"Blink," Gray said.
The swivel gun's slug tore the air on a bad promise straight at their mast. The shot howled its own legend; wind tried to help it lie.
Ace didn't widen.
He lifted his hand and set the wire where a heavy thing's courage always stumbles—the breath between flight and fall, the blink where weight remembers. He made the line smaller than panic and slanted it to steal space from the heat. Iron met answer, not argument. The slug tipped a rude hair and grazed the mast wrong, shaving paint and pride instead of wood, then climbed away like it had meant to miss.
"Acceptable," Gray said, and his laugh had edges.
The enemy sloop spat rage to hide embarrassment. Grapples sailed—three this time, teeth bared. A man in a sleeveless coat leaned into another harpoon, teeth bared to match.
"Don't widen," Gray said. "Nobody falls."
"Deck stays a deck," Pelly added. "If you scorch it, you marry a mop."
Teuton planted himself like a polite wall. "I will catch anyone who forgets the sea has rules," he said. "I will complain later."
Ace tuned his breath to the ship's, let the wire wake, and picked one thing. The first grapple arced greedy and sure; he pricked the rope at the blink between stretch and set. Fibers changed their mind without learning to burn. The hook clanged off the rail like a dog denied the table.
The second hook came smarter. He let it come, then laid a needle across the inside of the curve. Metal twitched; the bite missed. The third he gave to gravity and Teuton's glare; it rethought its life midair.
The harpoon kicked. Ace didn't chase it. He marked the shoulder of the barb where iron blinks before it decides to be cruel, a quick kiss that made the head lose interest in being one piece. The harpoon shouldered the rail, lost balance, and fell. Andrew hadn't even moved and looked offended at fate for denying him a rescue.
"Cloud if I say," Gray reminded him.
"I'm obedient," Andrew said, hurt.
"You are theatrical," Pelly said.
[LOGBOOK][MAST SAVED AT BLINK. ROPES CUT CLEAN. HARPOON SHOULDERS GAVE UP. CREW: NO WIDENING.]
The swivel crew swore and wrestled the mount. Gray watched the hinge of their small world—the trunnion pin holding the swivel's sulk to its stand. He tilted his chin.
"Knock on their hinge," he said. "One dot. Make their brag fall off its own leg."
Ace measured the distance. The gap wasn't kind, but his fire knew the road. Heat is a conversation, not a speech. He aligned the wire not with the gun but with the pin under its arrogance. Wind tried to make his edges fray; he shaved them tight until air had nothing to steal. On the next lift of their decks—the brief moment when both ships agreed on up—he set a needle at the pin's collar and pressed smaller.
A dot. Then a whisper. Metal remembered it had a seam.
The swivel sagged a degree it didn't believe in. The men at it scrambled to adjust dignity as if pride were a rope.
"Again," Gray said.
Ace gave it a second dot, no wider than a secret. The pin gave with a tiny, pathetic cough. The mount drooped; the barrel fell off balance and banged its own stand like a drunk discovering gravity's sense of humor.
"Petty," Pelly said, satisfied.
"Knock answered," Charles murmured, eyes half-lidded.
Alder's hands trimmed a breath to keep them honest. Damon slid a cleat and made forgiveness part of the plan. Abel's chin lifted a degree. "Second hull line far to starboard," he reported. "Either shy or elsewhere."
"Let it stay elsewhere," Pelly said.
The sloop fired knives because knives are cheap. One spun for the wheel; Ace kissed its spine at the blink and turned threat into trivia. A belaying pin bounced off Teuton and apologized by sinking.
The man with the harpoon hadn't learned humility. He cranked, yanked, and fired ugly, which is a kind of honesty. The line hummed a hungry song. Andrew's rope twitched, but his hands didn't move.
"Not yet," Gray said.
Ace took the line at the blink between pull and bite, cut it without theater, then pricked the barb midair so its idea of grip fell apart. The head plopped into Andrew's cloud, which had arrived without fanfare the exact moment Gray's mouth formed the word now.
