The Route It Would Steal

They left the ring where it was.

Orra checked the keel-instrument twice before packing it away, making sure the brass point had not shifted in its case. Nima had already sealed her pulse notes against the damp air. Below them, the ancient ring sat quiet beneath the cliff, its carved channels black with age.

The *Morrowfin* waited above the island, riding low on its remaining lift crystals. Its jury sail held a cautious angle. The missing fore sail left the ship’s bow bare and blunt, like a tool that had lost its fine edge.

Brask leaned over the rail as Orra and Nima came up the boarding ladder. “Good news?”

“We know what we need to compare,” Nima said.

“Sounds like the sort of good news that becomes bad news after the comparing.”

“It may,” Orra said. “We’ll do it at the basin.”

Brask glanced toward the cliff. “And the tempting old socket?”

“Still tempting.” Orra stowed the instrument inside her coat. “Still untouched.”

Vey had kept the ship clear of the cliff while they worked. He waited for them to secure their harnesses before easing the *Morrowfin* away. The island’s edge slid past, revealing a long view across the cloudbank. Sunlight caught in the Aethersea below, staining the mist violet and green. For a moment, the light made the distant cloud peaks seem to float on a clear, bright ocean.

Then the jury sail shuddered, and Brask went to check its lashings.

The trip back took most of the day. Vey chose a wide route around the cloudbank, avoiding the unstable currents that had already punished the ship. Nima spent the crossing hunched over her astrolabe, setting fresh marks against the pulse intervals she had recorded at the ring. Orra watched the rigging and the lift crystals instead. One stayed dark. The other three held their pale glow, but every small flicker brought her eyes back to them.

A working ship could still be lost to a tiny failure at the wrong time. Ancient signals did not care whether a crew had finished its calculations.

They reached the hidden island before dusk. The *Morrowfin* settled at the known landing with a groan from the jury sail’s patched spar. Vey ordered Brask to keep the ship ready to lift, then joined Orra and Nima on the path to the basin.

The basin had not changed. Its stone pillars stood around the shallow central groove, their tops dark against the evening sky. Orra recognized the routes they had already traced: the chainward path, the cloudbank route, and the uncharted branch that pointed away from both.

Nima set her astrolabe on a flat stone and unfolded two sheets of marked vellum. “I’ve matched the timing from the ring to the pulse we recorded here. It isn’t an exact copy. The ring alters the end of it.”