"Bite," Gray said.
Ace raised his hand. He did not widen.
The boom came again—drum-deep, skin-tight. It wasn't thunder; it was the cave slapping its own water hard enough to tell stories. The sound ran the bowl and tapped ribs and staples and old sins.
Ace aimed the wire at the water's glossy back, but Gray's voice caught him a breath before the line fell.
"Not the note," the captain said. "The drum skin. Where the lip lies."
Ace shifted his eyes a handspan up the wall to a thin wet ledge where recoil curled back and clapped. The seam there took water and gave noise. Hinge, Ace told himself. Not wider. One thing.
He waited for the blink—that thin, mean instant when lip and surge moved in opposite arguments—and laid the needle there, small, angled to steal space from the heat so the bite belonged to the seam and not the cave.
The boom answered wrong. Its pitch fell a finger's width and lost its pride. Air shook less. Stone complained quieter.
"Acceptable," Gray said, pleased by other people's mistakes. "Again. Smaller."
Ace let the wire sharpen until fear had nowhere to sit. He kissed the seam a thumb's width from the first mark—a second dot that agreed with the first. The boom tried to be important and settled for being present. Waves still slapped, but the cave had forgotten how to clap.
Pelly's exhale came out in arithmetic. "Deck remains a deck," he reported. "Keep it so."
[LOGBOOK][DRUM: DETUNED. LIP NICKED TWICE. RESULT: NO PRAISE, LESS NOISE.]
A spar drifted from the left-hand shadow, old tar and spite, trying to be relevant. The bowl's eddy curled a palm behind it and pushed it toward their quarter.
"Choose one," Gray said, gentle.
Ace didn't attempt to clean the room. He left the spar to Damon and Teuton, who already had a boat hook and a look. Teuton caught the spar as if it were a badly written sentence; Damon twisted and let the eddy decide to love somewhere else.
"Lines steady," Damon said. "Please keep the sea boring."
"I am trying," Ace said.
"Try harder," Pelly said, without heat.
Something under them remembered its job. That chain rumor crawled back, tugging starboard-forward—the same sulk now emboldened. Abel's chin ticked. "Under-keel persuasion," he said. "Same voice as before."
Ace went to the rail. Collar, not pride. He heard the lie in the water's grammar and set the wire at the link's collar—the small throat where metal accepts metal—and pressed smaller at the blink between pull and seat. The tug complained and let go, as if offended by physics.
"Acceptable," Gray said.
[LOGBOOK][UNDER-KEEL LINK: COLLAR NUDGED. TUG: RELEASED.]
The bowl pretended to be kind, which made Charles suspicious. He tilted his head. "Another drummer," he murmured. "Same cave mouth, different throat."
"Words, not poetry," Pelly warned.
"A second slit to starboard hums fainter," Charles translated. "If you chase both, the sea teaches humility."
"Pick one," Gray said.
The second boom arrived, thinner, quicker—more string than skin. Ace refused all the parts of himself that liked to be impressive. He did not go hunting sounds. He watched the starboard slit until the blink appeared—a shallow refusal at the lip—and put one small line there. The reply was a sulk and then silence.
The first seam tried to remember how to clap. Ace did nothing. Choosing is a rule.
"Good," Gray said, warm as a blade. "Now the throat."
They edged toward a lower arch where water breathed again—intake rougher now, exhale less sure, as if the detuned wall had changed the cave's faith. Foam hooded the lip. The mouth pulled on the inhale with more want than grace.
"In on in," Charles said. "Out on out. Timed."
Alder's hands found the beat as if he'd always been singing along. Damon's brace made a friend of the shift. Teuton's boots made gravity look obedient. Andrew stood with his rope hands behind his back, the picture of a man who collected restraint for a hobby.
Ace waited where the throat gathered itself. He felt it want before it moved. He set the wire just before want became demand—a knock, not a wound. The mouth accepted the bow and then the beam and then the stern, greedy and courteous at once.
"Acceptable," Gray said, softer.
Inside the second chamber, light from some slit of sky ran a thin white rag down the far wall and left. Wreck scars crosshatched the rock—long rubs where hulls had argued and lost. Iron staples bit another ledge, these older, hammered with a patience that had outlived the hammerer. A length of old rope hung in a loop, green with history, the kind that remembered wrists.
"Abel," Gray asked.
"No flags," Abel said. "No fire. No answers. Just the past."
"Professional opinion," Damon said, squinting at a staple. "Whoever built that didn't expect to sleep much."
"We will not stay," Pelly said. "We will not romanticize."
Gray wrote, moving as little as possible.
[SECOND ARCH: ACCEPTED. OLD WORK. ROOM THAT LIKES REGRET.]
