The attic never smelled different, but that morning it clung to Rin worse than usual. Ink and lamp oil, sharp, cloying, braided with the woolly funk of damp linen and the sour mildew that clung to the rafters like a permanent cough. She ducked under the lowest beam, her knuckles skimming the cool slant of the ceiling. A rat scuttled up a roof-brace and paused to stare at her with bold, lidless judgment. Rin flicked a fleck of dried ink in its direction, not out of fear, but to remind it this was still her corner.
She reached her desk, ducked onto the too-low stool, and ran her thumb once over the swirl-sail glyph she'd scratched into the underside of the frame weeks ago. Her secret sigil. Her defiance. The groove was nearly smoothed by habit now. She pressed into it anyway, just hard enough to feel it bite back.
Sarrha was already working. As always. The Varnari girl's stylus moved with metronomic efficiency, brisk and neat, one-handed. Her missing forearm rested against the desk's lip, the soft curve of the stump wrapped in fresh muslin. She never fumbled. Never flinched.
But today… she wasn't quite herself. The sharp angle of her shoulders was tighter than usual. The way she blinked between each line, slower, less automatic, it was like she had to remind herself where she was. Even her stillness felt unnatural, a frozen quiet rather than ease.
Issa slipped in last, hair still uncombed, rubbing the crust of sleep from her cheek. She said nothing as she crossed the cramped loft, but her gaze lingered on Sarrha too long before she dropped onto her own crate with a sigh.
The early bells rang. The three of them worked. Pages turned. Ink pooled. Silence stretched.
Then the stair creaked, once, twice, the groan long and steady. Rin froze, stylus mid-stroke. She knew the sound of Callun's step. But today, the rhythm was wrong. Slower. Heavier. Intentional.
He emerged at the top of the stair not with a barked order, but a slow glance. Eyes sweeping the room, resting too long on each of them in turn. When he reached Sarrha, he stopped. The ledger in his hand was closed.
"Your quill came by this morning," he said, voice unusually smooth. "You'll be correcting the tally for dockside exports."
Sarrha didn't look up. "Already done. Page seven, third column."
He said nothing. Instead, he stepped behind her, hand resting on the back of her chair, not touching her, but close enough to feel the shift in her posture. Rin saw it. The barest twitch of Sarrha's neck. Not a flinch, too proud for that, but a recalibration. Like someone adjusting their stance to keep from stumbling.
Callun leaned down, gaze dragging along the page. "You're sure?"
"Always," Sarrha said.
He didn't move right away. His hand traced the edge of the desk, fingers splayed, before pulling back. Then he turned, eyes sliding to Rin for a half-second. Just long enough to leave a film of implication. He gave a smile. Thin. Professional. Wrong.
Then he left.
Sarrha didn't look up. But her stylus moved a little faster.
The attic exhaled.
They worked in silence after that. But it wasn't the usual silence of shared toil, it was the brittle kind, where soundless things loomed between breath and ink. The light from the dormer window shifted slightly, catching the sheen of sweat on Sarrha's temple. She hadn't paused once.
Rin couldn't stop glancing at her.
Issa leaned in around midday, her voice low enough to barely reach. "You saw that, yeah?"
"I did," Rin said, though her stomach was a stone.
"He lingered," Issa murmured. "Too long. Hands too close."
Rin looked back toward Sarrha's desk. "She didn't flinch."
"No. But that's worse."
Callun returned in the early afternoon, ledger open this time, expression unreadable. His tone was clipped but calm. "Sarrha. You'll stay late. The Westpoint accounts are behind again."
Sarrha's stylus stopped. She blinked once, slowly. "I recalculated those last week."
Callun tilted his head, smile returning. "Then this will be quick. Your hand's the steadiest. I trust it."
That was the moment. Rin felt it, the weight in the room shift. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just final. Sarrha inclined her head without speaking, and the ledgerhouse's structure held.
He left.
The work resumed. Quiet. Mechanical.
Later, as they gathered their satchels and closed the ledgers, Rin pressed a cloth into Sarrha's hand. A cleaned scrap of linen, peppermint-oiled, folded with care.
Sarrha held it a moment. Her dark eyes flicked to Rin, something bright and unsaid behind them. She nodded.
