A group of scientists and explorers set their sights on the End of the World, an impassable and chaotic tempest beyond which no sailor has ever ventured.

This is the first chapter of There Shall Be Wings, which is my Guaranteed Novel of 2016 in the sense that it's almost finished. It's a sort-of-sequel to 2014's An Iron Road Running, although it doesn't really share characters (a few cameos aside). But it's the same blend of steampunk adventuring and derring-do and also occasional smut. There are a lot of characters here, and I'm trying a new method of separating them; each section is narrated by one character, and led in by some aside from them like a diary entry. Let me know how that works. This is a clean chapter, but... that'll change! Anyway, about a billion thanks to :iconSpudz: for kicking this into some semblance of shape.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

There Shall Be Wings by Rob Baird

Part I: "On This New Sea"

---

The bar that Dr. Röhaner entered did not appear designed to inspire confidence in the man he was looking for within, though the man in question deserved even less. A sign above the establishment identified it as the Rotting Tinfish, and the queasy smell that pervaded the whole of Ketta Bay's harbor somehow seemed to be even more pronounced.

He wanted to spend as little time as possible inhaling it. A slouching lion behind the counter seemed as good a prospect as any. Mindful of his foreign accent, Rassulf Röhaner approached. “Are you the owner, sir?"

“Are you lost?"

The wolf shook his head. “No, sir. I'm an employee of His Majesty."

“Then you are lost." Rassulf imagined that the bar's owner had no such use for such men. They would mostly have come to disturb the peace, and in a bar like the Rotting Tinfish Dr. Röhaner rather suspected that the peace was disturbed often enough as it was. It sulked right at the northern edge of the harbor, where hopeless ships and hopeless men alike ended up. Beached, and slowly decaying.

Rassulf's quarry was one of them. “I'm looking for Marray Medastria, former captain of the ship Nærla Dorn."

Hearing him, one of the other drunks turned his bleary-eyed gaze on the conversation. “Former ship, too." 

“Yes, I know."

The barkeep folded his arms. “What do you want with 'im?"

“That's between me, His Majesty, and captain Medastria."

“If y'ain't gonna tell me, why should I help you?"

Rassulf considered pulling the royal warrant from inside his vest, but he had no great suspicions over how likely it would be honored. Instead he held up his coinpurse. “For one, I'll pay his tab."

“Deal. Marray!" Clearly the lion felt no loyalty towards his customers — and with his neat attire and straightened whiskers Dr. Röhaner looked like a man who would be good for his debts. “Marray, get your bloody useless arse over 'ere."

Rassulf didn't quite know what to expect from the man. He'd been told to look for a stag, and to look for him drunk at the worst bar in Ketta Bay. Everyone had agreed on which bar that might be; none could tell him anything of Medastria's countenance. Probably, the wolf thought, he'd be one of the old ruined men that filled the roster of such depraved places.

But the figure who rose still looked deceptively young. Only his unsteady gait betrayed what had become of him — an effect greatly magnified by his sheer size. The stag must've been well on his way to seven feet tall. He lurched to the bar, thudded into it, and looked over the two. “What?"

“A friend of yours," the lion grunted. “Asked for you by name."

“Dr. Rassulf Röhaner." He extended his paw to shake the stag's hand, as was the Aernian custom, but Marray stayed put. “I was sent for you. From Tabisthalia."

“You're not from Tabisthalia." Marray's voice slurred thickly; the statement seemed almost accusing. “Down south, I bet. Drylander."

“That's... correct. I am originally of Ellagdra." He said the name of his home, tar Ellechtraubayand, with the coarse pronunciation of an Aernian so that Marray would not become confused. “But I have worked in Tabisthalia for nearly five years."

“And what do you want?"

“I have a question for you, sir." He waited until he had what passed for the man's full attention. “What's beyond the End of the World?"

Marray twitched, and his eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? What do you mean, asking that?"

“Let us... take a walk." Marray reached for his beer, and Rassulf gently forced the mug back onto the counter. “Without that. Later, then you can make up for lost time — if you decide not to listen to me. I promise." 

“Promised you'd pay his tab, too," the bartender reminded him. 

The wolf sighed, and opened his coinpurse. It was almost eight pounds — enough cheap harbor beer to have drowned a dozen lesser man — but it would get him out of the stinking bar, so he paid without demur. Outside, where the reek of fish guts at least mixed with the slightest hint of fresh air, he turned to look at the stag.

In the light, Marray Medastria did seem rather the worse for wear. The dark blue coat he wore had been expensive, once, but now it was frayed and the buttons were all scuffed and tarnished. A tear in the right sleeve had gone unmended. His pants were dirty, and his boots had cracked.

Most of all his eyes had dulled, at some point since abandoning the bridge of the Nærla Dorn, a barque sailing for one of the fishing colonies in the Shrouded Rocks — the new towns, chilly and damp and cloaked in an eternal fog. In the two years since, decades of vitality had been stolen from him.

“I'm from the Royal Academy for Surveying and Cartography," Rassulf Röhaner began his explanation. “Earlier this year, I received a letter demanding that I meet with the king himself. I mean this not as a boast, sir, but as evidence of the mission's sincerity. His Majesty wishes to know what lies beyond the End of the World."

“Nothing," Marray answered glumly. “No such thing."

“Nonsense," the wolf shot back. “And you don't believe that."

“Who's to say what I believe?"

They were walking towards the piers — a bustle of industrious activity from which Marray averted his eyes. Rassulf noted this silently, and began again: “What shape is our planet?"

“What are you, my teacher?"

“I paid you two weeks' salary on that gods-damned tab, sir." Rassulf didn't curse, as a rule, but it seemed to be the only way to get his attention — and remind him of what had been done on his behalf.

The stag was not so drunk as to have ignored the magnitude. Indeed, Rassulf was not certain how intoxicated he truly was — it took a lot of ale to stagger seven feet of well-built deer. “Fine. A sphere."

“Right. That, there." The wolf pointed to the masts of the largest ship in the harbor — a fast tall ship, bound no doubt for Issenrik or even Surowa in the Dhamishi colonies. “We'll see the hull disappear before the crow's nest, won't we?"

“Don't," the deer muttered. “You don't have to explain that. I graduated from —"

“The Naval War College in Stanin Bay." 

Marray shut his eyes tightly. “If you know that much about me, I don't know why we're having this talk."

And so Rassulf stopped. “If our planet is a sphere, then what happens if you sail west?"

“You reach the cape."

“Past that."

“You reach Meteor Bank."

“ Past that," the wolf demanded.

“Nothing!" 

“The world ends?"

The big captain's head drooped. “If you like. Why are you harassing me, Ellagdran? Why can't you let me die in peace?"

“Because there is no End of the World," Rassulf insisted. “It doesn't work that way. Something lies beyond it, and I'm going to find out what. And you're the only one with any experience encountering a chaos at sea."

Rassulf Röhaner's countrymen had little use for the sea. The great Sheyib River that divided the continent in half was the realm of the Dominion of Tiurishk and her client states. Ellagdrans were hill-dwellers and forest-folk; only the strange libertines of Issenrik wanted anything to do with the water.

Nor did the principalities that made up the Ellagdran Confederation need any stories of terrifying mysteries lurking just beyond the horizon. To the southwest, in the cracked and sun-baked wastes, lay the Hakasi city of Angbasa. The Hakasi preyed upon the outlying towns, from time to time; the Confederation was one of the only things keeping them at bay. This had been impressed upon him strongly by his father.

But unlike the elder Röhaner, Rassulf was a scientist and not a soldier. The End of the World fascinated him, and preyed upon his insatiable desire for a rational universe. After his time in the service, he'd spent his entire life studying the phenomenon. The Rift, some called it; the Warp, the Great Maelstrom, the Furnace.

'The End of the World' was the most descriptive, though. Something had isolated the continent. To the west and north, sailors had come to find a massive storm obstructing their progress. It stretched as high as the tallest clouds; it churned the water to frothy white. It could be seen from twenty leagues away.

Presumably much more could be seen closer, too, but few sailors made the attempt and fewer had returned.

No one knew why it existed, or what it was. Rassulf believed it was not completely natural — in other words, that some thaumaturgic component was also at work. The descriptions, wild as they were, sounded too much like the chaos storms that arose in unstable parts of the Known World: sudden tumults where gravity reversed itself and time spun backwards and water froze before bursting into flame.

Dr. Röhaner's understanding of magic was relatively limited, like most in his homeland and, indeed, most in the Iron Kingdom as well. But that made the End of the World a logical place to study the phenomenon. That was the idea. That was his mission.

“The King expects us to figure out what's on the other side." 

“That's madness."

Rassulf smiled. “Perhaps, captain Medastria. But what if it isn't? What if you finally had a chance to clear your name? That's what you were doing, wasn't it, sir?"

Marray froze; scarcely even breathed. “When? Where? What do you mean?"

“The Nærla Dorn. I think you were right, Mr. Medastria. I think you had the right idea. And I'm offering you a chance to find out. We have a ship outfitted in Tabisthalia harbor right now. A good ship, with a good crew — they need a good captain."

“How did you..."

“I'll tell you everything on the train, sir. What do you say?"

If he thought that Rassulf was truly mad, or on a fool's errand, he was himself not a fool enough to turn down the first part of the offer — which was new clothes, and a bath. These two, they both understood, were in deference to the wolf's sensitive nose.

The first-class carriage on the train from Ketta Bay to Tabisthalia had all the sumptuous luxury that the Carregan Transcontinental could offer, and which had been beyond Marray's reach for years. He was overwhelmed by the soft cushion of the seat, and he stared hungrily at the dinner menu.

In the end he requested nearly half of it from an increasingly wide-eyed servant, who looked expectantly at Rassulf. The wolf nodded his assent — though not before belaying an order for a pint of beer. “Later — perhaps. I need you sober, Mr. Medastria. I promised the rest of the team that you were a... well. A hero, of sorts."

“What in all the hells did you do that for?"

“So that they'd let me bring you on. I told them that you had... retired."

---

Marray shot a bemused look at the well-dressed wolf facing him from across the table. In truth the deer was still trying to piece together the events of the previous twenty-four hours. He had been approached at a bar by the soft-spoken foreigner — who had paid his tab, paid for new clothes, and given him the ticket on the luxurious train.

