[NEXT: RULES FOR NOT BEING EATEN. TARGET: ROCKS.]
They carried the bracket up the ladder like a plate that might spill. The logbook stayed open on the coil, paper warm with sun. Far ahead a dark line thickened like a sentence clearing its throat.
"Status," Pelly said.
Alder's hum came low. "Course holds."
Abel did not change posture. "Horizon hardens. Teeth or rumor."
"Door with teeth," Charles murmured, cross-legged with cup and beads. "Hinge awake."
"Words, not poetry," Pelly warned.
"A hinge," Charles corrected.
Gray set his palms on the rail, then took them off because Pelly would scold, and smiled at the distance. "Rules," he said. "We do not get eaten today."
He pointed, one finger per law.
"One. Don't widen. Heat small and certain or not at all."
"Two," Pelly said. "Deck stays a deck. Scorch it and you marry a mop."
"Three," Gray went on. "Choose one. In a crowd, pick the hinge."
"Four," Andrew added. "Cloud only on order."
"Five," Damon said. "Lines first, pride later."
"Six," Teuton rumbled. "No one falls. If you do, I save you and complain for a month."
"Seven," Colin said. "If you leak, I plug you."
"Eight," Charles said. "Don't say the name you want."
"Nine," Gray finished. "If fate stares, smile like you belong."
[RULES SPOKEN. MOOD: BRIGHT. DISTANCE: DISRESPECTFUL.]
The ship leaned as Alder shaved a degree and gave it back. Damon adjusted a brace. Abel's gaze ran the horizon like fingers along a blade.
"Teach me your hinge," Ace said.
"You learned it," Gray said. "Hurt one thing at the right breath. Doors are bigger versions of that."
"So knock small," Ace said.
"Small and certain," Gray said.
A slat of driftwood slid alongside to starboard. "Demonstration," Gray decided. "Andrew, no cloud. Damon, do not rescue it. Ace, kiss it where its balance thinks it is safe."
The slat rose on a small wave and blinked. Ace put the needle there. The wood didn't catch; a coin-sized bite appeared; the plank turned on the wound and slid under.
"Acceptable," Gray said.
Abel lifted his chin a fraction. "New line port bow. Small boat. No flag."
A skiff cut across their front with confidence. A boy at its bow raised a trumpet and blew three short notes.
"Let him have his performance," Gray said. "If he shouts, do not shout back."
"Name yourselves!" the boy called.
Pelly's mouth attempted a legal document and gave up. "Do not," he told Gray, "say anything true." Gray did not answer at all.
The skiff curved past, disappointed. On its transom: a painted Courier. "Knock once, nobody answers," Gray said. "We knock again."
"Where," he asked Charles.
"Two degrees starboard," Charles said, eyes half-lidded. "Breathe. One back. There's a current that believes in secrets."
Alder translated belief into wheel and sail. Damon's palm traveled a brace; Teuton leaned just enough to make physics think twice. Andrew put his hands behind his back and behaved.
[KNOCK #2: COURSE TRIMMED. COURTESY KEPT.]
The courier widened its circle and tossed a weighted line an optimistic distance. Pelly stepped where it would have landed. The line hit water with a sulk.
The horizon grew a dark stitch, then two, then an argument: a road of rock and water coiling in the distance, moving without moving.
"That," Charles said softly, "starves guests."
"Words," Pelly warned.
"A choke," Charles translated. "Water pretending to be land."
"Insult how," Ace asked.
"By arriving," Charles said.
"Rules, again," Pelly said. They recited: don't widen; deck stays a deck; choose one; cloud on order; lines before pride; no falls; doctor if you leak; no speaking names; smile if fate stares.
"Make them useful," Gray said. "Ace, here's your hinge. See the smooth sheet? Something pushes wrong. We don't fight wrong head-on. We tilt it. Pinprick where the push brags, timing with the swell. No fog."
Ace waited for the swell to inhale. He set the needle over the dishonest sheet and let it land smaller than fear. Air kinked for a heartbeat. The ripple shifted by a thought. The ship slid past where the push had offered to shove.
Pelly exhaled. "My favorite kind of miracle."
[WATER TILT: MINOR. DRAMA: NONE. RESULT: WE KEEP OURSELVES.]
Andrew drifted close without crowding. "When he says hinge," he said, "he means the small part that moves first when something big pretends it can't."
"I know," Ace said, and surprised himself by meaning it. Coin, nail, blade, water. The scale changed; the rule did not.
