The Gate Above the Ribs

The living course tightened around the Morrowfin until Orra could feel its turns through the keel-instrument.

The brass tool trembled in her hands. Each shiver came a breath before the current bent, giving her just enough warning to keep the Morrowfin’s lift crystals clear of the brighter strands. She watched the instrument, then the sea around them: ribbons of light flowed through the open ribs of the ancient vessel, gathering ahead where its immense shape curved upward into the mist.

“Current’s taking the bow,” Vey called from the helm. His voice reached her over the groaning rigging. “I can hold the heading. I can’t make it slow.”

The Morrowfin’s fore sail was gone. One lift crystal remained dead, and the jury rig they’d set in its place strained whenever the living course caught the hull broadside. Orra could keep the ship clear of the working crystals. She couldn’t make the wood and rope stronger.

“Then don’t fight its speed,” she said. “Keep the bow a hand to port when I call it.”

Brask had a coil of line around his waist and both boots braced against the rail. “A hand I can manage. A whole hand, I’m charging extra.”

Nima stood near the mast, her astrolabe open. Its shifting points glimmered with reflected light. “The vessel’s ribs are matching the course. It’s drawing the flow inward.”

“Toward what?” Orra asked.

Nima tilted the astrolabe, following a bright point as it moved. “Upward, I think.”

The living course pulled them between two towering ribs. Their surfaces were not stone, though they looked hard enough to be. Light moved beneath them in slow, branching patterns. The structure curved around the Morrowfin, too vast to take in at once. Through gaps in its luminous frame, Orra saw the Aethersea far below, shining in colors that had no business looking gentle.

The keel-instrument tugged in her grip. Its narrow point turned toward the heart of the vessel.

She had seen it answer before. She had watched it lead them into routes that chose their own destinations. This time, the instrument did not drag her hand. It waited, vibrating steadily, as if the course had brought them to a place where she had to decide how to guide it.

A shape formed between the ribs: a wide, pale opening, ringed with light. Beyond it lay no chamber or deck. Only open sky, faintly blue through the mist.

“Gate,” Nima said. The word came out softly. “An ascending gate.”

Orra’s mind went to the chains beneath the hidden island. She had left them without another pulse. She had chosen to leave. Each thought arrived in the same blunt order: the hull had shifted; the chains had held; they could not see it now.