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The Tannadorean Expedition pins its hopes to one final attempt to cross the End of the World before winter forces them back to port, where political machinations threaten the project.

And here we are. The last chapter of There Shall Be Wings runs a bit long, but most of the threads get wrapped up, Kio and Daari come to an Understanding, and I hope the ending works well for you guys :) Thanks for reading, and thanks for Spudz for shepherd assistance throughout. Give him a hug if you see him.

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 6: "There Shall Be Wings"

---

I must write this entry in pieces, a few words at a time. Staring at the paper too long makes me ill. The storm has finally hit. The ship is sound, but I am not, an irony that is not lost to me as her creator.

I wonder if we should turn back. Not because I agree with the king's whimpering messenger, but because more productive work would be done away from the storm. All we can do here is gamble, and the time grows short for gambling. -- Diary of Aureli Calchott, 1 Janasev, 913

Shallamer Graw had not been much of a place for a young engineer to learn her trade, but at least it was bucolic. To the east lay a broad curve of the slow Seffish River; to the west, the gentle wooded slopes that rose up to Geovia and the Dargherdon highlands.

On rare occasions, it snowed, but for the most part the worst weather came in the form of spring rainstorms. Even those were untroubling -- Aureli had plenty of memories of going out to play in them, staining her white fur black with mud.

A crack of lightning and the rushing din of thunder pulled her sharply away from Seffishire to the bridge of the Otiric, where a driving rain kept them from seeing more than a thousand feet in any direction. With the door closed, the worst of the wind howling in the lines was muted -- but she could still hear it, and it made her shudder.

"Miss Calchott?" Rassulf had caught the twitch, and was looking at her in concern.

"I'm fine." Mostly. The Otiric's nose dipped, and she had to reach out to stop her notebook from sliding away from the table. "You were saying?"

"We should expect the storm to last for another few days, and possibly longer. Beyond that, once the weather clears... well, we're nearing the end of our opportunities for testing that glider."

Aureli raised an eyebrow. "Maybe that's for the best. We can only try to kill Simrabi so many times, you know." She admired the jackal's persistence, in spite of her injuries and the manifest lack of any real progress in their work.

"All the same. If we can't manage in two weeks, I think we should consider retiring for the year and beginning next spring."

And although she was inclined to agree, hearing the thought as a viable option gave her some pause. From the beginning she had hoped that Dr. Carregan would be willing to approve funding for another year, and even if Dr. Carregan did not Aureli had enough in her own budget to cover it. The discussion, however, would be unpleasant.

There was the cost of the ship, to begin with, and its repairs. And the small matter of having lost Lieutenant Carpathish. And the incident with the Dominion -- not that Rassulf would care, but Carregan Transcontinental Railroad had a very tense relationship with that empire.

Setting aside a few new inventions from Kio Tengaru and the mad scientist, they did not really have much to show for their work. Rescat Carregan was not going to be satisfied with their tables of notes on sea state and barometric conditions at the End of the World.

Rescat made things look easy. It was not for no reason that Aureli admired the vixen, who could simply walk into any room and command the authority of everyone inside. When Rescat ordered something risky, or outrageous, it was always in a tone of voice that brooked no possibility of failure. Beyond this, it suggested that she was more than capable of bearing the risk and the outrage, and considered her instinct and intellect more than a match for either.

Aureli wanted to be like that; for a time, she had been. She'd even convinced herself that she was made of the same stern stuff as the vixen. It was only looking back that the ermine began to see the extent of her self-delusion. Every Carregan employee on the ship, including Lady Jan, sat below her in the company hierarchy and obeyed her as a matter of course. Rassulf didn't often disagree with her, and Sessla-Daarian Toth was too extreme himself to present much of a roadblock.

Haralt Berdanish believed that he was to be taken seriously, and sparring with him had once seemed a telling microcosm of the Railroad's relationship with the Aernian government. But the more she thought about it, the more she decided the milquetoast bear was entirely too easy to dominate. It hadn't just given her a false sense of confidence, but a false sense of legitimacy to the arguments she'd had with him. Who was Haralt? Nobody.

The Otiric groaned and pitched upright, forcing her to reach out and grasp the table to steady herself. "One more winter in Tabisthalia? You think we've done enough here to merit the voyage?"

"I wouldn't think of it as conceding the voyage. Just a change of location. There's a lot we can do," the wolf said. "Between testing these gliders and refitting the Otiric there's easily enough work for six months."

In a perfect world, there was work for even more than that. The storm introduced a new wrinkle in the steamship's design. Its bow sloped upward from the waterline, giving it as long a hull as possible -- which made it more efficient, at high speed.

It also, Aureli was now learning, caused it to plunge right into every wave. The weather kept the decks constantly awash, making the sailors' daily tasks hazardous and Expedition work a complete impossibility. Rassulf held on to the table as well, but he'd yet to show any sign of illness. Either the wolf was more used to severe weather, or he did a better job of hiding it.

"Do you think Haralt will permit the mandate to be renewed?"

"He can be convinced, I believe. You convinced King Enthar before, Miss Calchott, after all -- you or the Railroad."

That, though, had carried the promise of some return on their investment. And if -- when -- Rescat Carregan found out that she had divulged the existence of a wailing stone in the Carregan archives, Aureli would need something to bargain with.

"In any case, I suppose I have to decide what to do. I know you've been working on a few new ideas for the gliders -- Dr. Toth said that, though I have a hard time telling how practical his ideas are before I see them."

Aureli had seen them, and felt that they were not practical in the slightest. None of them were worthy of gambling on. The likely outcome was that if they continued testing, they would kill Simrabi Kaszul. That itself wouldn't displease anyone at the Railroad.

But it would mar the Expedition even more greatly. It was not worth adding that, even if the Railroad could use its influence to convince King Enthar, doing so required sacrificing yet more political capital without the promise of any sort of profit. This was important.

Small-minded critics of the Railroad liked to point out its occasional meddling in foreign affairs -- the Kamir War was a good example. It was certainly true that allowing a private company to seize control of an independent city-state suggested certain questions about royal sovereignty, and that the king should have intervened like his advisors counseled him to.

And it was true that Carregan Transcontinental had been able to convince him otherwise, which had taken quite a bit of negotiation and sacrifice behind the scenes. But in exchange, the Lodestone Meteor -- their premier rail service -- no longer paid extortionate tolls to the Kamiri shah. And they had a convenient watering station. And they had a depot. And a neutral port on the White Sea.

The Tannadorean Expedition did not, in Aureli's assessment, present that kind of opportunity for the Railroad's gain. Any new risk added to the likelihood of failure without a matching payout. If the balance sheet continued to stay negative...

She knew that she was becoming risk-averse, and that Rassulf expected differently from her, but he wouldn't appreciate the explanation and she didn't bother to offer it. "They aren't entirely convincing, I'll be honest, Dr. Röhaner. If we're going to return anyway, we should keep working on the designs rather than aiming for a test."

That increased the likelihood that some idea they turned up might pan out, when they had the resources of the various Carregan foundries and workshops at their disposal. It would also allow her to steer the work, which constantly threatened to escape her oversight.

If Röhaner suspected any such concern on her part, he didn't let on. To his credit, he'd accepted her explanation about the Railroad's history with magical artifacts. His objection was pragmatic, instead.

"Back in your homeland, though, we have no way of seeing how they'd behave here. And while it may be possible to find a compromise or negotiate an agreement, I doubt that we can convince Miss Kaszul to stay if it required accepting your company as a patron."

"Perhaps not."

"Nor can I say that I would blame her."

The stoat sighed. "Perhaps not," she repeated. "But we'd have to have something worth trying. I'm not sure we do."

"Yet. The storm must be getting to you, Miss Calchott; it's not like you to be so reserved." He smiled, and she realized that he was trying to reassure her -- assuming that it was all a matter of her nerves.

"It is more dramatic than I'm accustomed to..."

"Myself, as well. Still -- I trust that you'll manage."

At least one of them did.

---

Another day of bad weather. In the Expedition record I have described the mood of the others as "subdued" but I would say that "dispirited" is more appropriate. They know that we have come so far, and risked so much...

I told Miss Calchott that we should attempt one more test. The teams have returned to work to come up with the proposal for the best option that remains. It is the opinion of the captain that the brief respite we had yesterday was actually the interval between two separate storms, and we have now encountered a second.

It may be another week before we have the chance to launch, at which point our supplies will constrain us to a single attempt, at best. One last chance at a noble end to this endeavor, which has required so much from every soul here.

-- Diary of Dr. Rassulf Keilhaf Röhaner, 3 Janasev 913

The members of the Expedition were all gathered together, around their table, but two of them had clearly taken the center of the stage. Aureli stood, next to Simrabi Kaszul, before a pair of small wooden models on the table. The ermine spoke first. "We have two options."

"One option," Dr. Toth corrected.

"Two," Aureli said again. "But we need to make a decision."

The leftmost model, which Simrabi held up so that Rassulf could see it more closely, looked mostly like the gliders they had been testing from the beginning. Its wings had been curved back like scimitars, but it had the same basic dragonfly shape and the same long body, with another pair of wings for stability.

"Dr. Toth and I have been working on the joint between the wings and the hull," Aureli said, flipping the model on its back. Rassulf cocked his head, but was unable to discern much of a change. "Do you understand?"

"No," the wolf admitted.

"We're combining the wing's main spar with two wire cables, attached... here, and here." Calchott's claw tapped each in turn. "We adapted the design from one of the Railroad's bridges. The cables are held in self-reinforcing tension."

"Will it work?"

Aureli didn't answer. Instead, she looked to Simrabi Kaszul, who responded with a fatalistic shrug. "We do not know, Dr. Röhaner. This adaptation does not change the functioning of the glider. It is balanced, and harmonized."

"What's the load margin, Aureli?" Dr. Toth prompted.

Rassulf immediately saw the way her eyes darkened. Calchott shifted on her feet. "Well..."

"What is it?"

Her sigh was sharp, and telling. "One. And... a bit."

"Ten percent," Toth added. The badger flipped his cigar into his mouth and reached into the pocket of his jacket for a piece of paper. The paperwork was covered in handwriting -- though it was Aureli's, and not his own disorganized scrawl.

They were showing it to him so that Rassulf could validate the equations, but his knowledge of practical engineering had gone well beyond its limits. "Which of you can explain this objectively?"

"There's no 'objective' to it," Toth snorted around the cigar. "We are at the limits of what we can do with iron wire and spruce."

Aureli looked like she wanted to roll her eyes at the badger's dismissiveness, but Rassulf had the sense that she couldn't. She took the note from him gently, and placed it on the table. "These are our estimates for the stress loading on the wings -- considering what we've seen so far, and with some extrapolations from the report on the, ah... the Carpathish Incident. And this is my best guess as to what the wing spar will bear with the additional supports."

"They're very close," Rassulf realized.

"It should hold."

Sessla-Daarian snorted again. "Come on, Railroad-girl. Would you send a train over a bridge with that margin?"

"No."

"Well, then."

On the other hand, Rassulf knew Toth well enough to intuit that the badger would not have protested unless he had a better idea. "Then the other option is?"

As was usual, the wolf did not know at first what he was looking at. The other model looked nothing at all like a dragonfly. In form it resembled the strange offspring of a bumblebee and a dart.

The rounded body was short and bulbous. It had wings -- but only a single pair. And rather than long, elegant ellipses, they had been fashioned with deeply raked triangles, each ending in a sharp, sharklike tailfin. It looked as nothing the wolf had ever seen.