The narrow ahead tightened to a throat of current with a right-hand choke that would love anyone who widened. White water traced the places where promises had failed before.
"Rules," Pelly said, for courage shaped like repetition.
"Don't widen," the crew said together, like men paying dues.
Ace's hands had not started to shake again. They would later. Cost, not failure. He set the wire ready without announcing it to his shoulders.
The current offered a polite shove starboard-to-port. A shallow whirl tried to be born at the throat's lip. Ace pricked it on the blink, smaller than manners, and it died without ever getting to announce itself.
A gust came through the sky slit and laid its weight on the top inch of the bowl, altering nothing useful and everything petty. Andrew's rope sighed as if to invite a cloud into existence.
"No," Gray said, without looking.
"I'm obedient," Andrew said, wounded on principle.
"You are theatrical," Pelly said.
They slid along the right-hand choke with the confidence of people who write rules down because they intend to survive them. A beam of broken wood spun lazy across the lane and abandoned the idea of being a threat when Teuton glanced at it. Damon moved a cleat an inch and improved the world by exactly that amount.
"Breath to port," Charles said. "Now."
Alder made a breath out of wood. The ship tipped a degree and then back, like a bow that believed in humility. The rumor of chain under them tried one last tug. Ace left it. Choosing is a rule.
Light deepened ahead until it almost had warmth. The walls fell back a little, in the way of people who step aside reluctantly. The bowl lightened to a slit of sea that had pretended to be trapped and now pretended to be free.
"Note it," Gray said.
[INNER SLIT OF LIGHT. EXIT THAT PRETENDS TO BE AN INVITATION.]
The forward lane narrowed once more at the exit—two teeth nearly kissing, white water whispering between them. From beyond, a tidal bore muttered to itself, the voice of a wall of water rehearsing its lines.
"Hold," Gray said. He lifted his palm like a conductor and then let it fall, empty, because Pelly would make law out of hygiene if necessary. "Three bites only. If you use more, you widen."
"Three," Ace said, and believed himself.
He watched the whisper become a mutter and then a vowel shaped like trouble. The first bite belonged under the lip, left side, where surge blinks between curl and collapse—tilt, not burn. He set the wire there and did it.
The mutter found less tongue.
"Again," Gray said, the word a smile.
The second bite belonged to a shoulder on the right-hand jaw, a ridge that taught spill to be pride. He kissed its base smaller, angled to keep heat from eating stone. The shoulder forgot its posture.
The bore's voice changed. It lost grammar and gained speed.
"Third," Gray said, and his grin sharpened. "Choose one."
Ahead, the center seam blinked—a thin, honest failure where two lies met. Ace lifted his hand and put the third bite there, smallest of all, not a kill, just a tilt that would teach energy to split instead of hit.
Water agreed. The bore arrived and parted its arguments into two uglier, safer ones. The ship waited for both to get bored of being impressive.
"Acceptable," Gray said, and added, because he couldn't help himself, "Again—"
"No," Pelly said. "Kitchen now. If you insult my pans with drills, I will throw your knives into the hunger of this place and let it chew them into anecdotes."
"Translation," Andrew told Ace, delighted. "Food."
"Food," Gray conceded, a tyrant in remission. "Short."
[LOGBOOK][DRUM DETUNED. SPAR IGNORED. CHAIN COLLAR NUDGED. SECOND DRUM REFUSED. ARCH ACCEPTED. THROAT: THREE BITES. BORE: SPLIT. OUTCOME: STILL BORING.]
They eased into the slit of light that tasted like salt and relief. Beyond, the inner lanes of Rocks sketched themselves in black plates and white scribbles, a grammar of danger that could be read if you stopped wanting to be admired.
"Status," Pelly asked the air, because sometimes the air answers.
Alder: "Helm steady."
Abel: "No flags. Distant noise that wants attention, far port."
Damon: "Lines honest."
Teuton: "Gravity tame."
Charles: "Door ahead that thinks it is a person. Hinge to starboard, small."
"Words, not poetry," Pelly said, a reflex he would take to the grave.
"A small hinge," Charles translated. "Soon."
Gray closed one hand and opened it again. "We keep rules. We arrive alive."
"Acceptable rules," Pelly said.
Andrew, patient as he could stand to be, swung his rope once, ready to inspire someone else to wash dishes later.
Ace let his hand fall. Cost, not failure. His fingers would shake when the bowl wasn't looking. Not wider. Smaller. One thing. The cave behind them kept its drum to itself, detuned to mutter. The throat ahead waited with teeth and manners.
"Eat," Gray said. "Then we go where doors pretend not to be doors."
Ace nodded. He did not thank anyone.
He carried the wire in his skin anyway.