The stranger's hospitality did not extend towards letting him drink, which was becoming something of a problem. Waking up that morning, in a warm bed for once, Marray had acutely felt as though he was going to die. The headache had gotten slightly better; his hunger pangs now fought with intermittent nausea. It was like being seasick on land.

Retired. That was certainly one word for it. “They'll figure it out, you know."

“Perhaps."

“You could let me have half a pint, couldn't you? You can have the rest?"

“That won't be necessary."

Bloody prick. “A third? Doctor, come on. You are a doctor, aren't you? You said?"

“Of science, not of medicine. You're not dying. It will get better — in time. Hopefully by Tabisthalia, so as not to raise any... hm. Unpleasant questions?"

Despite his accent, the good doctor had a decent command of the Iron Tongue — down to the dry humor 'enjoyed' by the stately aristocratic types in the old provinces. The kind of humor, frankly, that Marray lacked the patience for. “Be a lot less unpleasant if they weren't so parched..."

Rassulf had his muzzle tilted down, towards an open notebook. He looked over the rim of his glasses at the stag, who could tell from the silence how harshly he was being judged. The wolf held the stare for ten painful seconds, then picked up his pen and dipped it in the table's inkwell. “I have been wanting to ask you a question. Do you think the Finsam had anything to do with the chaos storm you encountered?"

“ Finsam," Marray whispered, before he even knew that he was speaking. “Gods, help me…"

It was not a name he heard often. The Finsam had been a small freighter, when Lieutenant Commander Medastria was captain of the Raven. He'd been ordered to chase them down in the sloop-of-war; to capture some fugitives before they could make good their escape.

But when he heard Finsam, it was not the only name that came to mind and not the most important. More keenly he recalled the names of his crew — the men he'd last seen struggling, screaming in shock as the freezing water of the White Sea claimed them. They were the faces he saw, too, in the shadows of dark rooms in stinking flophouses and the mold he brushed from scavenged bread. All I deserve, anyway...

“Most of the records on the Raven's loss are sealed. The records on the Finsam never existed to begin with. It wasn't clear to me if you had ever been informed that the criminals you were after were dioscurians. Magic-using cultists, in other words," he explained for Marray's benefit.

Magic sent chills down the stag's spine, particularly as he'd had the chance to see it up close and personal. A twinge of anger shot through him, to think that the Admiralty had known that there were thaumaturgists aboard the Finsam when he was sent to chase them down. “I didn't know that." 

“A similar group evaded capture aboard the steam barque Clarion Adamant, some years ago. That ship was never found, though."

“And the Finsam was lost with all hands," Marray reminded him.

“As you describe in excruciating detail in your report."

It had been even more excruciating to watch, of course. “Do you think they might've... caused the chaos storm?"

“I don't know. The subtle arts are beyond my understanding, Mr. Medastria. Perhaps they summoned it and it grew out of their control. Or perhaps they were trying something completely different, and it somehow drew the storm to you — or disrupted an already-unstable environment."

He could only shake his head. “Is that... possible?"

“I don't know that, either. Thaumatology is not much more accepted in the Confederacy than it is in your lands. I've had to improvise. As you've had to improvise..."

The Admiralty refused to believe that chaos storms were even possible so close to the Shrouded Rocks. He'd been forced to resign his commission in disgrace — it was that, or face trial on charges of negligence, for the loss of all but sixteen others of the Raven's crew.

They were wrong, though; Marray knew more than anything, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that they were wrong. As the mate on a fishing boat he'd made a point of learning the signs: a slight change in the color of the sky and the shape of the clouds. He'd learned to sense the feeling of something almost imperceptibly wrong in the universe.

“You intuited the same thing that I did," Rassulf suggested. “That there's a connection, somehow, between our environment and the chaos. Chaos storms often happen at the same time as gales because they're the same sort of thing — the same sort of... tempest."

“Yes." 

“But you figured it went further. That a gale might be the symptom — the right thaumaturgic conditions for a chaos storm. If there were other signs."

Marray was becoming uncomfortable by the wolf's soft intensity, but he nodded. “Yes." 

“The day you turned the Nærla Dorn off-course, the captain of a fishing boat ten leagues to your west made a note in his log about seeing Selt's tears in his rigging. The Shrouded Rocks recorded the brightest sky-fire they'd seen in eighteen months. You were looking for proof. Proof that there are chaos storms in the White Sea."

He had not admitted this to anyone. Dr. Röhaner was the first man to have figured it out. “I thought that the odds were good that I might see one, yes. Perhaps we did come close. But by that time..."

By that time the mutiny was already underway, and he was in the ship's brig. Weren't you, you useless, drunk fool? Weren't taking any observations. Certainly weren't watching for the rocks. Weren't on deck to keep your idiot of a first mate from running her aground...

At least nobody had died. The only casualty had been the last of his pride — the victim of a mutiny and, worse, having it upheld by the Board. Listening to some old aristocrat tell the stag that he had, in fact, been behaving irrationally. That his mate had been within his rights to assume command, and that somehow it was Medastria's fault for leaving it in the hands of someone who would wind up losing the ship.

And they ensured that he would never have a chance to make such a mistake again.

---

The Royal Academy for Surveying and Cartography held court in a room in the Sirn Chædnic Building, a stately affair directly off the Grand Promenade. Many centuries ago, it had hosted a royal armory — but Tabisthalia had not seen conflict for centuries, now, and the fortress had been adopted by Artem-Jana University.

No trace was to be found of its martial past; even the ceremonial weapons were removed. Now it was a place of learning, and quiet contemplation. The Tannadorean Expedition had been given the top floor, not so much as a place of honor as to isolate their arguing from the rest of the university.

Rassulf was still slightly apprehensive about the buck, and how his fellow Expedition members would take to him, but Marray had settled down over the rest of the train ride and now looked more or less presentable.

The antique table in the center of the room, according to rumor, had once been the desk of the king himself. Now, a map covered its smooth surface. It was the best map they had, and the team had spent many months annotating it thoroughly.

None of them could escape the way it simply stopped, though, in a blank space at the paper's edge. A calligrapher's pen traced the explanation: Boundary of the Known World.

The paper had been weighted down with books on every topic from the science of earthquakes to crop records of the eastern provinces. An ermine was bent over one of the books now, her snow-white fingers stained with ink.

At the pair's entry, she straightened up and stood from her chair. “Doctor Röhaner! Welcome back."

“Thank you." He turned to indicate his companion. “This is Marray Medastria — the man I traveled to Ketta for. Mr. Medastria, please meet Aureli Calchott."

Aureli tilted her head. “You're of the Medastrias, I presume?"

Theaman Medastria was the inventor of the first practical steam engine, two and a half centuries before. Fifty years later, Bejarna Medastria had been the first to attach it to a moving vehicle.

Much of what the Iron Kingdom had become emerged from the Medastrian Auto-Motive Phaeton. Certainly, much of the Carregan Transcontinental Railroad owed its existence to the Medastrias — doubtless Aureli's reason for asking.

The attention had made the buck uncomfortable. “Yes," he admitted — but nervously, despite his massive stature.

“Capital!" The ermine clapped her paws, and made her way around the table to offer him one, ink-black though it was. “As the good doctor said, my name is Aureli Calchott. I'm from Carregan Transcontinental — we owe a lot to your family."

He shook her paw carefully. “I... see. So you work with the trains?"

“No. Vice-President in Charge of Special Projects. I work for Rescat Carregan, not Tokeli. Dr. Carregan has taken a keen interest in this project, as you might've imagined." 

“I haven't quite briefed Mr. Medastria on everything," Rassulf allowed. “We'll have some time on the journey northwestward. Where are the others?" 

“Fighting, as usual. Silly nonsense." Aureli grinned — like many of the Railroad's employees, she had unlearned any sense of decorum. “Shall I fetch them for you, Dr. Röhaner?" 

“Please."

While she was gone, the wolf tried to explain what they'd been up to, which amounted to preliminary research before departing. None of them knew what to expect; they had to be ready for anything. Some of it was obvious from the name of the Tannadorean Expedition: from Malmo Tannador, the mythic hero who — having defeated the giants of the east — ventured past the sunset and was never seen again. Only his helmet remained, and only as a constellation. 

Officially Rassulf was in charge of the project. Unofficially Aureli was second-in-command. In some corners of Aernian society, particularly the less-civilized ones, it was said that Carregan Transcontinental was even more powerful than the King.

Certainly, their army was more well-equipped. The Iron Corps, the mercenary force tasked with defending the long-distance trains, saw service anywhere the Carregans had an interest — and their interests were many. Depots out in the desert; railheads in the south and east, coal mines in the north.

Hundreds of years after the loss of the fortress-city Jarankyld, it was the Railroad and not the King's Own Army that forged a path through the terrifying nightmare forest of the Dalrath to re-establish a land connection to the city's descendants in their Jaranshire enclave. 

And it was the Railroad who was promising to cross the Spine of the World and link the far-off colony of Dhamishaya to the rest of the continent — including his own Confederacy. The Railroad did many things; they were helping to pay for the project, too.

Rassulf didn't really have a problem with the arrangement. He'd met Aureli's supervisor, a sharp-eyed vixen named Rescat, and found her of an agreeable personality despite her aloofness. Smart, rational, and just as dismissive of the notion that “the End of the World" could not be traversed, she made an acceptable ally.

Rescat also agreed that the Iron Kingdom could not do it by themselves — her words were the ones to have persuaded the King to cede control to an Ellagdran. And to permit more than a few of the others who had joined the team since.

One of them emerged from a side room now, looking cross. The feline was one of the only mountain-dwellers Rassulf had ever met, and her appearance still startled him now and then. Her silver fur was covered in patchy grey markings, and her thick tail seemed nearly as long as she was tall.

“Good you return," she said. “Maybe you can talk some sense into the striped madman."

She was referring to Dr. Toth, a common source of friction. “Maybe," Rassulf said, and avoided sighing — he did not want to give Medastria the wrong impression. “Mr. Medastria, Kio Tengaru is our expert on thaumaturgy."

“Otonichi?" Marray asked. That was the common name for the felines who inhabited the continent's high, snow-blanketed mountains — they did not have a country, as such; every mountain seemed home to its own separate tribe.

