It was like clockwork from here. Anqien spooled up the mooring rope as it fell, shoving it under a thwart by the helm. As Jinai winched the mainsail up, canvas unrolled in white and maroon overhead—this was the largest on the yacht, and would soon be put to good use steering it through the wind. She stooped to snatch the mainsheet rope in her gloved hands, setting the sail out broad in the rising gale.

Anqien on the helm, Jinai on the mainsail: this was how they were positioned every race.

As the Cloudlander glided into the bay, the first rays of sun glared over the thirty-five sails. Bows zipped through white-tips, splitting the surf in a tumult of foam. The length of the start line would have been adjusted for the fleet, yet with all the yachts coming together behind it, it looked like only just enough room.

Anqien tweaked the six-spoked helm clockwise, and the yacht followed suit, arcing to starboard. They threaded themselves into the tangle of boats converging towards the start line, shadows of ropes and sails overlapping in the first blush of the rising sun.

From far down the bay, two blasts of the foghorn sounded, shaking the deck beneath their feet. One minute to go. The shouts and battle cries crescendoed.

The sun was to their left now, casting long shadows across the splashing sea. The foam had begun to glow pink.

“Get on the port mark,” Iki’s voice interjected through the earpiece.

“Already on it,” answered Jinai, then turned to Anqien. “Let’s circle the fleet?”

“I was thinking the same—tacking to starboard!”

“Ready to tack!”

On the signal, she hauled the mainsail in. They accelerated around the left edge of the fleet, out far enough to be just outside the left end of the start line.

Up ahead, hulls were already starting to close in on each other as the yachts—all having a similar idea—vied for a lane through this end of the line. That hapless buoy bobbed and swung in their crosscurrents, the flag fluttering in the wind. Jinai scanned the crowd of rainbow hulls, all aligning themselves in the face of the wind. She nodded and pointed at the buoy. “Let’s leebow them just inside the mark?”

“Haven’t done that one in a bit,” Anqien replied. “You think anyone will beat us to the count?”

Jinai opened her mouth to reply, then her gaze darted over her shoulder and she shouted, “Incoming from starboard! Cut them off!” The words spurred Anqien—they yanked the helm hard right while their companion hauled the mainsheet. There was a cry behind them as the Cloudlander bolted to starboard, cutting the would-be usurper off.

“Ten seconds!” Iki’s voice came through their headsets. The two nodded at each other, yacht curving back into the crush of the main fleet.

Ahead, a boat with a white wheel on its black sail began to trend to port, on a trajectory that would pass the start line barely fifteen feet from the buoy. That was fifteen feet they had to work with. They'd been taught that twenty was barely anything, on water.

That black sail would be where they wanted to be in a second.

“Can we make it?” Jinai said as they hurtled towards the line. With this much momentum, there would be no aborting the manoeuvre.

“I think we can do this,” Anqien called back.

“I’m with you,” Jinai breathed, taking the mainsheet, readying herself to haul the sails in—

“Five seconds!” Iki’s cry peaked in their earpieces as they soared towards the gap—

A red boat closed in from their left, and around them, thirty-five sails twisted to catch the rising wind, all their telltales fluttering—

The foghorn sounded, rending and clear, over wave crests and through whistling sails. Saltwater doused their faces as the Cloudlander shot through the gap, threading the needle between the black sailboat and the start mark. But Jinai was already hard at work, hauling the sail in. They exchanged a nod, and in a concerted effort—mainsheet and rudder—they tacked sharp left.

It was a perfect right-angle turn. The heeling of the boat almost sent their shoes skidding over the deck, but they crouched and held their balance, yelling and cursing, until they completed the turn.

Jinai sprinted to starboard to heel the vessel upright. Anqien wrenched the helm against the boat’s leftward bias.

They lifted their gazes past the ropes, then, to a vision of the sun setting the clouds on fire over the distant fading peaks of Canlan Island. Ahead, around, and behind them was the fluttering gleam of sails, surging through that thousand-foot gap at the break of day.

“We’re underway!” Anqien announced, and through their headsets came a tumult of cheers.