That made its likely source obvious. "Your design, Dr. Toth?"

He gestured with his cigar to the two women on the other side of the table. "Aureli and the jackal, Rassulf. You can't blame me for this one."

"Miss Calchott had the first idea. We were thinking about birds -- realizing that I was mistaken to pattern my glider after a soaring bird. They ride on air currents. My glider does not. It has its own power."

"Like a falcon," the stoat continued. "They have short wings."

"But then she thought of something else."

"An arrow." When Aureli had their attention, she produced a fresh piece of paper and started to sketch one in the neat, practiced strokes of an engineer. "Think of how an arrow is fletched -- not with straight feathers."

She drew the fletching as a simple triangle, but Rassulf felt that he understood the basic idea. "Because?"

"When you move through the air, a resistive force is generated. That force, I believe, is proportional to the forward edge of the wing. When a falcon dives, it draws its wings in close. We see this with the gliders that Miss Kaszul has tested. When they accelerate, the air pulls the wings back -- along the entire forward surface. This drags them back. The dragging force is born most strongly on the wing joints."

"They break," Dr. Toth added. "A triangular wing, like an arrow's fletching, reduces the dragging force for a given area. It also increases the contact between the body of the glider and the wing, which adds more structural support."

Rassulf's people hadn't used arrows for many years, but the explanation was intuitive and he nodded. "So this is the answer."

"Not quite." Simrabi Kaszul had been quiet; now, she had put on her characteristic thin smile. "There is no single answer, Dr. Röhaner. This answer comes with many more questions of its own."

"Such as?"

"A wing should exist in sympathetic harmony with the air that flows around it. Miss Calchott is right: shortening the wing exposes it to less air. But less air means less wind bearing the craft aloft. It is nowhere near as efficient."

Aureli summed up the problem: "It would need to travel faster -- it's not stable at low speeds. That means a faster launch, with less margin for error. Arrows fly straight -- but they don't glide well. And we shift the strain burden somewhere else. To go faster, Miss Kaszul's divining resonators must work harder. That stresses where they meet the hull."

"I must add that at such speeds, I am not comfortable both helming the glider and performing your research. We would need a second person."

A second person, who would need to be willing to risk their lives on such a thing. Fortunately he doubted that this part would pose any difficulty -- they had their share of risk-taking volunteers, even now. "Is that reflected in the model I'm looking at?"

Kaszul nodded.

Rassulf studied the two craft, and suppressed a sigh. The choice troubled him -- between a proven design and something born from wild daydreams. The proven design had failed, and yet...

A heavy swell rolled the Otiric, and the wooden models and started to slide from the table. Silently, Aureli Calchott stopped them. She was looking at him expectantly. They all were.

"We have one more chance," the wolf began. "One. I appreciate your adventurous spirits, but with one opportunity for a launch left... this is..."

"A gamble," Toth offered.

"More than that."

It would risk everything. Rassulf could not count on a safe ending if the launch failed -- then there would be two dead, and absolutely no path forward no matter how long they spent in Tabisthalia contemplating a return to the End of the World.

"A completely new design. A completely new theory you three have invented. You've looked at our mistakes and decided the best way forward is to double all of them..."

A quiet chuckle drew his glance to Sessla-Daarian Toth. "Ain't the half of it, Rassulf."

"Can it be done?"

He looked around at the others' faces, hoping for an answer. They were not thinking no. Nor were they thinking yes. He saw in their eyes something else: tell us we can. Believe it.

They needed that much strength from him, at least. "Then 'yes.'" More than that. Rassulf straightened himself up, and called the image of his father to mind. "We're going to do this."

From the corner of his eye he saw Aureli's gentle nod of agreement.

And he turned to look at her. "No, Miss Calchott. I want to be clear -- amongst all of us. We are not doing this because it's our last chance -- although it is. We are not doing it because it is the best of poor options. You're better than that -- all of you.

"We've forgotten that. In the setbacks, and in the hardships -- in everything we've seen. We knew this would not be easy. I did not propose to cross the End of the World because I thought it would be a comfortable journey. It is a monumental task, and arduous -- and only we are up to it.

"Why else would we be here? From the deserts, and the valleys, and the tallest mountains. From... from farms and factories to the courts of your royal palace. Think of that! If I were a mystic, I'd prostrate myself to the divine providence that has gathered such souls here. But I'm not.

"My people are soldiers. My father was a soldier. I never thought of myself this way, but so am I. In a sense, the End of the World is our battle, and I can think of no better army to claim victory. I say to you again that we must be perfectly committed. This is not a time for resignation or doubt.

"We have accomplished in one summer more than many people have gained in a lifetime. This ship is a masterpiece like men have not seen since the World Before. Your work, Miss Tengaru -- and yours, Dr. Toth -- you craft things as a matter of course that lesser beings would weep even to contemplate. This is one more."

He took the model from Aureli, turning it over in his paw. "We are going to do this. Not to try, not to hope. When the clouds break, and the seas calm, we are going to fly. That is an order. Do I make myself clear?"

Aureli Calchott glanced over the room, and straightened herself. "Of course, Dr. Röhaner."

"Miss Tengaru? Dr. Toth."

"You do," Kio said. Quietly, but he hoped this was simply her way.

"Not about to disobey a direct order, Rassulf," Sessla-Daarian added with a grin. "Let's get started."

"Lord Erdurin."

The bear attended their meetings as a matter of formality; Rassulf wasn't expecting more than a curt reminder of this fact. "You speak as though you propose to venture where no man has gone before, Dr. Röhaner. We have more than done so already."

"Perhaps."

"We have. You have. But as the King's representative..."

"What?"

Haralt folded his paws together, and said nothing at first. They waited. The Otiric settled into another slow roll, and Rassulf observed for the first time how still the bear remained.

The others were compelled to shift their stance, or to find a handhold. Haralt, alone among the non-sailors, kept his formal, stoic pose.

"I've judged His Majesty's silence as tacit agreement to charting a safe course, rather than this one. But in a world of chaos storms and wailing stones, what does that mean? I am to voice the King's prerogative, which... must include my judgment. You understand that, Dr. Röhaner."

Rassulf cocked his head. "Yes. But I don't follow."

"We hang from a precipice. The weight of everything you've committed us to is born by a chain of this Expedition's crafting. It would not have been my choice. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I won't have that link be me."

Everyone was staring at the bear -- Rassulf included. He gathered his wits swiftly. "Thank you, Lord Erdurin. For that support."

"Long time coming, Haralt. Thought you'd never --"

"Don't mistake me, Dr. Toth," Haralt swiveled his head crisply to face the badger, bristling at the familiarity of the address. "Despite my assent, and certainly despite Dr. Röhaner's inspirational words, I don't doubt you have much to overcome. Perhaps that should be your focus."

Rassulf suppressed his shock to try and establish control of the situation again. "Indeed. You hinted at that, Dr. Toth?"

The badger faced down an icy stare from Haralt Berdanish for a handful of tense seconds before taking the offered opportunity to retreat. He stubbed out his cigar, and nodded. "Aureli will agree. I'm concerned about the hull. Wood likely won't cut it."

"Metal?"

"Iron is too heavy," Calchott said. "We could make the frame thinner, but iron has an unhappy tendency to bend. Even good bridge iron. Now, Dr. Toth is about to tell you that we could reduce the bending impulse by hollowing the iron out..."

"For once, no. She's right, Rassulf. It's not really strong enough for that. This is where it would be nice to have the Railroad's scientists -- and their money. The experimental foundry has been working on iron alloys that might be more suitable."

"Steel?"

Aureli nodded. "The new edition of Tetrusci's handbook has a few candidates. Unfortunately, steel is expensive, and we're not in a railworks. We might try something at Port Tarmett, but... well... I have my doubts."

"But steel is mostly iron," Kio spoke up. "You have plenty of that. And the ship's furnace."

The snow leopardess interrupted so rarely that Rassulf and Aureli were both caught off-guard. "Yes, at a high level," the ermine stammered. "But it isn't that simple. It must be produced under exacting ratios. The recipes are highly complex."

"I know."

"You can't just... drop in some lampblack and expect to get anything useful."

The feline's thick tail curled and swayed, adding a bit of animation to her amused smile. "Are you lecturing a daughter of the mountains on metallurgy, Miss Calchott?"

That was enough to give Aureli pause. "No, but our furnace isn't designed for it. It won't sustain the temperatures, or the -- or -- have you seen the furnace at the Experimental Foundry? They say it's got half a mile of pipes just to control the atmosphere. We even purchased some of -- some of your peoples' clockwork to manage it."

"Then you do lecture."

"Maybe your kind could do it, Miss Tengaru," the ermine said. "But as advanced as the Otiric is..."

Kio's smile grew. "I am of my kind, you know. It could be done."

"How?"

"Your... exacting recipes are ways of making certain that the metal cools in a pattern of order instead of chaos. Miss Kaszul showed me that. And I... well if we know anything, it is metalworking. I think I could guide that process -- without complicated machinery. Here."

"With magic, you mean."

"Yes, Daarji."

"I thought only fools and mad badgers used thaumaturgy to enhance engineering."

The snow leopardess flipped her tail in a heavy, swirling dance. "I did not say that you could, Dr. Toth. I said that I could."

"Oh, can you, now, spotty one?"

"Watch me."

---

The tapestry of the Berdanish clan has a long history, and I have told myself since my adolescence that I accepted I would not be a part of it. That is for my father, and for Alfri, and for Alfri's son. Their battles are not my own. I was not raised for a life of battles.

But now I have found myself one. I know that I have behaved foolishly. Not just with that [several words are scratched out] woman, but also with Dr. Röhaner, who is a foreigner but a good man anyway. The Expedition may be important to us.

I do not know. His Majesty should have sent someone He could rely on. Instead He sent me. It is some grand prank of the gods, and I am tired of playing their games as much as I am tired of playing my own. -- Diary of Haralt Berdanish, 15th Earl Erdurin, 7 Janasev 913

Haralt looked at the game before him, and moved one of the pieces with the sort of listlessness that defined the gesture's utter irrelevance. He moved another, paying only perfunctory attention.

He was not a strategist: it had never been expected of him. Reid's Keep was the pastime of would-be margraves and generals, and though like all cultured youth he'd been taught the rules, nobody ever imagined it would become a passion.

A year earlier, just after being assigned to the Expedition, Haralt had offered Rassulf Röhaner a game. The wolf professed not to know the rules -- Haralt still remembered his pointed question about the role of sacrificial pikemen -- but he'd still beaten Haralt handily.

They said that military strategy ran in an Ellagdran's blood, and their pups learned to read a battle map before they learned to read the alphabet. _What runs in my blood? _

Alone in his room, Haralt gave the board a dark smile.

Nothing. The only thing that runs in my blood is my name. And what's that? The name of some pathetic pretender. The pieces are not mine -- they're my father's. The rules are not mine. The desire is not mine. And yet here I am, playing against myself.

That was a sure way to lose.

Since the last visit to Port Tarmett he had been thinking. At first the thoughts were entirely dark. Bitter. He thought of what he had done, and he hated himself for every moment of it. The act, the weakness -- worst of all the gratification.

He could disclose his turmoil to no-one. They would not understand, let alone sympathize. The Tannadorean Expedition was full of souls who had convinced themselves that they were on a path of greater importance than whatever wound through mere mortal affairs.

Which was, he finally appreciated, why they ignored him. Why, since the very beginning, his station as Royal Liaison had been so meaningless. All along, he had been playing that game against himself, too.

