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The survey ship Otiric picks up a new passenger, Kio and Sessla-Daarian test some new technology, and Jan Keering finds a new companion as the End of the World approaches...

And here's part two of my steampunk adventure novel There Shall Be Wings_, in which we get to see a little more of our intrepid heroes. I felt like writing some sex so I'm afraid you're going to have to slog through that! :3 Thanks to best alaskadog Spudz for his help in resolving a lot of the problems I've been having with this, and I hope you enjoy it._

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 2: "Dreaming of Skies to Conquer"

---

21 knots!! But I know she has more in her... gods willing, we all do.

--Diary of Aureli Calchott, 16 Lettid, 913

Aureli riffled through the stack of notes she had been left, and then had to set them aside. At least in her cabin there was nobody to judge her for the wide grin on the ermine's muzzle.

No ship could travel infinitely fast; above a certain speed water resistance and interference from the ship's wake limited even the most powerful engines. By her estimates, the_Otiric_ had a maximum speed of around twenty-six knots.

She remembered reviewing the blueprints with her supervisor, Dr. Rescat Carregan. Rescat headed the division of the Carregan Transcontinental Railroad innocuously referred to as_Core Operations Division_ -- despite its name, quite far from any locomotive shed or railyard.

The trains were managed under the Railworks Division, which was what most Aernians thought of as Carregan Transcontinental. Its headquarters building in Stanlira was the most imposing edifice in the city. Its polished walls of inland marble rose six stories from the top of Cobbler Hill; it was the first thing anyone saw approaching Stanlira from anywhere but the sea.

Core Operations was not on Cobbler Hill. Indeed, it was not even in the same city. The compound was located northwest of Tinenfirth -- deliberately closer to the Iron Kingdom's frontier. There was no marble; no sculpted hedges or fountains for entertaining Aernian nobility. "It looks like a barracks," Aureli had remarked, on first seeing it.

Rescat Carregan's sharp eyes had flashed. "Doesn't it?"

The Core Operations Division managed the parts of the Railroad that did not involve trains. The Iron Corps, whose rifles and rockets protected the trains and their depots against predation, was part of Core Operations. The Resourcing Department, who ran the mines in the Shrouded Rocks and ensured supplies of everything from coal to cotton, was part of Core Operations.

Special Projects, too, was part of Core Operations. Special Projects handled research and development, and when Aureli agreed to run the department it was with the understanding that she reported directly and only to Dr. Carregan.

Rescat Carregan was a slim vixen who seemed to be dressed in a military uniform no matter what she was actually wearing. Her immaculate fur and smooth tongue belied a keen intelligence, and a fierce aggression; she wielded both like a lance. Aureli did not want to cross Rescat.

Fortunately, she had never needed to. Dr. Carregan understood the value of pure research; as long as Special Projects continued to make progress she did not impose unreasonable demands. Backing Dr. Röhaner's expedition to the End of the World had been Rescat's idea. When Aureli Calchott proposed repurposing the_Otiric_ from a warship into a scientific research vessel, Rescat understood immediately.

Some of the natives in the Shrouded Rocks opposed the railroad's mining operations; Calchott's predecessor had been the one to lay down the hull of a frigate who could shell them into submission. "I know you're concerned with the attacks, Dr. Carregan. But I think this would be better-served as a testbed for new technology."

Rescat had looked from Aureli down to the blueprints spread across a table in the vixen's office. "What kind of new technology?" That had been her only question.

"A new variety of rudder, for one; I think it would be more maneuverable. The kind of thing we might need, sailing close to the End of the World. A new method of hull riveting. A new method of propulsion: a screw design, rather than using paddles. With a ship this fast..."

"How fast?"

"Using Halrith's Formula? Officially, as much as twenty-six knots."

The vixen did not scoff, or curse, or roll her eyes. She stared at the blueprints; it was a stare Aureli had come to know well -- when Rescat looked at something as though the look alone could will it into existence. "You'd need power for that."

"Yes, Dr. Carregan. The engines that we fitted to the_Sybiss_ are the best we have. Indeed, I'm told that they are the best that the Geovia works can produce."

Rescat looked up, smiling a thin, knowing smile. "I see. Keep going."

"I hear whispers that Jan Keering is working on something even more advanced. All I've seen are models, but it would be a_compounding_ engine, able to use the steam more than once. And I hear she's been able to adapt the Smiling Tenrin design to a practical boiler."

The smile widened, until it was just enough to show teeth. "Jan is Lætal's daughter, isn't she? She can't be more than twenty-five years old. I suppose she thinks she can upend the world, miss Calchott?"

Aureli was sharp enough to return the smile; Rescat knew full well how young the stoat had been when she took her apprenticeship with the Railroad. "I believe she can, too. We'd need to work with the Keering Works, instead of Geovia, but we have the right to do so according to our contract. And I think Lady Jan would be willing -- given the chance to test the engines out."

"A new rudder, a new engine... a new hull design, from the shape of it. A new manufacturing process. Tell me, miss Calchott -- has_anything_ here been tried before?"

"Perhaps beyond the End of the World, Dr. Carregan."

Her eyes, lit as always by some fire from within, flashed brighter. The smile ended with the teasing question she'd posed. "You don't have to ask me for any additional permission. Any experimental procedure; any new process, any strange misfit you think has a good idea -- consider it authorized. By me. I want monthly reports on your progress."

"Yes, Dr. Carregan."

"What's it called? The ship."

"The_Luthinian_. After the battle of Luthinia Bay." Not that Aureli knew much of military history; the name had been her predecessor's idea, too.

"You're a divisionist, aren't you? Worship all the gods and goddesses of the Coral Valley?" Rescat, like the rest of her family, was a monotheist -- heretical, although nobody seemed inclined to challenge them publicly.

"I am."

"You know the story of Otiri, don't you? Child of Galith and a mortal woman -- the gods are always doing things like that."

Aureli nodded. "I know it a little, yes. Galith swore that she would be the most skilled craftsman in all the land, right? And she lived up to it, as I remember. She invented a bow better than Seolva herself had ever seen. A bellows that could blow down a tree. A pulley that could move a mountain. A waterwheel that could change the tides. That's all I remember."

"She went too far. She had no sense of a mortal's limits. Of course, the underworld had no claim on her, as a demi-goddess -- as you know, they're sticklers for regulation and bureaucracy. Instead Isul came to take her mother, as punishment for laying with a god. And you know what she did?"

"Stood up to Isul?"

"Isul said that her mother would be spared if she could win a race against whoever Isul desired -- Tatzl. Her mother knew that she could never win a race like that -- an old woman against the god of the wind himself."

Slowly, the rest of the story came back to Aureli -- that Otiri had accepted the challenge. That she had locked herself in her workshop until the next morning, and emerged at the last moment to give her mother a pair of feathered shoes that carried her before the wind like a falcon. "As fast as Tatzl ran, the old woman stayed just ahead of him, until at last he conceded."

"In your myths, Tatzl was so enraged that he pleaded with Æmer to strike her down for her insolence. There are different endings, do you know that? Superstition has no sense of consistency. In some of the stories, Æmer kills her. In some, Galith intercedes and she's cast up in the heavens, with the stars. The one I like says that Æmer had Galith imprison her -- but of course, she's too clever for that. She escapes now and then, to whisper madness in the ears of dreamers."

"To tell them that they, too, can challenge the gods..."

"Indeed."

"But you don't believe any of that."

Rescat laughed softly. "I don't. But I believe that_Luthinian_ is a very boring name for the ship you describe."

A year later, alone in her cabin, Aureli allowed herself another glance at the Shaft-Screw-Knots Computer that Jan Keering had delivered, with a flourish and a page of written notes on the performance of the engines.

40 rev - 11% - 11.6 knots. 45 rev - 12% - 12.8 knots. 50 rev - 13.7% - 14 knots. That was already faster than any of the barque-rigged sailing ships that plied the Aernian coast. Faster than the sidewheeled steamships that were beginning to dominate ocean trade.

85 rev - ?

The page of notes was designed to address the question mark. Jan was not a ship designer, but like Aureli she felt the ship could travel faster still -- if only they could get more power. As it was the boilers seemed to be near their limits, for even with the very latest designs there was only so much steam that could be generated at once.

And the_Otiric_ only carried so much coal.

Only so much was a practical question, though; it lent itself to practical answers. In her assessment, Jan Keering suggested a few changes to the steam cylinders; a few changes to the way that the boilers were arranged and fed. None of them could be made at sea.

But the Meteor Islands were just ahead, and they needed to stop for fuel and supplies, anyway.

The town, Port Tarmett, amounted to a few hundred hardscrabble souls, and it seemed that all of them had turned out to watch the ship's arrival. Aureli had to wonder what they thought of the machine -- brilliant white and completely without sails to suggest any means of propulsion.

The Meteor Islands had been settled by force of desire rather than necessity. They were cold, and constantly windswept; the soil was rocky and yielded only grudgingly to a plow. Nobody had found anything worth mining.

Good fishing off the Meteor Bank was the closest anyone had been able to suggest to an economic rationale, but for centuries Aernian fishermen had been content to sail back to Aernia itself with their hauls. It was, after all, where the fish were going in the end anyway.

King Chatherral had indulged some fantasy that it might be the gateway to expanding the Iron Kingdom's control further westward -- but there_was_ nothing further westward, except the End of the World. In spite of his friendship with the Railroad, Chatherral had been, Aureli freely admitted, a bit of a fool.

But since his foolish royal decree had established a coaling station at Port Tarmett, the town would serve as a convenient base of operations for the Tannadorean Expedition: they could resupply, and rely on the royal mail ships for communication back to Tabisthalia.

She found Rassulf Röhaner, the Expedition leader, standing at the railing by the gangplank, peering out at the drab, low buildings of the port and the stone wall that circled the town. The wolf looked at her in bemusement. "You thought that someone might want to take this from you?"

