There is a clearing along a cliff, surrounded by trees and other vegetation - silent, solemn, vast. Certainly a strange sort of forest. It's not dense enough to impede movement much. But the cliff opens up to a wide, wide expanse of sky strung along with occasional puffs of white. It looks as though if she leapt off the cliff she could keep falling forever. Nebulae and stars are visible both above and below. It's warm here, with the shrill wind blowing in from the wide cliffs carrying a slight chill. All around are floating mountains with great chasms between them, generally level with the same clearing (so far as gravity is behaving here), each laden with green growth.

And across the miles-wide gap, off in the distance is a truly spectacular set of waterfalls. Azure waters cascade down cliffs in multifarious patterns, splitting and recombining over bold rock faces framed by verdant growth, mist spilling forth in a haze where the water pools. As the falls descend the waters slowly turn into mist and clouds. They take up at least a mile of width, and almost seem sculpted to please the eye rather than natural.

That clearing now contains a door.

Thorn steps through the door, and closes it behind her. It winks out. 

The space around her is certainly one of the more surreal worlds she's seen, though with a quiet beauty to it; the flying islands are mildly troublesome, though, as she'd rather rely on muscles than magic. 

She casts Overland Flight just in case of an accident with a cliff, and then takes the time to investigate her own flying island on foot. 

It's a very big flying island. The forest is eerily quiet and seems to almost devour noise. Her breathing and the sound of her footsteps and such is clear enough, but no wind rustling leaves, and the distant noise of the waterfalls fades if she steps more than a hundred feet in. There are a normal amount of insects and animals in the forest, new species, but none especially weird. The strangest thing here is the quiet and the trees. They give off an impression of silent might.

After a while the path along the edge is barred by a chasm, and then a bit further inland a noisome swamp full of foul, sucking mud. There are plausible ways across on drier spots or fallen logs even for someone who can't fly, though.

She'll try the bog. It's still better than falling off into... whatever that place is. 

The bog is navigable with some effort.

The next notable event is when a field of flowers starts whispering to her. "you shouldn't be here" "the gardener's wood has been neglected" "a scribe's anger is inconsolable" "the way out is to the right, just a mile and you'll find the path" "something is watching you"

Fascinating. 

But she's not sure she wants to stay among the whispering flowers, especially not when they're rather creepy. She turns around and heads back the way she came.

The bog is equally navigable in the other direction. There aren't any obstacles immediately in the other direction along the cliffs.

Something is stalking her. Its eyes shine low to the ground among the trees.

Some form of predator. Magical? A good bet in this world. She draws her pistol, and keys it in to the runes along her arms. Whatever it is, she won't be going down easily. She doesn't turn her back to run; she needs to hit this thing with an enchanted shell right between the eyes. She can do that, it exposes itself enough for that - 

If it shrugs that off, then she'll consider running.

It hesitates for a while when she looks in its direction, but eventually tries its luck in a headlong rush - and flops to the ground limply after an enchanted shell between the eyes. The gunshot doesn't echo.

It's an extremely odd carapaced thing with the three-section body of an insect, but ten flexible tentacles for limbs and a mouth like an inverted cone. Blue blood.

Oh, lovely. At least it's vulnerable to bullets. But if there are more of those, she's not going to do well. 

The wildflowers whisper, the trees are silent as death, and there are huge nasty gribblies that will try to eat you. Certainly a good vacation spot. 

She kicks off and takes to the air. Better her magic fail her than she be eaten alive when the need for sleep takes her. She'll sweep the area from the air and look for any sign of habitation.

It's really cold out in the air! Also, when she gets far enough from the cliffs, or high enough, gravity stops being a thing.

There's a lot of wilderness out here. One of the waterfall's pools has a cleared area beside it and a staircase carved leading up the cliffside, though. The starlight is beautiful.

She'll go investigate the staircase, pistol drawn. It's cold up here.

A hooded woman waits by the waterfall, hands clasped. The stream is a continual thunder. The staircase is nearby.

"Oh, an interesting one. Are you here for the Regent's pools?"

"I'm looking for a settlement, actually. Somewhere safe away from the creatures in the wood. Do you know where I can go?"

"Oh, I see. The Reach is indeed a dangerous place even if you can fly. Somerset Camp is perhaps thirty or thirty-five miles south," (gesture to the left), "South-southeast once the path splits. But you had best wait for a locomotive and ask for passage, if you want to be safe."

"How long will it take for a locomotive to pass?"

"We usually see two or three a day. The Regent's Pools are known for their beneficial effects on health and allow a few of us who know the paths well a modest living as guides. But sometimes none for a few days, or even a week."

"I see. Do you have somewhere you sleep nearby?"

"We have a small cabin together, yes. Up near the top." She frowns. "I think I'd like to ask some intrusive questions before offering the use of it. Nobody's ever shown up without a locomotive before, you see. It's quite strange. Perhaps alarming, even."

She shrugs. "Go ahead."

"How were you flying? What are those tattoos for, and what are they? They're not Correspondence, you'd be insane and dead if they were Correspondence. Where'd you get such a nice-looking gun? Have you even heard the warnings about Traitor's Wood? Are you human? Do you still have your soul? Any malicious or unpeaceful intentions at all?"

"I flew using my tattoos; they're complex runic mana channels, and are definitely not Correspondence. The gun is an original piecemade just for me; so far as I know it's unique. I've never heard of Traitor's Wood before; I'm from very far away. I'm human. My soul is right here." She pats her chest over her quartz necklace. "And I don't mean anyone harm; the pistol and dagger are solely for self-defense against the kinds of things that tried to eat me in the Wood. And hunting, if need be."

Squinting...

"Well, alright then. Don't go into Traitor's Wood. It's over there - here isn't the Wood proper. New to the High Wilderness? Where from? Come along," she gestures as she turns sharply and starts unhesitatingly making her way up the narrow stairway.

Thorn follows. "I'm definitely new to the High Wilderness, yes. The place I'm from... I doubt you'll have heard of it. Oifilei?"

"Nope. Was it in the Neath, or Earth? Most of us around here are from one of those two, originally, if we're not born out here."

She moves with supreme confidence and familiarity with the path. There are no handrails, but the steps are fairly wide and smooth, if damp from the spray.

Thorn keeps up, nonetheless. 

"My upbringing's closer to Earth than Neath, I think. I don't really belong to either. How far are we from Earth, here?"

"Two cosmic thresholds, one to the Neath and then a less arduous one to the Surface. See, the Neath is underneath Earth, but still very much its own thing. Or possibly who the hell knows how long through the High Wilderness, I heard Earth is around a star out there somewhere. We just don't know which star it is, if it's even one of the ones we can see here. -Don't spend too long looking at the stars," she warns suddenly, "It can make you go crazy, and it's bad luck besides."

"Alright," she says. "I won't look at the stars." 

She quietly files away her new destination in her head. Earth exists in many worlds and is usually a hub of production and trade, so she should head there. The High Wilderness and the Neath are new, but she'll have to cross both of them to reach Earth. So. Neathwards. 

They get to the top of the stairway. There's two paths further on, both more like mountain trails. They look fairly precarious. The guide looks Thorn up and down and clucks consideringly. "You don't look like you need a rope, but ask if you do, alright? The name's Primrose, and my 'nym is the Hooded Guide."