He set the pieces back to their starting position, and abandoned the board for another walk. By necessity it was confined to the Otiric's inner corridors; four days in, the new storm lashing the survey ship seemed to be as strong as ever.

They said it would last for at least a few more days. It was fine; the Expedition was still making progress, which accorded with his previous dispatch. In the end, he'd told King Enthar that he would support the King's name by lending his help to a smooth denouement.

So what if it shocked the others?

He nodded to Aureli when she entered the room, but said nothing. It came as a mild surprise when the ermine joined him at the window, rather than leaving. "Is it any lighter, do you think?"

"Perhaps. I'm by no means a fortune-teller of such things."

"Nor I."

Again, when she could simply have departed, Aureli stayed. A minute of contemplative silence later, she went for the door. And there, she dropped the bolt to lock it shut. "Mr. Berdanish. A word."

"Yes?"

She spread her fingers out questioningly, with the tips curled to inadvertently reveal her claws. "What were you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your little about-face. You've been fighting us every damned step of the way. All I've heard is you questioning this Expedition -- suddenly everything is different?"

"It's as simple as I said, Miss Calchott. It does not befit the King to be seen as the weakest part of a mission with a royal mandate. I would not do His Majesty well if that was the royal legacy. That doesn't mean I approve."

"You don't?"

"I haven't been given reason to."

Aureli frowned. "I suppose as long as you stay out of the way..."

Haralt caught himself before a reflexive defense left his muzzle. And then, in the suppression of that reflex, it came to him. "That is, naturally, what you've wanted all along, Miss Calchott. What you have always seen me as -- you and your kind. You're accustomed to thinking of us as obstacles."

"When you act like it, yes."

The bear's self-identification as the Royal Liaison, and the voice of the King's prerogative, was practically a mantra. And yet despite that, he realized he had taken their dismissal as a personal affront.

It was not. The insults were just one more dimension of the same haughty self-importance the Railroad considered its right. Many of the easterners did -- the factory-owners and bankers and corporate presidents insisting that any opposition amounted to nothing but stubbornness.

"Have you not dwelled for one moment, Miss Calchott, on what you presume to do? Or why I question it? Anyone in the Meteor Islands can tell you what happens to those souls who have challenged the End of the World. Our losses are light -- but you saw it destroy a Dominion ship that I'm sure they claimed was every bit as advanced as this one."

"That doesn't mean we can't do it."

"Which tells me what, Miss Calchott -- that it is impossible? I haven't said it was. All things are possible. But my caution is not unfounded. We've seen what it can do. We've seen all our attempts amount to failure."

She straightened tensely. "You heard Dr. Röhaner. That doesn't mean we give --"

"No. It doesn't. I said that, too." For once in his life Haralt listened to his words growing clipped and felt the anger had a worthwhile direction. "But it does not mean that I will stay out of your way simply because it's owed to you."

"That's a strange way of putting it, Mr. Berdanish."

"Merely the way you think, Miss Calchott. All you Carregans believe there's no difference between the possible and permissible. I know that. Declare war on the Kamiri, or take it upon yourselves to 'pacify' the frontiers -- or your little expedition in Dhamishaya. Oh, yes, you and your glorious Railroad -- civilization, one battalion of mercenaries at a time."

Aureli had begun to bristle, and her curling lip showed the ermine's razor teeth. "The Railroad has done more to advance the Iron Kingdom than a hundred damned lords."

"Has it?" he snapped; her teeth did not unnerve him. "To advance the Iron Kingdom, or to advance you self-proclaimed iron kings? What do the coal miners think about that? What do the villagers you massacred in the desert say?"

"They --"

"They were in your way. Like I am. And you didn't ask. You didn't ask because you never have. You assume that if you can take something, it's not worth questioning if you should. That bloody wailing stone -- you knew they existed! Your Railroad sought one out and put it to use because you could."

At this last example, Aureli's expression darkened -- but her reply was cold, and angry. "And look what we've accomplished."

"You and all your merchant colleagues, chasing after every last half-crown like starved rats? Do you mean those enlightened, industrialized beggars in Marrahurst and Stanlira when you've accomplished taking their arm off in a factory incident? Or did you mean the lovely pall of soot you've accomplished all over the marble columns in Arrengate? Tell me, who shall you accomplish next?"

It was not that he didn't know the same narrative echoed by every easterner with a well-lined purse. That the industrialists were saving Aernia from itself; that they were its true source of vitality and energy. That they alone held the key to the future.

And it wasn't that he didn't know the value of their inventions. The electrical telegraph allowed nearly instantaneous communication all the way from one end of the Kingdom to another, and that was a miracle. Automated looms had finally given Aernia its own textiles. Steam engines far outpowered watermills.

"And you? What have the Earls of Erdurin done?"

He answered her question with one of his own. "What year is it?"

"913. Why?"

"Nine hundred years since Tabisthalia was founded. For nine centuries the Lodestone Sovereign has kept the peace in the west. The Iron Kingdom was a beacon of order for half a century before any Medastria dreamed of any steam engine. And those old ways you so quickly, so self-servingly dismiss? You'd be nothing without them."

"So you say."

"I do. When my great-grandfather opened the granaries during the Springless Years, he wasn't feeding those people because it was profitable to do so. He knew that as their steward, their loyalty exacted a debt of responsibility. I have a responsibility to my country, Miss Calchott. Where does your responsibility lie? Where does Carregan's?"

She said nothing.

"Some day it will come to battle -- a real battle, not a frontier uprising. Your company will demand something that even the King cannot countenance, and when he denies you, your president will challenge him."

"No dynasty lasts forever, Mr. Berdanish," was her cold reply.

"Before you make that boast, consider the last review of those great armies. Your king, and his princes, will ask loyal men to take up arms in the defense of an order that has endured a millennium. And you will ask your Iron Corps to oppose them, in defense of their paychecks, and your clinical insistence that sovereignty is measured only in gold."

"And you're afraid of what would happen. The Iron Corps is blooded. The Royal Army hasn't fought more than -- well -- more than a frontier uprising in centuries. You're worried."

"Because you might return to that wailing stone, you bold knights of progress and industry? No."

"You are."

The bear was finding it easier and easier to hold his ground. "I am," he admitted. "But not because of that. The Empire and the King's law has endured nine hundred and thirteen years. And in that law is the foundation of society, upon which your Iron Corps is built and which you presume to savage."

"In place of something better. If, and when, it comes to that."

"Yes. There is my worry. King Enthar's line is blessed by the gods of the Coral Valley, Miss Calchott. There is no greater divine authority that would draw me to another sovereign, nor to another law. When it is gone, what happens when a race of mercenaries realizes that a paymaster implies a treasury -- and that as long as you're removing middlemen, the cost of one more is only a rounding error?"

Aureli said nothing. The ship rose, and twisted through another swell; she took a step to keep her balance, but didn't open her mouth.

"For now, though, I shall stay out of your way. As you asked."

Then he left, closing the door behind him. They did not speak over the next few days, at the meetings that Dr. Röhaner convened to measure the progress of the work on the new glider. Haralt felt both that his point had been made, and that it was one worth standing behind. He did not see the need to apologize.

And when he stepped out onto the deck to find sunlight greeting him at last, he felt... _happy? Are you hopeful that they might yet manage something? _

He was. Sailors were taking advantage of the clear weather -- there were only scattered clouds, and none of them looked ominous -- to make up for lost time, tidying the decks of the Otiric and repairing the machinery that had taken the brunt of the storm.

Several hours later, he was still relatively hopeful when Rassulf Röhaner summoned him to the bridge. Aureli Calchott and Marray Medastria were also present. Medastria spoke first. "We've spotted something, on the horizon. A ship."

"The Dominion?"

"No, my lord. It flies the ensign of the Royal Navy."

Dr. Röhaner agreed to adjust the Otiric's course for a rendezvous; Haralt waited along with him -- as they had waited for the Bachbat Vaz, already an eternity in Haralt's past.

His Majesty's Ship the Palisen, though, was no Bachbat Vaz: a slim, elegant sloop-of-war, built for speed and graceful as a dolphin, she drew smoothly alongside, and a boat slipped into the water to cross the remaining distance.

"I present," a sailor announced crisply as the passengers mounted the Otiric's ladder, "Lieutenant Commander Temal Laith, HMS Palisen."

"I am Rassulf Röhaner. This is Marray Medastria, our captain, and Haralt, Lord Erdurin."

"I'm a civilian," Medastria said, with some evident discomfort at the salute that Laith raised. "Welcome to the Otiric. I hope the storm was not much trouble."

Commander Laith, a mixed-breed dog, shrugged with a mixed-breed's lack of concern. "We've had worse, and the Palisen has a good crew. We were picked specifically for this assignment."

"Assignment?" Dr. Röhaner asked.

Laith turned from him to face Haralt. "My Lord, we sailed from Tabisthalia on direct orders from the Admiralty. I myself do not know them."

A second figure finished clambering up the ladder: a lion, wearing on his breast an emblem Haralt knew quite well. It formed King Enthar's coat of arms; the jewels in its tiny crown had been sanctified by royal priests.

"Dævran, Lord Curesa," Laith finished. "He is to speak to you at once."

"In private." The lion's intonation was too deep, and the sentence too short, to pick up much of an accent.

Rassulf looked at Haralt for an answer the bear was unable to provide. "Ah. Very well," Röhaner said. "Perhaps, in the meanwhile, we can show you around?"

Commander Laith agreed excitedly, leaving Haralt to walk with the newcomer towards the superstructure of the ship. "Rather ghastly, isn't it?" Dævran said.

"It is quite bizarre."

"Do not be inclined to restrain thy thoughts on my account, Lord Erdurin. Ghastly," the lion repeated. His eyes flicked about as they walked -- taking it in, and judging.

Haralt opened the door to his stateroom, and followed the other man inside. "A drink?" he asked.

"Please."

Haralt retrieved a bottle of Canleyshire whiskey, and poured two glasses. "To the Iron Kingdom," he offered.

The man nodded, and raised his glass. "To the Iron Kingdom. And to the Lodestone Sovereign."

"Indeed." They sat, still sizing one another up. "The sailing folk aren't good for introductions. I know of thee already, Lord Erdurin, and thy lineage. As for myself, I am Dævran var-Ildirn, Sixth Viscount Curesa and son of Conto, the Earl of Eldirnech."

Curt as the summary was, it told Haralt plenty. It told him that they were westerners; Eldirnech Riding lay in County Durnland. They would be allied to the Arkenprince of Barland, one of the five members of the Old Council.

Since he did not know who Conto was, it also told him that the family was fairly minor. He had to wonder what would possess the Admiralty to dispatch a messenger of such little import. Did they consider him... expendable?

As I was? "What brings you so far west, Lord Curesa?"

"Orders from the King, consequent to thy dispatches, Lord Erdurin. His counsel it is, that this Expedition be terminated at once. Better for it to end now, than to suffer more destruction at His Majesty's word."

Haralt did not allow his surprise to show. "I have been advising that since before our departure. But my previous two dispatches indicated that the charter should be allowed to expire naturally -- we'll return to Tabisthalia before the winter in any event."

"Whatever the Ellagdran's intentions be, we shall not tarry further."

Dævran had the sort of stilted, affected speech that many westerners adopted to mask their native dialect. On balance Haralt would have preferred the accent. "Once again -- my previous dispatches clarified that the Expedition has made progress and should be allowed to continue."

"Yet thy king has spoken, Lord Erdurin. And surely thou hath not suffered at such length, that suffering is thy only respite -- recall is not censure, but cause for celebration." To convey this, he finished his glass of whiskey.