"I didn't think that."

"Your king did."

"His father. King Chatherral was... a curious man. He had rather grand ambitions. You remember that dreadnought? That was his idea, when he was still a prince. He was going to make Aernia into a naval empire."

Rassulf turned back to Port Tarmett. "I see."

"The King's Own Navy was supposed to be stationed here, too. To protect the tradelanes against pirates. As it happens, there weren't any tradelanes, and therefore not many pirates."

"But they built a dock for the navy, just in case."

"Yes." No warships were in evidence; apart from the_Otiric_, only a handful of fishing boats were calling at the port. "But consider it a point of good fortune that it exists -- otherwise we'd have to return to the continent any time we needed fuel."

"And after that run, we do need it," the wolf agreed. "I suppose that's a good point."

"And a chance to make a good impression on the locals..."

---

Day 4: Arrived Port Tarmett, where the inhabitants proved very interested to see such a ship as ours. We are to collect a new member of the expedition and all souls are naturally excited.

--Tannadorean Expedition Record, 16 Lettid, 913

The harbor would not have been Rassulf's first choice were he picking somewhere to live out his retirement, to be certain. But it had certain benefits of expedience; he was happy to see also that, regardless of what concerns the king's_representative_ had about the Tannadorean Expedition, all the supplies he'd asked for had been laid in.

At least, he_thought_ so. If he understood properly.

"And," the garrison captain who'd promised him the supplies was continuing, "some guest or other? Come on the mailboat, like? Back two week, nor down than."

The wolf generally considered his command of Aernian to be fairly respectable; only his accent set him apart. He could not imagine the commander would've been any more comprehensible to his own countrymen. "Someone arrived two weeks ago? On the mailboat?"

"Aye, boy. Uniform, like? Eight hundred pound near boxes and same as; nor down she were King's Army, like?"

Dr. Röhaner nodded. "They're still here?"

"Cheek, boy," the garrison captain snorted, before giving a coughing laugh and a heavy thump to the wolf's shoulder that suggested all was forgiven. He pointed towards one of the other buildings. "Right, knock up, tell 'em yer 'ere, like? Ribbon onna robin's tit, same as, eh, but..." He shrugged. "Bored."

"V-very well." The wolf excused himself before the man could subject him to any more of the vaunted Iron Tongue. The building he'd indicated was the town's inn.

He didn't have to ask around; the guest in question was already waiting for him just inside. "Dr. Rassulf?"

"Rassulf Röhaner, yes." He bowed.

"Lieutenant Carpathish, of the King's Own Army." The red-furred vixen was, indeed, wearing a uniform. "I've been waiting for you -- I was dispatched from Tabisthalia on the orders of a Carregan Railroad employee, who spoke to someone in the Army. They told me you're a scientist."

"Yes."

"Investigating the End of the World?"

"Yes."

"Wonderful. When do we leave?"

"You're ready to go?"

Lieutenant Carpathish looked over the wolf's shoulder, towards the harbor. "Yes. Trust me, doctor, I'm_ready_. This place is... not exactly what I was expecting when they told me I was headed to the frontier."

Rassulf had to smile. "No. It's very different from my homeland's frontiers, as well. I believe the garrison commander told me you had some equipment, although... to be honest I'm not entirely certain I understood him."

"You did. I'm sorry, doctor -- do you not know what I do?"

"I don't." His notes on the matter had been unclear; the addition was Aureli's idea. "I believe you're a... an observer, yes? A military observer?"

Her answer was a short chuckle. "Close. Yes.Observation. I'm with the Flying Corps. The King's Own Army is the continent's first flying military, as you know -- not even the Railroad competes with that."

"Balloons."

The vixen nodded. "Exactly. I've been serving in the Flying Corps for six years. Have you flown, Doctor Runer?"

It was not_quite_ his name, but close enough that he didn't bother correcting her -- it could, he now knew, have been far worse. "I haven't, no."

"It's quite something. I've seen more of Aernia at one time than anyone else -- even the birds. Mostly, we train to stay at a few thousand feet -- that way our signals are still visible to the artillery captains -- but we've done better. You have something to observe?"

She listened raptly to his explanation as they walked back to the_Otiric_. Carpathish -- 'Telmer' was her first name, he learned, though 'lieutenant' suited her just fine -- had never encountered a chaos storm before.

Nor, further investigation drew forth, had she ever been in combat. The Flying Corps was, like the dreadnought_Uthariel_, primarily intended as a boast. The King's Own Army hadn't seen combat outside of suppressing internal rebellions in nearly a century.

Their reputation was not for technical prowess. Nobody produced a finer rifle than the gunsmiths of the Ellagdran Confederacy, whose designs the Iron Kingdom poorly emulated. No archers on the continent matched the_kushri_ of the Tiurishk Dominion, with the polished shields that they used to blind their foes. The undisputed finest cannon foundries were in Issenrik.

Wealthy but conservative, the Iron Kingdom tended to settle for quantity rather than quality. Aureli had told Rassulf that this was changing, slowly. The cultural centers of Aernia were moving eastward, away from the old noble lands and to the centers of capital and industry -- represented by Calchott's Railroad employers.

The_Uthariel_ was the first of such prestige projects. The Flying Corps was another. If Rassulf felt like admitting it, so was the Tannadorean Expedition: the Iron Kingdom trying to assert itself as more than a mere industrial power.

"The End of the World, though..." Lieutenant Carpathish mused. "This should be an interesting challenge. Taking up a balloon against a chaos storm nobody has ever seen before?"

"You think it is possible?"

"I'm of the Iron Kingdom, doctor. Of course it is. I swear to the gods before you right here and now -- I'll be the first."

---

Man is hobbled everywhere by sad, animal terror. We're better than this! I like Kio, but she's so fucking skittish about magic -- doesn't she know what she's capable of? Maybe she's worried about doing something to that bloody great tail? And being stuck here is just letting everyone get comfortable. Arrr!

-- Journal of Sessla-Daarian Toth, 29 Lettid, 913

"Are you ready?"

"No," Kio said.

The badger groaned inwardly. "I am."

He was also cold: they were standing at the edge of the pier, where there was nothing to shield them from the brisk wind over the frigid Caelish Sea -- even in summer it was biting and crisp, thanks to the currents bringing water from further north. And he was hungry, because Kio hadn't let him finish breakfast before they left.

The snow leopardess was on her knees, working on the clockwork that guided their automaton. Since first presenting it to Dr. Röhaner, the pair had changed the shape of the fins and added a wax-impregnated skin to streamline the thing's body.

With the skin opened, Kio Tengaru looked like she was performing an autopsy. "I don't know that this will work the way we think it will."

Oh for the love of the gods. "What's the problem?"

"I taught it with a magnetic sympathizer."

"So?"

She twisted around, glaring at him over her shoulder. "And," the mage repeated herself: "it's a magnetic sympathizer."

"I really don't understand what you mean, spotty one."

She glowered, and held up a small contraption -- a box with a few gears in it, its purpose completely opaque. "This. See? You know my messenger-birds, they follow a charmed sympathizer."

Civilized folk, like the Aernians, sent letters by postman or, if they were lucky, found one of the new 'telegraph' stations that permitted messages to be sent instantaneously. The Otonichi, living as they did in huge mountains, did not have this option.

Instead they used light birds with clockwork wings. And, Kio explained, a compass that was sympathetically linked to an enchanted stone at the bird's destination and followed the continent's leylines to navigate. That, though, would not work at the End of the World.

But we knew that. We planned for it, Toth thought to himself. He was not impressed by her next objection -- that the planet's magnetism did not seem to be constant, and so a magnetic compass might behave differently at Port Tarmett.

"We can determine that experimentally," the badger said, through teeth gritted to keep them from chattering. "But you have to try launching it first."

"I think we should go back to the workshop and --"

"Kio," he yelped. "I've been standing out here for two hours! We don't all have fur coats like yours. Just try it."

"If it breaks or if it is lost, then we have to make it all over again..."

In the end, he was able to reach a compromise: she removed nearly all of the fuel. And then, after fussing over every gear and spring, she smoothed her paw over the leather skin to fix it back into place.

The probe slipped into the water with barely a splash, bobbing at the surface with just a hint of its tailfin exposed. Sessla-Daarian opened the case that contained their stopwatch, and waited.

Kio whispered a quiet prayer, then leaned over and pressed the spot on the mechanical fish's spine that hid a lever connected to the fuel source. At once, in a fit of splashing, it darted off, kept on a straight line by the mountain feline's skilled craftsmanship.

Like he'd known all along it_would_, really -- there had been no need to tear him away from breakfast. It wasn't all that noteworthy in the port, but at least it was fresh and that was more than could be said for the Otiric.

"Forty-five seconds," he called out, keeping an eye on the stopwatch. This, too, was Otonichi technology: try as they might, Aernians hadn't been able to perfect that level of fine machining. "Halfway through the run."

It barely left a wake, so cleanly did it cut through the water. Toth had to respect that. Had it been built in some Carregan Transcontinental forge, or the Geovia Works, the probe would've been ten times the size and with a massive stack belching smoke.

"Should be on the way back now, spotty one."

"If I measured the fuel properly."

"Right."

"And if I charmed the sympathizer properly."

"Right."

"I should be able to see it by now, Dr. Toth."

Her back was to him, so she missed his withering stare. "Forty-five seconds on the return. Forty. Thirty-five..."

"There it is!"

I could've bloody well told you. Could, in fact, have told her two hours before. The probe drifted to a halt twenty feet from them; Toth used a fishing pole to snag it and reel the contraption back to the pier.

"I suppose that wasn't_so_ bad," Kio admitted, opening the leather skin again and reaching into the machine's guts. "Perhaps we put on it a flag or a streamer so we can see it with less difficulty."

"Not a bad idea. How are your... whatever those are?"

