Ch 10 Correction

The captain’s cabin door wasn’t fully shut.

Kael didn’t bother with it. He sat at the desk, chart spread before him, the oil lamp lighting the grey blank of the map. There was nothing useful on the chart, but he needed something legitimate in front of him.

The argument on deck had broken up nearly two hours ago. Through a layer and a half of planking and canvas, he could still make out the direction of footsteps. Several sailors had gone below, boot soles dragging on the ladder treads. Someone was talking quietly on the foredeck, their voice so flat he couldn’t tell who it was. Castor’s iron-studded soles had paced back and forth across the quarterdeck twice, then stopped.

Kael braced his hands on the chart’s edge. The heel of his palm on the parchment, fingertips on the desk. The old scar on the web of his right hand pressed against the cool wood.

The lamp flame burned straight and still. No wind from the porthole. No wind from anywhere.

He heard a sound.

Not boots. Bare feet on wood — lighter than boots, more irregular. Two steps quick, one step slow, weight on the balls of the feet.

Naia pushed open the door that hadn’t been latched and walked in.

She didn’t say “sorry to bother you” or knock. She walked in, sat on the low stool across the desk. One leg tucked up, the other hanging down, toes tapping the floor now and then. Her eyes swept the captain’s cabin once, then settled on the chart.

Kael didn’t look at her. He stared at the blank expanse of the chart.

The silence lasted a while. Not the kind that needed breaking. The lamp flame flickered once — the oil, not the wind.

“I don’t know what’s ahead,” Kael said.

He didn’t look up. The words were aimed at the chart, or the desk, or the flame. Barely loud enough to cross the table.

Naia’s toes tapped the floor once.

“You never do.”

Kael’s fingers stopped at the chart’s edge. His thumb rubbed the curled corner of the parchment — a meaningless gesture.

“I’m afraid too.”

Two words. No qualifiers. No “actually,” no “to be honest,” no “don’t tell anyone.” After he said them his mouth closed, jaw tight, eyes still on the chart.

The cabin was quiet enough to hear the tiny crackle of the lamp wick charring.

Naia didn’t say “it’s all right.” Didn’t say “I believe in you.” She leaned back, shoulders against the bulkhead. A bead woven into one of her braids tapped the wood with a faint click.

“My mother took me past the edge of this sea.” Her voice was neither low nor high, as if she were talking about the weather. “This one. The edge. She stopped the boat, turned around, and told me nothing.”

Kael raised his eyes.

Naia was looking out the porthole. There was nothing to see out there. Grey dusk coated the glass evenly.

“I remember the rhythm of the water.” She paused. “Not like normal seawater. Deeper, steadier. As if the entire sea were breathing on the same beat.”

She pulled her gaze back and looked at Kael.

“It’s there. Whether we’re afraid or not, it’s there.”

Kael looked at her. The lamplight cast two small yellow points in her deep amber irises. Her expression was neither comfort nor encouragement. It was a statement of fact from someone who had stood at the edge of that sea and seen it.

He didn’t answer.

Naia set her tucked-up leg down and stood. She didn’t linger. She turned and walked toward the door. Passing through the frame, her shoulder nearly grazed the wood. Didn’t. Her footsteps in the short corridor went three or four beats, then were gone.

The door was still ajar.

Kael looked down at the chart. The flame burned straight and still.

Outside the door, a faint sound. Claws shifting on the floor. Sol had changed position in some corner of the corridor but hadn’t left. It had been lying there longer than Naia had been in the cabin.

---

Castor came later than Kael expected.

Kael had thought he’d come right after the argument broke up. He didn’t. He waited nearly two hours. During those two hours Kael heard him pace the deck more than once, iron-studded soles clicking from bow to stern and back, at a pace so even he might have been counting steps.

Maybe he was counting steps. Maybe he was counting heads.