Haralt poured another. It was true that ending the Expedition had been his goal -- back then. "And of the last dispatch?"

"It had not, in all likelihood, enjoyed yet the chance to be perused; our king is a busy man, and His Majesty's time is limited. Doubtful it is, that much would change on its receipt."

"He's brought you as a messenger, though? Not as his ambassador?"

"Indeed, Lord Erdurin."

"It's my advice, then, that we continue as ordered. There's one more test to be carried out, and then we can return -- in the coming days, not weeks. There's no point in skipping the last test."

The lion raised his head from the glass, slightly confused. "But there is. For the King hath ordered it, and what His Majesty orders is law by any reckoning, written in word or conveyed by his subjects."

"His counsel, you said. But I am His Majesty's liaison, and I am closer to this project than he. I say we wait."

"Commander Laith will not be pleased."

"Then you won't tell him. You're to say nothing, not until after the test. Then we can return."

Haralt did not blame the lion for being taken aback; the tone of the Royal Liaison's dispatches didn't give much reason to expect anything but support in bringing the Expedition to a halt. "But I must say something. It was His Majesty's will..."

"You've told me. I've said we'll carry on."

"Then I must to the Ellagdran speak, with haste and with directness. For even if thou hast permitted thy head to wander, no decent var-Ildirn would see his own head lost on such account."

Haralt shook his head, wandering or no. "You'll stay silent, Lord Curesa."

"I'll do no such thing!"

He got up, and went for the door as the lion continued grumbling his protests. By the time he had it open, and was looking about for anyone else aboard, Curesa was behind him.

One of the sailors, passing by, came to a halt. "Ah -- sir?"

The sailor was a bear, like Haralt, though taller. "May I trouble you? What's your name?"

"Arner, my lord. Stathley Arner."

"Petty officer, by your uniform?" Haralt asked.

"Er. Yes, my lord."

"Mr. Arner, this is Lord Curesa."

"Aye." The other bear nodded. "I know him. From Ban Corrish."

"Curesa," Dævran corrected.

Must be Ban Corrish's name in Old High Aernian. Ban Corrish was a cape on the western coast; Haralt at least now knew where the man's home was. "I suppose either works. In the event, Mr. Arner, Lord Curesa has suffered some on his journey westward. Find him a cabin, please. And ensure he remains there until he's recovered. I suspect it shall take until tomorrow morning."

"Nonsense! Arner, now, if thou know Curesa Ven, surely thou know also Lord Eldirnech. What displeasure would thou injure his son with, sailor?"

"I know Ildra'ch, aye, an' more than that I know its lord and what he's known for. I'm from Sidley, my lord."

"Good. Then escort me to Dr. Röhaner, at once."

Haralt raised his paw, gently but sternly, to summon Arner's attention back to him. "Lord Curesa believes that the King wishes us to stop work. As His Majesty's liaison, I can assure you that this was not my recommendation -- so Lord Curesa is a bit confused. As I said, it must be the weather. I suppose you are not all sailors, in Durnland."

"No, my lord." Arner said it carefully, looking between the two nobles. "But..."

"Lord Eldirnech will be extremely displeased if he hears of thy treason, Stathley."

"Beg pardon, my lord, but he can't do worse to me than he did Ildra'ch last storm season. And he has no claim on the Royal Navy."

"And of course, Mr. Arner, you're not the type to be swayed by threats." Haralt straightened himself, and looked as much of a bear as he could. "Orders, on the other hand, are quite different. The Royal Navy serves the King. As Royal Liaison, in His Majesty's stead, I am ordering you to take Lord Curesa to a cabin and keep him there."

"Now, just you --"

Haralt raised his paw again, this time more sharply, and for some reason it was enough to bring the lion to a halt. "As a member of the Expedition you joined, I note that we need to delay only long enough to carry out the next test. If it succeeds, we return in triumph. If not, it's all the same."

"Which makes ending it now safer for all of us," Dævran pointed out. "For thyself as well, Stathley."

Arner was unimpressed. "You think I need things safe, my lord?"

Haralt hid his smile. "If you did, you wouldn't be here. Neither would I. The Kingdom needs men like that. Perhaps you can discuss Durner politics with Mr. Arner, Lord Curesa?"

"Mr. Arner, now, now -- hold on," Dævran stammered. "Thou cannot merely obey such... er..." Catching Stathley's look, he cut himself off.

"You'll come with me, my lord," the petty officer said.

This had bought precious little time, indeed. Haralt went forward, and found Rassulf Röhaner on the bridge, watching from a distance as Marray Medastrian explained something or another to Commander Laith. He heard mention of the Otiric's top speed. And directly into the wind, no less.

It was their fashion, after all. Rassulf's ears twitched at the sound of Haralt's footsteps; he stepped back to meet the bear. "Lord Erdurin?"

"That was a messenger from the King."

The wolf noticed his tone immediately. "Something's changed."

"Indeed. You need to launch tomorrow morning."

"Why?"

"Tomorrow morning, the favor I extracted will have expired, and Lord Curesa will be free to leave his cabin and tell you what he told me about the King's mandate."

"Which is?"

"I don't entirely remember. But before someone does, you should launch."

"I'm afraid we're not... quite ready, my lord... close, but not ready."

Haralt nodded. "Fine. What can I do to help?"

---

I should have known that letting the others trust in my abilities would lead back to some flying contraption. If it's possible for some culture to be the exact opposite of a proper mountain clan, these are they -- they will never leave the heavens in peace.

Yet they have trusted me, and for the first time, almost, I think I can be the mage they feel that I am. We labor as one, towards some common goal. Everyone has been hard at work -- even that bear, the Aernian prince or however he is called. Somehow we have finished.

But I do not have the first idea what we have finished! _ _-- Memory-stone of Kio Tengaru, 18th day of 6th chase, year 577

Kio looked at the bizarre machine in the workshop knowing that she would not see it as the others did. Simrabi Kaszul still called it a glider, but even Kio could tell that it would never glide anywhere.

It was a child of compromise, and beautiful only to its parents.

In form, it resembled an overturned beetle. Its smooth underside was made of thin wooden sheets layered over the metal framework beneath. Kaszul asked for it to be watertight.

Back on the continent, safe and sound, thaumaturgy could have been used for this purpose: here, it was out of the question. Kio had done her best to teach them a mountain dweller's careful, calm precision -- in the end she'd done most of it herself. The wood was joined together so finely that not a single seam was visible.

Her people would have appreciated the work, although not the end to which it was being applied. It did not look like anything that would ever have come from Eskarada, her mountain home. Nobody had bothered to lacquer it and paint protective runes along its sides. Nobody had inlaid precious stones in the careful patterns that distracted the eye of any god seeing it so they would not intervene.

Nobody would ever describe it as delicate.

The hull curved up to a prow shaped something like a squashed acorn, symmetric from top to bottom and side to side but otherwise unlike any conveyance intended for the use of sane people. The smooth wood ended, revealing its metal skeleton.

Between the ribs they'd fitted panes of glass, which took sacrificing some of the Otiric's windows. These, too, were cut and fitted to microscopic precision. As a mage and not a craftsman, it was more than enough for Kio to take great pride in the result.

From the outside, at least.

"Dr. Toth said he'll fly with Miss Kaszul," Rassulf told her, seeing that she was looking inside the machine. "I think he understands all this mess?"

"Perhaps he believes so. But I should be the one to go, Dr. Röhaner. Miss Kaszul should have someone who knows thaumaturgy."

"Maybe." The wolf joined her, peering at the two seats within. "But I return to what I said. Do you understand this?"

It was patently obvious where Otonichi or Kamiri work ended and Aernian work began. Simrabi Kaszul fitted two harmonizing mechanisms, built entirely on her own. No Otonichi would have made the flawless gold and silver rings, or cut the crystals that adorned them -- but they might, at least, comprehend it.

The glider's short, sharp wings twisted to control its flight path. They had been linked to a pair of tillers mounted before the leftmost seat in the glider's bridge -- or so she had been told. The mechanism consisted of a monstrous assortment of gears and metal struts and wire.

More metal -- what looked like miles and miles of copper pipes and valves -- fed a confusing array of gauges and dials welded haphazardly to the inside of the framework, wherever there was room. She recognized a compass; the rest was beyond her.

Daari said that he understood. It was hard for her to know if this was true. And, if not, whether he was pretending or merely misguided. Leaving Dr. Röhaner to make his own final survey of the craft, she left to pay a visit to the badger's cabin.

"Hey, spotty one." She was not surprised, given the lateness of the hour, that he'd traded his normal attire for nightclothes; nor was she surprised that he hadn't felt the need to make himself more presentable.

Behind him lay a desk buried under open books and loose papers. "You're still working?"

Toth grunted, then stepped back from the door to let her in. "Given what's asked of me tomorrow? I rather have to."

"I told Dr. Röhaner that I think I should be the one to accompany Miss Kaszul."

"Unlikely." He dropped back into his chair, looking over the cluttered desk and giving a curt sigh. "I appreciate the offer, though."

"You don't know how the End of the World behaves -- a-and you don't know charmcraft like I do, Daarji. It's not safe."

"Nobody said it was. But that part will be Simrabi's job. Somebody needs to make sure the machine itself keeps working. That..." he waved his paw at the paperwork in what amounted to a curse.

"What is this, anyway?"

"Tables." The badger held one up for her -- dozens of rows of numbers in neat and unintelligible columns. "On this one, I've been working out what we know of pressure curves. If the first gauge reads... twenty-four, say, and the seconds reads..." His claw trailed down the second column.

"Twenty-four what?"

"Inches. If the second is here, then I can hold up a straight edge and see that it points to a value on this column over here. One hundred and twenty knots."

"It can go that fast?"

He snorted. "Who knows? It has to, though. Ah..." He set the paper down and started shuffling through the others, becoming more and more agitated until at last he found what he was looking for. "Based on our estimate, we need to sustain... oh, pick a number. How tall is your mountain?"

"The summit? The summit of Eskarada is... eighteen thousand feet? Nobody goes there, though."

"Sure. At eighteen thousand feet, we should need... well, of course it depends. Hm -- this chart? No." He picked the paper up, crumpled it, and tossed it aside. "Did a new one. Uh, yes. This chart, that tells us how to correct the pressure gauge against the real altitude. Once we have our real altitude, we need the temperature for our adjusted pressure... but if everything is normal, we should need to sustain at least twice that speed for the wings to be effective. Two hundred and fifty knots. Go on, spotty one. Say it."

"Madness?"

"Madness. And it's all conjecture." He looked up at her, then grinned. "Won't it be fun? Better yet, Simrabi can't tell me how quickly her little... charmed... meticulous shepherds can work. That's part of the flight plan."

"What is?"

"We won't know until after we're aloft whether the whole thing is even possible. It's lovely -- even I think it's lovely. Her best-case scenario was... this one." She recognized a few numbers, but his calculations consumed them quickly in a mess of diagrams and symbols not entirely unlike the untidy piping on the glider's bridge.

"At worst, you won't be able to fly at all."

"No."

"Then you shouldn't," she told him. The thought of how easily he dismissed the risk bothered her -- all the more because the glider existed at all only because of her intervention. "Too many things could go wrong, and..."

"And it should be you, instead?"

"Yes."

"Well. Alright, Kio. I'm close enough to done with this that I suppose I can spare the time for one final argument." He stood, turning to face her. "So. This might be our last chance. Make it count."

"Don't say that."