The burble of a bow chopping waves behind them signalled that another yacht had followed their lead, but whoever that was, they had missed the ticket into the lead pack. It was a club of six, of which the Cloudlander was a touch behind three others, including the black-sailed yacht they had crossed the start line with.

Anqien spent four seconds admiring the sunrise before Jinai beckoned with, “it’s not over yet.” Placing an easy hand on the helm, they held the rudder steady against the yacht’s bias to the wind. Jinai took the mainsail in close, and both steeled up for the windward beating to come.

As magical as sails could be—capable of moving a vessel in most any direction with the right tack—there was one way they could not go: straight into the wind. A zig-zag path was how one sailed upwind: this was called beating to windward. But when and where to beat was always a puzzle with a solution that shifted with the currents.

A simple rule of thumb governed this. It was always best to tack, or turn, as little as possible, chasing each diagonal until the destination mark was no longer in front.

With just the exchange of a nod, they both knew what was to come. Up ahead was the familiar silhouette of Canlan, overshadowing them in blue. Its shore outlined their route—southeast against the wind, down the strait between island and mainland to its southern tip, then round the mark and back up again.

About seven seconds behind them, the bulk of the fleet had fanned out into lanes, none wanting to be caught in the bad air behind another. Ahead, the leaders tore through the water, chasing the shortest line to the first mark like a pack of sharks.

Anqien and Jinai glanced at each other. “Aggressive field today,” she said, louder in their headset than through the pounding of waves.

“Psst, you two, look over to starboard,” Iki interrupted. “It’s irregular, but there look to be some transient gusts going on there.”

Their gazes simultaneously flew to the right, towards the open waters. Jinai rose to her feet. “See anything good?” she said, eyes narrowed.

“Uh, nothing right now,” Anqien answered.

Now that Iki had brought their attention there, they spent the next five minutes with their attentions split between steering and squinting out at the water to their right. Nothing showed in the shimmer of the waves to indicate wind of any worth to them, and they kept their steady fourth place, neither gaining nor falling away.

Then— “There!” Jinai’s shout came at the same time as Anqien’s gaze flew right. Where there had been flat silver sea before, there was now the erratic, tell-tale darkening of water, dusted in sparkles of sunlight, on the edge of their vision. “Looks like a steady header, it's perfect.” She unjammed the mainsheet as she spoke.

Meanwhile Anqien’s eyes darted to the lead pack—first place was seven-or-so seconds ahead, but the route there was wide and clear, nothing but the crisp horizon beyond.

“When do we tack?”

“Give it fifty more feet.” Jinai’s face was stern and focused, eyes narrowed on the puff as they hurtled up alongside. “Now! Ready to tack!”

They ducked as the mainsail boom swung overhead. With a roaring splash, they turned their bow right, and the Cloudlander split off from the route that the leaders were charting. Their course fanned away at right angles, and the gap grew to six seconds.

“Bold move,” Iki said, “but no risk, no reward, right?”

“We didn’t get here by playing it safe,” answered Jinai. At the steely confidence of those words, Anqien felt a surprising flutter in their chest, louder and sharper than even the thrill of the chase.

Now, the leaders were now reaching the end of their respective diagonals. Almost to an orchestrated rhythm, they began to bounce from their original course at right angles, one after another. As they sifted out onto their lanes, it became piercingly clear that the black sail with the white wheel had surged to the front of the pack.

In the same span of time, Anqien and Jinai had made it almost to the edge of the puff. The wind began to whistle in their ears, raising goosebumps on their skin.

Puffs—these transient wind currents came and went at the whimsy of fortune. If taken well and consistently, they could decide the winner on a course like this. All it took was an ability to read the sea—to spot a good puff, to see where it was moving, to know what to do with it.

“Looks like twenty degrees off from our heading, here it comes,” Jinai said, not a drop of doubt in her voice. “In three, two, one!”

As they hit the current, it stirred their hair upward, that same electrifying wind that now filled their sails and briefly rippled their telltales. Together they flurried across the deck hauling the helm and mainsheet, and the yacht turned through the wind, propelled by the current.