Andrew sighed, relieved to have a job. "Public transportation for angry metal," he said. "We serve all temperaments."
"Stop collecting," Pelly told him, and Andrew rolled the cloud away with two fingers like a tablecloth.
[LOGBOOK][ENEMY HINGE: KNOCKED. SWIVEL LOST ITS MANNERS. LAST HARPOON: RUDE, THEN BORED.]
The sloop swung across their bow, too close to be clever, and someone flung a weighted line in a knot of rage. It slapped the deck and tried to breed. Pelly stepped on it without looking. "No," he said, as if to a dog.
"Good mood," Gray announced. "We're done."
"Retreat," Pelly translated, pleased to use his favorite word.
"Fog," Gray added.
Andrew spread his palms and the air decided to forget. Fog unrolled from nothing and everything at once, sheet on sheet until the horizon was a rumor and distance an opinion. The sloop cursed itself hoarse. Their own deck turned into an island of remembered lines and voices.
Alder breathed with the wheel. "Course holds."
Abel's voice threaded the wool. "No pursuit worth the name. They lost their front."
Teuton adjusted a coil with tenderness. Damon set his palm on a brace the way friends reassure each other without talking.
Ace's hands began to shake, polite and late. He turned them palm-down so they could hide in the shadow of the rail.
Gray saw, of course he did. He stepped beside Ace without stepping in front of him.
"Cost," he said. "Not failure."
"I didn't plan on shaking," Ace said.
"You planned on living," Gray said. "The shake is from paying attention."
Ace breathed out. Make the shake smaller. He did, not by force but by name.
Pelly wandered by like a man checking if dust had the nerve to exist. "Kitchen in three," he said. "The cook's patience is not your training ground."
"I am patience," Andrew said.
"You are garnish," Pelly said.
[LOGBOOK][DISENGAGED. FOG PETTY AND POLITE. HANDS SHOOK: COST, NOT FAILURE.]
They slid out of their own weather and back into blue. The sea had changed its face by a hair and Charles heard it first.
"Door," he said softly. "Not open. There."
Gray didn't ask for poetry; he never did when poetry mattered. "Alder."
"Aye," Alder said. His hands trimmed. The ship leaned with manners.
Abel pointed, small motion, big meaning. "Horizon line hardening. Either rock or rumor that grew up."
Damon squinted. "Professionally, I hate what that implies."
Teuton shaded his eyes with a hand the size of a shovel. "Big," he said, which in his language was an essay.
Andrew stood on tiptoe even though his rope did not require altitude. "If it's a kitchen," he said, "I will respect it."
"If it's Rocks," Pelly said, "it will not respect you."
Ace followed their eyes. Rocks. He had said the name in his head carefully, like a curse kept in a pocket. The shape on the horizon was only a suggestion and already it felt like gravity for decisions.
Gray took the logbook off the coil and wrote with the same speed he threw knives.
[DOOR SHOWING TEETH. HOLD COURSE.]
He didn't look up. "Next lesson," he said. "Doors that don't want us."
"Favorite," Pelly said, with the voice of a man who never had favorites and liked it that way.
"Eat," Gray added, generous as weather. "Then we set rules for not being eaten."
Ace flexed his fingers; the shake had learned its manners. He touched the nail in his pocket and felt the bite he had taught steel to admit.
Andrew turned toward the galley as if leading a parade of appetites. Damon collected the vice with a pat. Teuton picked up the weighted line and set it gently where it could do no more harm. Abel didn't move, which meant he was working. Alder hummed the ship straight. Charles listened to the sea like it might sing the next page aloud.
"Captain," Pelly said, purely out of habit, "hands."
Gray sighed and went to wash them.
[LOGBOOK][NEXT: RULES FOR NOT BEING EATEN. TARGET: ROCKS.]