“Yes," Kio confirmed. She folded her paws and bowed to him. “The third only of my clan ever to have descended from the mountains. The first to have seen your... ah... te otah kashi?"

“Ocean," Rassulf reminded her. “Mr. Marray Medastria is a sailor — he served in the King's Own Navy. He knows the ocean better than all of the rest us combined."

Marray coughed. “Perhaps."

Before the conversation could become more awkward, they were saved by shouting from the side room — an argument that continued as its participants became visible. “— until next bloody millennium!"

Aureli stalked out first, but paused to turn and shoot back. “But we'll still be in one piece, won't we? Cargal'th. Ugh!"

Her partner stomped along behind her — partly from anger, and partly because with his short legs the badger was compelled to stomp everywhere. “Yes, you'll die safe and still-curious in your comfortable little bed, Railroad-girl. Now, all I'm saying is — oh, hello? Rassulf and..."

Rassulf waited for the badger to cross all the way over. He was a singularly strange-looking fellow — the black stripes along his face ended in a shock of perpetually mussed hair that had been grey for as long as the two had known each other. In his left paw he held a smoldering cylinder of Issenrik redleaf, which sailors occasionally smoked instead of pipes, but his dangled with the practiced air of a well-to-do businessman.

It made the man look far older than his thirty-odd years, although anything about his appearance was immediately contradicted by the energy with which he stormed about everywhere. Even now, standing before a stag the better part of three feet taller, it was hard to say which of them had the more commanding presence. “Well? Who's this?"

The deer regained his presence of mind to stick out his hand after a second or two of astonishment. “Marray Medastria." 

“Of the proper Medastrias," Aureli added, in a tone of voice to suggest so-show-your-respect.

“Hm." The badger grunted — not unkindly, for he did shake the buck's hand, but not in any particularly deferential way either. “Dr. Sessla-Daarian Toth. Tell me, Marray Medastria, where do you stand on Retiz-reaction-purifying test components?"

“His opinion is not relevant," Kio insisted. “Not a debate!"

“I'm asking politely." Toth appeared to be ignoring the gruff tone in his own voice. “Well, Marray?"

“I don't even know what you're talking about."

Toth rolled his eyes and shook his grey head. “Typical! Rassulf, the spotty one is calling for all our tests to be redone. Now, I know you like Kio..."

“They are invalids tests," the snow leopard countered, a bit of her accent slipping in the heat of the protest. “That is my point! Dr. Röhaner, the measuring equipment has to be completely purified before it is calibrated. Yes, yes, I know — it's timeful to do this." 

“'Timeful!' I'll say." Toth was far less than convinced. “The Retiz reaction is perfectly capable of doing so, and it takes hours instead of days. I've even made a few improvements of my own." 

Rassulf looked at each of the two in turn. “Dr. Toth, Kio is our expert in thaumaturgic affairs..." It was true that that the leopardess had a reputation for caution that had slowed their progress on occasion — but that was bound to happen anyway, on a complicated project. “We'll defer to her."

“But —"

“We'll defer to her," the wolf repeated. “That's final. Please return to your work, miss Tengaru... and let's pray they don't take too much longer. We should leave soon if we want to stay in nice weather."

Toth scoffed. “Good luck. Look, now, Rassulf, if you don't want to trust the Retiz methodology you might as well reject the whole mission. It comes down to a fundamental..."

He kept talking, but the wolf managed to shut him out. The badger was opinionated, loud, and — unfortunately for those who thought ill of him — startlingly brilliant. The patents he'd filed by the age of sixteen would've made him wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of even the most avaricious — but he stayed on a project only for as long as it took to master it before jumping to the next, and had no time for such trivialities as money.

And whether he approved of the man's brash style or not, they would need men like him in the days ahead.

---

There were few things that gave Aureli a greater sense of pride than looking upon that she had helped to create. In her youth the ermine built wooden models of boats. Then the boats had given way to wooden models of pulleys. Then they worked together — models of locks, and cranes to unload the boats, and conveyances to simplify how a loading dock might function.

She recalled two memories in particular.

The first took her back to the end of summer, when she'd sat on a bank of a creek in North Seffishire. She was staring at one of her models, floating lazily in one of the creek's still pools.

Her suitor at the time was a mink named Olun, whose family owned the town's grain mill and wagon depot. Olun's father approved of the pairing — and it would certainly have raised the esteem of Aureli's own clan.

Olun was watching her, the boredom evident in her eyes. “When do you suppose," he finally asked, “you'll tumble to something more practical?"

“Practical?" She had her eyes on the ship's balance. It looked to be listing ever so-slightly. “Whatever do you mean by that, Olun?"

“I mean that you should be learning to do proper things. Cooking and mending and the like. Your father's hardly a shipwright. A very fine carpenter, yes, but..." 

Aureli plucked a pebble from the bank, and carefully set it inside her ship to adjust the ballast. “Those things are boring, Olun. I have better things to do." 

“I've noticed. The harvest dance is coming soon, and I hear your dress is still the same as it was last year."

She allowed him a few seconds of her attention. “And? I probably won't go, anyway. Last year it was so tedious; why do you think I haven't bothered? All those frilly gowns and constricting vests — like everyone thought the Lodestone Sovereign himself might show up!"

Olun sighed. “But it's expected of you. Learning to cook and mend and proper things like that. Where would you spend your time instead? The library, I suppose."

“I'm not a fool," she told him. “I don't have that much time left before your father convinces mine to sell me off. And I expect I'll be doing rather more cooking and mending then." 

It wasn't that Olun was a bad person — he meant well, but he had an old-fashioned sensibility granted to him by his family's status and at times she had to admit to finding him quite dull. When he talked it was mostly of affairs at the mill, but he spoke of them merely as an administrator. She'd asked about the machinery once, and he'd shrugged.

The sound of a wagon approaching stirred the youths into action, finally. It was clattering up along the main road to town, drawn by two plodding horses. The road's track followed the creek closely, and they were bound to be noticed.

“Look at you," Olun groused. “There's river mud all over your dress. You're certainly not going to make a good example."

Splashing water on the dress didn't help as much as the stoat might've hoped. Embarrassment might still be avoided if the wagon passed them by — but instead it slowed, and the door opened. A fuzzy-eared dog leaned from it. “Pardon me — how far to Shallamer Graw?"

“Under a league, straight along the road." Aureli pointed for the man. “There's no other turns or anything. What takes you there?"

“Passing through." The dog looked at the two youths. “What keeps you here?"

“The town is rather quiet at the moment," Aureli explained. “I come out here to experiment with some things. Boats, mostly." 

Although she'd spoken out of turn, and without the respect a well-dressed man like the dog should've demanded, he didn't seem surprised in the slightest. “You're a boat-builder? What are you working on?"

Aureli stepped back to the bank, bending over and retrieving her model so that she could show it to the man. “This? At the moment. I'm an aspiring designer, you could say."

“Rather, an unapologetic dreamer," Olun joked.

The dog's muzzle turned in a knowing smile. “It's a strange thing to apologize for in the first place. Is that your own creation?"

“Yes," Aureli said. “I had the idea when I was watching them load grain into the wagons. This sort of design would be much easier, I think." It had a long hull that she'd left open, suggesting where hatches might go. “It's the third variation I've designed — it's long, because the canals that lead to the Seffish are narrow. But this could sail up the Seffish all the way to  the ocean. All the way Tinenfirth or Stanlira."

The man's head cocked, and his eyes lingered on the wooden model's curves. “Interesting."

“Thank you, sir." She turned to indicate her companion. “Olun's father owns the grain mill. Right now it goes by wagon to Keloch, and then via rail. But in bulk, I think water would be faster."

“Probably."

Olun spoke up, though not helpfully. “She has a lot of these ideas. You can imagine..."

“I can. This one won't work, though. Not beyond the canals."

The mink hardly seemed surprised. “I've told her that. I told you, Aureli. You're not a shipwright. Her father's a carpenter, you see. She has it in her head to become some sort of carpenter herself, but of course her brother is promised the family business, and so..."

Aureli did not bother to rebut him. She was dwelling on the dog's verdict. “Why won't it work?"

“Because you're a carpenter." It sounded like an insult, but his eyes were pointedly fixed on hers and he seemed to be trying to tell her something else entirely.

“What do you mean?"

“He means it's not your place," Olun suggested.

The dog opened the wagon door all the way. “We're stopping here for a moment," he told the driver, and then jumped from the carriage to the roadside. “May I see your model?"

“Yes," she said, and handed it to him.

The dog took it with respectful care, pausing for a moment to judge its heft in his paws. Then he put one on the stern and the other on the bow, grasping it tightly. “The problem is the longitudinal deformation." He twisted his hold, and sure enough she could see the hull warp — her carefully carved joints starting to come apart. Before they failed completely he relaxed his hold, and the boat returned to its original shape. “As a carpenter, you think with wood — but along the grain, wood is prone to torque stress. In high seas, you'll be taking in water through a thousand leaks with every wave."

She took the model back, frowning. “It wouldn't have to be made of wood. It could be made of... iron, perhaps." 

“True. But Brascea iron is eighteen times denser than good northern spruce, and nowhere near eighteen times as strong."

Aureli tried twisting the model herself — it didn't take as much force as she'd hoped. The dog was right. “A rigid deck would help. You could make that out of wood, placed crosswise."

“Lighter, yes. But if you cover the deck, you defeat the purpose of making it easier to load, don't you?" 

Her eyes squeezed shut. “Right. Perhaps... perhaps..."

“Give it up, Aureli," Olun said, patting her shoulder. “It's not for you."

She ignored him, but it was hard to see what the answer might be. After a minute of silence, the dog climbed back up and into the wagon. “Think on it," he told her. “And I'll give you a hint: never, ever listen to anyone who tells you to give up."

The wagon started off, at the same slow pace, and Aureli kicked at the bank of the creek in irritation. “I didn't mean to be cruel." Olun sounded a little guilty. “Your father is a good carpenter! You probably would be, too. But you weren't meant to be... well. This. The gods have a place for us."

“Yes," she muttered. “A neat little box you can put me in. A little dollhouse, like my father makes at..." 

“Makes at what? Makes at — Aureli!" He shouted after her, but she was already running.

She caught up with the wagon, out of breath. “Sir! Box!"

The horses ears flicked in agitation, but either the driver or the dog had seen her and the vehicle came to a halt. The door opened again. “Excuse me?"