Tucked away in the automaton were a few odds and ends that Kio said she could use to gain some sort of information about where the probe had gone. Sessla-Daarian had absolutely no idea how any of it worked, but the snow leopard seemed content for the first time: "ah!"

Her tail was waving. "Good sign?"

"I can read them perfectly, yes. The way the chaos flows... the temperature... it has recorded its story flawlessly!"

"Don't sound so surprised..."

"But I am." She had a notebook open. "All of this is very new, Dr. Toth. The_ofeng chowa_ is supposed to be kept close to its creator... none that I know of have ever tried binding it to a memory stone. You should be more surprised, yourself. And this was only the first test... we'll have to do some more, of course."

Of course.

That occupied the rest of the day: he was even colder, and even hungrier, by the time Kio was willing to pack up the equipment and return to the_Otiric_. The crew looked to have made good progress in loading the ship; one of them confirmed that Captain Medastria planned to sail at dawn, and Toth realized with a sinking feeling that he had missed his last proper breakfast for some time.

But the tavern was still open, so he contented himself with a pint of Canley bitter. More than a few of the sailors were doing the same. Good men: he could respect that. His academic fellows had always indulged a disdain for dirty paws that Toth did not feel like sharing.

It took a lot of skill to be able to shoe a horse, or to work iron; even the act of farming, of drawing sustenance from nothing but dirt and sunlight, couldn't be done by just_anyone_. And none of their high-minded talk of intellect and reason stretched to putting up with the slightest hint of unorthodoxy.

Sailors, at least, didn't put on airs.

"Oi." One of them elbowed his way over. "Ain't you one of them professors on the ship, mate?" The bear's accent was hard to place -- western, mostly, but over the years he'd acquired the curious blend that came with a mariner's argot.

"Yep."

"The white ship?"

"The_Otiric_, yes."

"True they ain't even got sails on 'er?" At Toth's nod, the sailor snorted and thumped his glass down on the bar as if in challenge. "Now what kind of ship don't even have sails?"

"A fast one. You're a fisherman?"

"Oi, now -- watch out, lad. I'm King's Own Navy, I am; on the_Lancer_. Proper ship, that. That's the thing, right, professor? Got all these crazy folk thinkin' coal will do everything for 'em -- how do they get the coal out here?"

"True," the badger agreed freely. "But then, how fast can the_Lancer_ sail? What is she? A fourth-rate?"

He puffed out his chest. "A pursuit frigate! Fourteen knots in a good wind. Better than any old collier, I'll tell you that much."

"Collier, maybe. We made twenty-one knots coming west from the continent, though."

"The fuck you did. Bunch of poncey bloody professors on a steam yacht, tellin' stories like that? Got a lot of nerve, stripes -- what're you even doin' in here?"

"What's it look like?" The badger flashed a wide grin, then grabbed his half-full pint and downed the rest of it in one drink. "Now, it's fine if you don't know anything about steamships, but I'm telling you: twenty-one. Into a headwind."

His companion's eyes narrowed. "That's not possible."

"Oh, I assure you it is. What's your name, anyway?"

"Petty Officer Arner, to you. Stathley Arner."

Toth waved the barkeep over. "Another round for Stathley and I, here. Now, look: I don't much care if you want to cause trouble, but I won't have you calling me a liar."

"Twenty-one knots, though..."

"Wouldn't have believed it myself. But we've got a good crew, you know? One of the best engineers from Keering and the oldest shipyard in Stanlira -- she may look strange, but they knew what they were doing."

Arner took his beer, when it came, and glowered. His mood, though, was beginning to change. Now he saw the badger less as a_poncey bloody professor_ but as any other man of the sea, prone to tall tales. "Good ship and crew or no, what takes that kind of speed?"

"Why, Stathley, our mission. We're not running coal, after all, and we're not chasing cod poachers off the Meteor Bank. We're headed to the End of the World."

His mug dropped to the counter. "What? They said you were surveyors, I thought..."

Toth grinned. "You heard right. And you heard me right. The King's Own Navy wasn't about to chart the End of the World. So it fell to us, the Royal Academy for Surveying and Cartography."

The sailor eyed his glass sideways, like it might've been the alcohol confusing him. "The End of the World..."

"Indeed. This time tomorrow we'll be headed someplace nobody's ever seen. Twenty-one knots? Twenty-five? Who knows. It's not for everyone, I've found." He took a long, pleased swig of the ale. "You're probably better off on the_Lancer_. It's safer, at least."

"You think I need things safe, professor?"

"I think you're_practical_, Mr. Arner. Practical men like you know when challenges are worth taking up, and when it's best to order another round and rest at a fine establishment like this one."

"And you're not practical, stripes?"

"Oh, gods no -- they call me 'mad.' You know how it is, though -- good country folk never like to see anyone go too far astray. If you ain't like their sheep, they don't understand you."

Arner listened more thoughtfully than a decent man might've done. "Maybe some of the westerners. Perashire types... never did get those bloody plow-lovers. You're not from Perashire, are you?"

"The Ostermere, my friend!" Toth raised his glass in a toast to his hometown. Avethmoor, a few thousand dung-smelling farmers and millers, was a few leagues to the north of that great inland lake -- but who would quibble over small details like that. "And you? Adleyside?"

"Oi -- Sidley."

That explained much. Sidley was the capital and largest city of Durnland, a county on the western coast of Aernia. As a large town, Sidley should have had a cosmopolitan reputation.

Like most of the old lands of Durn and Bar, westerners_actually_ had a reputation for fishing and timber and whiskey. And since no decent Aernians went to sea except by desperation, the Sidley fishing fleet did not stir much pride in anyone whatsoever.

"Interesting place, that. I have the notion our second mate is from Durnland -- or maybe Canleyshire. The kind of place you find men who don't mind getting a bit wet, eh? And who are willing to take on something more than a trawler."

"Canley's alright..."

"Mm. Wish we had more of 'em. To the West," he said, and lifted his glass again. "Bet our captain wouldn't give for more proper sailors. I'm sure you do the_Lancer_ well, my friend."

He could see the seed of an idea planted in the sailor's eye, though. Arner would leave the tavern to speak to his commander. He would find that the_Otiric_ was indeed in need of men; that they paid a bonus for the hazardous duty.

No doubt he would sign on. Whatever else might be said for the young petty officer, he at least had a sense of risk. In his more dejected moods, Toth sought out men like that to remind himself that not everyone was so easily frightened. And sailors in general were good chaps.

A disdain for the ocean was long-ingrained in the children of the Iron Kingdom, who likened water's corrosive effects on their namesake metal to its corrosive effect on the soul. Good Aernians were smiths and engineers and soldiers. Acceptable Aernians were traders and bankers and even farmers, who could at least appreciate the iron in a good plow.

Only the most marginalized went to sea, and only the most pathetic did so deliberately. Aernian society recognized the need for ships -- it was the only way to reach the empire's colonies -- but only begrudgingly. Many of their captains were foreign.

It said something about a man who chose the life of a sailor, and who stayed on. It meant that they were restless, like Toth was. Unsettled, like Toth was. Even a little crazy -- like Toth was. The badger found a certain amount of wisdom inherent in all these things.

With a smile, he finished his beer.Tomorrow, he thought. Time to see what we're made of...

---

Day 19: Once again at sea, and now with several new persons who embarked at Port Tarmett to join us in this adventure. There is now nothing before us but the End of the World. My anticipation is matched only by my desire to make sure we are completely prepared.

--Tannadorean Expedition Record, 1 Deyrnsev

Rassulf was running out of hands. On the one hand, the_Otiric_'s bow was aimed for open water and they were back at their mission. On the other hand, that drew their first encounter with the End of the World ever closer.

On the one hand, he was happy to leave the dismal buildings of Port Tarmett behind them. On the other hand, every day they spent there was a day of preparation that was sorely needed: refitting the engines, taking on supplies; reviewing their plans one last time before they became irrelevant.

On the one hand, the crew seemed to be working well together. On the other, they hadn't actually been truly_tested_ yet, and until that happened he didn't quite know how they would behave.

This was a lesson first impressed on him by his father, and then by the instructors in the state militia during his term of service. There was no telling what would happen when men -- even trained, stalwart Ellagdrans -- faced true strain for the first time.

Aureli Calchott, who had never served in any military, listened to him and then asked the question that told him she hadn't really understood. "You mean to say you don't trust them, still, Dr. Röhaner?"

"Of course I do. But it's not my trust we should be worried about..." He searched for a bookmark in one of his references, and then read the story aloud: a field report from a team of archaeologists trapped by a small chaos storm in the Menapset desert.

Their experience was typical: the appearance of strange apparitions, like no man or animal on the continent. Stones abruptly melting; shrubs shrinking as they aged backwards, then bursting into flame or freezing solid. Lightning bolts that lasted for half a minute, twisting in fluid patterns.

"I trained for half a year after I enlisted -- ate and breathed drill and doctrine every single day. But I had no idea what my first battle would be like until it happened, Miss Calchott. All we can do is prepare in the exact same fashion... but we won't know for certain until we're there."

"Soon enough. I've been looking over your plans. I have some changes, if you don't mind."

The next few days would be busy. Although Dr. Toth and Kio Tengaru had reported some success with their mechanical probes in the harbor of Port Tarmett, they agreed that testing in open water would be wise insurance. Kio also wanted the wolf to review every experiment in detail, and she'd planned nearly a dozen.

Now the arrival of Telmer Carpathish added a new wrinkle; the balloon-gas generators needed to be maintained and checked, and Lieutenant Carpathish herself stressed the need for test flights of the balloon she had brought with her.

This was the topic of Calchott's proposed changes. She knew more of balloons than Rassulf, and according to her checking the balloon and the generator was only the beginning. To be safe, the Expedition also required surveys of the wind currents aloft.

Balloons had not made much headway in Ellagdra, and Rassulf doubted that they ever would -- precisely_because_ of the wind that his homeland was known for. They called it the Kaltethner, and the way it scoured valley and hilltop turned ballooning into an expensive method of suicide.