"Don't let him get away with it," Rin whispered before she could think better of it.
"I won't," Sarrha said. But her voice was far away.
Issa returned, dropping a tough bread crust on Sarrha's desk. "Eat," she muttered. "I'll cover the first ledgers. You'll still be down here by nightfall."
Sarrha nodded again.
They were still here, Rin realized. Still tethered to the same air, the same ink, the same chains. And yet Rin had something else now, a knife hidden under her shift, muscles that ached in ways that weren't from ledgers. And a secret. A verse.
The fog had thickened by the time Rin reached the shack again later that night, a grey, whispering thing that curled around her legs and clung to her sleeves. The brine in the air stung sharper tonight, laced with the iron taste of distant tides. She pulled her coat tighter across her bruised ribs as Malri's silhouette emerged from the gloom, leaning against the doorframe like driftwood jammed into the earth.
He didn't greet her. Just studied her face, then the smudges of dark purple blooming on her collarbone. His gaze lingered.
He didn't ask questions. Only turned and rapped his knuckles once against the lintel before stepping inside, a motion too specific to be casual, like knocking on the hull of an old ship to remind it not to creak too loud. Malri crossed to the hearth and knelt beside it. He pinched salt from a jar and dropped it into the flames. The fire hissed once, sharp as steam. No words yet. Just the ritual.
"Stance," he said at last, voice like a ship rope dragged over stone.
She stepped to the middle of the floor, reached down, and hefted the belaying pin he'd left for her yesterday. The ribs beneath her shirt flared in protest, but she didn't flinch. She set her feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent, trying to recall how he'd moved the night before. He circled her slowly.
"Weight's too far forward," he muttered. "Back heel's lazy. Again."
She shifted. He nodded once. Then struck.
A blur, the edge of his own pin slicing low across her ankle. She stepped back just in time, breath catching. Another swing came, shoulder-high. She ducked, spun awkwardly, gritted through the pull in her side.
"Better," he said. "Still slow."
She squared up again. He swung low again. This time, she dropped with him, parrying by reflex. The wood-on-wood knock echoed, and he let the sound hang in the air.
"Your instincts are fast. But you move like someone always ready to be hit."
She blinked. "Isn't that the point?"
"No," he said flatly. "You're not surviving now. You're shaping. That's different."
Another blow came. She caught the shaft, twisted, nearly disarmed him. He let it happen, let her feel the brief thrill of advantage, then yanked the pin back hard and knocked her arm wide. She stumbled, ribs screaming, and dropped to one knee.
He didn't reach for her. Just watched.
She rose.
He handed her the dagger. Passed it into her palm like one trades coin for bread.
"Grip's wrong," he said as she took her stance with the blade this time. "Index over the crossguard, not under. Again."
They trained in silence. Her breaths got shorter. Sweat made her grip slick. The blade caught a flash of firelight now and then, but never Malri's skin. His movements were spare, exact. Like someone who'd done violence in close quarters, often.
She adjusted. She recovered. She missed, then stopped missing.
When they broke, he gestured toward the rear wall. Seven knotted cords hung from a bent nail, each a different color, each fraying in its own way. The loops swayed faintly in the draft, like they'd been waiting to be noticed.
He pointed to one dyed greenish-blue and stiff from salt.
"That one marked the day three cutters went down in Skar's passage. Calm seas. Clear sky. Water opened like a wound. Took 'em all."
He didn't elaborate. Just stared at the cords for a long moment.
Rin stepped closer, catching the slight shimmer in one of the knots, not magic, just oil or maybe sap, but it pulsed faintly in the lanternlight.
He crouched beside the hearth again, drew a finger through spilled salt on the stone, forming a spiral with a hooked tail. "You know this?"
"No."
"Means voyage unfinished. You'll find it carved into wrecks. A mark left behind by those who went down without anchor or landfall."
She stared at it. "I found a verse," she said.
"I know."
"I didn't seek it out."
"The verses don't care."
She hesitated. "So why do I have it?"
He looked up sharply. "You have it. That's the truth. It doesn't matter how."
He rose and took another dagger from a rusted box by the window. He spun it once in his hand before offering it hilt-first.