“Box," she panted. “It doesn't — have to — ah, please, hold a moment..." Aureli gasped for air until she could control herself, then took a deep breath and started again. “It doesn't have to be a full deck. Divide the ship into sections, and you can brace those with... anything. Wooden beams. A square frame — like we build houses with — you could — the ship would be — uh — in effect, a series of boxes."

The dog didn't even seem to have noticed her breathlessness. He grinned, with dancing eyes. “The torsional stress would be limited to the individual frames, you mean."

“Yes. Or... I think so."

He nodded. “We use a similar design. You can increase a structural shape's rigidity by subdividing it. Like a honeycomb, in effect, although those are quite complicated."

“You're a shipwright, sir?"

“No. No, I'm a bridger. But some problems are universal."

Talking through the explanation had helped; she was on to the next objection anyway. “Right. I suppose if I think about it, I was imagining a dovetailed ninety-degree joint, but — but that would put a lot of stress on the joint, wouldn't it? It might fail. How do you solve that?"

Olun trudged up as he was starting to answer. “What got into you? I'm sorry, sir. She probably startled the horses — and now she's bothering you... She doesn't understand her station very well. Her head is — well, it can be full of strange ideas. It's not very ladylike, I know. I'll speak to her father."

“I'd like to do the same," he told her. She couldn't read the tone in his voice. “What's your name?"

“Aureli Chalcott."

“What do you say to that, Aureli? Strange ideas? No sense of your place? Acting quite indecent for a young lady? Very pointed criticisms."

“I don't think they are at all." She bristled, and was more than ready to defend herself further. “Not criticisms, I mean."

“You and your toy boats..."

“Quiet, Olun," she snapped. That, too, was indecent.

“He's right, though. The toy boats won't get you anywhere. We just went through that."

“I'll take her home, sir. She —"

The dog cut him off. “I wasn't talking to you. Aureli, I know this is a bit... blunt... but is there any chance you'd accept an apprenticeship with the Carregan Railroad?"

“Sir?"

“You should study under a proper modeler. And you have much to learn about the study of materials — I imagine you haven't even read Tetrusci, let alone the new work coming out of the schools in Marrahurst. We could teach you. Train you. Tell you everything about how stressed a joint becomes. If you want." 

She didn't even have to think about it. “I do."

“I thought so. But I'm warning you: it's a long way from your boats to the real thing."

Sixteen years, to be precise. Sixteen years later, Aureli stood in one of the towers of the Royal Academy, overlooking the harbor. The ship was waiting. Their ship. Her ship. The ermine clasped her paws behind her back, suppressed her grin, and turned to the stag next to her. “Which one do you suppose it is?"

“That one, there," Medastria finally said, and pointed to a brig with graceful lines and a sloping hull whose low freeboard suggested she was truly laden.

“Fit for a day trip, perhaps, but not for us. Guess again."

“Then... that black ship, four berths down. The barque-rigged one with the golden masthead."

“A mere freighter, Mr. Medastria. Please."

“Which, then?"

Aureli raised her paw, and directed the stag's gaze to a closer pier. She did not have to point. There was no reason to. She knew that he'd seen her intent when the tall man gasped and muttered an oath.

There was nothing else that she could've been pointing to. The Otiric was painted in the fresh white of a swan — or a gyrfalcon. Three hundred eighty feet of sleek iron hull followed a raked bow that sloped forward to the waterline in an imposing ram.

“ Cargal'th," Medastria whispered again. “That?"

“The very same. We built her as a sort of experiment. Do you see anything missing?"

Indeed he did — as any captain would. “Spars, for one." She had one mast forward, with a crow's nest topping it, but there were no spars  crossing it — no bowsprit, either. No tangle of stays and rigging.

A funnel amidships suggested the likely answer. Aureli nodded. “Good start. What else?"

The first thing anyone would've thought, looking upon the Otiric, was 'clean.' The superstructure was spotless, glowing in the morning light. Nothing seemed to break her lines. “I'm not sure," Medastria said — but he meant that there were too many to count.

“Where are the paddles?" 

The stag looked; his head tilted. “You don't mean…"

Aureli didn't bother to hide her excitement; her eyes sparkled like the ship's brass fittings. “Aye. Those double-expansion steam engines are driving screws, Mr. Medastria! Far more efficient than side-paddles, and faster, too." 

“Doesn't hardly seem… I… I never would've thought I'd see a ship like that. How fast is she? She must be… she must make twelve knots, at least."

None of Aureli Calchott's engineers had been able to commit to an exact figure. The Otiric was originally intended as the first Carregan-built warship, for protecting the coal mines in the Shrouded Rocks. “We don't yet know. That'll be your job, my friend." 

She hoped he was ready. Marray Medastria struck some chord with Rassulf Röhaner, and since he was in charge of the project she knew that it was not her place to second-guess him. 

He'd had the right response to seeing their ship for the first time, at least: astonishment, rather than skepticism or fear. Where they were going was no place for fear, nor for the fearful.

The ermine looked forward to it. All those years of hearing about the end of the world, and she was finally going to see it — the thought was impossibly thrilling, really. How could one not find it so?

Not everyone was quite so positive. She was met at the gate of the Royal Academy by Haralt Berdanish, the short brown bear serving as their liaison to the King. “Miss Calchott! Miss Calchott!" He waved his paw at her briskly. “A word?"

She sighed. Haralt was of the aristocracy, through and through — quick to remind anyone making the mistake that he was not 'Haralt Berdanish' but rather 'Haralt, Lord Erdurin.' Fifteenth Earl; various assorted titles. Aureli didn't care: titles were inherited, not earned, and they said nothing about the man. “Yes, Mr. Berdanish?" 

Haralt bristled; she could tell that he was planning on opening his mouth to correct her. He only thought better of it because something else was on his mind. “Have you looked into our captain much?"

“No, Mr. Berdanish — but I suppose you have?" 

“I have," he nodded severely. “I went looking into all the records. He's not exactly Chaldan Shield material. Two ships lost!" 

In general, she found Haralt overly cautious — but that was a rather troubling record to be faced with. Indeed it did not seem like the kind of thing that would win one many medals, particularly not the highest one awarded by the king. “Under what circumstances?"

“The Raven was a Royal sloop lost in pursuit of a fugitive passenger ship. Both of them went down in a storm — there were only a handful of survivors from the Raven, and none from the ship she was after." 

“Must've been a bad storm…"

Haralt nodded, quite severely. He had an overwhelming need to be taken seriously, Aureli felt, but hadn't done much for anyone to have wanted to extend the courtesy.

“What about the other, then?"

“Well, after he was removed from the King's Own Navy, he took up life as a fishing captain. His last ship, the Nærla Dorn, ran aground off the Shrouded Rocks two years ago." 

So he was unlucky, then. But the Shrouded Rocks, which lay in cold and foggy waters to Aernia's north, had claimed more than their share of ships. She felt compelled to point this minor fact out.

“Yes. I know! I know, I know. But he was not in command at the time — apparently, he took the ship wildly off course, sailing towards another storm. The ship's mate took over and locked him up — and the inquest decided that the mate was right to do so! Not exactly a vote of confidence wouldn't you agree?" 

It was a little troubling. At the same time, more than a few of them were equally suspicious. Sessla-Daarian Toth, for starters — she didn't know anyone who would've willingly consorted with him. But Rassulf Röhaner seemed to have an eye for people… “Do you think Dr. Röhaner doesn't know?"

“He knows. I told him, and he said he knew. He also said it didn't matter — but please, miss Calchott, how can a thing like that not matter? Goodness — I hope you understand that it would be a scandal in Tabisthalia, if a thing like that got out…"

All she could do was to promise the excitable bear that she would look into the situation. Her opportunity did not come until they were all aboard — on the bridge of the Otiric, while Rassulf pored over a map with Medastria and a few of the other sailors. 

He looked up and nodded to acknowledge the ermine. “We're about ready to depart. The last of the cargo is aboard — I'm just waiting for Kio to confirm that her experiments weren't disturbed by overeager stevedores. You're ready?"

“I am. Might we talk in private, Dr. Röhaner?"

The wolf looked at her. She glanced sideways, towards Marray Medastria. Rassulf followed her look, and turned his muzzle a fraction of a degree in the stag's direction. His eyebrows raised. About him? he seemed to ask.

She nodded, just as subtly. 

It had taken all of two seconds — not long enough for anyone else to have noticed the exchange. “No," the wolf said, and reviewed the map one final time. “Have you seen Lord Erdurin?"

Before she could answer, the bear leaned in through the open door of the bridge. “Dr. Röhaner, did you call for me?" 

“Not exactly. I just thought you'd want to be here for the final preparations. Please, come forward…"

Aureli gave up her place around the chart table and went forward to look out through the bridge's windows — thick glass, sturdy enough for the toughest northern storm. For now they were spotless, undisturbed by the turmoil of a raging sea or the weathering of decades of salt spray.

Before her stretched a pristine wooden deck, stacked with coiled lines and boxes of cargo; between them sailors raced to and fro with the urgency of the coming launch. It was years in the making for her — something to be justly proud of.

A long way to the real thing, as the Railroad scientist put it.

“Sir." One of the sailors had approached Medastria. “Engine room reports ready and we have our final permission from the harbormaster, as you asked."

Marray nodded. “Thank you." He'd found a proper uniform somewhere; towering in a fitted navy-blue coat, he seemed like Chaldan Shield material indeed. “Doctor, our ship is ready to depart."

“Our ship is," the wolf echoed. “What of us? Miss Calchott? Lord Erdurin?"

Aureli left the forward window reluctantly. “I was ready last year, Dr. Röhaner."

Haralt was less than certain of himself. “Well, I… I don't… I don't know. I suppose we are… though…"

Kio Tengaru, the Otonichi snow leopard, appeared in the door and stepped through, followed by her impractically long tail. “Doctor; Lord Erdurin, miss Calchott. Doctor, my experiments have quite fortunately survived." 

“That's it, then. This has been some time in the making, indeed." As Rassulf surveyed them, Haralt shuffled on his feet uncomfortably — it was obvious that the bear wished to protest before it was too late.

Aureli supposed that she should probably come to his aid. She thought of the Otiric as her ship, after all, and therefore her responsibility. Perhaps Rassulf didn't know what she'd wanted to talk about; perhaps he didn't know how serious the issue truly was.