It almost felt like flying, being picked up by the puff and pushed forward. Jinai trimmed the tops of the sails, making the most of the stiff wind. And it rambled on and on, and they soared upon it, watching the speedometer needle swing—sixteen, eighteen, twenty knots—and the gap between themselves and the leaders shrinking.

“Damn, you found a good one!“ shouted Telaki in their ear. “That's my little stars!“

Jinai chuckled. “Save the praise for when we know where it’s gonna put us down.”

Telaki laughed, then paused. “Wait a minute, wait a minute?" There was frantic scrabbling in the tympanum on her end. “Nope, the data does say you’re in the lead, just barely! Keep it up!”

Anqien and Jinai grinned at each other. Out on the waters, it was hard to tell who was farthest upwind, but those watching from shore had a bird's eye view of the racers and the precise wind direction.

“As if they don't do this every qual,” muttered Janda, but Anqien knew from her lilt that she was beaming.

On the other side of the course, gaps were opening between the once-leaders, fourth place caught in the bad air of third. Sixth place—they saw now—was chasing them with their red sail blazing, a safe fifteen seconds behind.

They weren't in the clear yet. But the wind was still lifting them as they soared in the sunlight, and the sky had brightened to pale blue above. Only now, in this lull, did Anqien notice the ambient background cheer behind them, a shrill that blended into the beating of wind. Overhead and hidden in the sky by means of mirrors, a hovercraft's blades chopped the air, beaming footage back to land. The shores of the market peninsula behind them were teeming with swarms of spectators, specks identifiable only by the shimmer of their movement.

Now a third of the way into the race, the destination mark was no longer in front of them: it was time to tack. “What d'you think?” called Anqien with a gesture at the bright orange speck on their right. “We need to put more space between us and them.”

Jinai's eyes went to the other leaders. “Yeah, you're right.” Then she sucked in a breath, snatching for the mainsheet jammer— “Looks like another puff, dead ahead...that’s our ticket!"

“A...ah?” It was a split second of discombobulation, then they were all business again. “Right, let's tack to starboard!”

“Ready! On the puff—three, two, one!”

They hit the gust. Their mainsail swung out to catch the draft. The Cloudlander swerved sharply to port with almost enough force to throw a person overboard. Then the mark was in front of them once more, the puff behind.

Like a slippery eel, this gust was narrow and gone too soon, carrying them for just six seconds. But it didn't feel like six seconds to them—it was days, weeks, pushing them so hard it almost seemed to toss them forward. Nothing but ocean lay between them and the mark now, growing in their vision as they watched.

“Huh, things are looking good,” Jinai said.

“Always one for understatement, aren’t you,” Janda replied in their headsets.

The strait waters were rippling inward as the tide came in, though it made scant difference to their speed. Sea-spray roared in their faces. Steadily, they widened their lead, closing in on the orange buoy that marked the turning point of the race.

Twenty feet from the flag, their reflexes kicked in. In a hissing of rope, Jinai hauled the mainsail back in and out on the other side. Anqien grasped the helm in both hands and manoeuvred them into the sharpest turn of the race so far.

They snaked a perfect arc into the gravitational orbit of the brilliant orange buoy, slinging the yacht around it in a move that would make any sailor envious. As they passed, they heard its ropes slapping against its barnacled sides. The chasing pack swung back into view on their bow, seven seconds adrift, their yells and hauling and winching entering earshot.

"That was amazing," Anqien breathed. "I love you, you know that?"

"Yeah, yeah," Jinai answered with a sidelong smile. "Tell me again when we're back in town."

The wind and the tide were in their backs: it was as steep of a downwind as it could be. As soon as their bow was lined up with the start marks, Anqien sprinted across the deck, snatching the spinnaker sail from where it was stowed by the bow. The white fabric billowed in their hands even as they began clipping it to the hoist.

Up and out the spinnaker bloomed. The Cloudlander began to accelerate, whistling through the water as it began its charge back towards Muli Bay, past rival boats clumsily beating the other way.

You make me feel like I'm flying. The sail was an aerofoil, operating on the same principle as the rotor blades that lifted hovercraft into the air. Nothing could stop their run back to shore, and they laughed, wind roaring over the breakers around them.