"I should be fine without one. The name's Thorn; I don't have a settled 'nym." 

"I'd call you the Runed Wanderer if it comes up."

She takes the right path. Eventually they have to skip across streams and over gaps between rocks. Every step and leap the Guide is perfectly comfortable, though she does call out 'watch my feet' for a couple of tricky sections.

And then a left turn off the path, to a little cabin in a relatively flat spot, built halfway into the cliff face with a tiny pond and a medium-sized garden out front. A man wearing a straw hat is tending the garden. Primrose waves.

"Thorn here arrived without a locomotive. Seems like a decent sort, but very foreign. Wants a place to stay until she can get passage."

"Foreign like French, or foreign like the Blue Kingdom?"

"Sort of between? More like French. I think."

The gardener shakes his head.

"Oh, this is the Dour Guide, Hans. Hans, Thorn."

"A pleasure, I'm sure."

She follows adroitly, but feels chron spend on a particularly difficult section. She curses under her breath, but keeps up. 

When they finally turn off the path, she smiles at the gardens and the hut. "Lovely." She curtseys to Hans in greeting. "It is indeed a pleasure." 

"She can stay for a day or two if she helps out with the chores a bit, yes?"

Hans nods, frowning, and goes back to weeding the garden.

"Don't mind him. He's out here for the solitude, but it's just not safe to live all on your own. I think that was the case even on the Surface!"

"It's alright. I know the type. Mind if I drop my pack somewhere and get to work right away?" 

"Sure, anywhere inside is fine. Ah, what could we use help with- Chopping firewood or helping Hans in the garden, I suppose. Or lifting rocks up from this little quarry we have with ropes with me, I've been meaning to get to it so we can shore up the house a bit but it's a two person job and one of us usually waits to guide folk up and hint heavily about tips so we can buy supplies."

"I'll take the quarry. Should be easy enough for me to help out with." 

Here's a spot where she can put her pack down. This dwelling is solidly low-tech but not outright primitive. They have fairly nice furniture and a woodstove and kerosene lamps and steel tools and plumbing and large plate-glass windows (colored a faint green that tinges all the light entering from outside) and a desk clock and a porcelain tea set arranged in a glass cabinet and a large photograph of a highly vertical Victorian city centered on some kind of palace on the wall. Primrose fetches up coils of rope and a block-and-tackle from a closet, and they're off again - further along the path, but without any really tricky sections this time.

"I'm not sure where to start explaining the High Wilderness. Especially if you came to it some other way than through the Neath."

"I'm more or less from Earth, so... explain to me what an Earther ought to know. Like the stars." She smiles slightly, and keeps up with Primrose's pace.

"Okay... So, the laws of physics are a bit less reliable out here. It was even moreso in the Neath, death wasn't very reliable in the Neath. About the only good damn thing about the Neath, that. Bit more reliable up here. Sunlight is law, right, because suns are Judgements - gods. More or less. Each one shines with its own laws, and that gets confusing and crazy-making if you don't spend enough time under stained glass and journaling to pick out strange urges. We don't have any local suns in the Reach or Albion, so humanity can do our own thing for a while. Nonwithstanding all the other old unhappy things that wander here. Don't tell me you're Catholic or something now, that'd be awkward."

"No, I'm not Catholic. And thank you for the explanation: I have no doubt it'll be invaluable."

"Of course. What kind of place is Oifilei? Is that a city, a polity, a region? We're at the far edge of the Reach, a sizable region more-or-less colonized by London - the city and polity both go by that name, London."

"It's a region named after the trading company that colonized it. I'm a representative, but a very lost one." 

"What, trading company like the Windward Company? Careful, there. They're not much liked by some."

"Something like that. And I'll mind who I mention that to."

Most of her guests are happier to divulge interesting gossip. But she won't pry too much, that'd be rude.

"Of course, you wouldn't know what exactly the Windward Company is any more than you knew to stay away from Traitor's Wood."

The guide lapses into silence. Soon they get to a spot where there's a mediumish climb down, already fitted with pitons and grips. The thunder of the falls is quieter here, about as muted as it was near the cabin. About fifty feet below is a small shelf of clean grey stone, many of the rocks already cut into rough rectangles. She'll work with no more talking than is necessary to give Thorn instructions, unless she has further questions.

She doesn't. She lets Primrose lead, then follows by example. She's strong and no stranger to physical labour, so between the two of them they should make good time.

It definitely goes a lot faster with two since they don't need to climb up and down dozens of times.

"Plenty enough work for a night's stay. I can get them back to the cabin another time."

It's getting dark. She leaves the big rocks piled up along the path and goes back. Hans is cooking and silently provides a plate of potatoes and mushrooms. Primrose mutters a thanks to him, eats quietly, then fetches out a blanket and sets it by their small couch, then starts writing in a journal.

Thorn gets out her bedroll from the top of her pack, and sets it down in an unoccupied space that's hopefully out of the way. She nods to Hans. "Is there enough for me? I don't mind going to bed hungry." 

"Mm, go on, eat. Hospitality."

"I'd offer you tea as well but we're out," Primrose comments. "-Er, don't eat most mushrooms you see. These are a particular and safe kind."

She takes a portion. 

"I do have some familiarity with wilderness survival, yes. Though these mushrooms aren't a type I know. The lack of tea is hardly a hardship." 

She eats, and then she curls up to rest on her bedroll. She makes no further attempts at conversation.

"I don't know what you already know! Perhaps all mushrooms are delicacies where you're from." She spends a few minutes explaining local forage. The flora of the reach is, apparently, boisterous and erratic. Fungus is generally to be treated with great caution, not even approaching too close. And one should not gather or carry honey unless one wishes to deal with the dangerous dog-sized hypnotically singing Chorister Bees.

A couple hours after dawn the next morning she spots a speck trailing smoke round the corner of one of the islands, alerts Thorn, grabs her hood and starts making her way down to the waterfall base. She shifts into a slightly mysterious and confidently knowledgeable persona on the way down.

The locomotive is a flying engine larger in all dimensions than any that have ever pulled cargo across tracks on most Earths, but Primrose identifies it as one of the smallest varieties. There are scars and dents on the hull, and a couple of outright holes. There is a bridge with three figures at controls, translucently covered by orangeish stained glass. It ejects steam out of rear nozzles as well as the top chimney and appears to be halfway ignoring gravity. It pulls smoothly up to the large clearing and sets down, seeming weightless until the last moment, inaudible over the falls.

A small parade of middle aged folk tromp out, chatting and ambling towards the falls, followed by a few younger folk in uniforms who proceed to check around the exterior of the engine, fussing over the holes.

Thorn lags behind a bit getting her bedroll stowed, but catches up after a few minutes. As they near the base of the falls, she pulls Primrose aside and offers her a palm-sized gold coin. It's stamped on both sides with the letters OTC in a hexagonal grid. 

"For all your time, care and consideration. Gold's valuable most places; hopefully this is more than enough to cover any trouble I've caused."

"-More than enough, yes. I'm not sure how to verify gold, but I'll graciously accept it. Thank you and good travels."