“I'm glad to have you all with me," the wolf continued. Then he paused, waited for their attention, and turned to the stag. “ Captain Medastria. As this is your ship, now, may I have the honor to politely request that we get underway?"

The stag still had no commission; by 'captain' Rassulf meant only that he was in command of the steamship. All the same, his emphasis on the word cut off any protest before it could have even begun. Medastria spun on his heel. He was aware that he was in the spotlight. Standing stiffly, he raised his voice to a bark that seemed difficult to imagine from a twice-disgraced skipper. “Cast off all lines!"

“Aye, sir!"

When he was satisfied, he took the speaking-tube from its cradle. “Engine room, this is the captain. Back one-third."

Aureli Calchott closed her eyes, perked her ears, and let her attention linger on the deck beneath her feet. It began as a soft tremor; a reassuring rumble far more civilized than a civilian might've expected to come from the most powerful steam engine yet designed. Its inventor, Jan Keering, had come aboard with them as a technical advisor; the dog was doubtless just as excited, racing about somewhere and taking notes.

When she opened her eyes again the dock was receding. She took a deep breath. Damn all the doubters, she thought — the critics, the stuffy conservatives with no time or patience for iconoclasts. Damn Haralt, for that matter! Rassulf trusted Marray Medastria, and that was all that mattered.

The stag held a commanding paw on the ship's wheel, having taken over from the quartermaster. He spun it — gradually the piers and cranes of the Tabisthalia harbor slid from her view, to be replaced by open water and dozens of boats. Their prow kept turning, further and further… 

At their backs was Tabisthalia, greatest city on the continent! Ahead of them, over innumerable horizons, lay the End of the World! And beyond that? Aureli smiled to think of the challenge. 

And so, she thought, did Marray. The stag set his huge hand upon the shoulder of his second mate, a thick-whiskered old otter. “Mr. Riddea? Take us to sea."

---

The first day ended with the Otiric pounding westward, chasing the setting sun as if trying to save herself from the darkness. Kio, watching from the porthole of her cabin, was not concerned.

One kind of darkness was as good as any other — she had been raised in the caves of the Ishonko mountains, where her clan had made their fortress home. They used the deep earth to light most of the warren, but in the disused reaches were tunnels where light had not reached for centuries.

Flatlanders assumed that her kind lived permanently underground, and shunned the light. It was not exactly true: for many of them, life was spent out of doors, out where heavy snowfall turned winter light into something mean and blinding. But flatlanders assumed it nevertheless.

And it was not as though they knew any better, for the Otonichi were stereotypically reclusive. Kio was the first of her family ever to have seen the ocean; truthfully, she did not feel as though they were missing much. Her spirit for adventure had certain limits.

The snow leopard curled her thick tail around her front tightly, hugging it to her chest. Water — why would anyone have chosen to spend so much time around it. They said that, far out at sea, there was nothing to break the horrible flatness of the horizon. She could only hope that this was untrue.

She was slightly homesick, yes — and unsurprisingly so. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the Aernians… 

Well, unless you counted their strange, guttural language. Or their incredibly unhygienic habits — none of them seemed to bathe with any regularity. Or the way they gawked at her, with her dark rosettes and her huge, fluffy tail — like they'd never seen anyone from the mountains before!

But that was not why she was homesick. At least her cabin had a nice bed; she sprawled on it, and stared at the walls. After a few minutes, she began to mutter a quiet chant in her own language — bit by bit the walls faded, until she could see flickers of the orange-white light that came from molten rock, and hear the rhythmic drumbeat of an Otonichi temple priest.

After all, one kind of darkness was as good as another. 

Simple magic like that — nothing more than conjuring, really — was still beyond the average Aernian. They were too enamored of their coal and their iron. It was all very messy, the graceless brute force of their steam engines and their railroads.

Aureli didn't understand that. The white weasel could be very smart, in some ways, but when Kio talked to her about how civilized people traveled, like the cableways that connected the mountain fortresses, she was completely dismissive.

The snow leopard was increasingly given to wondering whether they called themselves Iron Men for their strength or for their complete unwillingness to bend. Investigating a chaos storm up close was out of character for both races: the Aernians from stubbornness, and the Otonichi from habitual caution.

She knew of the phenomena entirely from stories. Aernian scholars, to the extent that they cared at all, blamed it on whatever catastrophe had ended the World Before. The notion that blending magic and technology was responsible for that cataclysm formed the core of their belief system, so near as she could tell.

And it was true that, whatever had happened, the Ishonko mountains had largely been spared. Charmwork was safe and predictable there. Chaos storms — and the accompanying antipathy for the charmed arts — were for flatlanders. 

She couldn't blame them for that, exactly, as frustrating as it was. It just meant that she bit her tongue more often than not. And she spent her time alone, at work on her own projects.

Someone knocked at the door to her stateroom; she propped herself up on an elbow and glanced towards the door. “Come in," she said — though she knew who it was by the cadence of the knocking.

Sessla-Daarian Toth clicked the door shut behind him, and nodded to the feline. “Good evening. Are you busy?"

Kio pointed at the walls, where her conjuring lingered.

“Strange way to relax." They fought often, but at least she appreciated the way he didn't immediately shy away from her quirks. They seemed to interest him more than anything else — then again, he was by reputation slightly mad. “Can we talk?"

She sat up, and folded her paws in her lap. “Yes."

Toth would, she knew, have carried on anyway; he was already taking a seat next to her on the bed. “I was thinking about how we'll investigate the End of the World up close. You say we need to keep our distance."

“If we are not careful, it will destroy us, yes — if that's what you mean."

“You're wrong."

That was how many of their discussions started. “I assure you I'm not."

“Your conjecture is that the chaos interacts with ordinary matter along Retiz principles, correct?"

Kio frowned. Toth was obsessed with the work of the Tiurishkan scientist Gavich Retiz, who proposed that magic was nothing but a dimension of the physical world — that thaumaturgy was simply another form of energy. “It's more complicated than that."

She had said it so many times that she already knew what his response would be. Sure enough, the badger didn't disappoint. “It can't be. Hear me out."

“Fine…"

He shrugged off his worn cloth satchel, and pulled a fraying notebook from it. “Do you, or do you not, claim that the chaotic essence of the End of the World will, uh… you said, 'rend' matter?" 

“Yes. Every depiction of a chaos storm has said that. Now —"

“Kio. How?" 

She cocked her head sharply. “Eh? 'How' what?"

“How does it rend it?"

“By, ah… by disturbing the underlying thaumaturgic bonds that connect all things to one another. Dr. Toth, I have given you this demonstration many times now. Take a glass of water,  and —"

“Yes, yes." He waved his paw brusquely, and Kio didn't bother to hide her glare. The badger ignored it: “I'm aware. Thaumaturgically agitate the water and it heats up, etcetera. But. If that is true —"

“It is true." 

“Fine. So what happens if you neutralize the object's charm?" 

“What do you mean?"

He stabbed his finger toward her. “We waited in port for you to clean our instruments, remember? You can remove the… the magic stuff from something. If you did that, then what would the chaos be agitating?"

At least now she understood what he was getting at, although she didn't like it. “That would be extremely dangerous…"

“So? What's life without risk, Kio? Now, I think —"

“No, you're not understanding me. Even if I agree with you, you'd have to be completely perfect in removing the slightest trace of charmed essence. And —"

“You're saying you can't?"

“I'm saying…" He was staring at her, his bushy eyebrows cocked. Kio bit back her snarl. “In any case, it doesn't matter." 

His paw snapped, almost faster than her eye could follow, and he had his pencil at the ready, the point resting lightly on a half-filled page. “Why not?"

“ Because. Living beings create magical energy. It is a part of life itself! You can't just… you can't just sketch it away in your notebook! Why can't you just listen to me for once rather than fighting me every step of the way?"

Toth paused. He tapped the pencil-point a few times, and his brow furrowed, leaving his heavy brows twitching. “Hm. Good point."

She knew that he did not mean the part about listening to her, but it was a small victory. “Thank you. Now, will you leave me alone?"

“Hm," he repeated. But at least he got up, closed his notebook, and slipped it back into his bag. Muttering, the badger made his way to the door. 

Kio fell back onto the bed gratefully. She heard his paw scrabble on the door handle. And then she closed her eyes, as a thought occurred to her, and sighed. “Wait."

“What?"

“ Living beings create their own energy. But an automaton wouldn't."

“You could make one, then."

It wasn't her trade, but clockwork had become the hallmark of the mountain-dwellers and all of them had at least some faculty. “Yes. We've made things like that before — little... animals to help carry things in the mines and... well, you've seen my messengers."

“Those use magic."

“Yes." 

“Could they be made without it?"

She took a deep breath. “I don't think so. Ask me in the morning."

“But if you have the idea now, you —"

“In the morning, Dr. Toth," she hissed.

The sight of fangs was enough to finally convince him. Alone again, Kio tried to clear her mind. It was time to rest, after all; there would be plenty of sleepless nights ahead.

Some of the more unorthodox, the more extreme of her kind, professed to be scryers — said that they could predict the future. She claimed nothing of the sort for herself; in fact she was not certain it was even possible. But then, she did not need to be clairvoyant to know what was going to happen next.

Sleep would elude her. She was going to get up and gather her books. She was going to find the badger's cabin. They would begin work — never quite harmoniously. Eventually it would devolve into shouting, and then angry silence. He would light one of his cigars, stuff it into his muzzle, and glare at her periodically as they kept going. She would bare her teeth at him. Some understanding would pass between them...

And by sunrise they would have something to show for it.

---

“What am I looking at?" Rassulf could make vague guesses already: the object on the table before him looked like the skeleton of a fish, and was roughly the size of the wolf's arm.

On the other side of the table, Kio Tengaru opened and closed her mouth several times without managing to say anything. The silver-furred cat looked exhausted — so did Dr. Toth, who was standing next to her and had both paws on the table to support himself.

The badger came to an explanation first. “It is a... neutrally aligned marine automaton. We... she... Kio has removed the charmed energy from it. We believe."

“It shouldn't be affected by any... ah... isowashi daiha." She shut her eyes tightly, and he saw her claws briefly extend. “Tu toka, what do you say it? Otoyashi tokazo."

