Winter arrived all at once.
The Heavens River buckled as the currents shifted, folding in on themselves until the sky was carved into stable lanes and swirling eddies that ran upstream against reason. Sails bloomed across the horizon as the first Nueva Trujillo convoy broke through the cloudbanks, massive galleons riding the Jetstream like kings returning to court.
They were followed by hundreds of smaller silhouettes.
Arawinaya canoes spilled into Deadwake by the score, then the hundreds, their woven hulls flashing with dye and prayer marks as they threaded the currents with practiced ease. The docks vanished beneath traffic. Voices, bells, and signal horns layered over one another until the air itself seemed to hum.
Somewhere amid the noise, Drew realized that Black Keel Hall had graduated him.
No ceremony. No banners.
Deadwake was too busy becoming something else.
The morning of the Windfall Run found Deadwake fully awake.
By tradition, the run belonged to Black Keel Hall. Tradition, however, had never been Deadwake’s strongest defense.
Music bled from open trade halls stacked atop saloons, signal horns blared over the docks, and the air reeked of wine, incense, hot oil, and wet vine. The city did not pretend to be decent today. It leaned into the spectacle.
Drew rode with Thren in a slow parade toward the starting line, carried above the streets in a palanquin while the city pressed in from all sides.
They passed a cathedral grown from petrified vine and colored glass, its doors thrown wide, priests already shouting blessings over the crowd. Directly across the gap, a brothel clung to the facing island, its balconies draped in silk and lanternlight.
Between them, floating green cages drifted on tethers.
Women in loose tan dresses swayed within, beads hanging from long tassels as they laughed and called down to the street. Their rates were painted boldly on hanging signs, adjusted for the day.
“Come here, little one,” one called, blowing Drew a kiss. “Even a pirate prince needs fun.”
Drew yelped and slammed the shutter closed.
Diego cackled from outside, delighted by Drew’s flushed silence. Drew was reminded, unpleasantly, just how long it had been since he’d been touched.
He cracked the opposite shutter instead and found the cathedral again.
A new banner hung over the doors:
PARTIAL INDULGENCES AVAILABLE
Deadwake, it seemed, was prepared to forgive anything today.
The parade rounded a bend and the noise hit Drew all at once. The percussion of drums thundered in his chest, and trumpets shrilled in his ears playing competing songs.
The cries of traders filled the moments in between beats.
“Two cuts left on a western run! Jet’s holding clean!”
A ceremonial horn sounded Braaah—braaah—BRAAA
“You’re not funding violence, friend, you’re funding opportunity.”
KRRR—thaaah
“Vine safe ground confirmed. Lift anchor bonus applies.”
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tak-tak—THUM a drum thundered.
“House is backing this one. That’s as good as a blessing.”
Drew was so overstimulated by the sounds outside the palanquin that he cupped his hands over his ears and shut his eyes, unable to think. The palanquin seemed to reverberate with the noise.
They arrived at the starting line. Drew exited the litter fighting to stay stoic, head held high. At his exit a roar of cheers went up.
Diego pointed him up to elevated stands where an usher led them to their seats. Notably Thren was absent.
Above a flight of skyborn soared in a V formation painted in dazzling pink and green polka dots. A band marched out playing a cheery tune while a muscle bound man walked out caring a large flag embossed with a green wheel and spoke.
The crowd erupted, below tarps were pulled off of the canoes at the starting line exposing the X-2 in all her glory. Rafael already in the pilots seat waving.
Drew was surprised to see Claire’s plywood canoe also on the starting line with a thin man already settling into its seat.
So her canoe had received an invitation too.
A roar rolled through the stands, sudden and physical, like a wave breaking stone.
Drew spotted her because she wasn’t reacting like anyone else.
While the crowd leaned forward, shouted, wagered, she stood still at the rail of the viewing box, hands resting lightly on the carved stone. She was small, almost delicate at a glance, her green dress cut simply but worn with the unconscious confidence of someone who had never needed to announce herself.