"Good luck." 

She waves goodbye to Primrose, and approaches the locomotive. Should she just march up and speak to the officers? That would be presumptuous. So: she'll stop at a respectful distance from the locomotive, looking through the orange stained glass at the likely-officers, and wait to be noticed.

They're doing some kind of shutdown procedure by the looks of it. One of them waves to acknowledge her.

A minute later someone trying fairly hard to present as androdgynous, wearing a bowler hat and close-trimmed coat with a scar across their throat and a revolver at their side, steps out. They scowl at the damage, then turn towards Thorn.

"Captain Rothwell. Need something?"

"Thorn, or the Runed Wanderer by 'nym. Passage Londonwards as far as you'll take me." 

Captain Rothwell raises an eyebrow and looks around feigning confusion. "Huh. I seem like your only option. Interesting. Did your ride out here leave you behind?"

"I may be a bit stranded at the moment, but it's by my own choice. And I didn't come unprepared; I have gold to pay my return ticket."

She holds up another palm-size gold coin. 

They purse their lips. "Kowalski! Go get my scales, please."

How much does the coin weigh? Can it be bent a bit like a soft metal should?

It weights, measures and bends as .917 gold, because that is what it is. 

"...Hmm. This will get you to Port Avon, those fine ladies and gentlemen's origin, and fifty Sovereigns. Or to New Winchester which is closer to Port Prosper and the Transit Relay, and thirty-five. I'm not heading any closer to London after that."

"New Winchester and thirty-five, and thank you for the change. I'll board along with your other clients when they return?" 

"Welcome aboard the good engine Bramble. You may as well get settled now. There's two empty cabins." They scowl again. "If you're wondering about the holes, they're from a scrive-spinster. I was offered a substantial payout to hunt one. I've reconsidered the risks. We're going to patch her up as best we can in a few hours, she'll hold together if we don't get into any fights."

"I'll leave myself in your capable hands, Captain." 

She comes aboard and lets herself be directed to an unoccupied cabin, where she plunks down her pack and settles in to wait.

Through a pale red window she can watch the crew fell and chop up a tree, then apply some of the fresh lumber to the exterior of the engine as "better than nothing". The captain sends someone to ask if she'd like meals in her cabin or in the canteen.

They're off again in the early afternoon. The other passengers are loudly occupying the canteen.

She takes her meals in her cabin, preferring the solitude it gives her. Occasionally she journals, using a black metal ballpoint pen and a simple faux-leather-bound journal. She looks at the stars only briefly, remembering Primrose's warning. 

Looking at the stars, those dazzling points of distant light and law... Doesn't seem to do anything if she keeps it short.

The locomotive chugs through the air for several days, navigating valleys and crags. There is a brief stoppage for some kind of mechanical problem and things get a bit chilly as they scramble to fix it, but then the journey resumes and the air is warmed by steam pipes again. The falls were the most beautiful sight to see - The landscape they pass through, while still verdant, is more wild and not quite as deliberately pretty. They pass two different swarms of Chorister Bees and slow down until they're long gone, but apparently nobody here has enough honey to provoke an attack. They also pass a burnt-out wreck floating in midair, pause to investigate (apparently to signal to any survivors with the headlight), and then quickly move on.

Some bored off-duty crewmembers invite her to drink and play cards on the second day. They're likely to get to Port Avon on the third, and New Winchester late at night on the fourth.

She's supposed to be keeping to herself. If the crew find out about her origins, that could be disastrous. 

On the other hand, the crew likely have some good stories to tell of far places. So it could help her gather vital intelligence. 

Ultimately, boredom makes the decision for her. Evas don't take well to understimulation. 

"I'll play, but I won't drink. Dulls the nerves."

That's so valid. They want their nerves dulled, travelling for too long rather frays them.

She can learn to play a complicated card-passing game and hear stories about fighting (then fleeing from) huge wooden librarians (Scrive-Spinsters) and terminally angry isopods (Cantankeri), about how bucolic Port Avon was and maybe they should vacation there, about the strange Correspondence-engraved obelisk near Polmear and Plenty's circus, about the constant low-level skirmishing between the independence-minded Tacketies and Windward Company Stovepipes, about how they miss the Neath's mushroom wine and grape wine just isn't the same, horror stories of sky-mad explorers whose glass windows were all blown out and not repaired in time for them to stay who they used to be, news of the trade in Unrefined Hours and the Tacketies' threat to stop exporting them back to Albion...

Despite herself, Thorn finds herself smiling from ear to ear. This is an interesting world, and a lucky one. She even volunteers her story of being hunted by the squid-millipede-dog in Traitor's Wood. 

Yep, that sounds about right for Traitor's Wood. She's lucky she didn't run into something that stole her voice or took away her sense of direction or whatever. (Nobody here has actually been into Traitor's Wood).

They discuss more. Homesteaders are reasonably common here, as are pirates and marauders - but they're one of the least dangerous things. One guy laments that Chorister Honey is banned on this engine. It does wonderful things to one's voice. Another wonders just how Bronzewood trees actually work and is told that's folly to investigate without being some kind of academic, just cut them out and sell the gleaming wood for a tidy profit. The Blue Kingdom comes up as some kind of afterlife one can yet travel to(?), but the topic is quickly and loudly changed to different varieties of alcohol and food.

She settles in to listen to the sky stories, and after a few rounds more she bids the sailors farewell and heads back to her cabin.

Port Avon is a cheery, quiet little place. Cabins with gardens, a wide village square with a Maypole fair, a homey little pub, apple orchards and cricket fields, a white stone church, all surrounded by vistas of old stone ruins of mysterious purpose sized for titans, which the locals seem to mostly ignore.

They stop just long enough to disembark the middle-aged bathers, who cheerfully ramble about their 'adventure' to their neighbors, considering it great fun to have been in the locomotive while it was battered about and nearly destroyed on the way out, and pick up a small cargo of frankly enormous seeds tied together in heavy bundles. Then they're off again into landscapes that are much less ridiculously overgrown.

She can overhear speculation on who she is and why she's travelling. The leading theories are 'spy from one of the factions in Eleutheria', 'bard or artist of some sort going undercover', and 'involved with the Devils somehow'. (The last one is on account of her tattoos.)

She smiles to herself a little over the speculations; they tell her what sorts of people the locals suspect of duplicity and cunning. "Bard or artist undercover" is a good story, though. She might be able to lean into that one. 

She takes more time over journalling, and starts writing little fictitious accounts of encounters with Chorister Bees and Scrive-Spinsters patterned off the tales she's heard the sailors telling, marking each with a simple star so they're not confused for honest reporting if this journal should ever be retrieved by another her. She plays cards, listens to the sky-stories, and on occasion she asks a crewman with a particularly good story if she can write it down in her journal. 

Other overheard speculations include:

Spy from Her Majesty's Intelligence Service
Half-child of something higher on the Great Chain of Being, maybe a Scorn-Fluke
Wait, definitely not a Scorn-Fluke, their children are the Rubbery Men and she's not Rubbery at all
Explorer with a shady past and a new name
Former pirate with a shady past and a new name
Child of a rich and important Establishment figure who ran away from home to have an Adventure
Tackety or Stovepipe scout keeping tabs on distant areas of the Reach for the war effort
Priest or devotee of the Burrower Below

She can write their stories down, sure. They wonder if she can sing or play music, or maybe do poetry? Or is it just stories she likes?