Getting to his feet somehow made him seem even shorter. Kio bested him by several inches -- it was his bluster, a giant's worth of energy packed into his stout frame, that kept most people from noticing. "Say what?" he demanded.

"That it's the last one. You shouldn't joke about that..."

"Don't want to tempt fate, right? Besides, so what? You'd miss me, spotty one?"

He smiled, to play it off. Kio felt her tail drooping all on its own. "You shouldn't joke about that, either."

"Mm. I..." Watching her tail, his smile faltered. "I'd miss you, too. I'm not... it's not that I'm not scared, Kio. But I have to do this. Once we can confirm that tables are reliable, maybe I can train somebody else."

"Unless they're not, and... you and Miss Kaszul both..."

"Which isn't an argument for you going in my place. It's an argument against the whole affair, which is different. It's also in the past. Now if you don't have a good reason, I should get back to work..."

There wasn't anything he was going to listen to, she knew. Dr. Röhaner, though -- he might. Or even the Kamiri herself, perhaps. Either could understand that she needed to take some responsibility for the project. That it was unfair for it to be carried by others alone. She started for the door, putting the case together in her head.

"Wait, though. For a moment."

"Why?"

Toth pushed the chair back and closed the distance between them. "You're talking to Rassulf, right?"

"Perhaps."

"I don't know that he'll listen. Don't think so. But even if he does..." He left the thought unfinished, and shook his head. "One of us is going up, either way. So just in case... I want one fewer regret."

"Which is?"

The badger took the last half-step that separated them, leaned up, and kissed her. Rather gently, for all his fire -- and it was brief, over before she had even registered it.

"That was your regret, Daarji?"

He was close enough that she could feel the physical warmth of the man's body, and beyond that the thrumming pulse of his energy -- the beat of his essence that sparked when it met her own. He can't sense it the way I can, of course, she thought.

But in some form he knew. He knew, because when they kissed a second time it was insistent and lingering. His arms wrapped around her not to keep her close but for the added contact, the extra warmth binding them together with the physical sureness that bordered on magnetism.

She did the same. It was almost too fierce to be a mere embrace -- something drawn from deeper roots. The rhythm and pattern of his aura guided her paws as the mage clutched at him. It didn't require conscious acknowledgment to realize how perilously close it had come to being her regret, too.

"Can you..." Daari panted as he pulled away. "Can I -- feel -- you? Is that... magic?"

"Yes -- sort of. I'm not a real, ah..." She searched desperately for the word. "Empath. Not trained, but..." Giving up on words, the leopardess pressed forward again, deliberately letting herself become entangled with him.

It had never happened before, never been like that before; she had no way of predicting what would happen but as they met and everything started to intertwine it all happened by smooth, fluid instinct. And though the universe about them had it in abundance there was neither chaos nor doubt.

Her lips parted for his tongue when he sought her muzzle. And when they met the both of them gasped with the sensation of the barriers between their forms being stripped away. Kio felt the rising emotion as a tangible, wonderful heat in the badger's aura -- as pleasant to touch as the soft fur beneath his shirt.

He held her sides, but she felt the desire that drew his paws down to her hips at the same time as they were moving. Experienced it, almost as though the thoughts were her own. Strong fingers grasped her, sending warmth shooting all the way through her being.

They moved as one, as though in a dance; as though every step had been choreographed. The gown she wore spilled from her shoulders and his paws let go only long enough for the garment to fall away completely. Then they were back -- clasping to her bared rear, groping for hips animated by the thick, snaking tail that twisted and twirled in her excitement.

Her stance weakened, and as it did they turned, so that they fell together onto the cabin's bunk. She was torn between the thrilling weight of his body pinning her and the need to strip the badger's clothing from him -- to banish anything left that kept Daari from her.

But then... he knew it; he rose, and tore first the shirt away, and then his long underwear. And then he sank back down, with a mewl of approval from the snow leopardess that he answered in a heavy growl.

Kio slipped her leg around him to draw him close. Their shared bond let each feel the other's anticipation. Not desire, not even hunger, but the sense of something amiss in the universe itself. Something that needed to be righted. It was righting itself: she saw it as a flare in the darkness of her closed eyes when her lover found his mark between her open thighs.

He pushed forward. She shuddered, gasping as the badger entered her, his first thrust smooth and deep. It was not her first time -- but there was more now than the sensation of being filled, more than the heat of his hard, thick member throbbing inside her. They were joined, so much beyond simple physical contact that when he started to move again it was all she could do to mute her exultation into a gratified moan.

A dozen thrusts later cracked the edge of even this resolve. Daari's movements were steady and fluid -- slow enough that she felt every vein and contour of his shaft as he pumped his length into her slick and welcoming folds; quick enough that the feline had no time to recover from each wave of pleasure before the next was coming.

He was atop her, against her -- inside her, his charmed aura pushing up and within to meet hers in that most intimate contact that had her crying out for him. She could feel his energy, the distinct signature of his very life, and the way it touched her that confirmed they were more than lovers.

She was his canvas. His thrusts splashed ribbons of color through her vision. Growling and groaning now in the throes of his exertion, Daari bucked into her hips and every time was a new stroke, closer and closer to completion.

Or he was her clay. Kio's paws were all over him, stroking him, clenching into his fur as though the tightness of her embrace would make his body her own. Her touch shaped his arching, rocking body, guiding him, working him into some final, sculpted form.

For he was reaching the precipice of his endurance. She could sense it, every angle and aspect of the man's growing need: his pace quickening, his rhythm faltering, his breathing growing heavier; the energy building in his body like a building storm about to break.

With a last shudder and a deep groan he pressed forward and held still. A subtle twitch throbbed down his length. At first there was only a familiar, wet heat, spreading into her in pulses. Then just as she knew it was coming, before she had time even to anticipate it Kio felt the sharp, thrilling shock of their auras suddenly locking together.

For a few heartbeats the ecstasy of his peak washed into her, crashing against the snow leopardess like waves on a jetty and rebounding back into him. And then -- then it surged forward, overwhelming the feline, seizing the whole of her being.

She had the sense of being flung upwards, her ascent rocked by the mixing tumult of their shared pleasure. His fed on hers -- the badger gasped and started bucking again as her legs wrapped around him, kicking them higher still...

At the apex she waited to begin falling. And waited. Instead... instead as the rough, raw, carnal emotions played out they slipped gracefully from the stage and a fuzzy, gentle chorus took their place.

It was warm. Soft. Comforting. There was no fall, only the pressure of his body on her own, so close that they were really very nearly the same. Her every heartbeat became his also; his every thought filtered into her mind.

They would not have needed to speak, but she did so anyway to satisfy herself that it was real; that it had happened. That he was still there. "Daarji..."

"I have..." His shudder sent ripples through the both of them. "Is it... always like that -- for you?" He didn't seem to have the strength to rise: his voice was quiet, little more than a whisper, shared only to the bed and her ear.

She kissed his cheek. "Is it not, for you?" But she realized that he couldn't see her smile. She kissed him again. "No. Only with... only with certain people. When they share a... a particular... bond."

Daari tried to nod. Kio let him relax for a minute -- she told herself that, at least, but when he finally managed to sit up she instantly regretted the new distance between their bodies.

"Come back," she told him. He settled back on the bed, partly on his side. She rolled with him, trying to keep him as close as she could for as long as she could. "I haven't actually experienced it before, no."

"So we're, ah... bonded, spotty one?"

"You feel that our auras are joined, don't you?"

"Yes."

"We are bonded," she confirmed.

He kissed her, opened his mouth to consider an answer, and kissed her again instead. That was enough. She held him, and as he finally softened and slid from inside her the leopardess nudged her body closer to make up for it.

Some minutes later he turned away, looking out the open window at the stars. The reminder brought a sigh to him. He shifted, sitting up and leaning with his back to the cabin wall.

"If we hadn't waited, you know..." She didn't answer -- trying to prompt the caress that followed, with his fingers sliding through her fur, tracing the outline of her patterns. "But at least now we know, eh?"

She nodded agreement, and sat up so that she could look at the stars with him. Unremarkable, distant things -- so strange to think that they could be anyone's destination. But if a daughter of the mountains could come so far, then why not?

Daari's fur still prickled with an electric tingle. When she smoothed it down, it twitched -- charged as if by static electricity. The badger looked down at it. "What is that? Have you... filled me with some kind of magic?"

She wiggled her paw. "Sort of, I think. When we are so close, a bit of who I am... becomes you. And the other way, as well."

"I've never been charmed before."

Kio snuggled into his nice, thick fur. "It is a natural property, Daarji. You were always charmed."

"Maybe it'll help tomorrow, then. I hope so."

"I should be the one to go." She said it again because there were plenty of reasons that it was true. She was the only one who could assist Simrabi Kaszul if something went wrong with her thaumaturgy. She was the one most likely to be able to adapt to chaos. And you will be safer here, Daari; you know that.

If he did, he would have none of it. "We already decided, Rassulf and me."

"You decided it would be one of us. But it should be me."

Daari craned his head to kiss the tip of her nose. "Next time. You can break your damn neck next time, spotty one."

"I'll talk to Dr. Röhaner and have you dismissed. I'll tell him you're, um... that I found something with you... that you were too chaotic to go. He'll believe that."

"I wouldn't blame him." The badger chuckled, stretched, and settled his arm once more on her side. "But I think I'd win, in the end."

"I don't want you to."

"Then I tell you what, Kio. What about a coin toss?"

"No."

"Yes," he insisted. He rolled away, rummaging through the table next to his bunk until he came back with a one-pound coin. "You can call it. If you win, you get to decide. If you don't..."

He was so cavalier! But it wasn't her place to order him around, really. She took the opportunity to get comfortable, resting her head on him. "Fine. Fine, Daarji."

His free paw patted her. He showed her the coin -- on one side, the profile of King Enthar; on the other, the royal seal. "Heads or tails, spotty one?"

A flick of his fingers cast the coin up, in a tumbling arc. "Heads."

She watched its movement closely -- the way it glinted in the light, and twisted, and fell back to land on the back of his paw. The seal faced her. "I'm going," the badger said.

Kio sighed heavily. "You are impossible, Daarji."

"I know."

It wasn't fair to say that he never let her win such arguments, though, and she didn't try to claim otherwise. She sighed again. Her fingers stroked his arm, still catching the prickling energy of their shared bond. She toyed with his wrist.

Her claw brushed against the coin, and Kio felt a momentary spark. A flash of discord, not quite enough to jar her thoughts completely. Enough to twist them, though. Enough that a strange idea came to her.

"Daarji..."

"Yes?"

"The coin. You... you touched it, didn't you?"

"Had to," he said. "To flip it."

"That's not what I meant. You know it. You... affected how it fell."

"How? I don't know magic, spotty one."

"Look at me," she told him. He did. When he gave up on suppressing his smile, the playful quirk it had held the same kind of discord. Subtle. "Tell me the truth, Daarji."

"I don't know magic," he told her again. His eyebrows accented the teasing glint in his gaze. "Although, apparently, I've always been charmed."

---

This was probably a very bad idea. NOTE TO BIOGRAPHER: Don't leave it this way. Write something noble. -- Journal of Sessla-Daarian Toth, 11 Janasev, 913

"Are you ready, Dr. Toth?"

"Daari," he muttered. "That's what my friends call me."

The jackal looked at him with an amused smile. "I'm your friend?"

"I don't have many superstitions, you know? But I'd rather die with a friend than a stranger."

Simrabi's laugh was too quiet to be mirthful. "A man after my own heart. Call me... ah... hm. The name in my tongue is Nula. You may call me that, but it comes from a myth about a man whom the gods taunted until he thought he could fly. Our gods are very capricious. They told him to jump off a cliff."

