As the Cloudlander flew back into port between the two marks, ten seconds of clear sea lay wide open behind them. Though no visible line was drawn in the water, they could feel as they hit it, a whistle shrilling and a cheer surging across the bay, spectators pressing against the rails to watch.

They depowered as they crossed the line, luffing the sails until the wind began to drop around them. Anqien brought down the spinnaker as Jinai hauled in the mainsail.

In their ears, the relays were alive with activity. "How's that for a decisive qualifier?" said Telaki. “There’s my stars! I’m the proudest coach in the world!”

Jinai looked over at Anqien as they steered the boat in a victory arc around the bay, staring starry-eyed into the crowd. They always did, even at the smallest of wins. She roamed over, laying a hand on their shoulder. “Don’t know why I ever doubted,” she said.

“I love you so much,” they answered, turning from the helm and lunging for a hug that she was almost too stunned to return. Around her, she thought she heard cheers and aw’s. She wrapped her arms around the small of their back and leaned into the embrace.

A twinge shot through her heart with a memory of Josa holding her like this. His short brown hair, his soft eyes behind glasses—she saw him in her doorway, saying goodbye as he squeezed her close.

She jolted backward, half expecting to see him, but it was just Liu Anqien—long teal-tipped hair matted over their brow and cheek by seawater and sweat. Seemingly oblivious to the sudden lapse in her mental presence, they nodded once with a grin, taking the helm again to steer the boat into the marina.

The boat with the wheel on its sail, which they now knew from their crew’s relays to be the Kani-do Catcher, drew into the port twenty seconds behind them, a spinnaker with a crab high and proud in front of the boat. But Jinai’s mind was afloat on the afterglow of the win, and she only watched it over her shoulder long enough to register the sailors helming it: both short-haired and beaming, holding their joined hands up over their heads with a Niro-hei cheer.

All along the blue-carpet runway to the Sparkling Reef hotel, Anqien and Jinai were called and beckoned from the other side of the barricade by every kind of person who had any interest in their race. Reporters. Fans. Naysayers. Other sailors, even. They heard as many shouts of congratulations as they received tympanum bells in their faces, to which all Jinai ever had to say was thank you.

Fellow competitors on the runway were the only ones she paid any heed to, and Anqien did their best to take her lead. It was somewhere halfway down to the changing rooms that one young Astran team flew in from behind and halted them with a nervous request—in their best Helfi-yu—for filogram autographs. Without missing a beat, Jinai took the taller’s illuminated filograph and scrawled her signature on the screen.

Anqien hovered behind her, waving with a little “hi” but little else—attention from the crowd they could take, but the admiration of other competitors?

“Will we see you in the finals?” Jinai asked in Belan.

Their eyes met, widening. The one in front answered in Belan, “Yeah, we were fourth! You were both amazing, by the way.”

“In the chasing pack! Congratulations—you did a great job too,” Jinai replied, handing the filograph back. Anqien stared as the exchange unfolded. Then the young sailor cast a glance in their direction and inched towards them, holding the filograph out. “Would you also sign—”

At the very words they blushed to the roots of their hair, at which the two Astran sailors stared and Jinai chuckled. Inching towards the sailor eagerly proffering her filograph, they did their best to smile without looking completely dumbstruck and took it gingerly.

With their fingertip, they scribbled the least intelligible version of their name that they had ever written. The second sailor, taking the first’s lead, handed hers over as well—Jinai signed and passed it to Anqien.

This signature came out looking a bit better than the last.

As these two bowed in thanks and scurried off giggling, Jinai turned to Anqien with an inquiring sort of look. “It’s cute that you’re nervous, but you’re gonna have to get used to it,” she said, grabbing their shoulder and steering them down the path.

That took the cake. Their face was hot all the way to the changing rooms, and they spent half of that walk staring down at their feet.

“How are my stars? Come, come, I’ve gotta parade you!”

Finding them amidst cool-down stretches on the green by the changing rooms, Telaki snatched them both by the arms and dragged them right across the blue carpet to the nearest stairs.

