The rain had finally stopped. In its place was a silence that felt heavier, a damp cloth pressed against the world. Inside the Greywater, the only sounds were the ship's own protests—the groan of strained timber, the hiss of a faulty pressure valve, the constant, low hum of the lift-engines that vibrated up through the deck and into the bones.
Rust's bones ached with it. He stood at the helm, hands gripping the worn wood. Every creak was a shout in the quiet. He kept waiting for his fingers to move on their own. The memory of not owning his own limbs was a stain that wouldn't wash out.
He risked a glance away from the bleak horizon. A needle on the instrument panel jumped erratically. He reached out to tap the glass, his movement too sharp. He flinched at his own clumsiness.
In the corner, Zadie Merrin sat on a crate, a whetstone in one hand, her curved blade in the other. Schick-scratch. Schick-scratch. The rhythm was metronomic. She wasn't looking at her work. Her gaze was fixed across the cabin, dissecting the man who sat with his back to them both.
Ira Finch was a study in stillness. He'd shed his salt-stained coat. He held his brass compass, turning it over and over in his hands, not like a talisman, but like a craftsman assessing his favorite tool. The Map was a square outline against his spine, but it was dark, inert. He wasn't listening to it. He was thinking.
The silence stretched, thin and sharp as a wire.
Rust couldn't take it anymore. "So," he said, the word cracking in the dry air. "Where are we going, Finch? Or do we just fly until the sky falls on our heads?" He tried to lace it with his old carelessness, but it came out brittle.
Ira didn't turn. "The Map showed a stable node. A place that will endure the Swap." He finally turned the compass over, snapping the lid shut with a definitive click. "I've charted the most efficient course."
Zadie's whetstone stopped. "Your efficient course got us to a mountain that tried to eat your soul."
Ira stood, his movement fluid and deliberate. He tucked the compass away and walked to the viewport, his boots firm on the deck. He looked out at the churning horizon, his back to them, a commander surveying his domain.
"No," he said, his voice calm, assured. A new, hard edge in it. "My will got us off that mountain. The Map was just the terrain." He turned, his eyes sweeping over them, not with anger, but with a cool, analytical distance. "It's a tool. And I am the only one here who knows how to read it."
He strode to the chart table, not waiting for a reply, and unrolled a standard navigational map. He began making notations with a piece of charcoal, his strokes quick and confident. He wasn't consulting the artifact on his back; he was working. "The only logical path is through that storm," he said, without looking up.
Rust stared at the raging, black vortex ahead. "Through it? That's a one-way trip to a cliff face!"
"You're looking at it like a sailor, Rust," Ira said, a hint of impatience in his tone. He tapped the chart. "I'm looking at the data. The storm has a structure. A pattern. It's not chaos; it's a complex current. I can navigate it."
Zadie was on her feet now. "You can navigate a reality tear? Since when?"
Ira finally met her gaze, and for a second, Zadie saw the man from her vision—not a monster, but a man of such unshakable, solitary certainty that it was just as terrifying.
"Since I walked out of the Drowned City," he said, his voice low and final. "Since I passed the Keeper's trial. We go through the storm. It's the only way."
He wasn't asking for their trust. He was stating a fact. The pride in his voice was a wall, and he was already on the other side of it, leaving them behind in the doubt and the damp.