Aureli explained that a balloon did not simply float. By rising or descending, its pilot could find favorable currents to carry them, and in so doing they had some fashion of control over the contraption's course.

This did not make the notion any less bizarre to Rassulf, but he had no intention of objecting from a place of ignorance. He dutifully added in one more line to his plans, and Aureli agreed to delegate the task of surveying to Carpathish at the vixen's earliest convenience.

Though he did not confess it to Aureli, the new information unsettled him. He was accustomed to thinking, for the most part, in two dimensions. Finding out what a chaos storm would do to high-altitude winds was only part of the problem.

Finding out what else they had failed to consider was the larger one.

He spent the rest of the day in study, scrupulously copying and organizing the information he found. In total, this amounted to eight encounters with a chaos storm: two from Captain Medastria's ships, two from military observers, one from the archaeology team and three from Carregan Transcontinental Crews working in the desert.

If he was generous about trusting rumors and hearsay, a few more scraps of information could be added, but truthfully they knew almost nothing_but_ speculation. Did all storms cause time to run backwards? Did all of them include lightning?

Answering these questions was, of course, part of the Tannadorean Expedition's mandate. All the same, it wasn't auspicious to be so unprepared. The virtue of tactical intelligence had also been a favorite topic of his father and the instructors.

By the time he left the Expedition's office for the mess hall, dinner was already over; Jan Keering was the only one left, picking at the leftovers. She waved to him, and the wolf nodded respectfully. "Good evening, Lady Jan."

"Oh, you. I'm not really nobility, Dr. Röhaner, and I'm certainly not_your_ nobility. You don't have to call me that."

"Apologies, Miss Keering."

The dog sighed. "I suppose that's at least a little better. How are you faring, doctor? Happy to be back at sea?"

He joined her in looking, rather less than enthusiastically, into a pot of west-Aernian mutton stew -- still warm, although cool enough that it had begun to congeal. "On balance, yes, it's good for us. Not everything..."

"I'm settling for bread," she agreed, and sliced off a chunk from one of the dark loaves cringing next to the soup. "But as for the expedition, I'm just excited -- quite enthusiastic to see what's next for the ship, too."

"A technological marvel." He grabbed a piece of bread for himself, and some of the salt pork that the sailors ate, joining Keering at her table. "Has the performance been what you expected?"

The young dog put down her food to grin at him, and then laugh. "Has it ever! When the Railroad hired me, I thought I'd be working on trains. When they said it was ships, I had the idea they'd be making colliers. But_this_..."

She spoke of the_Otiric_ with the same pride Aureli Calchott did. Not just the vessel's sleek lines and not just its engines, but the arrangement of its steering gear and the shape of its screws and the design of its speaking tubes. Even the bilge pumps, Jan Keering said, were state of the art.

"We're living in the future," she declared. "Nothing else comes close."

"It is impressive..."

"She. Please, Dr. Röhaner -- this is no 'it'! Cargal'th, she's glorious. Twenty knots -- we can do better than that, though. With some convincing of her captain..."

Ellagdrans did not have the sort of sentimentality that led to personifying one's tools -- even a rifle was still a machine, and while it required precise care that did not rise to the level of affection that Keering felt. He chose to ignore that part. "I know Captain Medastria was not everyone's first choice..."

But rather than agreement, he heard the thumping of Keering's tail against her chair. "He'd be mine. You picked well for this, Dr. Röhaner."

"That's so?"

She nodded. "Nobody else would have the first idea of what the sea looks like in a chaos storm. And his record was astonishing... if you ignore the two ships he lost."

"I would agree that he's done well so far..."

"The perfect combination of skill and daring. You just need to draw it out of him. Or I could..."

He didn't know how to make sense of her smile, or the look glinting in the engineer's eyes, but he was not convinced that either were entirely innocent. "I don't entirely follow your meaning, Miss Keering..."

"He should be...encouraged. And I'd like to suggest something, while we have time. We need to make sure we're ready for whatever happens out there, you know?"

"I suppose..."

"Well, Dr. Rassulf. It's like with machines, or ships, or anything of the sort." She tore her bread into smaller pieces with her bare fingers while she talked; the gesture was not very cultured, but Rassulf had to marvel at the quick precision she managed. "You never know how they actually work until you test them for the first time in the real world, under real conditions. Until then, it's just theory."

He couldn't help smiling. "Yes. I do understand you, then."

"That doesn't mean you_don't_ study the blueprints, mind; cargal'th, gods know I've done enough studying of ours. But some more tests of the engine are in order -- not the propulsion so much, but the boilers. Should see how quickly we can get them up to pressure. And check the numbers on the computer, too."

More tests. Rassulf closed his eyes and recalled the list of tasks they had before them, which ran now to two pages. "Can you manage that? Work with Captain Medastria, and report back to me when you're finished."

Jan popped a chunk of bread into her mouth, swallowed, and then licked her muzzle. "My pleasure."

---

1200: Southwest at 16 knots. Winds east 11 knots. 121 souls aboard. We sail ever-further into uncharted territory.

-- Ship's log, 15 Lettid 913

Marray should've been more nervous, with his background, but he tried to convince himself that the time for nerves was yet to come and mostly succeeded. A warm summer afternoon, with the sun still bright and the sea calm, did much to settle everyone aboard. They had sailed far enough from Tarmett to leave behind the chill and bluster of the Meteor Islands.

He had written the phrase 'uncharted territory,' which was more accurate than 'unexplored' territory. Undoubtedly sailors had come before -- but they had never returned. The_Otiric_ aimed to be the first.

The stag felt comfortable with that part. There had never been a ship like the_Otiric_, of that much he was certain. And he was becoming more accustomed to her peculiar crew, which had grown more peculiar in Port Tarmett with the addition of a balloonist.

Telmer Carpathish spent most of her time watching the installation of all the new equipment in the ship's stern. Marray had only been able to grab her attention for a few minutes, during which he tried to gauge the threat posed by a device designed to do nothing but produce explosive hydrogen gas.

"Perfectly safe, I assure you," she'd said. It sounded a lot like he was being dismissed, and unfortunately Rassulf Röhaner did not seem to know much more about ballooning.

Help came from Jan Keering, who supervised the work because the machinery was directly connected to the engines she'd designed. "Mostly safe," Jan said, paying a visit to the ship's bridge. It wasn't completely reassuring, but at least it sounded more honest.

"Mostly?"

The canine nodded. "Hydrogen doesn't just burn on its own, Captain Medastria. It requires enough oxygen to combust, and inside the gas bag there isn't enough. It does leak somewhat -- we don't have the sort of advanced sealants they have back on the continent -- but I wouldn't be worried! Now, if the_bag_ were to catch fire..."

Inflated, the balloon was wider across than the_Otiric_, and taller as well. "What about that, then, Lady Jan? Is that a risk?"

Despite himself, he still called her_Lady Jan_, which was her formal name. He recognized, though, her singular lack of formality. She betrayed no shame over what must've been mixed heritage, and dressed as though she'd simply donned the first thing she found. And she saw nothing wrong with patting the stag's wrist. "Come now, captain."

"Ma'am?"

Jan grinned wickedly. "You're sitting on bunkers full of coal, with completely new steam engines running hotter than anything else on the continent.And you're headed straight for gods-only-know-what at the End of the World! It's all risk, my good sir."

This truth had not escaped him, either; though he now considered himself reasonably familiar with steam propulsion, it was hard for an old sailor to be comfortable at the helm of ten roaring bonfires kept in check by a mechanical automaton whose functioning even the madman Sessla-Daarian had declined to explain.

"Now, if you're asking me whether the risk is_acceptable_, captain..." The dog shrugged. "There's no point in planting flags on charted isles, is there? I'd be blown to bits just the same as you."

"The captain is supposed to go down with his ship," Marray pointed out. That, though, was something of a formality itself -- though they had lifeboats, there was little chance of rescue so far from civilization.

"The captain can go down however he likes," Jan said. "You asked about risk, and I said I don't mind it -- speaking of which..."

He had yet to figure out, in such exchanges, whether she was speaking of risk or of what the captain could go down on. The mutt tended to a degree of familiarity, and she teased him quite fondly in spite of her station -- or his. They were on the bridge, though, so he erred on the side of decorum. "You had another experiment?"

"Aye! Now, look here!"

This had happened several times before. Jan would lead him to the chart table, and spread her notes across it. Some of the notes would be identifiable diagrams of the engine. Some of them would be equations and formulae.

Many of them would simply be her own thoughts, written in the mongrel's erratic scrawl, and often crossed out messily. She would walk him through the details of what she intended, and repeat herself until he understood what was being proposed.

In this case, she wanted to know if they could bypass the condensing unit that was designed to cool the steam back into water. "When you're bringing the boiler up to pressure, it's just wasting all that heat so the water isn't as hot as it could be when it gets back to the boiler."

"That makes sense," the stag said. He'd never even seen a boiler before reporting aboard the_Otiric_. The steamship had twelve, each of them with a big furnace whose exhaust was sucked through a dense lattice of hollow pipes immersed in the boiler's water. As terrifying as the furnace was to look at, there was so much water in a single boiler that they took a long time to heat properly. "Is there a complication?"

Jan laughed merrily, and her fuzzy ears flopped. "I wouldn't be experimenting if it was simple, captain. It's possible to bypass the radiators, yes. However, we expected that you would only want to do this at low temperature and pressure. The cutoff valve was designed accordingly."

The stag tilted his head at the engineer's notes and schematics. "You believe that it will still work. What is the... the worst-case scenario, if you will?"

"How imaginative are you permitting me to be, captain?"

He crossed his arms and stared at her until she laughed again.