“Chaos," Dr. Toth said. “We anticipate that the storms at the End of the World will have... much chaos. Unpredictable magic. But if we remove that... it has... a compass, a magnetic compass. It will travel in a straight direction for about two miles, then turn around and return on the opposite course." 

Dr. Röhaner nodded carefully, and made a game attempt at divining anything more of the device. Its skeleton had been fashioned of wood — hollowed somehow, he guessed, from how little effort it took to move the limbs. Attached to the spine was a small box, although all he could make out were a few brass gears. “Energy," Kio told him. “ Atnai. Burns."

“Very well." He knew enough not to ask questions about that. Atnai, 'Otonichi spark,' was one of the most closely guarded secrets on the entire continent. They claimed that it was not magical; all he knew was that the mixture lit itself, and burned fiercely. It could not be extinguished; they made good use of it on their crossbows — although, to hear Kio tell it, it was intended for starting campfires. 

“Two miles," the badger repeated. “We could go further with more spark, of course. But some people are very... cautious about putting more of that in one place. If we were to increase the size of the reservoir, the compass accuracy could be good for five miles — even ten. So I propose that we —"

“No," Kio cut him off, firmly. “This is almost not safe already. This will do."

“But... for what?" The wolf was still struggling. “What is it for?"

“So we don't have to approach the worst of the storms, Rassulf. We can get some information from this... creature. Different instruments — different instruments can be put on it."

“When he stops, and turns," Kio continued. “Then he... he... tanewakida? Why is your language so hard?"

It would have been easier, Dr. Röhaner guessed, had either of them been working off a good night's sleep. “Comes back to the ship?"

“Yes. Yes! Without needing a tether. It will not be exact, I fear, but at least you should not have to endanger the ship."

There were, as yet, many uncertainties that remained to the wolf. Chief among them, though, was the ship itself, and how much it truly would be endangered. Aureli Calchott was steadfast in asserting that it was the finest vessel ever laid down in the Iron Kingdom, but much of the technology was new and untested.

He told Kio and Sessla-Daarian to get some sleep, suspecting the order to be futile, and went to find the captain.

Marray stood perfectly still, his eyes locked through the bridge window. The stag's transformation had been remarkably dramatic, to Rassulf's eyes. The hesitation in his voice was coming less and less often. The crisp uniform now seemed as much a part of him as his antlers.

“Captain Medastria?" 

His head remained fixed in place, but he permitted a sideways glance to let Rassulf know that he'd heard the wolf's question. “Sir?"

“How are we doing? Where are we?"

“Twenty miles east of Ban Suthian, sir. We're making good time."

“What's 'good time,' in this case?"

He returned to looking forward, where the ship's prow knifed through a calm sea. “I have us at ten knots, Dr. Röhaner. We're against a six-knot headwind, so I'd say a fair sight better than anyone traveling by sail. We'll be clear of the Cape by morning." He had not needed to refer to any map to make this pronouncement.

“Open water, then?"

“Aye, sir." 

The wolf took a deep breath. Reality was approaching quickly — and all at once. Their new ship was due to leave sight of land. Their new crew was due to be tested for the first time.

Soon enough there would be nothing familiar — they would cross beyond the reach of even the Aernian fishing fleets. Nothing but cold water below them, and the End of the World ahead. 

“Do you feel ready, Captain Medastria?"

Finally, he moved; his head turned, and he offered up a smile. “Do you?"

---

In truth Marray did not know if he was ready, which was why he had demurred. He did not have an answer when the question was asked, and had not come to any new conclusion by the following morning when he took his eighth turn on the bridge.

Dr. Röhaner seemed to believe in him. It had been so long since anyone had that getting over his surprise took the stag a few days, but when he could come to terms with it he found that he liked the wolf a great deal. Rassulf was smart, and level-headed — nothing like Dr. Toth, who seemed to smarter still but was also troublingly reckless.

Aureli Calchott, the energetic weasel who had first shown him the vessel, was clearly less convinced. She rarely spoke to Marray without Rassulf present. And Lord Erdurin treated him even more poorly — always with an imperious tone that, looking at him, Marray couldn't see how the bear had possibly earned.

The crew of the Otiric proved to be rather mixed. Some of them seemed to be quite experienced — old hands, although there could not be that many truly old hands with steamships. The remainder were young; some of them had come from the Navy, at least, but more than a few were Railroad employees pressed into service for their technical expertise.

He would need to feel them out just as he felt out the ship. “Mr. Riddea, your report?"

Second Officer Carzal Riddea was one of the old hands, a weather-beaten otter from somewhere to the east. “Quiet, sir. Eleven knots indicated. The previous watch fixed us by sighting the light at Chelmer's Head."

To the Otiric's stern swelled a warm, ruddy dawn, but for now the path ahead still lay in darkness — dark enough, hopefully, to catch the lighthouse at Ban Sorroway, the last marker before most ships would begin to turn south. “No trouble with the engines?"

“None, sir."

“Very well. You're relieved, Mr. Riddea."

The otter nodded, and stepped back from the wheel. “I stand relieved," he confirmed. At the quartermaster's table, their senior navigator was taking her own place. Small as she was, the steamship did not demand a particularly large watch, and her bridge was well oversized for it.

Five minutes later the junior quartermaster of the watch leaned in from his rounds. “Eleven knots five by the log, sir. The second compass reads two-six-zero."

“Thank you."

“Two-six-zero here, too," the navigator told him. “There's no drift, yet. They've built the compasses well."

Marray nodded. “Built a lot of things well, miss Hallegan." There were always gripes on a new ship, and the Otiric was no exception — but her machinery appeared to be completely impeccable. “We'll sight Ban Sorroway in..."

“Thirty minutes, with a good lookout."

It took thirty-three minutes, by the clock, but Marray was willing to credit some of that to the lightening sky that made it harder to pick out the glow of the lighthouse. 

When the junior quartermaster came back around, Marray handed over the helm and went to look at the charts with Arystha Hallegan. The vixen slid to the side, making room. “Here, sir." She traced the line of their course with the bearing to the lighthouse. “Nothing before us but water. And cold water, at that."

He tried for a joke: “Better than west Hutwyck." Hutwyck was the furthest northwest of Aernia's provinces: one of the oldest, and still one of the least populated.

“Maybe, sir."

“You disagree?" Though he smiled, he knew her concern: as their navigator, Arystha felt more than anyone the pain of an empty map. Hers still went further west — but not so many days' sailing.

“I'm looking forward to it. I've been to the Meteors, you know? But plenty of sailors who claim to bleed salt water end up missing Finchol's Cock as soon as it's astern."

That was not the official name of the tall lighthouse at Ban Sorroway, although the resemblance was both uncanny and unfortunate. He permitted himself a chuckle. “How many times have you been to the Meteor Islands?"

“A dozen. All by collier, though none by steam."

“The coaling station is fairly new, isn't it?"

New, the vixen explained, and also mostly useless. Merchant ships and fishing boats still largely went by sail; it was far more efficient. The King's Own Navy had a few warships with auxiliary steam engines, but they had no reason to venture that far out — no threat came, after all, from the End of the World.

In a few hours, he told her, the Otiric would be sailing further west than he ever had been. “Mostly I stayed to the north."

“I've heard."

He looked over her face, trying to judge the expression. “You have?"

“Permission to speak freely, sir?" She waited for his nod, and even then seemed to be considering just how far she wished to go. “In some quarters, word travels more swiftly than kindly."

Arystha was trying to be diplomatic, and he supposed that the effort was worth appreciating. “Is it a problem?"

“Traveling to the End of the World, you'd ordinarily desire a captain who had lost no ships rather than two. But..." Her muzzle swung like the point of a compass to the western edge of her map. “When I signed on for this expedition, they told me that Dr. Röhaner was one of the wisest men on the continent. If he trusts you, I shall certainly not dispute his wisdom."

The problem, Marray felt, was that he could not blame her: certainly, he had earned his reputation. According to the crew records Arystha Hallegan had been serving as a navigator for the better part of twenty years, from Maddurai in the south all the way east to the gates of the Tiurishk Dominion.

She deserved his respect, in all probability, far more than he deserved hers. It would be a matter of changing her mind. He had a lot of minds to change — his own included.

Any lingering fog had burnt off by the middle of the watch, and the morning sky had turned a comforting blue. In such weather he rather envied the junior quartermaster, whose job it was to walk the decks, from the log in the stern that tracked their speed to the auxiliary compass near the bow and the weather station before the bridge.

On his next visit, the junior quartermaster was accompanied by Dr. Röhaner himself, his eyes keen as ever. “Captain Medastria," he said, nodding politely. “How are we?"

“Good, sir. Eleven and a half knots in a slight wind. We're past the Cape, now; nothing else 'til the Meteor Islands."

“Wonderful." The wolf joined him, and looked towards the featureless horizon — beckoning to be filled in. “How long of a journey?"

“Three days. With..." He caught himself, and laughed softly. “I almost said, 'with a good wind.' I suppose it doesn't matter." 

The doctor did not seem troubled by this — Medastria gathered that they all had quite a bit to do in getting ready for what lay ahead, in any case. “Will you perhaps consider something, captain?"

“What's that?"

“I'm told that this ship will manage faster than eleven knots."

And although eleven knots was rather fast indeed, particularly against a headwind, the stately Otiric did look as though she'd been designed for more. How much faster, Marray was not certain. “You are suggesting that I might... confirm this to you?"

“I am. Nor am I the only one. But," he added, and waited until Marray looked at him. “Not unless you think it's safe."

“I think I ought to know the ship. I think you ought to as well, Dr. Röhaner."

The wolf, level-headed though he was, appeared pleased at the answer. He requested a slight delay, and left the bridge, returning ten minutes later with a sable-furred dog in tow. Marray seen her earlier at the docks, clad in oilskins that had left him assuming she was a fisherman.

This time around, she was wearing a mottled dress in the eastern pattern — straight, functional, and without any frills or accoutrements. Had it been less brightly colored, she might've been serving as a maid for the ship.

Something in her eyes told him otherwise. “Captain Medastria!"

“Have we met, ma'am?"

“Your reputation precedes you," she said; she was smiling, but it was difficult to know just how kindly the smile was meant. “We haven't met — I spend most of my time below. My name is Jan, though." 