"They manifest in sets," he said. "Always have. All within a year. All on one island. If you've seen one verse, the others are coming, or already here."
He dropped the dagger into her hand.
"You'll carry two by the week's end. Or you'll wish you had."
She stared down at the blade. It wasn't fine, but it was sharp. Balanced. The weight of it was real.
And for the first time since stepping through the shack's door, she smiled.
The firelight danced against the warped, smoke-darkened walls as Malri stood and exhaled through his nose. "Enough for tonight."
Rin nodded, folding her stance into something quieter. She crossed the cramped room and dropped onto the barrel seat, dusty, familiar, her daggers and training pin left abandoned at the corner as if part of the exercise itself. Silence filled the space for a moment, broken only by the hiss of embers settling in the hearth.
Malri moved to the fire, retrieved a chipped cup, and poured it full of broth, thin, salty, warmed with a hint of fish and wild onion. He brought it to her without a word. She took it, offered a small nod of thanks, and let the warmth bleed into her fingertips before she lifted it to her lips.
Rin drank, slow and steady, tasting the salt and hearth, and allowing the unspoken promise of this place to settle around her.
"You ever wonder why songs linger?" he asked.
She blinked at him over the steam of her cup.
"Songs?"
"Aye. Not the Crown's marches or ballroom noise. Sea songs. The ones you don't remember learning. You just... know."
Rin nodded slowly. "I've heard sailors hum them in their sleep."
"There's a reason. Shanties weren't written for pretty voices. They weren't written at all. The sea gives them. Bit by bit. And sometimes.."
He tapped his chest.
"They stick here."
She shifted in her seat, setting the cup down carefully. "But why? What do they do?"
"Depends how many voices you've got. One alone? Might calm a wave. Might cool a storm. Might do nothing. But a bonded crew?" He sat back. "That's something else."
She frowned. "What's a bonded crew?"
"Not just any lot who can keep pitch. Bonding's old. Ritual. Takes commitment and risk. Once done, though… it sharpens the verse. Gives it teeth."
She let the thought settle. The idea that a crew could bind their will into a single sound, that the ocean listened only when it liked what it heard.
"Is that why the Crown forbade it?" she asked.
Malri's gaze sharpened.
"They forbade it. But not with reasons you'd find in any edict. No parchment. No trials. Just disappeared crews. Empty holds. Songs that were never sung again."
Rin swallowed.
"Some say it made crews disobedient," Malri said, voice quieter. "Others say they sang something that frightened the Crown."
He looked into the fire like it might answer.
"They say it breaks ships. I say it breaks chains."
Rin opened her mouth to speak again, but he stood suddenly and crossed to the wall. From a rust-flaked hook, he pulled down a length of knotted rope and held it up.
"This? Deck rhythm. Every proper crew had one. Not magic, not even a verse. But it trained your body to match your mate's breath. You haul in unison. You lift together. You survive together."
He tossed it to her. The knots were smooth, worn by dozens of hands before hers.
"There's power in harmony. Even without magic."
They fell into silence. She held the rope loosely, thinking of nights on the balcony with Sarrha, breathing in time without realizing it. She thought of the chain that no longer rattled when she moved.
A knock broke the moment, hard, urgent. Malri moved fast, blade already in hand as he opened the door.
A boy stood there, drenched and breathless, mud on his trousers and a strip of parchment in one hand.
"You Malri?" the boy asked. "They said you'd want to know."
He handed over the note and backed away as Malri opened it. His eyes scanned the lines fast, twice.
"Who was the last to see him?" Malri asked.
The boy hesitated. "He was headed to the northern docks. Someone said he was humming something strange near the mangroves."
Rin stepped closer. "Another verse?"
Malri didn't answer. He turned, dropped the note in the hearth without reading it aloud, and crossed to his coat.
"Get your things," he said. "We leave now."
She stared at him. "But it's.."
"Dark, aye. That's when things go missing. That's when the water listens best."
Rin didn't hesitate. She grabbed her blades, the looped cord, and her coat.
They slipped into the mist, boots crunching salt-damp grass, the shack's fire shrinking behind them until it was just another fading star in the fog.