The first sign of their destination is a tall lighthouse beaming out in all directions in the distance. The next sign is a huge locomotive - more the size of a naval destroyer than a mere engine - passing by in the other direction on a patrol, with two large visible cannons and a blue-painted hull.

New Winchester is a sprawling and small (by OTC standards- with maybe one or two hundred thousand people at a guess) early 20th century city built on a dozen mountains in the sky, laced with bridges and spars like a highly unsymmetrical spiderweb. Large sections on the edges seem to be overgrown and abandoned, and the rumble of refineries and clanging of forges and machine shops and steam whistles echoes off the stones.

The Bramble passes by two small landing zones in front of important-looking buildings and pulls in to a central station with six landing rails. The Captain comes to meet her, hands over seven small five-Sovereign steel coins coated in brass, and thanks her for being a quiet passenger.

She can't sing or dance, but she can compose poetry fast enough to do doggerel with decent meter and rhyme on whatever subject's recent. Subject to her limited knowledge, of course, but she's got a few days of experience now among the crew and can improvise if need be. 

She disembarks with a small wave to one of the crew she half-knows, and nods to the captain. "It was no trouble," she says, accepting her sovereigns. 

Then she sets off into the city, mostly so it looks like she knows where she's going. A few streets later she'll look around and try to orient herself. Is there a currency changer or a jeweller anywhere nearby?

This street seems fairly low-income. There's grocery stores and bars and hardware shops and food stalls and clothes stores and apartment buildings and a pawn shop. There's also a rat sitting in a tiny 'stall' sticking out of a building at eye level, the sign offering watch and toy repairs.

She'll stop in at a grocery and see how things are priced in sovereigns to get a feel for just how much money she's currently carrying. Maybe she'll buy a box of cookies/biscuits while she's here.

A day's worth of food in this grocery store is about a third of a Sovereign, a bit less or more if you want to eat plain biscuits or plenty of cheese and meat. Sovereigns break up into Shillings and Pennies.

Cookies and biscuits: Exist.

Quick calculations: one gold coin is fifty sovereign plus a dangerous expensive service, a locomotive trip of a day or two from Port Avon to here is fifteen sovereign, one sovereign is three days' groceries, so a five-sovereign coin is worth fifteen days' groceries, which is half a month, and she would get ten of those plus a dangerous expensive service for one gold coin, so one gold coin is worth groceries for half a year. 

She definitely overpaid Primrose. But that was somewhat the point. 

She breaks a five-sovereign coin to purchase a small box of cookies, which she tucks in her pack. No doubt this produces a hail of change she can tuck into one of her convenient pockets.

Looks like it's twenty Shillings to the Sovereign and twenty Pennies to the Shilling. There are five-Shilling and five-Penny coins. The little box of cookies is one Shilling four Pennies - or Pence, the alternate plural is interchangeable. Sugar seems expensive.

She takes her hail of change, her cookies, and her new understanding of money back to the railyard, where she looks for an arrivals board or station clerk. She needs to know what fare to London looks like, even if her current feeling is that she'll stay to observe for a while yet. Who knows what strange things the engines might bring in to this place?

There is a newspaper stand, with exactly one paper - the Winchester Gazette - the only paper worth what it's printed on in New Winchester! Objective news of recent developments between the Tacketies and the Stovepipes! Pricing tables for Hours, Bronzewood, Chorister Honey, and Stained Glass for a dozen major ports of call for the last week!

There are no less than four bars, a brothel pretending to be an inn, and two actual inns in sight of the loading yard. There is a rough-dressed man who seems... Off... With a ragged cart and a sign that says "I BUY CRER CURTA EGGS", who smiles a bit blankly at everyone and says 'I buy eggs!' a lot. There is a large warehouse store that sells fuel and shipboard canteen-grade food by the barrel and crate. There is a shuttered building belonging to 'Columbia Lines' which displays a faded notice that all operations in the Reach beyond Port Prosper are suspended 'due to recent developments'.

There are posters proclaiming the causes of both the Tacketies (independence from the bully-tactics of the Establishment) and the Windward Company (law and order, safety from bandits and monsters). New Winchester seems to be a sort of neutral ground, Victory Hall and Company House both being large outposts for the two organizations. There is a sign pointing towards 'Victoria Market - the largest shopping district in the Reach!'

And there is a small station office that has bulletin boards of departure times and destinations, each with a photo of the engine and a brief description of the captain's history and their intended path and their passenger rates and requirements and any noted dangers along the intended path. Travel to Port Prosper looks likely to be about thirty Sovereigns, more for a direct route or a fast and/or reliable captain. The few that advertise travel to London start at fifty.

...Travel to Port Avon is supposed to be ten or twelve.

Foreigner's tax. She's used to it? It's odd, considering that the memories in question aren't exactly hers, but it's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened to her before. 

She's short of Sovereigns to pay for her trip out, but she can look around for somewhere better to sell another gold coin than at the local pawnshop later. For now, information and a place to stay.

She buys a newspaper, and then she heads over to one of the non-brothel inns and sees about a room.

The place obviously caters to sailors wanting a slightly nicer place than their own cabins to spend their shore leave, those between employment on ships, and new arrivals. There is a small reception area, a front desk, a staircase and back hall, and a sign describing amenities. Rooms have a bed, a desk, a gas lamp, and a wardrobe. Nicer rooms also have an armchair, icebox, tea set and stove, ensuite rather than communal restrooms, hot and cold running water, and bath and laundry passes included instead of purchased separately. There is laundry and a sauna and showers and baths on the first floor - the latter two are individual affairs lockable from the inside, not communal. Rooms are rented by the day at 10 or 16 shillings, and by the week for five days' rent. No food served here.

She rents a good room for the week using one of her shiny five-sovereign coins, drops her backpack off in the room, then heads back out to a clothes store. How much will it cost her for a nice long-sleeved shirt in a dark color that will cover her tattoos?

A nice long-sleeved shirt cut for women in current middle-class fashion with comfortable material and shiny buttons runs about ten shillings.

Ten shillings is fine by her, given that she's soon to liquidate some more of her gold. 

She heads back to the inn with her prize, has a shower, changes her shirt, and then goes up to her room to snack on cookies while reading the newspaper.

An urchin-gang tried to deface Victory Hall by throwing rocks at the windows and were soundly thrashed for their trouble. The Windward Company engine Light of Justice was spotted testing out a new model of auto-cannon, with a higher fire rate and more explosive shells. Tacketies boast progress on uniting the small towns of the reach, calling for a Reach Congress in six months, which the Windward Company decries as inflammatory and illegal, and declares that they will ignore any so-called 'Congress'. The Order of St. Peter's Blessed Mercy Hospital calls for donations to help care for the poor and downtrodden, as their stores of medicine and Hours are critically low after treating many poor workers in the accident in Andrew's Engineering last month.

