A Hull Beneath the Curve

The Morrowfin had no fore sail, one lift crystal, and a crew busy pretending those were ordinary things to lose.

Brask had wedged himself beneath the broken yard with a coil of line over one shoulder. He kept glancing up at the bare fittings as if canvas might grow there if he gave it enough attention. Vey stood at the helm, judging the cloudbank and the ship’s slow drift. Nima had her astrolabe open, its little brass arms turning against a shifting scatter of stars that Orra could not see.

Orra stayed at the rail with the keel-instrument wrapped in both hands. Beyond the cloud, the curved structure filled the sky. The two chains dropped from its collars toward the Aethersea, drawn taut against the immense shadow enclosed by the structure’s arc.

“We can make the island,” Vey said. “If the remaining crystal holds and we keep the aft sail trimmed.”

“Those are two large ifs,” Brask called from under the yard.

“Then trim carefully.”

Brask looked up at the bare foremast. “That advice would have been more useful yesterday.”

The joke landed lightly. Orra still saw the way he checked the strained stay before turning back to his work. She had cut the fore sail’s release to keep him clear of it. The sail was gone. The ship was still flying. Those facts did not settle as neatly as they ought to.

Nima raised one hand from the astrolabe. “The pulse is building.”

Vey looked at Orra. “Can you see the collars?”

She leaned over the rail. Their outlines held against the dark curve. The chains ran from them into the shadow, each link broad enough to span the Morrowfin’s deck. Orra fixed her eyes on the nearer one and waited for the telltale shiver.

The keel-instrument warmed against her palms.

“Now,” Nima said.

The pulse passed through the structure. Orra felt it in the soles of her boots, a brief pressure that made the ship’s timbers complain. The chains snapped taut. The mass inside the curve moved with them.

This time it turned.

A long black surface emerged from the shadow, ribbed by immense crosspieces. Its far end tapered into a prow-like point. The whole shape rolled slowly within the structure, too broad to see at once, but its line was unmistakable: a hull, or something built to resemble one on a scale no shipwright alive could have planned.

Orra’s grip tightened on the instrument. Along the hull, pale lights kindled one after another. They ran in a line from the pointed end toward the middle, then stopped.