Ace lifted his hand.
He did not widen.
The black slit exhaled cold—iron-and-rain breath that had learned its manners in cellars. The sound inside had edges, a metallic echo that knocked twice and waited to be important. Water on the lip pulled thin, then thick, then thin—breathing the way stone doesn't unless someone has taught it.
"Bite when it breathes," Gray said, soft enough to count as privacy.
Ace watched the lip—not the dark, not the shine, the seam where wet met rock and pretended it had always been married. The slit exhaled and the seam blinked—a tiny back-step between suck and slack—and Ace put the needle there. He angled the line to steal space from the heat so the bite belonged to the seam and not to anybody's story.
The exhale stumbled. Cold turned from statement to suggestion.
"Acceptable," Gray said. "Now make it ours."
Inside the slit a chain spoke—a small clink, then weight moving in a shaft. The water inhaled a fraction harder, the way a throat prepares to pull.
"Gate," Damon said, disgusted on principle. "Sluice and counterweight. Professional insult."
"Choose one," Gray said.
Ace listened to the counterweight argue gravity up some old chute. The chain's rhythm told on itself: pull… seat… pull… seat. Collar, not pride. He set the wire at the collar where link met link and waited for the blink between pull and seat on the inhale. The point arrived small. Metal remembered it had a seam. The chain slacked a thumb's width; the gate eased a handspan.
Alder breathed with the wheel and shaved a degree that he gave back. Damon pressed a palm to a brace like forgiveness. Teuton moved half a step and improved gravity by doing so.
"Don't widen," Pelly warned the future. "Deck stays a deck."
Andrew made his rope sigh and then tied his hands behind his back with a flourish that wanted applause and didn't get any.
They slipped along the slit's shoulder where shadow made courtesy and water tried to keep a secret. Cold ran fingers along the hull and lost interest.
[LOGBOOK][BLACK SLIT: LIP KISSED; CHAIN COLLAR NUDGED ON INHALE; GATE RELENTED A HANDSPAN.]
"More inside," Charles murmured, cup and beads still; his head tilted to listen inside the rock. "A bell that wants to gossip."
"Words, not poetry," Pelly said, because habits make the air taste cleaner.
"A trip-line close to the surface," Charles translated. "If it sings, a friend gets teeth."
Abel's chin lifted by the width of a thought. "Shadow on the right. Lantern behind rock. One person. Not bored."
"Decent manners so far," Pelly said. "Let's keep them ignorant."
The water ahead wore a wire just above its face—thin, the color of obedience. It sagged the way lines sag when they're not supposed to be seen. A bell lived beyond the bend in the dark.
"Choose one," Gray said.
Ace did not try to unmake the wire. He waited for the blink—the slack-breath where water dies down between two arguments. He set a pin smaller than pride into the wire's lacquered skin, not to cut it, to soften the pull. The wire twanged in a pitch humans could not hear and did not ring the bell. The slack learned a new word: later.
"Acceptable," Gray said. "Again, if it tightens."
The shadow behind rock moved as if somebody had decided to earn a job. A dull lantern showed through fingers and shutter: meat-colored light that hadn't learned subtlety. A small shutter above the slit began to slide, thin as a lid that wants to close.
"Don't widen," Gray said mildly. "Make it forget how to be a lid."
Ace measured the groove where the shutter rode and the pivot where weight made choice. He touched the pivot once, then twice at the lip in two shy pins a finger-width apart—agreement is stronger than performance. The shutter stuck with the stubbornness of old iron asked to behave like new. It did not fall. It did not fly. It sulked exactly shy of shut.
Damon grunted, pleased by other people's mechanical failure. "Good."
Teuton's hands rested on nothing and therefore on everything. "If it closes, I complain and then fix it."
Alder nudged a fraction. Abel's eyes did math. Pelly tracked the deck like it might decide to be famous.
[LOGBOOK][TRIP-LINE: SKIN SOFTENED, NO BELL. SHUTTER: PIVOT PRICKED TWICE, STUCK SHY OF SHUT.]
Andrew leaned without leaving his bow. "Permission to be petty," he said.
"No," Pelly said.
"Later," Gray negotiated, which in his mouth meant maybe. He plucked a coin from nowhere he kept such encouragements and snapped it vertical into the slit's light like a joke aimed at the future.
Ace didn't look. He listened. The coinblinked at the top of its small career and he put the needle there, a clean dot as signal. Metal sang a note no bell could understand.