Her hair caught the light, a muted copper rather than fire, gathered back neatly so it wouldn’t interfere with her view. Freckles dusted her skin where the sun reached, softening features that might otherwise have seemed severe. Her posture was precise. Economical. Nothing about her wasted motion.
She watched the race the way an appraiser watched a flawed gem. Not cheering. Not hoping. Measuring.
When she glanced sideways, her eyes met Drew’s for the briefest instant, and he felt the uncomfortable sensation of being seen through rather than looked at. Not interest exactly. Assessment.
He noticed she didn’t sit with her keel, Patron or other pirates. She sat next to a tall man also with red hair, garbed in a dark green command coat. A Nueva Trujillo uniform. So the rumors were true. Her brothers had been placed in the Nueva Trujillo Navy.
Drew looked away at the starting line realizing he missed the launch, the canoes already sprinting towards the Casa Solariega to complete the first turn. The X-2 was no longer visible to Drew’s naked eyes.
A speck formed on the return from the floating casino rocketing back towards the start line. The crowd gasped as the X-2 sped towards the crowd ahead of schedule. The crowd silent bands still playing as Rafael skillfully piloted the craft in a wide bank, wider than necessary over the crowd dumping rose petals over the crowd.
The crowd answered with the kind of shrill screaming usually reserved for boy bands and doomed hearing. The cheers collapsed into a single, sustained scream that vibrated in Drew’s teeth.
As the X-2 disappeared from sight the first competitors sailed into view the lead resolving into the lighter green of the plywood canoe.
Spectators hollered raising, white banners with a pale green symbol.
Drew did a double take.
It was the press seal of a Nueva Trujillo house. Registered, bonded, and already trading futures on a canoe that hadn’t been proven.
He looked over at Claire. Resting at her collarbone was a small gold pendant, suspended from a delicate chain, bearing the same press seal.
They were outmaneuvered. This was not a race. It was a product launch.
Drew ran through everything he knew. There was no marketing plan for keelweave. No public branding. All sales were meant to stay within the keel.
Which meant someone had moved faster than they had.
Drew’s head spun with the implications.
The final canoe was closing on the dock when the X-2 appeared above it, cutting in from a higher lane.
At the last possible moment, Rafael slid the X-2 down across the laggard’s nose and shifted from sprint to cruise. The forward sail flattened. Lift bled off.
The X-2 climbed again immediately, light and clean.
What it left behind was not empty sky. It was disturbed.
The trailing canoe flew straight into the X-2’s wake, its sail collapsing as the pressure vanished. Lift failed unevenly. The hull yawed hard.
The pilot panicked and overcorrected.
The canoe’s nose dropped, spun once, and vanished below the lip of the dock.
Gasps and cheers rolled through the crowd. Drew rose to his feet, stunned.
“THAT’S HOW IT’S DONE!” someone roared beneath him.
Rafael hadn’t touched the other canoe. He hadn’t fired. He hadn’t even looked back.
But the sailor was gone.
People were cheering. Drew felt sick.
Turning he looked to Claire a faint smile tugging at her lips. Not in sick pleasure over the death of a competitor. She saw what Drew had seen.
A faction making a mistake.
Diego grabbed Drew’s arm and pulled him down to his seat.
“Act like a man,” he hissed in Drew’s ear. “That was deterrence. This is how you stop bloodshed.”
Drew swallowed and held his head up high.
Rafael finished a full half lap ahead of second place.
“A new course record!” the judges roared.
He leapt from the X-2 to a storm of cheers, bouquets, and boos. Rafael drank it all in, grinning as guards waved women through to plant kisses on his cheeks.
The plywood canoe came in third, greeted by the loudest, messiest mix of cheers and jeers.
The crowd surged forward anyway, thickest where the laminated vine hull rested. Hands reached. Voices rose. Deals were already being made.
Drew watched them, fists clenched.
They cheered what they could understand.
What they could copy.
What they could control.
The X-2 was not an innovation.
It was a wild mustang.
And Deadwake, it seemed, had already decided which one it preferred.
