They spent the morning making a safety line out of things that had never been intended to keep a diver alive.
Brask took a length of boarding chain from the *Morrowfin*’s starboard locker and laid it across the island’s rock shelf. The chain was heavy enough to bruise a foot through a boot. He fixed one end to a buried stone spur and clipped the other to a belt ring on Orra’s brass suit.
“That’s your second line,” he said. “It won’t haul you up. It’ll keep you from going where the first line can’t reach.”
“Comforting.”
“I’ve got better comforts. They’re all back on the ship.” He checked the clip twice, then gave it a hard tug. “Don’t lean on it unless you have to.”
The first line ran to the island’s main winch, with Brask at the handle and Vey watching the drum. The *Morrowfin* hovered beyond the exposed shelf, held steady by its levitation sails. They had tested the lines, anchors, and hand signals until the routine felt dull. Dull was the point.
Nima crouched by her astrolabe, its brass arms shifting against a reflected pattern of pale stars. “There’s a pulse in the chain,” she said. “Very faint. It repeats, but I can’t tell if it’s coming up from below or traveling down from the windlass.”
“Can it wait until I’m back on deck?” Orra asked.
“It can. I’m not asking you to go farther.”
Orra lowered the suit’s faceplate. Her last look at the island was Brask’s broad hands on the winch handle and Vey’s steady attention on the line. Then the shelf dropped away beneath her boots, and the Aethersea took the world.
The mist shone in layers: blue-white veils, green sparks that faded when she turned her helmet toward them, and far below, a dim radiance with no surface to measure distance against. Her suit’s seals held. The air gauge stayed in the green. She kept one gloved hand close to the chain without grabbing it and let the winch pay out at a pace she could count.
The chain’s links were wider than her shoulders. Their edges had been smoothed by age or movement, though not evenly. Some wore long shallow grooves. Others had small, square notches cut into them. Orra marked their spacing as she descended, calling the changes through her throat mic so Nima could compare them to the pulse.
“Four notches,” Orra said. “Then two. Then four again.”
“Same interval,” Nima replied. “Keep going, if you’re still comfortable.”
Orra looked down. “Comfortable is doing a lot of work there.”
She reached the depth they had agreed on. The chain angled away from the island, just enough to put a steady pull on the line. Orra put a boot against a link and leaned to see beneath it.
Next
With their second safety line damaged, the crew must build a proper rig before Orra can return to the ring and learn whether the immense structure below the island is holding the chain—or being held by it.
At first, she saw only the glow of the Aethersea, broken by the chain’s broad shadow. Then a shape emerged from the mist.
A ring of black stone stood below her, large enough to admit the *Morrowfin* with room to spare. It was set into a curved surface that stretched beyond the reach of her lantern. The chain passed through the ring and vanished into a narrow seam in that surface.
Orra swept her lantern across the curve. Plates, or carved ridges, ran over it in broad arcs. Their edges were lost in the glowing murk. Something on the far side gave off a soft, pale light, rising and fading in time with the pulse Nima had heard.
“Do you see it?” Nima asked.
“I see a ring. The chain goes through it. There’s something under the ring. Big enough that I can’t see where it ends.”
“What kind of something?”
“Stone, maybe. Built. I’m not touching it to find out.”
A small laugh crackled through the speaker. Brask, probably. “That’s my girl.”
Orra stayed still and watched the distant light fade, then brighten again. The chain trembled against her glove. The movement was too slight to call a pull, but she felt it travel up through the link beneath her palm.
“Vey,” she said, “anything moving topside?”
“Wind’s steady. Island’s steady. I’m watching the pawl.”
“Hold position.” Nima’s voice sharpened. “That pulse just matched the cloudward reading. Exactly.”
Orra looked toward the stone ring. The light had gone dark. For one breathless moment there was only the mist. Then it returned in a quick double flash.
The boarding chain snapped taut against her belt.
The impact spun her shoulder into the great chain. Pain jabbed through the suit padding. Her primary line jerked, then settled. The boarding chain scraped across a sharp edge near her hip, rattling against its clip.
“Orra, come up,” Vey said.
“I’m coming.” She looked once more at the ring. There was no time to count its carvings or follow the seam. “Bring me up.”
The winch answered in measured pulls. Orra held her arms close and watched the secondary chain as it slid past her. One link had a bright scrape along its edge. The connection at her belt remained firm, but the chain had taken damage.
“Slow,” she called. “I’m clear of the ring.”
Brask eased the winch. Vey kept the ship’s line from swinging against the island. Orra rose through the light and mist, counting each pull until the shelf was above her again. Brask reached down and caught her shoulder plate. No one spoke until her boots touched stone.
He helped unfasten her helmet. The air smelled of wet rock and hot metal. Orra’s hands shook while she worked the faceplate latch. She waited for them to stop before she looked at the scraped chain.
“That line’s done,” she said.
“Could patch it,” Brask replied.
“Could. It wouldn’t be a safety line anymore.”
He studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Fair.”
Orra lowered herself onto a crate. She had gone down to see where the chain led. She had seen enough to know it led somewhere built, and not enough to know whether it was an anchor, a gate, or something she had no word for. The next thought came anyway: one more length of line, another minute at the ring. She hated how quickly it formed.
“I wanted to keep looking,” she said. “When it moved.”
Vey leaned his arms on the rail beside her. “You came up.”
“After it hit the line.”
“Before it hit you worse.”
Orra glanced down at the scraped link. “That’s a narrow measure.”
“Still counts.” Vey’s gaze stayed on the mist below. “We don’t go back down on a line we know is damaged.”
No one argued. That made it harder to brush off.
Nima turned her astrolabe so the crew could see its three narrow pointers. One held toward the cloudbank. Another quivered over the hidden island. The third pointed down, though the instrument had no reason to mark a direction beneath the Aethersea.
“The flash beneath the ring and the cloudward pulse matched,” she said. “Not approximately. Same rhythm, same pause. The signal may be traveling through the chain. Or the structure below could be receiving it.”
Brask rested a hand on the damaged boarding chain. “So the thing down there’s talking to the thing out past the clouds.”
“Or to something between them,” Nima said. “I wouldn’t call it talking yet.”
“Good. I’d hate to answer by accident.”
The joke drew a tired breath of laughter from Orra. Then the astrolabe’s lowest pointer made one slow turn and stopped, still aimed into the luminous depths.
They had found where the chain passed. They had not found what it held, or what had answered from beyond the cloudbank. And the one line that might have taken Orra closer was now scraped through and useless.
Vey ordered the windlass left secured. The crew would need a new safety rig before anyone went down again. Orra watched the chain vanish into the mist and tried not to picture the black ring waiting below it.