Splice the Main Brace

A severed three-inch hemp stay whipping through empty air could take off a man's head before he heard the hum.

Celso Valdevez wedged his right heel deeper into the footrope beneath the foreyard, blinking through a crust of frozen salt. His left palm burned where the locking dog had torn the skin to the meat, but he could not afford to favor it. Above him, sixty feet of heavy standing rigging flapped against the timber mast-hound with the crack of a signal gun, shedding frayed fibers into the abyss. If he failed to snare the loose end before the galleon dropped through the cloud shelf, the first punch of lower atmosphere would catch the yardarm without its brace and snap eighty feet of seasoned pine like dry kindling.

\"Pass the running eye!\" Celso shouted over the cataract's roar.

Ten feet out along the spar, Eusébio was paralyzed. The boy gripped the iron jackstay with both arms, his cheek pressed flat to the pitch-scented wood. His pupils were wide and dark, reflecting the violet flares that pulsed three leagues below, where the imperial vanguard was already shelling the coral atolls.

\"Eusébio! Look at the timber, not the fire!\"

The boy flinched, his knuckles white against the iron. \"The whole fleet is firing down there, Celso. They're—\"

\"They're doing their shift, and you're failing yours. Grab the line or drop into the trough!\"

Fear of the fall won out over the distant butchery. Eusébio fumbled at his harness, unhooking the coiled hemp runner and sliding it along the yard. Salt spray boiled off the ship's tumblehome, whipped upward by the vertical plunge. The São Pelagio had ceased to sail; she was an iron-ribbed mountain falling down a cataract of churning brine, guided only by the tense biotic slip-sails Celso had stitched twenty minutes before.

Celso took the runner in his teeth, freeing his right hand to grip the gaff hook hanging from his work apron. The whipped stay lashed back across the spar, gouging a pale trench through the paint six inches from his thigh. The air smelled of scorched hemp and ozone.

He didn't grab for the cable on its outward sweep. A novice reached when the rope seemed nearest; a rigger who still had ten fingers waited for the apex of the pendulum, where inertia balanced gravity and the thrumming strand went momentary deadweight.

The ship pitched violently to port, sliding off a shelf of green foam.

The cable swung wide, hung frozen against the dark void, and stalled.

Celso lunged with the hook. The iron barb bit into the frayed hemp, jerking his shoulder against the hound. Kinetic force ripped the breath from his ribs, his boot slipping two inches along the wet rope before catching the stirrup knot. With a grunt, he hauled the iron backward, dragging the thrashing beast toward the mast.

\"Throw the bight!\" he barked.

Eusébio leaned out, trembling, and looped the runner line around the stay's throat. Together they hauled, dragging the thrashing cable against the iron mast-band until its frantic slapping reduced to a strained shudder.

From the forecastle sixty paces below, a brass horn blared three shrill blasts.

Celso looked down through the mist. On the quarterdeck rail, Second Lieutenant Barreto was brandishing a yellow assault pendant. Through a long brass speaking horn, the officer's thin voice pierced the wind:

\"Riggers aloft! Set the braces sharp up! The Admiral has signaled battle order! Any ship dropping out of the firing corridor will be raked by the flagship!\"

\"He wants full canvas,\" Eusébio stammered, staring down at the deck. \"With the stay cut? He's mad! If we take the wind like this, the mast will pull its own step out!\"

\"He isn't mad,\" Celso said, his bodkin already between his teeth. \"He's terrified of Paiva. To an officer, drowning in the dark is an accident, but falling behind the line is a court-martial.\"

A proper long splice required twenty minutes, three dry fids, and two men sitting on a calm spar deck. They had perhaps ninety seconds before the São Pelagio slammed into the dense vapor barrier separating the cataract from the Second Shallow. If they relied on raw hemp lashing, the violent deceleration would saw the cords through each other in an instant.

Celso unbuckled his canvas ditty bag. Alongside his bone needles and grease pots lay a bundle of heavy crimson cloth, heavily edged with braided bullion. He had stripped it off a dead junior ensign while climbing the shrouds before the drop.