"In the absolute worst-case scenario, Mr. K'nDalveigh slips when turning the valve, falls and injures himself. Trying to get back up, he grabs the mechanical stoking lever for support and opens it up all the way. When he realizes his mistake, he runs into the boiler room to stop it, but tumbles into the conveyor belt and is mashed up into fuel. We --"

"Not that imaginative."

Jan giggled, and flipped one of her notes over to the blank side. "Fine. One, the valve fails. If that happens, the pressure differential should..." She narrowed her eyes, concentrating and scribbling on the paper -- ignoring the way her tongue stuck out and the unseemly quirk of her ears. "By the main line, it should be below a hundred pounds, so the relief valve will be triggered and the boiler can be shut down safely. Two, the valve works, but the condenser suffers thermal shock when it's hit with hot water and the joints fail. If_that_ happens..."

He understood words like 'shock' and 'fail.' "Yes, Lady Jan? Then what?"

"Hm." She shifted her weight from foot to foot, rocking in thought. At last her tail began to wag. "Well, I've an idea for the next version of the engines! Maybe we can even try to manufacture it the next time we're in Port Tarmett. Suffice it to say, however, there won't be permanent damage and we can do without the condenser until we put back into port."

"Is there a three? A four?"

"At some point," the engineer told him, "you move past 'worst case scenarios' and sail right into 'fretting.' No, I don't believe so. You are sailing with four cold boilers right now. I spoke to K'nDalveigh about the precise details. We'll leave one connected, then start them all at the same time and reconnect the others to the condensing loop at different pressures to test the valve. With your approval, of course..."

There was something odd about the dog, Marray felt. Rather, it was odd how difficult it was for him to doubt her. Her head was tilted, and her eyes looked hopeful. "If you cost me my ship, I shall be most unhappy."

"Both of us," she promised.

He called down on the speaking-tube to the engine room, giving his chief engineer permission to begin the experiment; Jan followed him as he left the wheelhouse to stand out in the open air whipping past them in the breeze created by the_Otiric_'s passing.

"When did you know you would be a sailor?"

Marray turned to look at her. "You wouldn't like the answer," he admitted to the dog. It was not a particularly inspiring story, despite the affection he now felt for the open water. "It's quite boring."

"I doubt_that_." She rested her paw firmly on his, at the ship's railing. "You're a Medastria! Something pulled you away from the family business."

One of his more illustrious ancestors had invented the steam engine -- a primitive, crude version of the iron beasts now busy hauling Aernia into its next great age. "It did. I got in a fight."

"What?"

"I was supposed to help run a warehouse, with my older sister. On the night after her wedding, her lover and I -- and his friends -- became very drunk. When someone insulted us, I..."

Young, strong, and stupid, he'd broken the other man's antler off and knocked him unconscious with it. This detail he left out; instead he told a different truth: that his relationship with alcohol was fraught and unkind, and that he was given to rash decisions even without its help.

"My father said that I should lie low, and so I enlisted -- I'd reported aboard before the constable even woke. Didn't mean to stay more than one cruise. But in the end..." An inauspicious beginning to an inauspicious career, as befitted him.

He expected Jan to say something along those lines. While she chuckled at the story, though, she shook her head. "That's when you went to sea. When did you know you were going to be a sailor?"

"I don't understand your meaning, then."

"I read the Expedition's information on you -- well... Lord Erdurin practically demanded I do so. He was quite upset and wanted my support in some sort of coup. I think his exact words were that we were disgracing ourselves and the king by ceding control of the ship to a 'drunken failure.'"

The words didn't even sting, and none of it came as a surprise. Rassulf Röhaner was the only one to truly stand behind him, at first. "Not untrue, even if he wouldn't say it to my face."

"I became curious, particularly since I'd seen you huddled over in a corner at the Academy. The first impression was not a good one, I must say." She patted his wrist to let him know that some change had intervened, and smiled at him. "When I saw you in uniform, standing on the bridge, I knew immediately."

"Knew what?"

"The change was so dramatic -- like when you throw fresh fuel into a dying fire. It was obvious that you were meant to be here, at sea, on this ship. Dr. Röhaner saw it, too. He must've. Like they must've at the Naval War College. Like your crew must've..."

The stag opened his mouth to answer, or protest, but as he did so a vision struck him, surely as if he'd been under a mage's spell. "I know when I realized it," he said. Not the drunken fight, nor the bar in Tinenfirth; not the board of inquiry. "I was third mate on a ship of the line, sailing down for Surowa to resupply the garrison. The night was pitch black, and the nearest land lay fifty miles abeam. I was practicing my navigation, trying to get a fix from the stars. And I couldn't. It's hard."

"I imagine!"

"The navigator helped me. I told him it would be easier if I could see the horizon; find some landmark. He said to ignore the horizon. To a good ship, with clear stars and a fair wind, there's no such thing as a horizon. I believed him."

"You still do," she prompted, smiling.

"No court politics, no crowded streets where you can't hear yourself think, nobody to tell you where to go or what to do... the world belongs to a sound ship with a good fix and a steady hand on her tiller."

"Until the End of the World," Jan said. "And maybe not even then, hm?"

"Maybe not."

"We'll find out. I have to say, I think you're right -- and at least we have the right captain for it."

---

Lieutenant Carpathish's report. Deyrnsev 4, 913AF. Morning.

I find much to be impressed with the state of the vessel Otiric_, far superior to any ship of the King's Own Navy, a good argument for steam power, and a testament to Aernian technical achievement._

It poses one slight difficulty: not reliant on the wind for propulsion, they seem content to ignore it completely. I have had to remind them of the need to test our balloon apparatus in calm winds. Finally, after three days of moderate sailing, we have done so.

Winds from the south at 3 knots. Temperature 66 degrees. Barometric pressure: 30 inches. Balloon condition: Without complaint.

"How difficult do you think it will be to complete this?"

Telmer allowed herself a momentary pause from the work of calibrating one of the balloon's pressure gauges to look over her shoulder at the foreign wolf, Dr. Röhaner. "It shouldn't be very difficult. I've done this part a hundred times."

The number itself was a slight exaggeration, but with 56 flights of a lighter-than-air craft, the vixen had more experience than nearly anyone in the King's Own Army. According to tawdry adventure stories written about the Royal Flying Corps, they were the first to have invented such a means of lift -- which meant that, really, Telmer had more experience than nearly anyone since the end of the World Before.

Today, she wished to set no new records. Instead they were confirming the functioning of the hydrogen-generating equipment, and ensuring that nothing had damaged the balloon in transit from the continent.

Certainly the hydrogen generator had worked: the balloon's envelope towered over the stern of the_Otiric_, straining against the ropes anchoring it to the vessel. Nor could she find anything wrong with the balloon. Everything was in order.

"You'll ascend to five thousand feet," Rassulf confirmed for the second or third time.

"Correct. I'll wait there, check my instruments, and then signal for you to haul me back down." It didn't seem like the wolf had difficulty trusting her, precisely, but he had the caution of someone who had always wanted to remain planted with both feet on the ground.

And there was nothing wrong with that, except how terribly limiting it was. Telmer pulled herself into the gondola, and then looked around for a last, cursory examination.

"Ready," she said.

The wolf nodded, and raised his paw in signal to one of the_Otiric_'s crew. Scant seconds later, she felt herself beginning to rise. She found herself at eye level with the winch... then the superstructure... the observation mast...

The sound of the machinery and of orders being exchanged faded away, and Telmer could lose herself in the glorious, solitary sensation of flight. It felt so_freeing_ -- to be surrounded by nothing but silence, and empty air.

The gods had blessed them that morning with a nearly flawless day; a few clouds, to be sure, but no winds or chop on the sea below. The_Otiric_ became a tiny white figure, alone in a field of deep, dark blue.

Sometimes, soaring above the Aernian countryside, the vixen found herself wondering if a battle would seem the same way to her -- fought by tiny toy figures rather than real people. And then she thought:scant wonder, with a view like this, the gods esteem us so poorly!

Changed perspective made quite a difference. From a mile up, the horizon was ninety miles away -- an aeronaut took in whole counties at a single glance. Railroads that had taken so much effort to build were reduced to tiny lines, inhabited by insects that scuttled along trailing wispy puffs of fine cotton.

And none of her countrymen knew! None of them could appreciate it! None of them had seen Stanlira from the sky -- seen the diminutive geometry of her streets, softened by a haze of factory smoke, or the intricate precision of her gaslamps in the evening.

Whenever the other soldiers asked what possessed her to enlist for such madness as the Flying Corps, Telmer could only shake her head. There was no way to describe it.

Her pressure gauge registered a gradual slowing of the balloon's ascent, towards the planned altitude of five thousand feet -- evidently the greatest length of rope the_Otiric_ carried.

This shouldn't have mattered, and she'd explained that to the expedition leader. She was trained in the operation of untethered balloons, and she was trained to ascend twice as high. Dr. Röhaner insisted that they take things one step at a time.

She'd stopped ascending. Nearly a mile of emptiness separated her from the nearest other person, and their judgment, and their skepticism -- all the critical mutterings of a ground-lover. Ironically, her greatest ally proved to be that eccentric badger fellow, Dr. Toth.

Well, I'll show them. Just like she'd shown everyone else. Telmer went through the balloon's gauges, one by one, checking that they matched the expected parameters. Everything was flawless -- like she'd known that it would be.

Returning to the noise and commotion and smell of the ground was always difficult. She put it off as long as she dared, savoring a small lunch and eyeing the clouds -- still above her, taunting Lieutenant Carpathish with their superior height.

"Soon," she promised, and then pulled a lever that swung out the balloon's signal arm. Its two brightly colored flags matched a precoded message.

Through a spyglass, she watched and waited for an answer. Soon enough she had it: two flags of the_Otiric_'s own, indicating that they were preparing to bring her back down.

She opened the hydrogen valve until the balloon started to descend on its own, adding some slack so that when the winch started reeling in the tether there would be no sudden, unpleasant jerk. Instead it took up the offered rope smoothly, and with no further ado she was on her way.