Damon rapped his knuckles once on the rail. "If we must trade paint," he told the day, "do it with manners. I just made her pretty."
"You say that every week," Pelly said.
"Because I make her pretty every week," Damon said.
Teuton stretched his neck until it popped, then settled like ballast. "If someone jumps, I prefer catching them by the collar."
"I prefer they don't jump," Pelly said.
"They will," Teuton said. He didn't look at Ace when he said it, which was kindness.
The courier boy tried one last trick: he put the trumpet down and waved both arms, as if he could measure them into a box. Gray lifted a finger the height of a smile and the boy sat on his hands without knowing why.
A pale foam line showed ahead and to port, thin as thread. Charles pointed with his eyes. "Hinge within hinge. Walk that thread and you step between opinions."
"Translation," he added, preempting Pelly. "A safe vein inside the choke if you keep narrow. Widen and you wake teeth."
"Then we do not widen," Gray said. "Ace?"
Ace placed the needle where the thread looked weakest and waited for the tiny blink. He touched it once—less a bite than a nudge. The thread shifted to meet them. Alder felt it in the wheel; the ship's shoulder relaxed by a thought.
"Acceptable," Gray said, softer now.
They moved through the narrow like a rumor saying only what mattered. The nameless hull shadowed their angle without closing. Its bell did not ring a third time.
"Good choice," Pelly told the foreign air. "Keep making them."
Bard plucked one string no one else could hear. Latin's fan closed with a click that meant she'd found a number she liked. Colin, not having to plug anyone, lined three small bottles on a crate and put them away again just to feel in control.
"Rules until sunset," Gray said, not loudly. He flicked a glance at Ace's hands. "Keep them small even when you want to be admired."
"I don't," Ace said, and then amended, "Not anymore."
"Good," Gray said. "Admiration widens more than fear."
Pelly grimaced. "There is a sermon in that, and I refuse to hear it."
"Eat after we live," Andrew said.
"We will live," Gray said. "Because we keep rules."
The dark road ahead tightened. Low stone showed teeth and hid them. A broad-timber hull slid across that teeth-line again—near enough to warn. No flag. No name. Its sails still argued with the wind and won by complaining louder.
"Abel?" Gray asked.
"Hull armed," Abel said. "Guns quiet. People loud."
"Rule three," Gray said. "Choose one. If they spit manners, Ace, kiss the rope that tells their rudder who it is. Tilt, don't burn."
The courier tried one last circuit and threw its weight hard. Ace cut the rope at the pause between swing and set and let the weight thud and bounce into the sea. Pelly nodded at the ocean. "Catch."
[KNOCK #3: WE SAID NO WITHOUT TALKING.]
A single bell rang aboard the nameless hull—one note, not alarm, not welcome.
"We understand," Gray said.
He took up the logbook and wrote.
[HORIZON: HULL WITH NO NAME. BELL SAID HELLO WITH TEETH. WE SAID HELLO WITH RULES.]
Another piece of timber slid past, with a coiled rope asleep on it. Gray touched Ace's sleeve. "Final rehearsal. Make the rope forget it is a rope, but do not set it on fire."
Ace put the needle down over the knot. Fibers unlearned conviction. The coil loosened and slid into the sea, bored of being useful.
"Stop practicing," Gray said.
The bell rang again. One note. Then silence asking for an answer.
"Do not answer," Pelly said.
"Of course not," Gray said. "We knock instead. Alder."
"Aye," Alder said.
"Breath to starboard, then back. Two heartbeats."
The ship tilted like a blade leaning into whetstone. The water's wrongness offered a push; Ace felt it arrive and smiled at it with the smaller he had learned. The hull ahead lifted its chin by a thought.
[KNOCK #4: POLITE. ANSWER PENDING.]
Abel: "Gunports open. Not angry. Curious."
"Curiosity is the first step to regret," Pelly said.
Gray glanced at Ace. "If they spit a warning, we don't eat it. Hinge only. One line. Then we leave."
Ace nodded. Not wider. Smaller. One thing. He studied the nameless hull's rudder ropes and taught himself which one was truth.
The big hull lifted a warning anyway: not shot, not shout, but a blank from a bow chaser—we are awake. The blank arced, blinked, began its fall.
Ace lifted his hand.
He did not widen.
[LOGBOOK][RULES HELD. DOOR WITH TEETH. NEXT ACTION: ANSWER WITHOUT BEING EATEN.]