Jakk stared at him.
Gin grinned, letting the ease show. "You were going to go alone, weren't you? Best beast-hunter on Khelt, Hull's strongest, doesn't need anyone—could use a drinking buddy, I reckon."
Jakk's jaw flexed.
"You saved that girl," he said quietly. "And you did my job for me while I was face-down in my own habits."
Jakk looked away, toward the darkening water.
"…Fine," he said at last. "You can come. You listen to what I say, and if I tell you to stay in the boat, you stay in the boat. No heroics."
"That doesn't sound like me at all," Gin said.
"Exactly." Jakk tossed something at him.
It was a surgetip spear, lean and balanced, the tri-flanged point wicked even in low light. Gin caught it, feeling the familiarity of a good weapon settle into his grip.
He smiled.
"Where to?" he asked.
"Oily squid sighting," Jakk said, untying the moorings. "Easy pickings if we don't annoy them. Ink, fat, meat. Less teeth than the shark you kissed earlier."
Gin hopped to the bow as Jakk shoved them off. The little beast-boat surged forward under a compact motor, skimming along Khelt's flanks before angling out into the open water.
The world shifted.
Hull noise fell away. The sea opened, dark and deep and full of unknown things. Stars were beginning to prick holes in the bruised sky, their light smearing across the ripples.
Gin breathed in salt and spray and felt that familiar, giddy freedom uncurl in his chest.
His bones hummed in agreement.
"This," he said, half to himself. "This is what the pirate life is supposed to be. Good boat, good catch waiting, bruised knuckles, no one yelling at you about quotas."
"Pirates," Jakk said flatly, "are not like this."
The words cut sharper than any spear.
Gin glanced back.
Jakk's face had gone shuttered again, jaw locked, eyes fixed on the horizon. The air around him felt colder despite the heat his strain carried.
Right. Nerve. Hit. Hard.
Gin's first instinct was to joke, to poke until it broke the tension. His second was to pry—ask what happened, why the word tasted like poison in Jakk's mouth.
He did neither.
He watched the set of Jakk's shoulders, the white of his knuckles on the steering handle, and chose the one thing he never used to choose back on Hull-9:
He let it go.
"Then we'll call it something else," he said lightly, turning back to the bow. "Two idiots in a boat, just trying to survive."
Jakk snorted, a low, reluctant sound.
The tension eased a fraction.
They cut the motor near a stretch of darker water where the surface glistened with an odd, oily sheen, rainbow-light sliding across the chop.
"There," Jakk said. "Ink slick. They're feeding below."
Gin peered down.
Shapes moved in the green: long, slender bodies with thick central mantles and trailing tentacles that glinted at the tips. Hooks, he remembered. And somewhere in their pulsing bodies, sacs of highly pressurized, near-boiling ink that they spat when annoyed.
"On a scale of one to 'should've stayed home,' how hostile are they?" Gin asked.
"Three," Jakk said. "Unless you provoke them."
"And how do we not provoke—"
Jakk grabbed the barrel tap, tilted his head back, and chugged.
Gin watched, eyebrows climbing, as half a cask of strong ale vanished down the man's throat. Heat shimmered around him, visible now—a wavering halo where the air met his skin. His veins seemed to light from within, a red-gold flush racing along his neck and arms.
He slammed the barrel down, exhaled steam.
"Alright," Jakk said. "This one's called the Drunk Monk."
He vaulted over the side.
He didn't dive so much as drop, hitting the water hard enough to send up a splash that hissed.
Gin scrambled to the rail, staring.
Below, the sea around Jakk began to boil.
Not violently—no explosive roil—but small, furious streams of bubbles poured off his skin. The Brinefurnace Reef roared to life, burning ethanol in his blood and dumping the waste heat outward. The water shimmered, turning into a wavering lens around him. Oily squid scattered, tentacles flaring.
One, braver or dumber than the rest, whipped around and sprayed.
A lance of superheated ink shot through the water, slicing across where Jakk had been a heartbeat before. The trail it left frothed, the liquid blistering.
Jakk, apparently drunk off his own combustion, stumbled sideways in the water like a man missing a step on a staircase. The ink missed by a handspan.
"That can't be intentional," Gin muttered.
Jakk's movements were chaos. He flailed, he spun, he let the heat rising off his own body push him in erratic bursts. But every time a hooked tentacle slashed toward him, he was just not there. Every spray of ink landed where he'd pretended to be headed a moment before.
He grabbed one tentacle with a sloppy-looking clutch, letting the hooks bite into his forearm without so much as a flinch. Steam hissed where barbs met furnace-hot skin. The squid panicked, lashing with another limb.
Jakk's sway shifted.
A clawed tentacle slashed through the space where his head had been, catching only bubbles. He let the first limb wrap fully around his forearm, twisted with it, and used the squid's own leverage to yank himself in close.
His free fist drew back.
Gin saw the moment his knuckles flushed brighter, the heat concentrating.
Jakk punched the squid squarely in its huge, unblinking eye.
The organ burst like an overripe fruit.
Even from the boat, Gin heard the muted pop and saw the cloudy fluid plume into the water. The squid spasmed, tentacles going slack. Jakk wrapped both arms around the limp body and kicked for the surface, trailing steam and ink like some drunken war god.
He hauled himself and the catch up the side with brute-force ease, dumping the creature onto the deck with a wet slap. The squid flopped weakly, one remaining eye rolling.