The liquor burned the cold off in a hard, useful way; it left Elara numb but alert, as if frost had been scraped from the inside of her skull. The blanket was coarse across her shoulders. The scrape on her chin throbbed, a small, honest pain that kept her from slipping into a dream of drowning. Three hours ticked in the back of her mind like the tide—an implacable deadline.
Captain Veridian kept to the table. The captain's bandaged hand rested on the map, issuing orders in clipped phrases. Speed. Quiet. Extraction. The Cutter had weight; any mention of one turned plans into prayers.
Elara studied her hands the way a thief studies locks. The silver dust clung to her skin like a brand. She pinched a small smear from the canvas and smeared it across the smooth vertebra she'd been carving. The bone took the powder and held it, as if the marrow itself remembered storms.
I did it once by instinct, she thought. Threw the dust in and the field folded.
If that had been a fluke, she needed to make a habit of the miracle. If it wasn't, she needed to make it repeatable.
She left the bunk and approached Veridian's table. The captain didn't look up at first. She dealt in transactions, not theatrics. Elara set the bone down and pulled the scriber from her belt.
"Captain," she said low. "I need a controlled test. What kind of ether are you running in holds like this?"
Veridian's eyes slid to her. "We run cheap alarm wards. Guild-Grade is a luxury we don't waste on perimeter bells. Why do you care, Channel?"
"Because I can't risk wasting Arc Ether on a blind experiment," Elara replied. "I need something predictable, repetitive. A low-grade beacon you can spare."
Veridian considered her, then barked a name. "Garth — the pebble from the cargo hatch. And a pail."
Garth returned with a palm-sized pebble that hummed on the table. It radiated a steady, petty pulse—the kind of magic designed to be obvious and useful, not elegant. Veridian set it next to the scrimshaw and watched Elara like someone waiting for a wound to heal.
"This pebble pings a quarter-mile perimeter," Veridian said. "If you can silence that, I'll believe you did more than fluke the Cutter's field."
Elara nodded. The pebble's pulse was the simplest Arc Ether pattern she could wish for: measured, repetitive, and shallow. Perfect for tearing open a seam.
She worked with the bone and the dust as if stitching a trap. She scratched a new, microscopic pattern beside the sea-serpent motif—no rune she recognized, no formal code. The pattern was a memory of the implosion: twisted, inward folds that mirrored the way the Cutter's magic had collapsed. She used the tip of the scriber to press the silver dust into the cuts until the lines glowed faint and restless.
The pebble kept humming. Small, regular. The sound felt like a heartbeat she needed to stop.
Elara did not speak a spell. She did not call names. She let the focus of the night—the cold, her fear, the memory of the Cutter's field—tighten like a wire behind her eyes. Then she placed both palms on the bone and thought a single blunt command: Stop.
The dust uncoiled. A slow silver mist peeled off the carved lines, reluctant and hungry. It drifted toward the pebble and met the pebble's pulse like water meeting a flame. The tone of the humming did not falter. It simply,…ceased. No crack, no pop—only the sudden absence of sound, like a bell cut from its rope.
The hold inhaled the silence.
Veridian's face did not show shock so much as calculation. She picked up the pebble, turned it, and slammed it back on the table. "How long?"
Elara felt something like a confidence she hadn't earned. "Ten minutes," she said. "Less if the pebble's core has been recently topped. It drains the residual arc until it can stitch the circuit again."
Garth went pale. He'd expected a story; he'd not expected precision. Veridian's lips narrowed into a smile that had teeth behind it.
"A ten-minute blind spot to Guild tracking," she said slowly. "That's not a trick. That's leverage."
She handed the scrimshaw back to Elara with a motion like passing a loaded coin. "You'll dry off. You'll tell me everything you remember about the Starfall Rift and the bones. Then you'll prove you can do it on command, not by accident."
Elara wrapped the damp bone against her chest. The fear was still present—raw, quick—but it had a new shape. It was no longer only about running; it was about making the next move deliberate. If the Cutter burned the barge, they all died. If she delivered a useful silence, Veridian might run her into safe water.
They had minutes to make choice into plan.
And then the deck split with a single, precise sound: wood breaking where no ordinary hand had struck. It was the sound of a thing that did not miss.
Veridian's smile sharpened into cold. "No more negotiations," she said. She reached beneath the table and drew an axe the way some people draw signatures. "You have less than ten minutes to make me invisible."
The hold turned to motion. Men grabbed ropes, checked blades, moved like animals trained to sprint. Garth hustled for the Sea Moth. Lanterns were steadying. Outside, the water slapped the hull, and overhead the harbor felt suddenly smaller.
Elara's hands trembled, but she did not panic. Her fingers slid the scriber into the bone and began to trace the fold again—this time with intention. The Cutter was on the deck. The test had turned into a real window. If she failed, the Guild would come with everything that had teeth.
She had a single advantage: the thing that made the Cutter fear her was not a spellbook he could seize. It was an accident that answered to pattern—and patterns could be learned.
Veridian watched, not with pity, but with the exact appraisal of a trader seeing merchandise being dressed for auction. Below deck the crew prepared the Sea Moth to shove off. Above deck, the Cutter paced with the patient hunger of a predator circling a trap he knows how to spring.
Outside the hold, the city waited with bated breath.
Inside, a tired girl carved the silence that might save them all.