A group of Devils has purchased an office building on Gillier Street, could they be up to something? Opinion column - These newfangled automobiles are expensive and annoying and useless and we should ban them! Prices for Unrefined Hours have shot up after mysterious recent trouble in Albion. Heroic Rattus Faber squeezes through an active engine to save his locomotive, and we interviewed him! A record of recent reported attacks and battles (two dozen attacks by 'monsters' or pirates, two dozen more skirmishes between Tacketies and Stovepipes, most of them draws). A small opinion column declaring that Curators and Scrive-Spinsters are people too so stop hunting them! Old Tom's Well seems to have calmed down slightly.

Well, that's interesting. 

She notes down in her journal:

- What are Hours? Are they what they sound like? What's their use in a hospital? 

- What are Devils like? They certainly have a foul reputation, but then they do on most worlds. Sometimes deservedly. She'll have to investigate for herself. 

- Rattus Faber? That explains the rat doing watch and toy repairs, certainly. Perhaps they'd be a decent place to get a unique perspective.

- What is the Blue Kingdom, and why is it regarded with such fear and distrust? 

- Tacketies vs. Windward Company: which side does OTC want to back as a trading partner?

She cloaks the page with Hidden Page, and snaps the journal closed. First things first: finding somewhere to liquidate more of her coins.

She heads out from her rooms, pockets jingling, and starts scouting the town. She looks for a better-off district where she might find a jeweller or moneychanger.

Victoria Market is a dense, tangled shopping district comprising three twisting streets, with a multitude of busy stores. One can buy furniture, guns, booze, fancy food, insurance, property in the city, safes, "Empyrean Exotics" that mostly consist of simple electric devices, fine clothes, a variety of strange plants and creatures, bottled souls, scientific equipment, and more. There are at least four jewelers and two banks.

Jingling pockets attract the attentions of pickpockets.

She has the habits of a long-established native of Sigil, one of the busiest places on the planes. The pickpockets have made the mistake of confusing a proper blood and a cutter for a common berk. Fortunately, she is inclined gently. A few sharp raps with the hilt of her athame ought to teach that she is not an easy target, and the efficiently-used bare steel ought to discourage the more experienced ones who are watching how the young and stupid fare.

The few pickpockets are no match for her and search for easier targets.

...That person who just passed her may have been a Devil. Golden irises, smelling faintly of sulfur, people getting out of her way. The last thing could just be her fine clothes and the confident way she walks, though.

Hmm. The sulphur smell correlates. But for now, she has other business. She stops in at one of the jewellers', and asks: 

"Excuse me, do you buy gold?" 

They do buy gold! After testing it, of course. What sort is it, used jewelry, ingots, nuggets, coins...?

A gold coin of eccentric make. Here, have a look.

The supervisor puts on white gloves before handling it.

He takes it over to a desk half-hidden away and carefully weighs and measures and otherwise scrutinizes it, and asks what the alloy is, and eventually offers 87 Sovereigns for it.

The 50-Sovereign coin is mostly steel by weight, a bit larger than the one she handed in, and has a piece of red stained glass in the center.

Excellent, local and portable. She puts her money into her pockets, then returns to the inn, where she moves the 50-Sovereign piece into the heel of her boot and puts some of her 5-Sovereign pieces into her luggage. Then it's time to eat. 

She picks one of the dockside bars to get pub food from, looking for both food and stories of the High Wilderness. 

Pub food is available. Stew, beans, bacon and eggs, biscuits and gravy, mashed potatoes, Murgatroyd's Fungal Crackers, fried vegetables, something called Rubbery Lumps that appear to be fried but are otherwise mysterious...

Pub gossip is also available. This crew is back from cold Lustrum and had a run in with Cantankeri. They're not that dangerous in ones or twos, but they're bloody persistent, it was exhausting. That captain raided a pirate vessel and is describing (making up) a ghastly shrine in the foul villain's private quarters. This crew had to pass Old Tom's Well and tells of the icy hurricane-like winds lashing the engine for almost twelve hours before they were clear. That one describes the Candlewind, a spirit or force of nature that acts according to possibly-divine whimsy and is generally a hassle for navigation. This lot speaks of Magdalene's, the great house for the disturbed and unnerved, and how theraputic a few days of treatment there was. Someone else mutters about bloody artists, Titania, built right on top of a huge Chorister Bee hive and too stubborn to move. A tall woman with a movie camera marches in and announces 100 Sovereigns to take her to Hybras- Which seems to be a distant community built among a titanic tangle of fungus.

She'll try the rubbery lumps. Her culinary adventuresomeness has still not been blunted by the "delicacies" of a thousand planes. And besides, they wouldn't sell it as pub food if it was awful or hazardous. Probably. 

She listens carefully, and makes a mental note: Titania. 

Her thoughts turn to investigation. Hours and Devils. Devils are clearly the more dangerous, so let's start with Hours. There were prices for them in the newspaper, yes? Perhaps she can simply purchase some.

After she finishes her meal, she heads back to her room at the inn and reads up on the latest price for Hours. 

The Rubbery Lumps taste faintly like seafood, the taste mostly dominated by salt and oil. And they're very chewy. Their primary draw seems to be nostalgia.

The newspaper lists wholesale prices. A standard barrelful of Grade A Hours, sealed in wax and notarized by the Windward Company, can be had for 93 Sovereigns this week. She probably wants fewer than a whole barrel.

She could afford a full barrel, and she could likely find a full barrel, but the question is "how big and heavy is a full barrel?" Because if it's as tall as she is, she might have trouble carting it away with her, much less storing it. 

No, she'll need a better approach than solving this with money the blunt-force way. More information will likely solve her problems: the question is how to gain it. 

Victoria Market seems like a good starting point to begin her investigations, speaking of which why are there souls on sale? And what does that even look like?

Souls are billowing semisolid things kept in glass bottles, flowing and glowing softly and occasionally resolving into a face or hand for a moment. They're kept... Slightly out of the way, as a not-very-respectable thing to trade, though not actually disguised like the brothel is. Ordinary colored glass bottles with plain shapes house most of the souls, and the ones in especially ornate bottles are brighter, clearer, more defined, and have interesting colors or patterns. There aren't any signs or such explaining what they're for.

Should she purchase one of the smaller ones to send back to the OTC? Then she can see if this is a case of trade in sentients or not. 

... later. She needs a place scouted for her beacon home, and some Hours in her other hand to add to the pile for analysis. 

Are Hours on sale anywhere in the market?

Hours are on sale in a couple of places! So are Hour-looms, which you apparently feed them into, but those start at a couple hundred Sovereigns. They seem to be specialty enough that asking how to use them correctly could fly without being sucpicious.

Well then. All she needs to do now is find a quiet spot on the edge of town to use her beacon, and then she can send a soul and some Hours back to the OTC. 

... That seems like the kind of risky operation she'd best do at the end of her week, rather than immediately. She can make the trek to the edge of town anytime in the next five days; no sense in going off half-cocked. 

What about Chorister Honey? Supposedly it's good for one's singing voice, yes? That's a simple enough claim that she can test it herself. Where can she buy some, and for how much?

A whole gourd is 120 Sovereigns and looks to be about 2 gallons. A shot glass's worth advertised to be good for an hour or two costs 16 Shillings.

