive at his answer.
The rope hissed—not a burn, not a torch, just a quick change of mind where fiber became not-fiber for the width of a thought. The hook dropped short and clanged against the rail without catching. The cut was so small the rope looked insulted rather than charred.
"Acceptable," Gray said, pleased enough to make his eyes warmer.
The harpoon crossed the gap with the arrogance of a problem that believed in its own weight. Ace didn't chase it. He aimed where the barbed head would blink—the instant gravity remembered its job and the shaft thought about being a spear rather than a story. He brought the wire down on the shoulder of the barb and pressed without pride.
A bright pin of heat bit. The harpoon flinched sideways like a drunk realizing the step was a stair. It kissed the rail and skated off into water, dragging an unhelpful length of line.
Teuton's rumble approved. "You could sign steel with that."
"Someday," Gray said, delighted, "we will make you write your name on a cannonball."
"Today," Pelly said, "we do not let them into my kitchen."
The sloop screamed its frustration with a volley of knives and belaying pins—junk turned fast and angry. Andrew didn't move his rope. Abel didn't take his eyes off the horizon to be insulted by weather. Damon swore at air for trying to be helpful.
Ace did not try to be a hero. He chose one.
A long knife angled for Alder's hands where the wheel made him important. The blink on a knife was different from the blink on a coin; thinner, meaner, fond of lying twice. Ace cut it off at the breath between lies. The wire laid a pinprick on the spine and the blade dropped a hand-span off course into the deck where Pelly's foot wasn't.
"Thank you," Alder said, which counted as a weather report.
"Don't thank him," Pelly said. "He'll only get ideas."
"Incorrect," Ace said, deadpan as he could make it.
[LOGBOOK][FIRST CONTACT: GRAPPLES CUT AT BLINK. HARPOON BIT AT SHOULDER. KNIFE DENIED. NOBODY WIDENED.]
The sloop adjusted its manners by becoming worse. Three men leaned into a swivel gun mounted near the bow—a fat-bored little liar that hated masts. They slewed, sighted, and the muzzle glinted with the kind of certainty that got sailors killed.
"Angle," Gray said, and his voice arrived in Ace's bones as if he'd moved in. "Steal space from heat. Hurt one thing."
"Cloud?" Andrew asked, polite as sin.
"After the first mistake is theirs," Gray said.
Pelly flicked ash into his dish, set it aside, and stood with his hands empty. "Don't scorch me," he told the future.
Damon put a palm on a line and made forgiveness a physical object.
The swivel gunners yanked the lanyard. The cannon coughed and spat a brutal slug that wanted their mast. Wind tried to flip the arithmetic. Gravity tried to negotiate.
Ace didn't widen.
He lifted his hand and let the wire wake to a point that didn't know how to be afraid. He did not chase the slug's story. He aimed at the blink built into every flight—the instant a heavy thing has to admit to physics that it is heavy. He set the line a breath ahead of that admission and made it smaller until mist and panic had nowhere to sit.
The wire met iron. The bite was not a wound; it was a tilt—a rude correction that stole a sliver of balance from a slug that believed in straight lines. The shot kissed the mast wrong, shaved a whisper of paint, and screamed past into sky that had nothing to say about it.
"Acceptable," Gray said, and his laugh was a small, sharp thing.
A second grapple missed on its own. The sloop's crew cursed in a dialect made mostly of vowels. Someone tried a second harpoon with worse aim and more hope.
"Now cloud," Gray said.
Andrew tugged his rope and a small square of white patience slid across the water and parked under the harpoon line so neatly fate would have taken notes if it had hands.
Ace cut the new line at the blink between water's pull and air's pride; the rope gave up its ambition without learning to burn. The harpoon sulked into the cloud and then into the sea.
"Stop collecting," Pelly told Andrew.
"I collect experiences," Andrew said.
"Collect plates," Pelly said. "Wash them."
"I inspire washing," Andrew corrected.
The sloop spat more knives, because knives are cheap, and one came spinning for Teuton's broad shoulder just because some days the world makes bad choices. Ace did not attempt to clean the air. He picked one thing. He set the pin into the spine and let the blade give up its plan.
Teuton looked more offended than relieved. "I am not a plate," he informed the knife, which was gone.
"Debatable," Bard said, from somewhere quiet, which was as loud as he got in fights.
[LOGBOOK][SWIVEL GUN: TILT AT BLINK. ROPE CUTS CLEAN. CREW: STILL ALIVE.]
"Hold her there," Gray told Alder; then, to Charles, "Door?"
"Hinge purrs," Charles said, eyes half-lidded. "If you trim now, it bites the man who fired the gun."
"Words," Pelly warned.
"Starboard breath, one degree," Charles translated.
Alder's hands did the thing hands do when language turns into sail. Damon shifted a cleat a thought. The ship leaned like a gentleman choosing which puddle not to step in.
On the sloop, the swivel crew scrambled to reload too fast and made a mistake. The muzzle swung a hair late. Gray's grin tilted. "Answer," he said.
"What answer," Pelly asked, cleanly hostile.
"Petty," Gray said.
He stepped to the rail and flicked a coin straight up, a vertical insult between decks. It climbed, blinked; Ace met it without looking, just to prove the joke was honest. The wire bit. The coin fell, tugged the sunlight after it like thread.
"Show-off," Pelly muttered, but the word had no teeth.
"Again," Gray told the enemy, as if they were his students, which in that second they were.
The sloop refused to be educated and chose rage. Men surged to the rail with boarding hooks ready, and even Teuton sighed because now we were going to be loud.
"Choose one," Gray said to Ace, almost gently. "The rest belong to gravity and regret."
The first boarder threw his hook early; the blink on a hook is wide as pride. Ace pricked the inside of the curve—small, sharp, angle honest—and the hook complained into water instead of wood. The second hook came smarter. Ace let it learn a lesson about smaller. The third he left to Teuton, who simply looked at it and it changed careers midair.
"Kitchen in five," Pelly announced, because hunger cares nothing for other people's climaxes.
A yell on the sloop cut off like rope. Abel's voice, calm as weather: "Swivel aims wrong. Crew deciding whether to be brave or poor."
"Let them be poor," Pelly suggested.
Gray rolled his shoulders. "We're done," he decided, which meant the universe would cooperate. "Today I'm still in a good mood."
"Retreat," Pelly translated, the word he liked best.
"After one last thing," Gray added, the phrase Pelly liked least.
The swivel gun spat again, badly, at their mast out of spite more than plan. The slug came low and rude.
"Blink," Gray said.
Ace lifted his hand.
He did not widen.