The door swung open. All the way open this time. Castor turned sideways to enter, broad shoulders filling most of the frame. He didn’t sit. Stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed, eyebrows at their habitual angle. Sweat at his temples — from the stifling heat or from urgency, hard to say.

Sol moved out of the doorway. It stood, flicked its ears, and walked slowly to the far end of the corridor. Settled there.

Castor glanced at Sol. Then at Kael.

“How many days?”

Not a challenge. Not an order. Not even said loudly. The way Castor asked it was the way you’d ask how much fresh water was left.

“Don’t know,” Kael said.

Castor’s jaw shifted. His mouth opened and closed, as if swallowing back a long speech he’d prepared. What came out was still short.

“Give me a number.”

Kael looked at him. Castor stood in the doorway, the faint grey dusk of the corridor behind him. His broad shoulders filled a grey-brown long-sleeved shirt, flecked with wood shavings and copper dust from the day’s work. The hatchet hung at his left hip, its handle newly wound with strips of rag.

“Three days,” Kael said. “Three days with nothing new, we turn back.”

Castor stared at him. Didn’t blink.

Three seconds. Four. Five.

“Three days.” Castor repeated it. Not confirming — chewing the number up and swallowing it down. He gave a small nod.

He didn’t say anything more. Turned and left. Iron-studded soles clicked four times in the corridor, hit the ladder treads a little harder, then disappeared onto the deck.

The door was still open.

Kael reached out and rolled up the chart. Three days. He didn’t know where the number had come from himself. Not calculation, not judgment. It was the point where the shortest time he could give and the longest time Castor could endure happened to overlap.

He slid the chart into its leather case and picked up the compass pouch from the desk corner. The copper case’s warmth came through the leather the instant it met his palm. Hot. A little hotter than a few hours ago. He didn’t open it.

He put out the lamp.

---

Kael went out on deck that night.

The grey vault had darkened to uniform black. No stars. Two lanterns hung on the fore and aft masts, each casting a small circle of warm yellow light. At the edges the light was swallowed — no gradient, as if cut clean.

He walked to amidships, port side. The air was neither cool nor warm, no temperature against the skin.

The deck was very quiet. The watch sailor sat by the helm, back against the wheel mount, eyes open but unfocused. The scraps of cloth wound on yesterday stood out in the lantern light, garish against the grey of the deck.

Kael saw Armo.

He was sitting on the rim of the forward hatch, legs dangling above the ladder. Not a posture for taking the air — more like he’d walked there, sat down, and hadn’t moved since. Lantern light caught one side of his face. The contours were flatter than before. The transition from cheekbone to jaw was too smooth, as if someone had run a palm across it.

Armo’s right hand rested on his knee, palm up. The index finger of his other hand traced slowly across it. Once, twice, three times. The finger followed where the palm lines should have been, but Kael could see from three paces away that there was almost nothing left to follow.

Armo’s lips moved. No sound. Or there was sound, but it blended with the grey air and by the time it reached Kael it was indistinguishable from something other than a human voice.

Kael didn’t walk over.

He stood for a few seconds, then turned toward the stern. Passing the mainmast he saw Bryn sitting on the rope coil on the other side, notebook open on her knee. She wasn’t writing, but the book was open to a fresh page. Her pen was pinched between index and middle fingers, the nib capped with a dried bead of ink, waiting to come down.

Bryn’s eyes swept past Kael, paused for less than a second, and returned to the notebook.

Kael kept walking. When he reached the captain’s cabin door he stopped. The corridor was dark. The cabin door stood half-open. Through the gap, nothing — the lamp was out, only the porthole’s position slightly lighter than the rest.

On the desk, a small warm glow.

Not light. Heat. The compass sat on the desk, its copper case radiating faint warmth in a cabin with no light source at all. No color visible, but Kael knew it was there. His palm still remembered the heat that had lingered long after he’d held it.

It burned quietly. In a place where every temperature was converging, the compass stubbornly held its own.

Kael walked into the captain’s cabin and shut the door. This time, all the way.