She pays sixteen shillings for a shot-glass-sized portion and takes it away with her. If need be she'll pay for a small bottle in order to have a container for it. 

What other exotic curiosities are on sale?

The bottle is included.

Aside from the Chorister Nectar and geode-like Unrefined Hours, Bronzewood seems to be more than an ordinary wood - it's advertised as extremely durable, and is attractive with smooth dark grain like wood and yet gleaming like, well, bronze. The least expensive Bronzewood item on display is a two-Sovereign jewelry box with a velvet interior.

There are a wide variety of shining gemstones available, both large and finely cut, some of which almost seem to have an inner light, and at what seem like really low prices compared to other worlds. There is a huge variety of stained glass items from the ordinary to the artistic, including lanterns, windows, religious art, and stained-glass telescopes that promise reasonably safe and undistorted views of distant stars.

Thirsting Bombazine is a fabric that seems to drink light, always a deep dark purple or black and becoming thick and heavy the more light it's been exposed to recently. Some of the weapons and munitions for sale seem to have possibly-exotic components to their function, though nothing blatantly obvious there.

There are a variety of samples of Reach flora promising huge food yields for no effort, or an incomparably delicious fruit, with little indication of reliability to those claims - though they are still being bought up. And there are a variety of pickled, caged, and sketched or sculpted exotic creatures. One of the heads on display looks sort of similar to the thing that attacked her in Traitor's Wood.

She'll take the jewellery-box for two sovereigns, she can use it to hold her spare change. The gemstones are worth an additional look; they don't seem entirely natural. Stained glass is not unexpected given the need for it to keep out the starlight, and it's precious enough to be in the fifty-sovereign coin. Thirsting Bombazine is wondrous though impractical, and would sell well elsewhere. As for this world's exotics, all of them are suitably exotic, but she's not going to pick through the market right now. 

She heads back to her room at the inn, and takes out the bottle of Chorister Honey... then puts it back. It wouldn't be ladylike of her to start singing out loud in the middle of the inn. Perhaps there'll be music at one of the bars in the evening, though she frankly has no idea what time it is, owing to the lack of a sun. 

Until then... grocery shopping for the week to go in the inn icebox, and she'll buy herself an entire second set of clothing. 

There are clocks in a fair amount of abundance. They currently read 7:30 - and there is a subtle day/night cycle in the dimming and brightening of the stars that seems to indicate it's night. Lots of places are closed or closing soon. The bars certainly do seem to have music, and there are also concert halls here and there.

Food is available at a few grocery stores that seem to operate for the night shift, but her options for clothes are limited to secondhand stores at this hour. It's not always clear if something is meant as feminine or masculine or androgynously - though they seem accepting of crossdressing and genderfluidity and homosexuality here.

Ah, time's caught up to her. She'll leave clothes and groceries for tomorrow, then. For now, she'll go to the bar, down her bottle of Chorister honey, and join in the singing. 

Chorister Nectar tastes like warmth and light and the sweet and powerful urge to express oneself, however one can. It seems to be a bit intoxicating, in that way. She wants to stand up, sing or dance, to tell a story or write poetry, something expressive!

It infuses one's voice with an ineffable clearness, a depth and timber and resonance. It gives a wider vocal range, and prevents the throat from becoming strained by volume or extended use. And while it does not exactly confer skill, it gives a measure of steadiness, control, that is a potent benefit to an amateur singer.

She can improvise poetry; it comes bubbling up out of her, driven by the honey-muse, and she has the half-remembered tune of a Sigilite drinking song, and a voice like water, wavery and shimmerant and rich. She sings about the beauty and majesty of the High Wilderness with all the conviction of an adventurer who's just met a new frontier. 

The honey rather wrings her out, in fact. She hadn't known she'd wanted this. To be close to people. And if there were some cracked notes and some stumbles where she forgot the tune, that only makes the heartache in her deeper. 

She wants to be able to sing. 

The honey gives her that, and then it takes it away.

The other patrons try to sing along for a bit, but there's not much one can do to match someone who's downed Chorister Honey, especially if they don't know the tune. The improvised band tries their best to accompany her, but they don't know the tune either, and quiet as well. Near-silence except for her voice echoing through the bar, the center of attention for that bare moment... It could feel glorious and perilous.

The second or third time through a few of the better singers pick up along her and flub it even more than she does, softening the metaphorical spotlight. The band learns the beat to keep, accompaniment that doesn't overwhelm. And after - who knows how long? Half an hour? A full hour? - Then, the honey starts to wear off. Her voice becomes more ordinary again, her range shrinks, the bursting urge to sing as loud as she can fades away. It could have gone better. She gets a good amount of smiles and cheering anyway, and a couple of offers to buy her a drink.

The bartender brings her a cup of ice water and says, "Here, drink up. You alright? First time drinking Chorister Honey? Most pace themselves a bit, that was a lot all at once."

She downs the ice water. "Yes. Apologies for my singing, I know I wasn't... exactly..." 

Good, she doesn't say. 

"I should have told someone up front, but... I've always been the reckless type."

She fishes in her pocket for a sovereign shilling and puts it on the bar. "Thank you," she says.

Then she looks around for those who offered to buy her a drink.

"You were fine, miss. This is a bar, not a choir club." He smiles as he takes the shilling.

The closest person who offered a drink is a woman in a blue uniform-style outfit with small scars on the back of her hands. She holds one out to shake.

"That was fun! New songs are always nice."

She shakes Lenora's hand. "And so are new people. I'm Thorn, current 'nym the Runed Wanderer. You?" 

"True, true~ Lenora! Bright-Eyed Gunner. Between ships on account of my old captain deciding to retire. What's a rune, exactly?"

She pulls up her right sleeve to show her tattoo. "These, here. Some people say they bring good luck."

"Oh, neat. It can be hard to tell, you know? Whether certain things help or not. Since there's so much," vague wave, "Stuff. What do you want to drink? I offered you one for the new songs, so you'll get one."

She pushes her sleeve back into place. "I don't drink alcohol, but I'm sure there's something on offer that's to my taste... We can sort it out later, the drink's not the important part anyway." She halfsmiles. "This is actually my first time out in the High Wilderness, so maybe I'll buy you some drinks for a few good sky stories."

"Well, you are in a bar. Mmh. I have stories, sure - which sounds fun? The Uninvited Guests aboard our engine, that time we tricked two pirates into fighting each other, or something about the Blue Kingdom? Anyway, how's that happen? Everywhere that's anywhere is in the High Wilderness these days."

"I'll have something about the Blue Kingdom, I keep hearing the name but I don't know what to believe about it. As for the unfamiliarity... there was an accident I don't care to talk about." 

"Understandable. I understand. So, Blue Kingdom... The Blue Kingdom Transit Relay is right near New Winchester, actually. It just doesn't see much traffic, because of how the Blue Kingdom... Is." She pauses thoughtfully. "There's not nearly as much reason to go there as there is to go to Albion, I mean. They're hostile to anything that's not dead. Officially dead, I mean. Damn, I'm telling this all out of order."