“Er... crew?"

“No, no."

Rassulf, seeing his confusion, provided the explanation: “Lady Jan is the designer of the ship's propulsion. She knows better than anyone what it's capable of."

“Merely the engines, Dr. Röhaner, please."

“ Lady Jan?"

“Jan Keering." The dog looked about for a few seconds to acquaint herself with the bridge. Shorter and rather stouter than Rassulf, with her fuzzy ears and unruly tail the two canines looked to be complete opposites save for the sense of command they both held on the world around them. “Lætal Keering is my father; Ruovan Keering was my grandfather." 

Ruovan Keering had been one of the most important figures in steam technology — important enough to have earned a title from the previous monarch. “I see. It's an honor then, Lady Jan." 

She widened her smile. “We shall see what honor you do me, captain. But the title is not important — 'Jan' is fine. The ship's engines are... performing well?"

“Eleven knots."

“With all the boilers lit?"

“No. Six."

“You should light the others, then. You'll need the power."

The water in them wasn't completely cold — waste heat from the other furnaces ensured that. All the same, it would take time to bring them up to full steam, so in any case the order was sound. He passed it down over the speaking tube to the engine room, waited for the answer, and then asked the crew to stand by.

The ship was so long, Jan explained, precisely because of that power — the boilers that were required to drive her two double-expansion engines and the coal bunkers that fed her hungry furnaces. She had twelve boilers in all, of a new design that was intended to be heated quickly. “Also, they're smaller. They can take greater pressure. Size isn't everything, when it comes to strength." 

She'd winked, when she said it, but Marray ignored that for the moment. “It is less efficient, though, I believe?"

“We'll see, won't we?"

They would, but in good time. Nothing happened quickly on a steamship — it took time to heat the boilers and build up pressure. Marray signaled the engine room again. “Be ready to give me as much steam as you can," he told them. “We'll be testing her maximum speed." 

An hour, they told him. That would put them near the end of his watch, though he fully intended to stay for as long as it took. Jan Keering asked him how much experience he had with steam engines, and he was forced to admit that the Otiric was his first.

“You don't seem like one of those old, salt-muzzled scowmen, at least," she replied. “ Cargal'th! I swear, when I tried to tell the Admiralty about these new engines they looked like I'd grown another head."

“I thought the King's Own Navy loved steam."

“What about your ship? The Raven was practically brand-new when you lost her — a brig, wasn't she?" Jan said it completely off-handedly. “And the Uthariel? Thank every god in the Coral Valley no Keering worked on that monstrosity." 

The ironclad dreadnought, now thirty years old, had been launched to great fanfare during the coronation of King Chatherral IV. He had claimed that it marked the point at which the Iron Kingdom took ownership of the high seas — an open challenge to the seafaring Dominion of Tiurishk.

Instead it had sailed exactly once, and now guarded the harbor at Tabisthalia from threats that all knew would never actually materialize. It was an embarrassment — Marray knew that as well as any of them. And the adoption of steam power in Aernia had suffered greatly in the years that followed, for none wished to be associated with such a disaster.

At least Keering was enthusiastic; she went on at length to Medastria, and to Dr. Röhaner — even to Kio Tengaru, their mage from far inland who was something of a mystery to the captain. The silver-furred leopardess spent much of her time avoiding the windows — the sight of the water seemed to bother her. Medastria heard that many of the Otonichi had never really seen standing water. In the Ishonko mountains, it came only in the forms of glaciers and icy rivers.

“I should show you the engines sometime," Jan Keering told her. “Some of the newest, most precise machinery in our country!"

Kio looked up from the map she'd been investigating. “Much larger than what I'm used to. And when you speak of precision…"

“I don't mean like your clockcraft, no," the mutt answered with a laugh. “But close enough. Maybe you'd be able to give us some pointers."

Speaking of the engines. Marray called down to the engine room, and waited for the muffled answer. “Lady Jan, the engine room reports one hundred and forty pounds of pressure."

The dog clapped her paws, and grinned in a very unladylike way. “Let's see what 'Aureli's Arrow' can do, shall we, then, captain?"

Despite his own uncertainty, the stag found her enthusiasm a bit infectious. Taking one final look around the bridge, he picked up the speaking-tube again. “Engines, ahead full." 

“Ahead full. Aye, captain," came the answer.

Down below, the mechanical automatons that fed the Otiric's great boilers were clattering at full speed, stuffing them full of good Tilladen anthracite. Each was at full pressure — a hundred and forty pounds per square inch.

From the boilers they hit the engine itself, flooding the high-pressure cylinder and driving the piston down with the full force of the scalding steam. Keering's engines were of the latest, most advanced design — a second cylinder after the first captured even more energy before releasing the steam to a condenser that recycled the water.

The practical details were mostly a mystery to Captain Medastria — but even so he knew to respect the brute strength of the engines. The fastest sloop he'd ever sailed on would not have been able to best her, and certainly not headed directly into the wind as they were…

“How fast?" Jan asked.

“We were eleven knots to start out with…"

“And now?"

He called forward to the junior quartermaster, who saluted and sprinted aft to check the log. Two minutes later they had their answer. “Fourteen knots even, captain."

Twenty minutes later, Marray was standing with both paws at the railings of the open bridge, with the engines adding more than sixteen knots to the brisk headwind. It whipped through the stag's coat and whistled in his antlers. Gods, but it's good to be at sea again!

“Our speed, captain?"

He turned to look at Jan, who had a notebook out and was waiting for his answer. “Steady at sixteen point three now for the last two checks, ma'am."

She looked at her book and tapped her foot against the deck. “And the boilers are still at full pressure?"

“A hundred and forty pounds, yes."

The dog seemed to be weighing these two pieces of information and finding at least one unsatisfactory. “They'll do more than that. You should increase the pressure."

“The rated pressure is a hundred and forty pounds, I remind you, ma'am."

Jan grinned fiercely. “I designed the bloody engines — I remind you, sir. They'll take it — and don't you want to see what this ship of yours can do?"

“But the engines…"

The mongrel dog's continued expression told him that she was not about to be a good influence. “This isn't a fishing trawler. Captain Medastria, you were hand-picked to command the most advanced ship on the continent! You should start behaving like it."

Medastria's grasp tightened. “You're appealing to my sense of pride."

“I'm appealing to your potential. And," she added with a wryer smile, “the potential of my engines. If they're going to blow up, I'd prefer to know that now — wouldn't you?"

She had a point, which was that it was better to know the Otiric's true limitations while they were still close enough to the Iron Kingdom for rescue should it come to that. Giving her a rather sharp glance, he stepped back inside and picked up the speaking tube. “Engine room, bridge."

“Standing by, captain."

“I'd like to test the ship's maximum speed. Can we get anything more out of the boilers?"

A pause. “Er. Captain, they're already at their rated pressure."

“Understood, Mr. K'nDalveigh, but that wasn't the question. Can we get anything more from them?"

“Er. Perhaps, sir."

Jan clasped her paws together, and offered a wide grin: “You think he's up to it?"

“I believe so, yes."

She nodded. “Well, then. Good! I'll be going below."

---

She liked him. He was still a bit hesitant — but he'd come out of his shell soon enough. For an Aultlander, their captain was definitely a fairly decent chap. Of course, he was not without his issues. One, his accent was a bit thick. Two, he was tall enough that she was always looking up to him.

Three, he was flesh and blood, not made of iron and brass and coal.

But that couldn't be helped. Jan dropped down the ladder and into the forward space of the engine room. They were separated from the roar of the furnaces by at least two hatchways; the sound of the steam pistons themselves was relatively muted.

The chief engineer, a stout badger whose twenty years of experience with steamships put him as one of the more senior in the fleet, looked rather taken aback at her arrival. “Er, engine room is off-limits."

“I know," she said.

“So you'll be going?"

“I wanted to see how things were, down here."

Paral K'nDalveigh frowned. “Look, beg pardon miss, but the engines are awful complicated and not a bit dangerous an' I don't… er… miss? Be careful. That's the control for the automated stoker."

“I know. My grandfather designed it. Like I designed these engines, Mr. K'nDalveigh." RM Keering's Patented Mechanical Stoking Apparatus was one of the great inventions of the Iron Kingdom by anyone's reckoning — the counterexample raised whenever anyone suggested that Aernians knew nothing about precision engineering.

A clockwork regulator measured coal from the bunkers and onto a conveyor where the rhythmic thump of a great press crushed the big chunks into something manageable for a boiler. Further conveyors, driven by gears reduced from the output of the steam engine, guided the coal right to the furnaces.

Ruovan Keering claimed that using the Mechanical Stoking Apparatus could completely replace a crew of stokers, and while this was not completely true it certainly did enough to help. The Otiric operated with just enough men to supervise the machinery. 

So K'nDalveigh added a bit of respect to his tone. “You're… Lady Jan?"

“Just 'Jan,' sir. Inherited titles aren't worth a damn — yes, yes, I know it's different for you March folk. But call me 'Miss Keering,' if you must. How are the boilers holding up?"

“One hundred fifty-four pounds — captain asked for more, but there's safe limits…" And although Marray Medastria might have been in charge of the ship, the engine room was the domain of her chief engineer and Paral K'nDalveigh's word was law.

Jan sympathized, and nodded her understanding, but pointed to the gauge itself. “Do you see the highest mark?" The dial went all the way to 250. “We have a ways to go, don't you think? But there are more important things afoot, anyway." On either side of them, two big shafts were visible — iron driveshafts, built to the highest specifications the best foundry in Stanlira could manage. “Sixty revolutions?"

“Sixty-one, aye."

“Where's your computer?"

Paral K'nDalveigh pulled it off the hook on the wall and showed her the board. She should've known that it would be almost completely blank. The Shaft-Screw-Knots Computer was one of the most important tools available to a ship's engineer, for it tied together the speed of the driveshafts, the efficiency of the ship's propellers, and the speed she made through the water.

Calculating it was a manual thing, though. Along the coast, the engineers had been busy: at thirty revolutions per minute, the Otiric managed nine knots; at forty revolutions she could do eleven and a half. Above fifty-five revolutions per minute, the computer had been left empty.

“We're working on it, of course, but… pardon me, but you really are Jan Keering? I haven't ever seen but lithographs, though, and they're a bit hard to recognize. Might I ask you a question, then? When I was brought on, the figures said that they'd designed the screws to operate most efficiently at seventy revolutions?"