At a thousand feet -- close enough that she could clearly make out the ship and its crew -- everything stopped. The balloon quivered against a taut anchor. Telmer cocked her head, and brought the spyglass back up.

Three flags. Four. Five.

She leafed through her codebook.Broken equipment. Repair possible. 3 hours.

Telmer tapped the fingers of both claws on the edge of the gondola, thinking. Three hours wasn't all that much; observers were trained to endure much longer, and in worse conditions.

But why wait? She was a professional, wasn't she? The vixen wrote a quick note asking for further explanation of what exactly had gone wrong, then folded it around a small chain she looped around the tether. Gravity carried it down the rope's length back to the_Otiric_.

Winch. The vessel's signal flags spelled it out letter by letter.

That was a little more worrisome. Telmer found that civilians often assumed that the most dangerous part of ballooning was the balloon itself -- falling out, or the gondola detaching, or the flammable hydrogen exploding.

These_were_ perils, it was true, but the tether was often the source of greatest catastrophe. In high winds, or with an excessively buoyant balloon, the strain on the winch and the rope were tremendous. They did not fail in amenable ways, either -- stories of a snapped tether's aftermath were quite common in the barracks, and quite ghastly.

For now, the vixen felt that her balloon presented no threat, but a lot could happen in three hours. And she could avoid the whole thing -- was she not a trained aeronaut, after all? Flight was a matter of science. There were rules.

She got out her compass and sextant. Careful observation of the smoke coming from the_Otiric_'s funnel told her the wind's speed and direction at sea level. At altitude... the vixen held her paw up, and watched the breeze washing her fur.

The pilot of an untethered balloon felt no such breeze, for her craft was always drifting at the same speed as the air around it. Intuition told Telmer that the currents were slightly different, and a quick experiment with the wind gauge confirmed it.

Satisfied, she wrote another note.Propose to recover independently. Otiric may aid by steaming 350 degrees at 4 knots. On your signal flag READY, I will wait exactly 30 seconds, then release tether from balloon before descending. Please reply with intention.

Telmer watched one of the sailors pick up the note, read it, then summon two others over. They summoned a few more, Rassulf Röhaner included. Now it came down to a matter of trust -- his faith in her abilities against his unwillingness to accept such faith blindly.

The wolf went forward, disappearing into the ship's superstructure. Telmer waited. Five minutes passed, with no sign of activity. And then a single flag:

UNDERSTOOD.

A ship the size of the_Otiric_ didn't begin moving instantly, but the smoke billowing from her stack thickened, and beneath the water's surface her big propellers started to churn the dark water.

As the ship turned, sailing beneath the balloon, the added slack on the tether gave her a little more altitude; the men working the winch would've been watching that too. Indeed, she saw the signal flag appear only a few seconds after the balloon reached its apogee.

Telmer flipped a thirty-second sandglass over and kept one eye on it as she opened the gas valve to reduce her buoyancy. Despite its great bulk, the balloon responded fast enough for her to feel the tension ease on the line.

As soon as the glass had emptied she stole one last look at the deck to reassure herself that the line's path was clear, and then pulled the lever that separated it from the gondola. Now she was free, at the mercy only of the wind...

And of her own skill. The_Otiric_ now sailed only a few degrees away from the wind, and a fraction of a knot slower: the smoke from her funnel rose nearly straight up.

Telmer was accounting for this, and for the speed of the balloon's descent, and for the nearly imperceptible difference between the air currents at sea level and those of her own altitude. At five hundred feet she stopped descending long enough to align herself with the steamship's course and to check her figures again.

They were precisely as she had intended. At two hundred feet she crossed the ship's wake; a minute later she was over the fantail, barely seventy feet up.

Twenty feet over the deck, she had also begun to drift to one side, but not so far as to make it difficult for one of the sailors to snag the rope she threw overboard. Everything else was simple: with their help she settled down, light as a feather.

Rassulf was waiting. "Welcome back."

"Thank you, Dr. Röhaner. I told you I didn't need a tether, didn't I?"

"I admit, I'm impressed with the degree of control you can exercise over such a thing." The wolf looked up at the balloon's huge envelope. "Deceptively powerful."

"I'll say." This bit of muttering came from one of the_Otiric_'s sailors, taking a break from lashing down the gondola. "Bloody unwieldy thing. Like takin' a damned elephant for a walk."

"The winch failure," Rassulf said, "complicated things a bit here."

"How did it fail?"

The inch-thick tether was spooled on a drum four feet tall -- the largest they'd been able to ship from the continent. The Royal Flying Corps equipped a ballooning company with its own steam engine, too, which required many wagons to carry.

At sea, they relied on the_Otiric_. Rassulf was holding up a piece of twisted, tortured metal: the remains of a driveshaft overtaxed by the strain of hauling against the balloon's desire to ascend and the drag of the wind that pulled on the envelope like a massive sail.

"We'll have to be more careful next time. I would've said a shorter tether, but you seem to think we don't need one at all."

"Not hardly. It'll be easier to use if I don't have to be leashed, too."

He didn't argue, except to say: "The situation may be different, where we're headed, and unpredictable. We may not want to risk it."

"The risk is mine, doctor," Telmer countered. "We were meant to be up there. What did I say, doctor? I'll show you."

---

experiments keep going well. can't believe they told me i'd never be able to do this. next on the agenda: what if we [entry ends abruptly. two pages of diagrams follow]

_!! ask marray what he thinks, jan you dog _

-- Jan Keering's personal diary, 6 Deyrnsev 913

Jan Keering rubbed her paws together and looked over the table of figures one last time, trying to find any errors. Nothing suggested itself, and nothing triggered the dog's honed sense of intuition.By the gods, I think we actually did it!

She gathered her papers together and went to the bridge, where the_Otiric_'s second mate informed her that Medastria had already retired for the evening. He wasn't in the mess, and she didn't encounter him in the corridors. That suggested his cabin; her excitement warred with the sense that he was not to be disturbed when off shift.

In the end excitement won out; she tapped with the flat of her paw on the door to his stateroom, and waited hopefully.He's not a proper engineer -- yet -- but he ought to appreciate this. Right? Perhaps?

The door opened. He had removed his jacket, but the crisp shirt and uniform trousers were enough to give him a properly regal appearance. "Jan?"

"Can we talk?"

"Ah -- yes. Certainly." The stag stepped away to let her in; she ducked under his arm and found herself again drawn to his imposing presence; the way he'd come to dominate any room he stood in. "What is it?"

"Results from our experiments, prepared by Mr. K'nDalveigh and myself." Jan handed him the papers, and stood back. It took an effort not to clasp her paws behind her back and wait at attention like a schoolgirl -- particularly with the gleeful way her tail was wagging. "Better than we predicted, captain."

"I don't understand all these numbers..."

She nodded, and made her way closer to point them out. "No rise in pressure at the gauge on the relief pipe, and no sign of any thermal stress on the first or second loops."

Marray turned, looking down from the paperwork to the mutt. "Practically speaking, what does that mean?"

"Decreasing the time it takes to bring the boilers to full pressure by twenty minutes, at least. Maybe more, if we can find a way to get more heat out of them. I'd like to try a new arrangement, but we won't be able to machine them here -- not in Port Tarmett, either."

"Twenty minutes..." He trailed off, obviously impressed.

Jan stopped trying to hide her grin. "Yes! So with your permission, Mr. K'nDalveigh and I would like to make the modifications permanent."

"If he's agreed, then I can't really argue." He set her paperwork down, putting a physical point on the conclusion.

"Excellent! Next, we'll run through the pressure readings on the boilers themselves -- for once, Paral is the one trying to get us to do something new! He thinks if we increase the torque on the_first_ reducer, we might be able to switch the gearing on... captain?" His eyes were raised.

"Even if you weren't speaking so quickly, lass, I'm not sure I'd follow."

"Maybe not. Making it work is our job, I guess -- the chief engineer and I, that is. But captain, this is a brilliant ship. And the ship has a brilliant captain! It's quite the privilege."

"Somehow I feel it's not terribly earned, is all."

"But it_is_!" she insisted. "Everything that it's taken to get here! Marray, do you realize what we could accomplish! It's -- and -- and to get to work with you?"

"With me? I'm just..."

The same impulse that led her to take the job with the Railroad saw her throw her arms around the stag and hug him tightly. Marray's body had gone tense -- no sooner had she managed to circle his sturdy chest than she coughed, and let go. "Apologies. Uh. I'm excited..."

"I... noticed," he said.

Sometimes her eagerness was a boon; sometimes it got her into trouble. This, Jan thought with flattening ears, was one of those times. "We do have much to celebrate. I would've offered you a drink, but... I don't think it's your style. It's not mine either," she added hastily.

"Ah, well..."

Her ears wilted further. "I guess I should retire. It is late, and -- and you're tired. You have better things to do. Thank you for the help with the experiments."

She started to turn, and felt his paw at on her shoulder. "I wasn't suggesting that, miss. I was surprised -- that's all. Not that I should be; every part of this Expedition has been new. What's an unexpected embrace to add to that?"

His soft tone, at least, disarmed her. Jan chanced a smile. "It can't be that uncommon, captain. You sailors and your dashing uniforms -- every time you get back to port, I bet!"

"Not_quite_, miss. Not all of us. I should've appreciated it more."

Jan lifted her floppy ears, abandoned her move to withdraw, and hugged him again to make up for the briefness of the first attempt. "There," she told the stag. "Better?"

Despite his background as a naval officer, and his position as captain of the finest ship the world had ever seen, Marray hesitated. His return of the embrace was halting, and when his arms finally settled around her a few seconds of anticipation had built.

But he was every bit as warm and strong as she'd imagined. "We're not in port often, but... we can do this after every experiment, if you'd like."