"Did he fly?"

"Briefly."

Rassulf Röhaner tapped lightly on the side hatch, then pulled it open to look inside. "Are you ready?"

"Everyone keeps asking me that..."

Simrabi provided an actual answer: "We're ready, yes, Dr. Röhaner."

"One more time. Your flight plan."

The plan was written on a few pieces of paper, secured to one of the spars in the glider's tiny bridge. Simrabi didn't look at it. "When we are forced aloft, I will start our engines and circle the Otiric until we are satisfied that there is enough harmonic force to carry us. Thereafter we proceed due west, climbing at a steady rate. We should be at two miles altitude fifteen miles from the storm. At that point, I plan to increase our speed as fast as we can, then begin a sharp climb."

She was quiet cocky for someone who had not yet completed a single successful test -- Toth had to respect that. It sounded like it might even have been doable. This was not to say that it would be easy.

As a chaos glider, the machine required some degree of chaos to operate. According to their theories, there would be less of that the higher up they went; it was, indeed, the very point. This meant the craft would have less and less power; by the end it would truly be gliding, and they had to hope that the apex of their ascent carried them out of the worst of the storm.

A lot of hoping was involved.

Toth was in charge of the instruments, such as they had them. Simrabi needed someone to keep track of everything else so that she could focus on the task of flying a contraption that even the badger had to admit looked ill-suited for the job. But Simrabi said she was ready.

"And you, doctor?" Dr. Röhaner prompted.

"Make up a good story for my family, Rassulf. Something honorable. Tell 'em I died in a brothel."

The wolf shook his head. "Good luck, both of you. Miss Kaszul, may your gods carry you far. Dr. Toth... I know you don't believe in gods, so... may they look the other way."

"Thanks," the badger said.

Rassulf started to step away, then caught himself. "Doctor, for what it's worth, I wasn't flattering you. I truly never thought you were crazy. Not then, and not now -- and when you come back, I fully expect you to put that to rest once and for all."

Those were tall orders, but he took them in the spirit they were intended. "I'll do what I can, Rassulf. Otherwise -- brothel, remember that." He'd added a similar request in his journal, in the hope that a charitable writer would give him respectable last words.

Rassulf stepped back from the craft; the next thing its pilots heard was the sound of his voice raised to a martial shout. "Begin launch preparations! Start the countdown!"

They were rapidly approaching the point at which it would be too late to turn back. "I was thinking about something, though," he told the jackal. "They increased the power of the steam piston."

"If the machine fails, it should kill us instantly, yes."

"I'm glad we feel the same way."

He could see movement from before the craft's windows -- the crew of the Otiric and the other members of the Expedition, readying themselves and presumably trusting that the aeronauts knew what they were getting themselves into.

Rassulf Röhaner came back alongside the open hatch. "Test your helm?" Simrabi worked the pair of levers that steered the ship. They were connected to rudders on the glider's fins; the rudders were in turn bound thaumaturgically to the harmonic engines. "They're working fine. What say you, Miss Kaszul?"

"Go."

He nodded. "Helm says 'go.' Launch control!"

When Toth saw Jan Keering last, the short mongrel was fretting over the steam valves and displaying enough nervousness that Daari felt it was best to ignore her. But she answered Rassulf in a clear enough affirmation: "Go."

"Launch control says 'go.' Tracking!"

That would be Aureli Calchott's job, watching through the ship's most powerful telescope for as long as the glider remained visible. "Go!"

"Tracking says 'go.' Wireless!"

Kio Tengaru's soft voice came through the resonator. "Can you hear us?"

"Yes," Simrabi answered.

"Go," the snow leopard announced -- they heard it twice, with the slightest hint of an echo, for the resonator carried sound faster than the air did. "Good luck, Daarji. You better come back."

"I'll do what I can," he told her.

Without commenting, Rassulf continued with his checklist. "Wireless says 'go.' Miss Kaszul, I'm going to spin the rings on your harmonizing devices. Please make sure I've done it properly."

The polished gold rings began to move with a low hum that rose into their soothing, steady melody -- as though they would be carried forward on the efforts of clarinets instead of chaos.

Although they were still beyond Toth's comprehension, the effect pleased Simrabi. "They perform well, Dr. Röhaner."

"Good. Captain Medastria!"

"Ready, sir."

"Do it," the wolf barked. The Otiric was steaming at full speed; at the last moment, the captain was turning them, putting the glider's launch angle directly into the wind so they had the greatest amount of lift. "Stand clear!"

He swung the hatch closed and it latched with all the heavy finality of its metal frame. The glass before them looked out on nothing but water.

"This is a bit rough, as I remember," Simrabi said.

A steam piston would, after all, be slamming them as quickly as it could to full speed. He'd watched it a few times, and every time it looked unpleasant. Ignoring the fact that it also ends in the whole thing coming apart...

"Ten seconds," they heard Jan say over the resonator.

In point of fact, all of it was mad. Jan presumed to stress the steam cylinder further than anyone ever had before. The glider itself owed its entire existence to Kiojo's entirely unproven smelting and Aureli's equally unproven design skills and chaotic motors engineered by a jackal with an obvious death wish.

Toth's final thought was not of fear or regret, but rather the curiosity of whether he would feel either. I hope not. Would be a shame to come this far and change my mind at the last moment, with all the work that's gone into --

They shot forward almost too fast to hear the deafening scream of the steam piston -- and left it behind anyway, for the roar of the wind and the rising tone of Simrabi's resonators.

The shock of the launch hadn't ebbed either before it was replaced by a heavy, sinking tightness all over the badger's body, shoving him down and into the chair. In front of them the horizon dropped away, until there was nothing but sky.

"It works," Simrabi gasped.

"You're not supposed to be surpr --"

"It works," she cried out again. Her paws tightened on the glider's tillers, and like a swallow it dipped to the side and curved into a tight, wheeling turn. "I knew it. I knew it."

Her ears were back; her eyes glittered and her muzzle was drawn back in an incredulous grin. Toth saw in her expression the sudden, shocking realization of a lifetime's work -- and now that he no longer felt his life in immediate danger, he was grinning, too.

Beneath them, glittering water swept by at ever-greater distance. Above them, open sky called as it did to any other bird. The resonators called out in their own exulting chorus. It was the momentary glimpse of godhood that had beckoned so many others to flight.

But she was the first; that could be claimed by no other. "Congratulations," the badger said, and meant it. Her answer was to whip the glider into a tight, snapping roll -- then to straighten from it just as easily. They were one and the same, the pilot and her machine.

"We do," she said at length, "have work ahead of us."

Leaving her to grin, he ran his finger along the resonator. "Ahoy, Otiric. We seem to be alive."

"A relief to us all down here," Rassulf said. "Your height?"

He checked the pressure gauge. "Five hundred feet. Everything is functioning... as expected, I suppose?"

"Very well. Proceed, then. Good luck."

Simrabi retrieved her necklace from a pocket of her robes, and looped the cord around a cockpit spar so that it hung in her peripheral vision. "Good luck -- hm! We shall see, Daari."

The glider's instrumentation amounted to a terrifying amount of guesswork and improvisation. One gauge measured the atmospheric pressure outside the craft, which could be used to determine their altitude. A second gauge pointed directly forward; the glider's forward movement acted to compress the air, and in theory comparing the difference between compression and atmospheric pressure gave them a clue as to their speed.

At least, it did so in theory -- if one ignored the limits of accuracy and their own knowledge. This was no time to be limited in such fashion, anyway. Toth spoke decisively. "Your speed is two hundred knots. Our compass has us heading directly west."

So close to the chaos storm -- and growing closer -- the compass could not be trusted. But it did not matter: the End of the World seethed at the horizon, and a few degrees to either side scarcely made a difference.

"Two thousand feet," he reported.

"I shall permit the resonators to spin freely," the jackal said. "They should seek such balance as they can find -- without my limitations..." Her eyes closed, and she splayed her fingers over a silver coil that had been connected to the two harmonic engines.

Their song warbled briefly, becoming jarring. Then it reunified into deceptively soothing accord, rising in pitch and volume. "Seems right to you, Simrabi?"

"I believe. But we should test something. Watch the altimeter, Daari."

His body grew heavy again, and the horizon vanished -- he saw nothing but blue sky. An inclinometer suggested they were rising at an angle of nearly seventy degrees. "Three thousand feet. Four thousand. Five thousand. Is everything well?"

The jackal's paw was back on the silver coil, and her eyes were closed.

"Six thousand. Simrabi? Hello?"

She took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and pushed the glider level once more. "You're right. There's less agitation here... less to be disordered. It's much quieter."

"Good sign."

"Yes. But we'll need to be cautious. Remember what we talked about."

The resonators worked by finding harmony in chaos; this much Toth understood. The more chaos available, the greater the power they were able to generate, and the faster they moved. The faster they moved, the more chaos they were exposed to. In level flight, the increasing speed would tear either the resonators or the glider apart.

They needed to rise quickly enough to keep either from happening, but slowly enough to give the engines something to work with. Aureli hadn't wanted to guess at the point where the hull might fail; Toth was more optimistic, but not enough to hazard his own conjecture.

"Ten thousand feet," he called out. The storm in front of them, still some miles distant, had started to take on a clearer form. It was composed of at least two parts, a lower part roughly on their level and a higher wall of clouds that might well have gone all the way to the heavens for all he could discern.

"Our speed?"

They couldn't measure it directly; he took a pressure reading from the gauge in the glider's nose, compared it against the altimeter, and looked both values up in a table he had spent the better part of a night writing out by hand. "Between four hundred thirty and four hundred fifty knots."

"Hm," was all Simrabi said.

At fifteen thousand feet, he opened the valves of their air supply; the glider was supposed to be completely sealed, and they needed a regular infusion of oxygen if they wanted to keep breathing. This created its own limitation: "Twenty minutes of air."

"Look at that." The jackal took her paw off the tiller to point ahead of them.

They had risen above the first level of the storm. Toth tapped the resonator. "Ahoy, Otiric."

"Ahoy. Go ahead."

"Fifteen thousand feet. The End of the World has at least two parts. The lower one looks like a thunderstorm. That's where most of the lightning is coming from."

It was strange, he thought in narrating what he saw, how normal it had become. The lightning came in odd colors, and it rippled and pulsed through the clouds rather than striking in crisp bolts. Sometimes it traveled slowly, like a breaking wave, bursting from the cloud tops in silky fire...

But by now it seemed so... familiar.

Behind it was a steeper cliff, of some fashion; he ended his report without saying further, but the badger was not actually certain they were looking at a storm at all.

At first it seemed to have the dull, soft grey of a raincloud. But it seemed too smooth for that, and the longer he stared at the grey the more it melted into other colors -- muted purples and blues and greens, like polar skyfire given tangible form.

"I don't think those are clouds," he told Simrabi.

"I don't either." Though their course had them proceeding directly to the storm, at twenty thousand feet aloft she turned the glider so they approached at a gentler angle.

Toth's spyglass didn't help. There was no detail to be discerned. "It's grey until I stare at it, and then it stops being grey. It seems not to move, until I look away and then I think... I think it's moving? I can't tell what I'm looking at."

"You're not."

"Not what?"

The jackal turned. In the reflection of her eyes, the End of the World became even more animated -- until the badger thought he almost could see shadowy forms and shapes.

"Not what?" he asked again.

"Looking."

"Of course I am. I can see --"

"Nothing," she said. "There is nothing to see. Our eyes are inventing it -- the way, in perfect silence, we hear voices singing."