All the control crews were headquartered in the Sparkling Reef, as they always were for the NHR qualifiers: a beautiful, velvety hotel adjoining a function space, with corridors paved with black carpets embroidered in gold filigree—the kind of place where the upper crust might convene to talk business over wine.

When Jinai and Anqien hurried after Telaki into the red terrazzo lobby, the receptionists’ heads darted up in concert. Their coach waved them towards the left side of the counter, styled out of polished red granite in the shape of a ship’s bow.

“Say hello to my little stars,” she announced, a little prouder than Jinai would have liked—but the receptionists ate it up, the one seated farther away flying across the booth to gawp.

“Oh my goodness, what an honour!” “Legendary work on the racecourse!”

“All in a day’s work,” Jinai answered with a wave. “Been a busy one for you?”

Through the conversation, they were acutely aware of Anqien hesitating on every sentence, as if trying to come up with something worth saying and then chickening out of it. By the time Telaki finally waved them off to the Cloudlanders’ HQ— “take the first right, and it’s the first door on your port side, I mean left”—they looked just about ready to shove themself in a closet.

“What’s up?” she said as they went, their feet making barely a sound on the carpet. “We won our qual today, people are gonna want to hear from you.”

They clutched their face. “Yeah, I know, it’s just, all the attention and praise from people we’re meant to be professional with, I don’t know how to deal!”

Jinai chortled. “Oh, Anqien, say you’ll share your greatness with the world someday.”

“I’m, uh, I’m gonna do my best.”

Telaki’s directions proved extraneous, on account of the Cloudlander control crew placard on the door. As they pushed that door open, Iki shot out of his chair, sweeping them a bow. “Welcome to our home for the day!” he declared, waving once around at the room. “We had a nice view of you decimating the competition.”

“What was our time?” asked Jinai

“Fifty-six minutes, almost on the dot. Which is kind of wild.”

“It was a good wind.”

Indeed, the balcony looked out over the ocean, and the promenade roads that girt the coastline, presently utterly impassable for all those lined up to watch the races.

“Well, lucky you, having a view like this,” Jinai answered. “Those people down there aren’t seeing any more than the backs of people’s heads.” Four ray screens were mounted on the right wall of the room—three in a row that each bore ranking charts, graphs, weather visualisations, and the like, and one above them streaming live coverage of the event from Sports Three.

The three had their work terminals whirring away on trolleys, ready to be carted out and around on the briefest notice. Iki and Lujang tapped and scribbled away on their gesture pads, the latter’s station cluttered with Thread relay headsets and transmitters in hanging sleeves.

In one corner, Janda reclined in the sole armchair, reading a book.

While Jinai briefly pulled Iki and Lujang from their work for a chit-chat, Anqien wandered to the wall-height sliding doors and pushed one ajar, sticking their head outside. The roar of the crowded docks hit the ears of everyone in the room.

“Wait a second, that’s a lot of sailboats, is—”

The foghorn for the second race sounded out across the bay. Anqien scurried back into the room and all eyes flew to the broadcast screen overhead.

The hovercraft camera swept across the advancing field, focusing on one boat to another. There, among the masts, was the blue-green mainsail of the reigning champions, the AmaShiru Mirages, which shot into a comfortable second place out of the gate. Even at such a distance, the bearing of Xye and Zera was palpable—the former swift and flourishing, the latter efficiently forceful in her manner.

This race was more open in front, although that meant the rankings from third onwards were shuffling constantly. Even so, the Mirages held their chasing position steady for the next ten minutes, and the yacht in first place, wearing a horse on its red sail, held them off admirably.

That all changed at the first tack. They saw the outplay clear as day: the two homing in close as the leader hesitated on the tack, the green hull cutting the red off. Just like that, the Mirages had scooped the best lane up.

“Whoa!” “No way!” “Boom, there it is,” Janda said, peeking at the screen over the edge of her novel. “What, did you think they wouldn’t?”

“I mean, yeah, but we were all hoping.” Iki looked around. “No?”

Janda shook her head. “They’re reliable, you’ve gotta give them that.”

Jinai knew better than to hope the Mirages would make some sort of freak mistake—though in truth, she had no desire for that to befall their biggest rivals. It wouldn’t feel fair.