"So, the Blue Kingdom is right near a star. The Sapphir'd King, they call him. So the whole place is blindingly bright and gives you the sense that you're doing something wrong, even as it's sort of - eerily beautiful. As I understand it, whenever people across a huge range of the High Wilderness die, they go to the Blue Kingdom. The whole place is filled with... Shades, disembodied spirits, who have to walk from place to place in the Blue Kingdom and be judged, before going to their final resting place. I saw them, lines literal miles long before that court, hardly moving at all. An elephant-like spirit told me he'd been waiting for an appeal for two hundred seven years!"

She shivers.

"It was really unsettling. They were like moving porcelain versions of themselves, or made of shadow or... Something. Most of them aren't human. I have no damn idea what Captain Ekedis was hoping to accomplish there. Or why we didn't refuse to sail in."

"I can see why the rumours persist if that's what the firsthand accounts are like. Mind if I press you for your other pair of stories? I'm fascinated by the Reach, it's full of new experiences. Like Chorister Honey."

"I didn't even get to the actual story! Though it's not much of one, really. We saw a Prince of Heaven, a living being of golden fire whose body was Correspondence, constantly shifting from sigil to sigil. It was beating the hell out of another locomotive with bolts of fire that turned in midair to follow it, we think it was spirifers cracking Blue Kingdom vaults in it because it had Devils inside when the Logoi tore it in two. And, sure, if I get a couple stories in turn."

"How about the time I was hunted by a fearsome beast in Traitor's Wood?" 

She goes on, elaborating the story a bit to eliminate her spell-bound flight, but mentioning the whispering garden, the sucking bog, and the thing that stalked her in the starlight.

Lenora gives little gasps and interested noises as appropriate. She's been to Summerset Camp, but never into the deep parts of the Wood.

The Pirates Incident happened when two marauder engines had the Bullhorn trapped in a long winding chasm with some side-passes but no actual exits. Both were waiting at the edge in ambush position. Lenora had the idea but her captain executed it beautifully - they disguised their engine as one of the pirates, shot at the other pirate a bit and signalled insults with the spotlight, then ran to the opposite side of the chasm and did the same thing, then hid in a side passage. Once the pirates were busy fighting each other, they just went the other way and were home free!

She laughs. "Oh, that's a good one. Clever, just and valorous. And a good idea from you. I take it you were... gunnery officer?" 

"Thanks! Yes, though it's not one of the customary officer positions and the raise was small, it's a nice title."

"I've never had a title to my name like that. Came out here to the Reach to explore, maybe make my fortune. I have some inheritance from my family, who were good enough of adventurers to make a living from it. This nice pistol -" She taps it. "- And enough sovereigns to travel the Reach and live in close-to-comfort while I'm here. I've had years of training in how to shoot and how to fight, growing up in my household, but I've never really been out on my own. I took an expedition to Traitor's Wood, got separated from the group... And that's how I come to be back here in New Winchester, a bit rattled to be frank. Now the question is, do I go back to London with my tail between my legs, or do I explore some more? This might be the honey talking, but I'd love to see Titania. Maybe get some singing lessons." 

"I'm not you, 'course, but it does sound like kind of a shame to head back after doing one major thing. I'm never going back to Albion, probably. Even if I wanted to..." Shrug. "The Reach is big and I haven't seen all of it. And there's always Eleutheria if I get too bored of here."

"Elutheria, huh. What's out there?"

"The rumors are a little mysterious but for one - the Eagle's Empyrean! Another - polity, I guess. Not as powerful as London, but wholly independent. They do all sorts of things with lightning, apparently. I want to know what they're like. And Pan, home to strange factions with pagan powers and goals and secrets. And more, like the Rubberies or Devils, all very mysterious and foreboding."

"I think I'd like to see that," she says. "Any of it and all of it. But I expect trips out are quite perilous, if even here in the Reach you have to contend with Canktankeri and Scrive-Spinsters. Not to mention pirates." 

She lowers her voice and leans in slightly. "There's a Transit Relay out there somewhere that goes to Eleutheria. The Establishment wants everyone to forget it exists and those who know it can make bank importing from there, so the exact path is not widely known."

Thorn's eyebrows shoot up. "... Thank you for trusting me with this. I think very much that I'd like to find that transport relay."

The only way to make contact with the Empyrean would be to find that relay and use it. I could try to bribe a captain, but they're not likely to risk their livelihoods on me. I... Oh, I very dearly hope that this is a very lucky world.

"Sadly I cannot help you directly with that. I don't have an engine or enough money to buy one and the bank is not gonna give anyone a loan to buy an engine - I don't really want to be a captain either, bossing people around is stressful, I'd rather find a good one and stick to them."

Wild hope rises in her chest - but no, she has to be cautious. She doesn't know this world.

"If only I had that kind of money. What's it cost for an engine nowadays anyway?" 

"So, the Britomart's, what, two hundred, and... Uh." Blush. "I am a bit tipsy and not so great at math in the first place, but about a thousand?"

She can afford that. 

By how much can she afford that? She doesn't know. But it has advantages, it could work - 

"That's surprisingly cheap for that much good iron. Maybe if I strike it rich getting into trouble on some backwater colony." 

"Well the hull would be the priciest part overall, yeah, but you can smell the steelworks from here, steel's cheap enough. And it'd be partially rebuilt from damaged ones. But it'd fly."

"Flying is rather necessary to get things off the ground, yes." 

She laughs and orders another beer for herself.

"Almost want to invite you out to target-shooting, see how good you really are. I'd offer singing lessons in exchange, but I'm crap at it and you don't want those from me."

"I'd be willing to show you in exchange for your third story. How about it?" 

"Sure, lemme just-" She sets down her drink and makes a strange gesture, maybe a warding gesture. "The Uninvited Guests are kind of horrible. Every engine does daily checks for them on the outside of the hull in sky-suits, and if you find any small black wriggling things - toss them into the void. They're flying eel things that are attracted to human warmth, sentiment, feelings of togetherness and hominess. And have acid spit. But they stay away from islands, and only go to locomotives in the sky. A few wouldn't be much harm actually, but they call to each other. If you have a few, they'll fill the entire engine in days, crushing anything inside."

She takes a large gulp of beer.

"Well, we had some. We spent six hours searching every nook and cranny and found dozens of the slimy little things. And then the next day, we had a hundred of them spill out of one of the supply cupboards, where they'd eaten all the flour. Cap had us abandon the engine entirely and camp out on the nearest rock. Let the Guests do their thing and get bored because nobody's on the locomotive making it homey and leave. Four days freezing our butts off and playing cards and worrying over starlight exposure, and then the Guests were gone and we could clean everything up and continue on our way."

"Quite the tale to tell. I'm glad your captain had the presence of mind to clear the engine before the Guest problem got too bad; I'd have hated to lose the chance to know you."

"Yeah, I'm glad I didn't die too. Meeting interesting people at pubs is a hobby as old as pubs!"

"I'm glad to uphold a noble tradition. Let's schedule the shooting for when tomorrow?"

"Some traditions need upholding, alright. Others could do with some revising. Whenever works for you really - I'm not up to much. One in the afternoon?"

"Let's go for the evening. Five PM, say?"

"Well the range closes at six... An hour's enough time, right? Okay, I'll write down directions. Starting from here?"