“Indeed!" 

Already ten percent beyond the rated limits of the boilers, and the ship was still nine RPM short. “But…"

“Need more pressure. More coal, in other words."

The chief engineer coughed. “The controller is already at its limits, ma'am, as you can see."

She could indeed. The Mechanical Stoker was regulated by a sturdy series of gears — crude clockwork by Otonichi standards, perhaps, but like most Aernian machinery it was designed to hold up to abuse. She knew better than nearly anyone; the tinkerers at the Keering Works loved nothing more than to torture the equipment.

“If we wanted to put on more coal, we'd have to shovel it by hand."

“Or to speed up the Keering Stoker."

He shook his head, and pointed to the gears — like she couldn't already see. It had been set to the maximum. “An' how'd you like to do that, ma'am?"

“I start by appealing to your sense of adventure," Jan told him, grinning. “Which I know you have. The Otiric is an experimental ship; you wouldn't have come aboard if you didn't have a bit of risk-taker in you. In fact…"

The badger tilted his head, looking at her warily. “In fact, lass?"

“How high have you really taken my boilers? Not now — I mean back in port, before the shafts were engaged. One-sixty? Did you even manage to get it up that far?"

Did you even manage. Paral bristled. “Manage?"

“Well, I don't want to presume. We got the prototype up to one-sixty by hand, in the laboratory. Out in the field, I know things are probably more difficult…"

“I'll 'ave you know we stopped 'er at a hundred sixty- four."

“Good!" She reached for her satchel, unfolded the flap, and handed Paral a bundle wrapped in cloth. “Then we'll want this." 

The badger undid it carefully, revealing a brass gear still polished and shiny. “What… would 'this' be?"

“We're going to bypass the reduction gear on the mechanical stoker."

He blinked. “That would… double the speed of the machinery. It won't hold."

“Probably not," Jan agreed. “So we won't push it that far. But a little bit faster — I'm sure you're curious. So am I! When they asked me about the screws, I didn't want them designed for a measly sixty revolutions, Mr. K'nDalveigh."

The engineer twisted the gear around, looking at it from all sides. “That's what those quick-release levers are on the input shaft are for, aren't they? We couldn't figure out why you'd want to change the reduction ratio…"

“Let's be fast. I'll do it, if you'd like — hells, I'll take full responsibility. Disconnect the stoker."

She hadn't needed to make that offer, she knew — they were in it together as soon as the badger reached up and pulled the lever to lift the stoker's gearbox from the still-spinning shaft that came from the steam engines.

There was a friction brake hidden behind one of the stoker's panels: she jammed it in and the whole contraption came to a sudden halt. As K'nDalveigh had astutely noted, the reduction gear was normally held in place by quick-release bolts; it took less than a minute for the mutt to remove the old one and slide in its replacement.

“Ready?"

“Aye. Drop the stoker into low speed and reconnect it." Jan released the brake and stepped back to watch. Paral reversed the lever, lowering the gearbox back until everything meshed again. The machine spun back to life at once. “Well?"

A series of gauges and dials measured the health of the automated stoker: the speed of the belts and the weight of coal on them, which served as a proxy for how quickly fuel was being fed into the furnaces. “Right back to normal — bit lower'n before." 

“Good… Advance it slowly." She may not have had pedigree, but the mixed-breed's ears were carefully tuned to the slightest sound of distress in her family's machinery. Nothing sounded out of the matter.

And so he pushed it further. “One… seventy. One-seven-five."

Jan moved over to look at the propeller shaft. “And… seventy revolutions, dead-on. We should get a speed check, from the bridge."

It came back at nineteen knots, and Jan felt a little thrill run through her. The thrill deepened when the badger cast a careful eye towards the stoker, which was clattering away as normal. “If I might ask… you think that the engines could take more pressure?"

She grinned.

Paral K'nDalveigh looked at her, and kept looking while he pulled the speaking tube down. “Captain. With your permission, sir, I'd like to see what we can get out of these engines." He listened carefully for the answer. “Aye, sir."

“Ready?"

K'nDalveigh nudged the speed controller cautiously higher. Together, they watched the pressure ticking up in the boilers and at the high-pressure cylinders for either engine. 175 became 180, and then 190… 200… “What d'ya reckon, for eighty revs?"

She didn't have to reckon; it could be mathematically determined, and she knew the figures already. “Two hundred twenty at the gauge, or close to it."

“Cargal'thl, lass — the engine…"

“She'll take it," the mutt assured him. “That's not the problem."

At 220 PSI, the Otiric's steam engines needed 2500 cubic feet of steam every minute to keep the pressure up. It was close to the very maximum that the boilers could deliver — they could only hold so much water. Ten pounds short, Paral informed her that they were no longer keeping up steam pressure at the engine.

Eighty RPM now seemed tantalizingly close, though, and Jan had no intention of letting it slip by. She closed her eyes and pictured the layout of the powerplant — every valve and pipe and fitting that she'd committed to memory. “Shut the relief cocks on lines A through D."

Those lines were intended to keep the engines from being overpressurized — above a certain pressure, they simply vented steam directly into the air outside the ship. Closing them would send that steam right to the cylinder: “You're… certain?"

Her certainty lay in the gap between the blueprints and the real world, but it wouldn't do to admit that. “Of course. She'll hold."

Paral nodded, and opened a hatch to shout the order down to the boilerman inadvertently overseeing their experiment. When he closed the hatch, he kept his paw on it warily. “By the gods — why am I listening to you? This is madness…"

“Because you want to see as much I do," the mutt answered primly. “Seventy-nine revolutions."

“Two-twelve… fifteen…"

An alarm whistle sounded, from back in the boiler room. Even through the closed hatch they could both hear the piercing shriek. The hatch spun open, and a rather alarmed-looking otter poked his head in. “Chief, line A — two hundred thirty pounds — we have to —"

“Shut valve three on that line. All the way off."

“Do as she says, lad," Paral agreed. The otter vanished, and a minute later the whistle silenced. “Two-eighteen, lass. Reckon he knows that valve just shuts the alarm off?"

Jan laughed. “What he doesn't know won't hurt him. Just a bit more, now… there!"

Both of the Otiric's great driveshafts were spinning at eighty revolutions a minute. A hundred feet to their stern, the blades of two massive screws churned the water of the Caelish Sea into a glowing white wake. According to the chief engineer, the high-pressure cylinder of the steam engine was at just over two hundred and twenty pounds of pressure. He moved to throttle back the automated stoker.

“Hold on."

“Eh?"

“Unanswered questions, sir."

“Aye — you mean to ask how long we can sustain it for?"

“I mean to ask indeed, Mr. K'nDalveigh. Besides, we want to give the captain a pleasant surprise…"

---

Captain Medastria could scarcely believe what he was being told. “Check the numbers again," the stag barked. Perhaps the long shift had started to get to him — perhaps he was imagining things. And if he was imagining them, then so too might the junior quartermaster.

But he sprinted back two minutes later, shaking his head. “Steady, sir. Twenty knots six."

Dr. Röhaner was on the bridge, along with a few of his companions. “Twenty knots into a headwind?"

“Round it up and it'd be twenty-one," the captain confirmed — no less impressed. All the same, there was no good way of accurately determining how fast they were moving by instruments alone. The Otiric was equipped with the newest mechanical speed tabulator, an arrow-shaped contraption whose vanes spun it in proportion to the speed of the water flowing over them. She also had a traditional log-line, tossed out over the stern and left to drag — the ship's speed being measured by how quickly they left the drogue behind.

Against this one needed to consider the water currents, and the inaccuracy of the instruments themselves. It seemed rather unlikely that the steamship, fantastically advanced or no, was traveling much faster than twenty knots. Slower, though; he could believe that.

“Miss Hallegan," he called the senior quartermaster over to their navigational chart. “What do you think? At twenty knots…"

The question was not academic — the ship had started out at half that speed. They were headed for the Meteor Islands, with plenty of rocks that could bring their journey to an abrupt and highly unpleasant end. Arystha Hallegan saw the problem at once. “We should sight the first of them in… a day and a half?"

“Can we get a fix before then?"

The vixen nodded. “We can check it against the noon sight, at least. And if we're not certain…"

'Noon' did not really exist, at sea. By the word Arystha meant the time at which the sun appeared to be highest in the sky. The Otiric's chronometer told them what time it was in Tabisthalia; by comparing the two it was possible to estimate how far west they had traveled.

It was not, Marray knew, the only technique available to the vixen. She would be comparing this estimate to her own based on her knowledge of the currents in the Caelish Sea, and the drift of their magnetic compass.

Although their shifts were over, neither Marray nor the vixen seemed tired; he waited obligingly for her to take the sight. Jan Keering rejoined them for this — noting that in any case they were burning too much coal to keep the speed up for very long without a rest. When he asked her about the boiler pressure, the dog simply smiled.

“Here," Arystha declared, placing a new mark on their chart. “Is where we are — give or take five miles."

“Where were we planning to be?"

The vixen tapped her claw against the map, a good thirty miles further to the east. “I have us at about another thirty nautical miles made good over the last three hours. Which, if we were at eleven knots indicated…"

Marray shook his head in wonderment. “Twenty knots and not one sail…"

“What did I tell you?" Jan asked. “Unfortunately the rate of coal consumption is somewhat precipitous — but we could maintain sixteen easily, with four of the boilers cold. Or fifteen, without taking the engines past their rated limits."

In consultation with the chief engineer — a badger giddier than Medastria had ever seen him before — he decided to keep the engines running over pressure. When they stopped for coal in the Meteors, they could take a look at how well the machinery was holding up.

As expected it took little more than a day: nearly a record for sailing between the Cape and the Meteor Islands. The previous record, Hallegan told him, had been held by a clipper ship traveling in ballast, with an extremely favorable wind — “once in a hundred years." The Otiric had accomplished it as a matter of course — nearly routine.

There had to be a catch — something to make it outrageous. Had the engines been destroyed? Were the boilers irreparably damaged? Angling the steamship in the direction of the pier, Marray set away the ship's log and reached for his own notebook. Twenty knots! Two hundred pounds of boiler pressure! The pen danced upon the page:

… I find it hard to believe that I am here.