"But that's... that's not..."

"As we get closer and closer to the End of the World, the laws and order of nature become weaker until they break down completely. Near the water, it acts to tear the wind and waves apart until you see that storm. Higher up there is no barrier. There's nothing to shield our eyes from it..."

"You're calling it the End of the World," he realized.

"The end of ours, at least."

But she had not turned away. The glider continued to climb. They could stare down into the tops of the clouds, now; they saw how the clouds did not properly end -- simply melted into a startling blankness where even the lighting bolts dissolved into nonexistence.

They had fifteen minutes of air remaining. Toth glanced at the altimeter, estimating thirty thousand feet of height, and then out the window again. All at once the sight hit him: how different the world looked, and the storm, from so high up. He was seeing their home as nobody had for centuries -- perhaps they never had, even; perhaps they were the first.

From time to time, back home, Toth had been known to take his agitation out in long walks. His short legs carried him briskly onwards, five or six miles at a stretch, to the far edges of the city and into the farmland beyond. Now they had traveled that far straight up -- and there was further to go! It did not seem possible that Simrabi was right -- and more than this, it did not seem fair.

The world could not end; it went against everything he knew. How could there be no further to travel? And more rationally: if the world ended, then how could one explain the shadow cast upon the two moons? Or the patterns of wind and climate? How many thought experiments had he and Rassulf gone through?

Rassulf. Oh, cargal'th. Stop daydreaming, you bloody fool! Remember what you were going to tell him! "I don't think so."

"No?"

"When the Bachbat Vaz exploded, do you remember how we thought the storm was... rippling? Rassulf was the first to notice. I told him it was important. He wanted to know why, and I told him to think about it -- but with your gliders, I never got back to him."

"The destruction of the wailing stone caused many aftereffects, not just the shockwave that hit us. It could've affected the storm, too."

"Yes. Sure. But it wasn't just affecting it, it was rippling. That means it had to have had a surface to be propagating over. I thought it was important because -- yes, you see?"

Her ears had given a startled flick. "That would mean an actual barrier of some kind. But it is chaotic... the same sort of chaos that would mark the end of our universe..."

"You said there was no such thing -- just different ways of looking at order."

Simrabi licked her muzzle, either in thought or from apprehension. Her ears flattened. One paw left the controls, and she grasped for the stones of the hanging necklace. "I can hear it..."

"What?"

"Fractures. Breaks. Small eddies that calm the worst of it. The sound of calm in an ocean of discord -- can you not hear it? See it?"

"No. I'm not -- I'm not like you, remember?"

"The song is... is louder to our south. That must be where that ship -- where it..." The jackal's ears flicked back, and her speech grew clipped with the effort required to explain herself. "Hundreds of voices -- songs -- but where that chorus ends there is... a valley of silence."

Try as he might, with eyes narrowed and straining, he could perceive none of that in the twisting, shadowy grey. "The explosion has disrupted the storm? Is that what you're saying? How is that possible -- it's been weeks since that happened."

"And it is fading, I feel, yes. But for now... for now, we could cross -- if there's something beyond. I'm almost certain we could cross. There is a problem, though."

Always is. "Yes?"

"We can't do it from thirty thousand feet, Daari. It would need to be two or three times that -- maybe more, even. The resonators are already beginning to quiet, this high up. They need more noise to work with. More disorder."

He worked back over his calculations, trying to think of where some constant or assumption might have been too pessimistic. "What if we..." But, uncharacteristically, he'd started speaking without knowing the answer.

"There."

"What?"

Simrabi was turning again, pointing them back towards the End of the World. "Disorder. Even up here, the closer we get..."

"Gods -- you're serious?"

"If you're right about it not being the End of the World, then that won't matter. Will it? Think of it -- the End of the World bends air, and water, and light. It casts everything into what we perceive as disorder, except disorder itself. The one thing this craft is adapted to."

"Presuming it will hold. We don't know about the stresses -- the temperatures, the pressure..."

"We don't," the jackal agreed. "Yet we shall do it anyway."

By rough estimation, they were five miles from whatever made up the End of the World; the glider's nose pointed higher, but he had the sense that their speed was increasing anyway. Sense and rough estimates alone were all they had; the gauges had stopped working. "Ahoy, Otiric."

"Ahoy. Go ahead."

"We need to gain some altitude. Simrabi and I believe the best way to do this is to approach the barrier more closely."

"How much more closely?" Rassulf asked.

"Ah. Touching it, pretty much."

"Daarji," he heard Kio shout before Rassulf could answer. "Don't be stupid!"

"You know me, spotty one." He was trying to sound nonchalant, and wondered if her ability to tell when people were lying worked at a distance. "We'll be fine."

Rassulf had taken the resonator back. "From the Otiric, we seem to agree with Miss Tengaru. Are you certain this is necessary?"

Simrabi didn't look away from the controls, but she nodded sharply. The badger was not in a position to argue, or to disagree. "Yes, Rassulf. It's necessary."

He stayed quiet for a few seconds; all the while the glider was continuing onward, without waiting for any approval. "Very well," the wolf said at last. "Proceed."

"Daarji, you're coming back," Kio added. "Ichanaren udojina, Daarji. Yen sakine udojina, gi kana shanazo hikane..."

"I'll listen for once," he promised her. "Ane kirohashiren."

"You had better," the snow leopardess ordered.

He tapped the resonator, turning it off, because he did not trust himself to speak.

"The only way to beat disorder is to defy it," Simrabi said; he didn't know if she was trying to reassure him, or her, or both. "To adapt. To challenge. That spirit, I know you have -- so do I. That's all we need."

"That, and good fortune." They could not have been more than two miles distant.

"There is no fortune at the level of our perception," Simrabi said quickly, under her breath -- she had the controls of the glider held tightly. "Only an illusion we see in the gap of possibilities between different worlds."

Like a coin toss. "We're going to do this." The badger didn't know if he was saying it or realizing it; all he knew was his belief, in spite of the empty grey swelling before them.

"We are," Simrabi echoed. "This is ours. Mine. Destiny. Hold on --"

At the last possible instant she pulled both levers, hard, and the glider's nose pointed straight upwards -- then it disappeared.

Everything disappeared.

He was blind. Deaf. Senseless.

It was time, in that black infinity, for fear. It was the right moment for every doubt and mistake of a lifetime to fill the darkness. For realizing the rank impossibility of declaring the spirit and soul indomitable. For surrendering to their consumption. For an eternity of madness.

No.

Formless as it was, the void shuddered.

Music.

He would not later know why it had come to him, that word. But he perceived it anyway, the melody of the two harmonic engines. He heard it -- saw it -- touched it, and felt beneath its tone the beat of a steady, strange accompaniment.

As the rhythm pulsed pinpricks of light began to appear -- a few at first, then dozens. Hundreds. Millions, broken by the shadowy outlines of...

Metal struts. Bars. Dials. Next to him, a jackal.

They stared up, and up, into pure blackness and the dazzling glitter of the stars. Their stars, seen as none had for ages. Simrabi turned, as if to look at him, but was unable to glance away.

The glider was tumbling, slowly; its nose dipped.

Beneath them stretched what had been, seconds before, the Known World. At the eastern horizon, hundreds of miles away, he could just see the edge of the continent, disappearing under a smooth, graceful curve.

His eye drifted west to the sea. A clean, beautiful emptiness -- and then, before them, a line of dark clouds sharp as a razor. And on the other side... the other side!

"The End of the World," Toth said.

"Or the beginning," Simrabi answered.

Beyond the End of the World, they could see glittering water, and the white flecks of icebergs far to the north. Far out to the west the sun had not yet risen, but he could have sworn he saw dry land.

"I don't believe we crossed over. I think we skipped off it, like a cast stone."

"Next time."

"I hope so," she agreed. "Contact the Otiric."

Toth tapped his paw against the resonator, but nothing happened. He tried again. "We may have a problem..."

"More than one. I can't hear the harmonizers, either."

Toth twitched his ears, but she was right -- at least, he could hear nothing either. "But it's a glider. It can be flown without power. Isn't that what a glider does?"

"Before we decided to make it out of metal, yes." They were starting to fall, though there was too little air beneath the ship's tiny wings to give Simrabi any control. Toth had to force himself to take steady breaths against the sensation of his stomach rising in terrifying weightlessness.

At least their rebounding course took them away from any storms -- by thirty thousand feet the jackal had managed to straighten out their path. Ten thousand feet more, and she pointed out the rising smoke of the Otiric's funnel.

Toth flipped open his notebook and worked through the figures as quickly as he could. "Another five miles. I think. At best. It puts us a few short... hopefully they see us."

"Indeed."

"Hopefully this will float long enough."

"Indeed."

"Hopefully we'll --"

"Stop hoping, Daari. We're back in your realm, now. This is engineering, not hope."

He ran his fingers over the resonator again, and was greeted with nothing but more silence. _Damned thing -- worst part is I've no idea where even to start with fixing it... _

The sea was coming closer and closer. He took a few deep breaths, doing what he could to focus on the numeric tables, which indicated the speed of their descent, and the slowest the glider could travel without falling from the sky.

Scientifically, as a matter of engineering, the impact would be survivable. Probably. "You have any suggestions? You've done this before."

"Crashing?"

"Yes."

"It's just flying, but in reverse. Would you like good news, instead?"

She pointed. They were still high enough, though just barely, to see the Otiric's wake, though not the ship itself. The disturbed water left a curving track until it straightened -- headed directly for them.

"Perhaps a minute left now, Daari. I won't ask if you're ready. It doesn't matter."

But it was best to approach it hopefully, anyway. "Can't be the strangest thing we've been through today..."

"No. Nor will it be the last. Relax yourself. Steady. Saba dovtannak sailigi kayeb --"

They hit the water gently, bouncing up again with such deceptive softness he almost counted himself safe. The second landing was rougher. One final time they skipped airborne; then the nose dug in -- the glider spun sharply. There was a jolting impact -- sharp, sudden pain --

His life did not flash before his eyes. He did not find himself at the edge of the Coral Valley, the way Aernians believed the afterlife began, looking down to the first gate where he would be judged. He did not see the ghosts of his ancestors, wagging their fingers at him. He did not know what he saw -- gauzy, smeared colors. Strange flashes; glimpses of moving shapes that looked like people.

"Oi, the fuck've you done..." he muttered, his voice thick.

"That's more like it."

"Eh?"

The more he blinked, the clearer his vision became. The man standing next to him was not his grandfather. Rassulf Röhaner tilted his head. "You're back with us? What you just said sounded more like the Dr. Toth I know."

He got to his feet, and approached the situation analytically. His fur was wet. His glasses were gone, which partly explained how blurry the world seemed to look. "I'm on the ship, Rassulf? Not dead? Where's Simrabi?"

"Also not dead," Simrabi said.

Someone pressed the glasses back into his paw, and he clipped them to the bridge of his nose. "The glider?"

"Recovered." That, too, had come from Simrabi. He looked to her, and followed the jackal as she pointed across the deck. "Damaged, but not irreparable. It will fly again. I will fly again."

Kio had been the source of his glasses, he decided, from how close she turned out to be. The snow leopardess gave him a careful hug. "You, Daarji, might think twice."

"I might," he admitted. "We will need more tests. Next spring, if not sooner."

"Many changes to make in the design." Simrabi nodded in her agreement. "Now that we know it's possible, we can address some of the flaws. And I'm afraid, Dr. Röhaner, that we were not successful."

"No?"