At long last, he permitted himself a soft laugh. "I had wondered if that might be your aim. From... what you've said. And I would not turn the affection of a comely lass such as yourself down, Lady Jan. Were it not..."

She tilted her head back to look at him. "'Were it not'?"

"Are you not... do you not feel it... ah... someone of your station, and of mine?"

"You think I risk my reputation?" The suggestion drew a laugh of her own, sharper and biting. "My reputation is not for seemliness, captain. Not at those sort of court parties -- the ones where everyone has ruffled dresses, and they eat fancy little sandwiches served on Dominion silver, and in hushed breaths over the aperitifs they call me_Jan the Queer_."

"Queer?" His arms tightened comfortingly.

"It is considered politic to wear such dresses, instead of trousers. And it is considered politic to discuss matters of the latest opera, not of the combustion temperature of coal or the shape of a water-screw."

"I see..."

She kept her grin steady, and her tone light. "I would need to spend more time learning about silverware to be 'seemly.' Why do you think I keep telling you not to call me 'Lady Jan'? Being a lady has never got me anywhere!"

The stag gave her a slow nod. "Jan is a fine name by itself..."

Jan spends a lot of her time that way, she didn't say. "Yes. But it's more fun than you think to be a wayward soul, so don't you worry on my account."

Marray let her go, and stepped back a pace, looking at her and her lingering smile. Then his eyes wandered -- flicking off to the side, past her. He opened his mouth, but the words required another pause first. "May I ask you something?"

"You may. I..." She waved her paw at the papers strewn over his desk. "I can't guarantee I'll explain well."

"You would stop an experiment if it seemed_risky_ to you, yes? I'm not an experimenter. Despite your belief in me, sailors... we tend to be cautious."

"I would stop it, yes."

The stag's arms went snug. Before she could elaborate -- before, indeed, she could tell what was happening -- Jan found herself leaning into his chest. His lowered muzzle pressed to hers: fine, soft fur rubbed the smooth pad of her nose.

Jan's notes on the experiment took the form of a sigh, and a reflexive compulsion to repeat it. He started to pull away, probably to ask about just such a thing... so she chased him, until their lips were locked tightly and the mutt felt every quiet breath from his soft, fluttering nostrils teasing her.

A minute or five later -- Jan was losing her sense of engineering precision, but it was long enough to reduce both of them to soft panting -- she finally let him go. And she stood under his gaze like it was a warm spring shower falling on her, washing away those long days of waiting...

And like a shower, his eyes ran downwards, from her face to the curves of her stocky body, and her hips. His paws followed, pressing down her shirt and coming to a halt at the canine's waist. "Decorum would say..."

"Not ladylike?" she teased.

"Perhaps not particularly."

"And perhaps I'm not, either." She unfastened the top button of her pants, to give him the right idea.

He undid the next. "Ah, don't listen to them. You're quite the lady..." The last button parted, and she felt his strong, warm paws spread the fabric wide to gain access to her soft underwear and the fur it hid.

"Am I?"

The paws walked her back two steps to the captain's bed, and when he gave her a soft shove she didn't fight the urge to lose her balance, falling back and onto the coarse sheets.

Jan closed her eyes as the stag's paws grasped at her, pulling on her trousers until they surrendered, sliding down her stout legs. Her undergarments joined them; she felt the weight hang on her foot for a second or two before it fell away.

"You are," she heard the stag say, huskily, before he pushed her thighs apart. And then she sensed movement: when she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was his antlers.

He was between her legs -- she only had a second to process the information before soft, wet, smooth heat brushed over her lips. He spread her apart gently with his tongue, in slow laps that washed ripples of warm ecstasy through the canine's body.

Marray pressed his paw against her leg and she spread them wider immediately; reflexively. She was completely pliant, she knew -- distantly. Any chance to dwell on it was banished by the return of the stag's tongue as he pressed his muzzle close, filling the soft fur of her thighs with the heat of his breath.

Jan let out a moan, quiet as she dared. The sound became whispered and shaky, but it was enough for the captain: his tongue bathed her lips one last time and then she felt him slipping within her, his groan as he tasted her muffled by her fur.

These were no quick, flicking laps like a canine might've settled on; he worked his tongue surely and firmly into her folds, sliding in and out faster every time. She was whimpering now, squirming at the feeling of him up inside her, dragging his silky tongue against her walls.

The last of any concerns about propriety faded fast beneath the stag's hunger. She hazarded a glance: his handsome head buried between her thighs, big antlers rocking as he devoured her. Their eyes met, and he speared his tongue deep, following it with a firm nudge of his nose that sent a jolt of pleasure straight into the dog's core.

Jan's hips trembled and jerked, but the strong captain's steady hold kept her nice and firm for him and she stopped trying to fight the urge for stillness. One of her paws scrabbled to hang on to the sheets; the other grasped at her chest, groping herself beneath the constraining fabric of her shirt.

Finally, desperately, she forced the buttons open enough to slide her paw through. Shuddering, she squeezed her breast, teasing and pinching the pert nipple -- building shocks of pleasure raced through her until Jan was certain she was going to lose control, going to scream like a broken steam pipe in surrender to him.

He knew it. Felt it. He slipped from within her and she felt his tongue press hot and smooth against her clit, bathing her, heedless of the mutt's arching back and her strained groans. Jan couldn't focus anymore; there was nothing but the feeling of liquid, bubbling pleasure threatening to break free.

She opened her mouth to call out to him and got the first syllable of his name out -- then the rest vanished in a hoarse groan as he plunged two fingers into her up to the knuckle. Furry heat, harder than his tongue, pumped into her swiftly, denying her even the chance to finish pleading for him before it_happened_.

Happened like a boiler giving way; she bucked and howled and all the while he was still thrusting into her, even as her pussy fluttered and clasped around him and her slippery juices spilled over his soaked fingers. Every time she started to come down another wave slammed into her, locking her body rigid and leaving her groaning brokenly.

Jan found her mind again in a thick, hazy, fog -- clearly slowly, only to find the captain's eyes level with hers. His velvety nose was wet, and slightly matted. She thought of a half-dozen things to say, all of them tumbling at once into her muzzle, but the only one that made it out was his name.

She hugged him tightly, using her weight for leverage; when he finally gave in and settled atop her he crushed the breath from her in a grateful sigh. His warmth pinning her, pressing her down snugly, blotted out any self-doubt and replaced it with a soothing, comforting pressure.

Bit by bit, the comfort was joined by the suspicion that he would feel even better without his shirt. She could only reach the topmost one, and this require twisting her arms awkwardly. He tilted his head. "Jan?"

"Off," she murmured to him. "Your shirt -- off."

The mongrel thought of the silly things she might've said -- the way she'd joked about how a good captain could go down however he liked. She might have called removing his shirt another experiment, for example. But they were beyond that, into something deeper and more primitive than words. He didn't question the plaintive way she tugged his shirt open, button by button until it was gone.

Marray lowered himself back to her, chuckling softly with her happy growl. She growled again with the firm warmth of his muscles under her fingers, and the way his big, strong body twisted and wriggled. Beneath the shirt his fur was sleek, and deceptively soft.So handsome -- how can he be so handsome? Even more than I predicted...

Because she'd predicted it in isolation -- Marray posed as though he was a model, not resting atop her, muzzle still damp with her own juices. Chest pressed to hers; hips between her clasping, sturdy thighs. Clothed hips. He was still wearing his trousers. She was too short to do more than push uselessly at his belt. "Jan," the stag muttered, trying to keep his voice down. "Miss, I -- do you really think this is..."

An acceptable risk? More teasing, defensively flippant as though she couldn't risk admitting her need for him. Jan bit it back. "Yes. Whatever you were going to ask." Still, he hesitated. She felt old doubt start to creep into her thoughts -- as if she was back at boarding school again, watching the way her more comely classmates caught the eye of the students from the boy's campus when the two met.

Well-meaning advice about her dress and the way she combed her fur -- or more often forgot to, after a night in the workshop. A whisper that she'd been too in love with her studies and her suppers to consider what a prospective mate might want. Those furtive, secret encounters with one of the other apprentices that had been lovely, until she remembered how tawdry they were supposed to feel.

"Marray?" Her ears were back. "Do you not_want_... this?"

"Want, yes... I want you, but it's been so long... and..."

"Too long, then. For us both."

He started to answer, and swallowed heavily. Then the big stag slid from the bed back to his feet, pulling open his polished belt and undoing the buttons of his crisp trousers. Hesitating one final time, he looked at her, caught her expression, and let the pants fall.

Jan's eyes locked on the result: the captain's thick, tapered endowment, stiff as a spar and glistening dark pink in the cabin's dim light. No knot swelled it, making that obscene canine promise, only slick, smooth flesh over a white-furred sack whose soft fur belied its heft. The dog knew that she either had to speak or give in to the urge to lick her muzzle with the anticipation.

She licked her lips. And she knew that she failed to pass it off as wetting her nose because the stag smiled in relief. He rejoined her on the bed, and for a short, breathless moment she felt his length glide over the fur of her thigh. Then it happened again, while he pressed lower to kiss her nose. Their eyes met.

His rigid tip nestled in and between her lips. She gasped with how hot it felt, that hard unmistakable maleness teasing her, and the way the stag's eyes half-closed at the beckoning wetness his length found. Every muscle tense in the spread-fingered grip of the dog's paws, he slowly pushed inside her.

That same heat sank gently deeper, stretching her, parting soft folds that squeezed him snugly as she lost herself in the delirious sensation of being taken by the handsome captain. He was most of the way in when she felt resistance, and the pressure of his tip prodding her walls. But before either could dwell on it he'd started to pull back, just as tenderly, his hips taking up a slow rhythm between her thighs.

It had been too long by any reckoning, the hour since she'd gone to find him or all the weeks she'd been aboard. Too long, but at least now he was_there_, and hers -- breath growing more and more uneven with every new thrust. Every twitch and tug of the stag's shaft drew more flutters of pleasure from the dog.

