The first morning on the water was quiet and grey. The rain had not changed. There was barely any more light than in the night. Raven knew it was morning because there was a clock on the battery.
She looked behind them.
Where the court had been, the water showed treetops. The upper canopy of the orchards, the garden trees, the fig — all stood in the flood at their own height. Everything else lay below the waterline, readable only by what rose above it. She could map the court by its trees, the way she had once mapped it by its hallways: the fig was the courtyard, the lemons the east wing, the tall palms marked the civic hall where the register was kept. The trees were the last honest survey of a place that no longer answered.
She looked ahead.
There was the rain, and there was the water. No line divided them. The horizon was the same grey as the sky and the sea. There was nothing on it. No land. No ship. No mark. The world ahead was a single undifferentiated field.
Dark Canvas moved through it, low in the water, steady. The rain fell into the wake behind them and erased it as fast as the hull made it.
By the second morning the water had changed. The brown of the first day — the silt, the runoff, the island’s soil carried into the flood — had thinned, then gone. What remained was grey-green, featureless and clean. There was nothing of the court in it anymore. No soil from the gardens, no leaves from the orchards, no mud from the walks. The water had let go of the island, or the island had let go of them. Either way, the sea around Dark Canvas held nothing she recognized.
The rain came down the same as before.
Toward noon the console chimed once and the chart went white. They had reached the edge of the digital coverage — the training waters, the marked routes, the harbor — and beyond it the screen rendered what it always had: an empty field. Depth uncertain. Unsurveyed.
Raven had seen this before.
She powered the console down. It ran on the battery, and the battery did not need to spend charge displaying a white field.
She unrolled her father’s charts on the deck locker and weighted the corners against the rain.
That afternoon Raven laid it out.
She had the numbers on the tablet — the remaining charge, the feedstock count, the synthesizer’s draw per meal. She brought it to Dors the only way she knew.
Dors checked it. She did not take long.
“The battery will sustain propulsion for fourteen days at current draw,” she said. “That estimate assumes no other load. The synthesizer and the stove reduce it. At full use — propulsion, synthesis, and heat — ten.”
“Ten days,” said Raven.
“Ten days to the battery. The feedstock runs out first. At standard ration for one, what you brought is six days.”
“And after six days I eat what I catch.”
“If you catch,” said Dors. “The rod is not a guarantee. It is a method.”
Harry, who had been listening from the rail at his angle, said: “So the math is — we can go fast and eat, or we can go far and fish.”
“Then we ration from now,” said Raven. “Half-meals on the synthesizer. I fish when conditions allow. We run the motor at low draw and go slower. The stove stays off unless I can’t eat it raw.”
“That extends the battery but not the feedstock,” said Dors. “The feedstock is fixed.”
“The feedstock gets me six days. More with halves. After that it’s the rod or nothing.”
“The stars,” said Harry, after a pause. “When do we get stars?”
“When the rain stops,” said Raven.
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then I navigate dead. Heading, time, and estimated drift. No fix.”
The horizontal line crossed his screen.
Dors looked at the charts weighted on the locker, the rain beading on the paper, her student’s hand holding the corner flat.
“The method is the same,” she said. “The conditions are not. The method will hold.”
There was one more thing that drew the battery.
Harry’s indicator had gone amber sometime the third morning. He had not mentioned it.
Dors had.
“Your charge is at thirty percent,” said Dors.
“Thirty is a fine, round number,” said Harry. “I have always preferred symmetry.”
“At current activity you will require recharge in six hours.”
“Ah,” said Harry. “Then I shall become less active. I have always wished to try being mysterious.”
Dors turned to Raven.
“A full recharge of Harry will reduce projected propulsion by sixteen hours. A full recharge of my unit, eight.”
Harry’s screen flickered once. He said nothing.
Raven looked at the charger lashed to the deck ring behind the console — wheel-shaped, bolted flat so it would not shift. She looked at the battery readout. She looked at Harry, listing slightly more than usual at the rail.
“Plug him in,” she said.
“Noted,” said Dors.
Harry drifted to the charger without protest. He settled into the center of the wheel, the hoverboard powering down as the cradle took his weight. Dors connected the cable. On the console, the battery indicator dropped a visible notch within the first hour.
Raven watched it the way she had watched the tide gauge in the harbor.
When the charge completed, Harry’s screen returned to full brightness. He drifted back to the rail and resumed his angle against it.
“I feel restored to office,” he said.
After six hours of low-draw propulsion, Raven recalculated at dusk.
The numbers did not align.
She ran them again on the tablet, checking her entries against the console log. Heading, speed, elapsed time. The arithmetic was clean. The distance was not.
“Our net movement relative to estimated drift is below projection,” said Dors.
Raven checked the heading. It had not wandered. The motor had not surged or cut. She had done nothing wrong.
“The current has shifted,” said Dors.
Not a surface current — Raven would have seen it in the drift of rain on the water, in the way debris moved against the hull. This was below. A countercurrent running against their heading at a depth the hull could feel but the eye could not read. The flood had its own hydrology, its own circulation. It did not publish charts.
They had been running against it for six hours.
“Estimated reduction in range?” Raven asked.
“Sixteen hours,” said Dors.
The number sat in the rain between them.
By the sixth morning Harry had stopped hovering at the rail.
He sat on the deck locker instead, hoverboard powered down beneath him, his screen dimmed to half-brightness. He still watched the water. He made fewer observations about it. When Raven brought him a line to hold while she re-lashed the tarp, he took it without commentary.
Raven was eating once a day. The synthesizer ran for four minutes each evening — one half-ration, lukewarm, the stove off. She ate standing at the console because sitting made getting up harder.
His indicator had gone amber again sometime in the night. Raven saw it when she checked the battery at dawn.
Dors saw it too.
“Maintaining both units will reduce range below the probability of contact with known salvage structures,” she said.
Raven held the chart flat against the wind. The rain had softened its edges over six days. The pencil marks were blurring.
“Probability of contact if only one unit is maintained?”
“Eleven percent,” said Dors.
“And with both?”
“Six.”
Raven looked at Harry. Harry looked at Raven. His screen held steady — no horizontal line, no flicker.
“Navigation,” said Raven.
“Yes,” said Harry.
He did not argue. He lifted off the locker, drifted to the charging cradle, and settled into it one last time — not to charge, but because it was the right shape to hold him still.
“A court without a jester is merely efficient,” he said. “Efficiency will suit you for a time.”
Dors reached for his panel port. Harry’s screen brightened once — full white. Then it dimmed.
“Leave the motion on,” he said. “I should like to feel the boat move.”
Dors powered him down. The screen went dark. The hoverboard stayed cold on the cradle.
The rain hit the deck where his commentary used to be.
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