\"Take this,\" Celso said, thrusting the fabric at the boy.

Eusébio blinked at the gold embroidery. \"That's an officer's dress sash. That's Imperial silk!\"

\"Tight weave. Boiled worm-strand,\" Celso muttered, working his knife into the severed strands of the stay to separate the heart from the outer laid cordage. \"Hemp on hemp friction creates embers under shock. Silk slips just enough to spread the heat without cutting the core.\"

\"We can't use an officer's commission sash to bind a hawser,\" Eusébio whispered, his voice cracking with superstitious dread. \"It's treason. If Barreto sees gold braid wrapped around the hound—\"

\"Barreto doesn't look at rigging unless it falls on his hat. Wrap the split, boy! Two tight turns around the throat, then pass the silk through the heart. Move!\"

Eusébio swallowed hard and obeyed. His hands shook, but he worked with the desperate quickness of a boy who had spent his childhood stealing salt cod from the wharf warehouses. They wound the heavy crimson silk into the junction where the stay had parted, forcing the gilded tassels into the open laid gaps to act as a friction shim.

Over the silk, Celso began laying on a Spanish windlass, wrapping four-gauge tarred marline in tight, overlapping coils. His raw palm left smears of red across the embroidered imperial crest, grease and blood mingling on the gold thread.

\"Hold the Spanish bar,\" Celso grunted, slipping a six-inch iron toggle into the center of the turns.

Eusébio grabbed the iron, hauling with all his slight weight to twist the coils until the marline groaned, biting deep into the silk beneath.

\"Hold it! Don't let the lever slip, or it'll take your jaw off!\"

Below them, the roar changed.

The hollow hiss of vacuum vanished, replaced by a deafening thunderclap as the galleon's hull punched into the atmosphere of the Second Shallow.

It was like driving an oak sledge into a stone quarry.

A wall of thick, warm sea fog slammed into Celso's chest, tearing the air from his lungs. The São Pelagio shuddered violently from stem to stern as the planar gravity reasserted itself, leveling the falling vessel with sickening velocity. Gravity grabbed Celso's boots, suddenly quadrupling his weight. The stirrup rope dug agony into his instep. Beside him, Eusébio shrieked as the sudden deceleration nearly tore him off the yardarm, his boots swinging wild out over the churning sea.

Celso clamped his left arm around the boy's collar, the raw flesh of his palm grinding mercilessly against the rough wool of Eusébio's smock. With his right hand, Celso threw the final locking hitch around the iron toggle, securing the windlass to the mast ring.

The galleon hit the brine.

A mountain of turquoise water erupted over the bow, sweeping the forecastle deck in foaming torrents. The ship leveled, her great keel biting into the lower ocean as she surged forward at twenty knots, carried by the terrifying momentum of the drop.

Celso hauled Eusébio back onto the footrope. The boy collapsed against the spar, sobbing into the damp timber, his fingers locked like claws into the jackstay.

\"Breathe, boy,\" Celso rasped. His throat tasted of sulfur, sea salt, and copper.

He looked up at the improvised repair.

The crimson silk sash was stretched so taut the gold thread had turned silver. Wisps of steam rose from the binding as the residual friction dissipated into the humid air of the Second Shallow. The severed stay was held fast, locked together by the silk shim and the biting marline.

The foremast stood.

Celso let his head rest against the mast for three short heartbeats, listening to the rushing foam beneath them.

Then the first lower-deck carronade fired.

The concussion traveled straight up the pine mast, a brutal hammer blow that vibrated through Celso's ribs. Out on the stay, the crimson silk creaked, a sound like tearing parchment. The temporary splice had survived the drop, but it would never survive the recoil of thirty-two broadside guns.

\"On your feet, Eusébio,\" Celso said, his voice flat and cold as he reached for his harness. \"We have to get below before Paiva opens up the main battery.\"