It was_so_ good, so unlike any man she'd had before, and she willingly gave in to the raw, gusty moan that escaped her muzzle. Marray's hips revolved with a steady, firm precision drawn straight from one of her diagrams -- except she'd never drawn herself panting on the bed of a ship's cabin, spread beneath the sinewy bulk of the captain as he mated her.

She curled her back to push her hips up and into his fluid movements, moaning yet more sharply at the jolting pleasure of the added forcefulness, until he sucked in his breath and shuddered, slowing. "Marray?" She could scarcely manage to find the breath for it.

"Need a... a moment. It's, ah -- hard, lass. To hold back."

Her gratitude that he felt the need was dwarfed by her aching desire to feel him finally abandon his restraint. "Don't," she panted.

"Ah, lass --"

"Don't," Jan whispered again, squirming gently to shift his half-buried cock back and forth. "Marray, please..."

His eyes shut and he drove his hips the rest of the way forward firmly. She had a second to dwell on the strength his muscles hid before he pulled back and drove into her again, hard enough that her yelp was equal parts shock and pleasure. "Can't -- keep --"

"Give me --all --" He arched and slammed into her again, cutting off the sentence to a choking moan. "All of you," she finished in a rush, and by then he was both doing as she asked and far beyond the ability to obey consciously. The big stag's pace grew swiftly in speed and strength; no sooner had she started to recover from one thrust than the next was forcing her roughly back and into the bed.

No longer protesting, he had nothing but guttural, hoarse groans. She groped at his sides, and then his shoulders -- finally his antlers, grasping for any leverage while the stag bucked and jerked, rutting into her heedlessly. Her own pleasure was bubbling beyond her control, shoved roughly higher with her lover's hammering strokes.

He was so strong -- and now with all his reservation banished he was indeed giving her all of it, every ounce of power in his muscles. Jan's conscious thoughts were starting to fragment -- she tried to speak and heard herself yelping. She felt Marray's tempo going uneven and erratic and by the same instinct her legs had wrapped about him. There was a thudding urgency spreading through her, meeting his own need for release as he reached the shouting, frantic peak of his coupling.

Marray lunged -- speared deep and held there. She processed the sharp twinge as his member claimed her fully -- the abrupt stillness -- his bellowing roar -- and somewhere in there a shouting tumult of bliss clenching her muscles as the energy of his climax pushed her into her own. As she wailed, his whole body jerked; his hilted cock throbbed with another bellow, and a gushing jet of heat splashing so deep inside the dog it might have been bathing her very soul.

Jan whined, and yelped, and pawed helplessly in delight at the stag -- his short, jabbing bucks slamming her into the bed so that as every wave of her pleasure ebbed he was right there forcing her back into it. She was intimately, totally aware of him. Every part. The heavy grunting, and the pulsing spurts flooding her with his essence. And the slowly easing tension in his muscles. And the little twitch of his sack, pushed up against her with the depth his culminating thrusts had sunk him in his need to fill her.

He settled by degrees, tall frame dwarfing the dog and pinning her in soothing comfort. Just as she let herself marvel on the stag's raw strength, she savored his slow recovery -- how his breathing became gently calmer, and he found control of his limbs one at a time.

First his fingers groomed the fur of her side, and then his whole paw. Then he hugged her, if awkwardly in their close touch. And then he pushed himself upright, on bent elbows. "Jan..."

"Darling," she murmured. "Yes, Marray?"

"Did I -- I didn't mean to be so..."

She would, she knew, be somewhat sore in the morning -- and perhaps in the future this would brook some need for greater caution. But now was different. Now she was drenched in happy, honey-sweet warmth. "Mm. Shush, love..."

He nodded, and lowered his head back to the sheets. He whispered a quiet_thank you_ and they both knew that it was not the night he was thanking her for, but everything that had come before it.

And when she hugged him again, and cuddled the stag as long as she could until he began to soften and slip from within her, they both knew, too, it was her own version of the same. A mutual understanding. A pleasant realization. A shared recognition.

Wayward souls...

---

_Jan has turned out to be something more than a friend. Would that the gods would tell me why, lest I lose the charm of her companionship. _

I'm not certain why I find it so hard to leave behind my past. More and more, none of the others seem to care. And soon we will have far more important matters. I only hope that Jan is right, and that I may rise to meet this challenge.

--Personal log of Marray Medastria, captain of the steamship Otiric_, 8 Deyrnsev 913 _

He had not overlooked the affection Jan Keering had for him, but Marray still found some surprise that she turned out to be so enthusiastic about more than experiments.

These, though, were still at the top of the dog's mind. As they kept their westerly course, she made Marray's cabin a regular haunt -- until the walls had been covered with sketches and diagrams that she wanted to talk to him about.

When they tired of this, there were other ways to pass the time -- like Marray, Jan seemed aware that they had to make the most of what they had before the Expedition began in earnest.

None of the crew really knew what to expect; the seas remained largely untroubled, and the weather cooperated as much as it ever did on the windy Caelish. The edge of Arystha Hallegan's map drew ever-nearer, and he tried to prepared himself for what was ahead.

He was asleep, off-shift, when a voice tugged him from uneasy slumber. "Captain?"

Marray sat up quickly. The voice was that of his first officer, Yeren Cavell. "What is it?" His cabin was on the starboard side of the ship; the porthole looked on nothing but empty darkness. Neither of the moons were out.

"You'd... best come see this, sir." The lioness's tone was disconcertingly queer.

"One minute, miss Cavell."

Next to him, Jan Keering grumbled her own way back to wakefulness. "Problem?"

"I don't know." The stag rolled from the bed and began to tug his pants and jacket on. By now he had already gained a sense of the ship's personality -- enough to feel nothing dangerously out of place in the way she rolled or the hum of her engines. By that sound, they were still traveling at a reasonable pace. "I'll have to see."

From his cabin, it was only twenty steps to the bridge. Yeren Cavell met him at the door. "Sir..."

"Is the ship well?"

"The ship is fine, sir. It's only..." She took a deep breath, and opened the hatch.

The fog had lifted, and at once he wished that it had not. Leaving Yeren behind, the stag sprinted outside, to the wing that ran before the bridge and permitted observation across nearly a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

Above, the stars glittered in sharp judgment, cold and glaring. Behind, the ship's wake left an eerie fluorescence in the lightless sea, black all the way to the horizon.

Ahead of them there_was_ no horizon. It ended in roiling clouds that seemed to stretch up for miles, to the furthest extent of the heavens where they kept the clouds at bay. It was lit from within by flickering fire, eerie purple with occasional flashes of red and gold.

"I have the conn," he said, keeping his eyes fixed at...at the End of the Known World. Careful, Marray. "Engines, ahead slow. Starboard helm, ten degrees."

"Aye, sir," someone called back from the wheelhouse. The_Otiric_'s bow began to drift slowly to the left.

"Looking glass." He felt Yeren press one into his paw.

Magnified, the storm was even more magnificent. The red flashes came from whirling sparks that leapt from the churning clouds as though from a blast furnace -- or a volcano. But the golden ribbons that wreathed and spun from the tempest danced in sinuous, unearthly patterns, and the violet lightning that raced along the cloud-tips defied all rational explanation.

Worse still, he could not see the base of the clouds: the storm was still beyond the horizon. By the map, they were more than fifty miles from it still -- yet despite the warmth of the summer night, the stag's stomach had chilled into a tense ball. "Miss Cavell, gather the officers."

Dr. Röhaner would need to be roused soon enough -- but he would wake the rest of his scientists, and they would all want to quarrel and inject their own opinions on the matter. He needed to speak to his crew first, alone. Over the few minutes it took, the stag steeled himself. Rassulf Röhaner had faith in him. Jan Keering had faith in him.Have a little, yourself.

They would be counting on him, after all. When they had all assembled, he directed their attention to the luminous western horizon, now directly off to starboard and parallel to their course. "When you signed on to this expedition, you were told that you would be sailing to the end of the world. That's it. Right there."

They stared. A burst of crackling flame picked out the edges of the distant clouds in threatening purple-white. "Gods preserve us..." Raelyn Maristhea, one of the junior quartermasters, said what they were all thinking.

"Have any of you ever seen a chaos storm up close?" No one spoke. "I didn't think so. Well, I have. They cost me two ships -- in storms far smaller than that one there. Dr. Röhaner, on behalf King Enthar, asked for me because of my experience seeing them up close. That's good enough for him, but it's not good enough for me. That's not why I agreed. I agreed because we're going to prove to be that thing's match."

He explained all that he had seen. Not just the winds and the crashing waves, but the way the water flashed suddenly to steam -- the way the air burst and caught fire. How the waves abruptly reversed themselves, and the torrents of rain fell upwards, towards the sky.

They would be careful, he said, by necessity. They would divine the nature of the storm in order to best it -- the way they had harnessed waterfalls into mills, tamed molten iron into steel, and beat the frontiers further back with each new generation. This, he promised, would be the Iron Kingdom's next conquest.

"Dr. Röhaner tells me that you are the best sailors in the whole of the Iron Kingdom. Miss Calchott tells me that this is the best ship. Those are strong words -- high expectations. And it is_my_ expectation that you will exceed them. The days and weeks to come will test all of us, I have no doubt. But nor do I doubt that we will prevail.

"And you, also -- you also must have no doubts. Your men will be looking to you; the civilians will be looking to you. Back home, all of Aernia will be looking to you. Let us give them something worthy of their attention!"

They were skeptical, still, and with good reason -- but when he asked for questions, his tone suggested he was not inclined to take them, and none objected. Off the steamship's beam, the End of the World blazed.

"Port helm," he ordered.

He kept his eyes fixed, as the ship's bow came around until they were pointed straight for the heart of the tempest -- such as the massive thing had any heart to speak of. Then he ordered the rudder amidships and took a deep breath.

"Steady as she goes!"