"The harmonizers more than met their match. We failed to cross the End of the World, as was our hope. Our notes are less sufficient than I'd like, but..."

Aureli Calchott stepped forward. "You can give a full accounting later. We'll expect it, from both of you. But for now... for now, you've earned this, Miss Kaszul."

"With help," the jackal demurred gracefully.

Aureli smiled. "Of course. But you were the one to show us. You gave us wings, just like you said. The skies are ours, and everything in them -- the next great frontier. A hundred years from now, it'll be routine, just like a railroad, but... when a young aeronaut sits down at her studies, or looks at a glider for the first time, she'll not be thanking me, or Dr. Röhaner. She'll pause, and look up there, and she'll think of Kaszul Ashuraba Simrabi Rosh, Kamirul."

"You know my given name..."

"I know you don't normally go by that, in Kamir, right? You have to earn the right to distinguish yourself from your mother. Normally by having children of your own, I gather, but if this doesn't count as earning it, then nothing ever will."

The jackal swiveled her ears back. Then, following a moment of contemplation, she bowed deeply. "Thank you."

"We'll have much to discuss," Dr. Röhaner spoke when the aeronaut had straightened herself once more. "Your plans and ours, both. I'm inclined to agree with you that this is only the beginning. For now... Captain Medastria."

Marray had been observing the conversation quietly; the sound of his name brought him to quick attention. "Doctor?"

"At your convenience, kindly set a new course. It's time we go home."

---

I cannot say that I am surprised. Day 132 marks the final entry of the Tannadorean Expedition. That book having been closed, I must ponder the next to be opened.

For neither can I say that I am disappointed. In such short time we traveled further than anyone before us, in any sense of the word. Though I regret its end, and that I shall not be able to carry it further, I have now seen the final proof that worthy heroes exist in this world who are just as suited as I.

Tabisthalia was never destined to be my home. Aernia was never destined to be my country. Expedition leader was never destined to be my calling. But those I have met were destined to be my brothers and sisters sure as any blood relation. It is with a glad heart, secure in this knowledge, that I pen these last pages. -- Diary of Dr. Rassulf Keilhaf Röhaner, 1 Mitaltid, 913

"I trust that you'll be able to manage."

"Even though I'm not mad."

Rassulf smiled, and laughed in the spirit that it had been intended. "You have enough madness to carry on."

They were alone, for the moment, in a stately room of the Royal Academy for Surveying and Cartography. It was almost as though nothing had changed -- servants had kept the dust and spiders at bay, and it still smelled of old books.

Dr. Toth twisted a cigar around in his fingers, fidgeting. For the moment, it remained unlit. He looked away, to the old glass windows that smeared the Tabisthalia skyline into something soft and gently muddy.

"Rassulf. There's something I left out of the report."

"Dr. Toth?"

He set the cigar back in his pocket, and turned from the window. "I didn't want anyone to draw the wrong conclusions. I don't trust all of them. If you want to put it in yours..."

The wolf didn't like his tone -- nor the faint hint of nervousness it seemed to cover. "What is it?"

"My worst fear started to become realized when I saw the destruction of that Tiurishkan ship. I told you then, Rassulf -- the way there seemed to be patterns, and rippling. That was when I first suspected it wasn't exactly the End of the World. It was a... a thing."

Rassulf knew what he meant by that, though; it was a topic of extensive discussion. "That's not surprising. We conjectured that the End of the World wasn't actually a gap in reality -- some kind of storm, or cliff created by the destruction that was wrought at Ragnarok. I wasn't nearly as startled as you were."

"Right. Well. When we touched the End of the World itself, there was -- I don't know how to describe it, exactly, but a sort of hallucination. A vision, I guess. In it, I heard a... rhythm. A pattern. Rosh said she heard it, too."

"Order, even in chaos?" he suggested. "Which explains also why, in the end, you could negotiate it -- that the laws of nature did not themselves break down. That part is in your report."

"No. Rassulf." Though the badger's voice was not raised, he had become more intense than the wolf had ever seen him. "Listen to me. There was a pattern to it. It adapted to the Bachbat Vaz. It adapted to Rosh and I."

"You got past it, though."

"Perhaps, or perhaps not. That isn't the point."

"Then what is?"

"It changes, based on the rules of an underlying rhythm. That isn't chaos, Rassulf. It didn't come into being from discord. It was created."

Rassulf felt at the same time his hackles raise, and a chill flickering through him as though the coldest winter wind had struck at full force. "That's an incredible claim, Dr. Toth..."

"It met us, thrust for parry. How could pure chaos have precisely countered Kiojo's Otonichi charms and a Tiurishkan wailing stone and a glider designed by some third Kamiri school of thaumaturgy? Think about it, Rassulf."

The wolf shook his head. "Dr. Toth... we know that in chaos storms the world breaks down. I'm not a thaumaturgist. You're not, either -- you don't know how anything would react."

"But I'm a scientist. So are you. We faced a massive, unbroken barrier. It doesn't follow coastlines. It resists all attempts at crossing it. It doesn't move or change with the seasons. Does that sound like a random phenomenon, Rassulf? Or does it sound like a palisade?"

He grasped for whatever came to mind. "What does Miss Kaszul think?"

"She referred to it as a song. And she would tell me nothing further, save that she intended to study it."

Rassulf thought to a line in the jackal's final report on the flight. The End of the World frustrated my ability to decipher the harmony in its music. He thought she'd meant merely that she was not able to find any sense in it.

But that was not how she thought -- not how she perceived chaos. They'd all been listening when she said that there was no such thing, only a different way of looking at order. On reflection, the phrasing implied that she had been actively stymied.

Not in a way that would turn her report into a falsehood; not in a way anyone looking for half-truths would notice. Rassulf would have ignored it. "If that's true, we might not ever be able to cross it properly. Only to observe from a distance... and what's worse, if it actively resists, then none of our records can be trusted -- who knows what influenced them?"

"Indeed," the badger said. "Although since we know that, perhaps we can find a way. Now, let yourself ask the other question, Rassulf."

This had long been the way Toth operated -- suggesting that others ask rhetorical questions to prompt them into answering. This time, Rassulf could scarcely manage the effort to keep his ears from flattening completely. "I can't."

"You should. You need to."

He swallowed. "Fine, Dr. Toth. You want me to ask: someone crafted it. What could've possessed someone to do something so desperate? So... total?"

"We assume that the Fall of the World Before ended everything; everywhere. Maybe it did. Maybe not. If it was a palisade, what were they trying to keep out, Rassulf?"

He thought of the Hakasi, out in the desert -- and the rumors that they were merely what remained of a far larger cult. That their knowledge could not have come from nowhere. "Or if it was a barrier, what were they trying to keep in?"

Toth nodded grimly. "And if it was cast, it can probably be uncast. Until we know more -- presuming Rosh ever tells me, and I'm not betting much on understanding it when she does... until we know more, I didn't think that knowledge was wise to disseminate. Just in case someone gets bright ideas."

"The Railroad. That stone -- Tavak."

"Supposedly there's one at Körlyda, too. To say nothing of the Dead City. If anyone could figure it out, it's them -- but..."

"Indeed. You'll work on it?"

"If I can. In secret."

Two heavy knocks rang out, and the room's stately oak door swung open. Haralt Berdanish and Marray Medastria entered; the bear gestured at his companion. "As requested, Dr. Röhaner."

"Thank you. Please -- be seated?"

Both of them did, settling on the other side of the table that, for once, was clear of maps and books and field notes. It suggested a blank slate, of sorts.

"Mr. Medastria. I wanted to express my thanks on behalf of the Expedition. In the aftermath, we have not had the chance to speak -- save that, as you know, the Expedition has been terminated."

"Yes, sir," the stag nodded.

"Your salary will be paid in full, of course. But there is... another matter."

"Sir?"

"After discussion with his liaison, King Enthar feels that it is time to take action."

"We've been too... cautious." Though, having said it, Haralt chose his words carefully even so. "His Majesty has directed me to establish a society for the exploration and research of what they have chosen to call aeronautical phenomena. It is a department under the Royal Academy for Surveying and Cartography."

Marray listened, and then nodded again. Slowly. "It sounds as though your work was appreciated."

"I hope that it was. And I hope the Society finds great success."

"You won't be staying?"

"It was decided that it would be best if a native Aernian was put in charge. I don't entirely blame them, and I feel no injury. In any case... it has been too long since I've seen my homeland, Mr. Medastria, and I have learned many things that would be of great importance there."

Some of them more important than others, he thought to himself. But it should be of use enough -- and he could not expect his father to wait another two decades. The wolf had uttered no protest in favor of staying with the Academy.

And he hoped that he'd found a suitable replacement: "Dr. Toth has agreed to take over."

"Miss Calchott, I thought, was..."

"It is a royal society, Mr. Medastria," Haralt corrected. "We may at times contract the Railroad, of course; they're a business, and I'm sure they'd appreciate the gold. It brings us to the point at which Dr. Röhaner hinted. A budget exists for the purchase and upkeep of a seagoing vessel to support the Society's research."

"Seems that keeping a formal investigation away from their archives was good for some favors." Dr. Toth explained with none of Haralt's stately nobility or Rassulf's political decorum. He could be trusted to do this. "Might as well call 'em in, aye?"

Haralt gave the badger and his tone a weary glare. "But the Royal Survey Ship Otiric would need a captain. Captains with steam experience are in short supply. Captains with steam experience and knowledge of... aeronautical phenomena... are even rarer."

"The post is yours, if you want it." Rassulf was proud of most of the Expedition's work, and of all that they had accomplished, the stag's record chief among them. It was a far cry from a reeking bar in Tinenfirth.

Not only that he had served competently, but that he had not wavered from his dedication to do so. And not only that he had earned the position, but that he had earned the right to reject it, also. He had the strength to make his own decisions.

This one, though, had been made by the flash of brightness in his eyes. "I would be honored to do, Dr. Röhaner. Or... Well, I suppose I address this to you two now, Dr. Toth and Lord Erdurin. My answer is 'yes.'"

"Fortunately we predicted this. It was the expected answer, if not without complication," the bear said. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, and pulled forth a letter sealed and stamped in wax. "A letter from the Admiralty, signed by myself on behalf of His Majesty."

"Sir?"

"The terms of your contract," Toth told him. "And tidying up some loose ends. It is a royal appointment, after all, and they like their formalities."

Rassulf watched the stag carefully break the seal and unfold the letter. He scanned its contents; little emotion was betrayed in his gaze, but at length the wolf saw him swallow heavily. He took a deep breath. "I see."

Toth grinned; he gave every impression of enjoying the moment just as much as Rassulf did. "Indeed. Welcome aboard, Mar -- hm. Well, just this once, I suppose. Commander Medastria, welcome to the Society."

Marray closed the letter in two neat, firm folds. Placing it precisely before him, he straightened up in his chair and answered the greeting in a crisp dip of his head. "Thank you, doctor."

"I should be departing." Rassulf stood; he, too, was having some difficulty checking his emotions. The stag rose with him, and when Rassulf held out a paw Marray shook it firmly. "It was a great honor, commander."

"Likewise." Marray paused. Then he stepped forward, and hugged the wolf tightly -- a strong, crushing embrace. "Thank you," he said once more -- not the tone of formal acceptance but something deeper, a gratitude that had traveled countless leagues, to the End of the World and back.

When the stag let go, Rassulf felt he could marshal precious few words. A dozen, perhaps. Any more, and he would lose the ability to maintain his stoic composure. He looked one final time at the table, and let its emptiness sink in.

"What are you waiting for? There's work to be done."