Charles smiled like a secret had gotten a good night's sleep. "Door heard that," he said.
"Translation," Pelly said.
"Someone decided we're clever enough to ignore," Charles answered.
The slit inhaled again, less cold. The chain somewhere above coughed and then forgot to be faithful. The trip-line relaxed like a man whose letter hadn't been delivered.
"Passage," Gray said, eyes not leaving the places where problems are born. "Alder."
"Aye," said the man whose hands made comprehension out of wood. The wheel answered, and so did water because sometimes water has taste.
They cleared the first throat into a turning alley that bent twice and then thought better of a third time. Here the sound had a harder edge. To port an iron grate hung above a slot, chained to a winch someone loved once. It thought about being down and decided to practice.
"Human hinge," Damon spat, professional jealousy wrapped in admiration. "Well made."
"Choose one," Gray said.
The grate quivered on its chain. A cross-current shoved from starboard, lazy but sure, as if timing had been planned to turn thought into error.
"Grate or shove," Gray said, and his grin sharpened. "One."
Ace lifted his hand.
He did not widen.
He chose the shove first, because gravity loves accomplices. He set a pin at the whorl where the starboard push blinked—that quiet seam between shove and spill—and tilted it smaller than manners. The push forgot its posture for a single beat. The ship kept her line.
The grate decided to drop now. The chain clinked, then built a word out of metal syllables.
"Angle," Gray said, a kindness shaped like a knife. "Steal space."
Ace left the shove to its new boredom and laid the needle at the grate's cheek—the guide where tooth meets track. One small dot on the guide near the pivot, then another so the first wouldn't be lonely. Iron wanted to fall and instead hesitated. The grate hung with its own weight and felt ashamed of it.
"Acceptable," Gray said, which meant more.
[LOGBOOK][CROSS-PUSH FIRST, THEN GRATE: GUIDE PRICKED TWICE. DROP HESITATED. PASSABLE.]
Something ticked under the water—a tensioned line that had not been part of this room until the last half-breath. Abel's head moved enough to be a warning. "New line aft port," he said. "Slid in while we watched the grate. Humans."
"Choose one," Gray said. "Still one."
Ace did not try to solve time. He chose the line because it could yell. He found the blink—stretch becoming sing—and softened the lacquer again without cutting, a kindness that made silence last longer.
"Acceptable," Gray said, which was a feast he served often and never with dessert.
Andrew pretended not to die of admiration. "Your petty makes me feel like a better person," he said to the day.
"Do not become a better person," Pelly advised, "you'll be unbearable."
They slid under the grate while it argued with the new opinion Ace had given it. The alley opened into a short well with black walls rubbed pale by old hulls. Overhead the sky had been reduced to a rag. Below, the wash curled and tried to read them wrong.
"Hold your hands small," Gray said.
Ace did. Cost, not failure, he reminded his bones.
A shutter to starboard woke—another lid that loved down. It tried to start before it could continue. Ace pricked the pivot twice more because sometimes manners teach more than sermons. The lid froze at a curious angle and stayed there to think about its life.
Damon nodded to somebody he would never meet. "The person who built this will hate that."
"They should have gone to church," Pelly said.
"They built a church," Andrew said. "It has hinges."
[LOGBOOK][SECOND SHUTTER: PIVOT AGREED TWICE. LID DECIDED TO THINK.]
They came to another bend where the wall pinched their lane thin and the water darkened like running under a hand. A sliver of lantern showed in a hole near the roof and then vanished as if it had been embarrassed. A breath of smoke wandered onto the deck and forgot its sentence.
"One person," Abel said. "Maybe two. No shout."
"No shout means they prefer stories where we don't exist," Pelly said. "Let's be generous and indulge."
Gray leaned his grin against the future and let it slide. He flicked another coin—not up this time but out, a slow arc that would graze the rock and make a small sound exactly where Ace told it to.
Ace set a dot at the blink when arc becomes fall and the coin ticked off rock in a rhythm that meant we can hear you without meaning we want to. The slit answered with nothing, which was courtesy.
"Door heard it twice," Charles said, pleased. "We are guests who don't stain."
"Kitchen," Pelly said aspirationally.
"Later," Gray said. "After one more thing."
The alley straightened, which should have been a lie. Above, a grate that hadn't wanted to be seen until now started to fall for real, muscles finally coordinated. At the same moment—the precise same—water shoved from port, impatient and personal.
"Choose one," Gray said, delight thick in his voice. "Grate or shove."
Ace lifted his hand.
He did not widen.