"Starting from here, I'm staying at the inn right close by." 

Lenora writes down instructions in scribbly handwriting - in the style of 'straight until you see the bakery with a giant rolling pin sign, turn left there' - then wanders off to heckle the darts players with a jaunty wave and allows other patrons to ask where she heard that song from, it was interestingly different, and has she got any more?

The tune is an old one passed down by her venturesome family. The words, she made up on the spot. She has some more old tunes she could share another night, but not now, she's all wrung out for the moment. Does anyone know of an artist's club? She's looking for a singing instructor. 

This woman sings amateurishly in her church choir and invites her to Sunday service. The most well-known artist's club is the Bohemian Club over on High Street but they're actually kind of expensive and pretentious. This guy's sister married well and goes to salons to gossip, they might know of some artists in need of work? This guy claims to know a famous singer but is clearly bullshitting. Someone else offers the name of a gymnasium, assuring her that it's been slowly taken over by the dance and musical scenes.

She'll pass on sunday service. Thank you for the tip about the Bohemian club. She'll be here all week if his sister gets back to him about an opportunity. Famous singer? Next. A gymnasium? Well, if she tries it and it doesn't work she's only out a little time. And it seems the best lead she has yet. 

Someone tells her their favorite busker's usual spot. The guitar player in the corner gives her a name and address, saying "The Manic Dilettante is weird but he'll teach you if you seem interesting." Nobody else has any useful contributions after that.

The guitar player can have a shilling for his specific and useful advice. She buys some pub food to eat, and once she's finished she heads back to her room at the inn. 

A couple people try to hit on her. Lenora is still in the bar when she leaves, but waves goodbye.

Nothing interrupts her return to the inn. She can access the baths and showers by unlocking them with her room key.

She waves goodbye to Lenora.

She goes back to her room, puts her bronzewood jewellery-box into her pack, and checks quickly to make sure her gold coins are still there. Then she carefully seals them back into the bottom of her backpack. 

She checks the time. 

It's 9:15 PM.

She only needs to sleep half as much as a normal human would, so a late bedtime is no concern of hers. She lights a lamp, and stays up counting her money. 

Seventeen OTC gold coins. One fifty-sovereign steel-and-glass coin. Twelve five-sovereign coins. Four one-sovereign coins. Three shillings. Two five-pence coins. At a rate of eighty-seven sovereigns to the OTC gold coin, that works out to… one thousand, five hundred and ninety-three sovereigns, three shillings, ten pence. 

She doesn't want to sell more of the gold this soon if she can help it, so that puts the vast majority of her funds off-limits. Minus one thousand, four hundred and seventy nine sovereigns. What does she have left in native currency? One hundred and fourteen sovereigns, three shillings, ten pence. Alright. Reserve seventy-five sovereign for her eventual trip to London; That leaves her with thirty-nine sovereign and change. It costs four sovereign a week to live here and another two and a bit per week for groceries. She also would like singing lessons. She has no idea how much that would cost but five sovereign a week surely ought to cover it. So that's eleven sovereign a week, letting her stay for three further weeks before she'd have to go, but there's no fun budget there. So call it 15 sovereign a week and she has roughly another two weeks after this one. 

If she keeps to that, then can she afford an engine? A thousand sovereigns is definitely "sell all of her gold" money. There are four jewellery stores in town. She can sell five coins at each of the remaining three stores and have… fifteen times ninety… One thousand three hundred and fifty sovereigns, slightly less than. A lot depends on the exact cost of an engine, but it is definitely within reach if it's near Lenora's estimates. Supplies, crew… Charts. Charts could definitely be worth something. Call it ten crew, each paid… ten sovereign? She doesn't know enough yet.

So, information. She can look at the wholesaler's prices tomorrow and see what food and fuel cost. She can ask around the rail yards for a better price on a locomotive. She can just purchase a chart or two, they'd be useful to her even if she never boards another engine again. She can ask about signing on to an engine and the average wage of a crewmember. Lenora would know that, but how best to ask? Hm. 

She checks the clock again.

It's 9:40 now. The street outside is getting emptier and emptier.

She journals for a little while, making notes on her conversation with Lenora. She doesn't think any of the shops are open anyway.

She writes some starred fiction, more to fill time than anything else. After an hour or two more she goes to bed. It's an early turn-in for her, but she should be pretending to need eight hours of sleep like a normal person. 

Starting around 6 AM, steam whistles and grinding and cranes and motors can begin to be heard from the rail yard practically right next door to this inn.

She's up. First stop the fuel and supply wholesaler to check their prices, then onwards to purchase groceries for the day and store them in her inn icebox. After that, it's time to buy a full change of clothes, including at least three more pairs of socks and underwear. And after that, she has the Manic Dilettante to investigate. 

Anthracite Coal seems to be the gold standard in fuel. A sizable barrel of quality hard coal in pelletized gravel form, weighing about 300 kilos, is sold for 5 Sovereigns. Several more questionable fuels like soft peat, lignite coal, charcoal, or some sort of lichen are available for somewhat less. A large crate of food that is meant to keep well looks like it'd feed about 15 people for a week, and costs 40 Sovereigns. They come in four different pre-mixed sets with different portions and varieties, more powdered eggs on that one, a ration of canned pork on that one...

She nods along, thanks the sales clerk, and ventures out into the city. A few trips to grocery stores and clothiers later, she knocks on the Manic Dilettante's door.

There's no answer except the faint sound of clanging from inside. If she checks, it's not locked.

"Hello?", she calls, stepping inside. "I'm looking for the Manic Dilettante?" 

The front hall of this house is a mess. Scattered shoes ranging from high-heels to sandals to combat boots to be-feathered slippers, and a coatrack made of bones, an upside-down portrait, a half-disassembled clock, and a burn mark on the wall.

"He's in the kitchen!" Comes a voice from the kitchen. That's also where the clanging is coming from.

She has a feeling she's going to instantly love or loathe this person. 

She follows the clanging into the kitchen. 

There is a slightly pudgy middle-aged vaguely-latino man hammering on an arm-ish piece of metal in a vise, on a large and sturdy table. No food is in the area. He sets down the hammer and gives a little smile and wave.

"Hello! I'm working on sculpture today! Not very well but sometimes you just need to hit something! Who're you and are you doing anything interesting today?"

Oh, she likes him. 

"Thorn. Dreaming of a sky-engine in the way that ends with a full account of prices for everything you'd need to own one. Also, I was told by a guitarist that you might be able to help me learn how to sing. I tried Chorister honey for the first time yesterday and I think I fell in love." 

He laughs. "Oh, the joys of Chorister Honey! If only it wasn't so unfortunate to gather, it'd be cheaper. The way I heard it, the best way to get an engine is to inherit it from a former captain. One way or another. Who was it who recommended me, Clyde? Granger? Or maybe Yates, that silly young man with the beard."

"I didn't get a name - the guitar player at the skyfront tavern. I think it was perhaps because I sang a song they hadn't heard before."

"Probably Clyde, then. Go on, let's hear it, anyone can sing even if most everyone could use more lessons." He turns around and starts rummaging through a cabinet as he talks.

This is harder without the Chorister bouying her up. It takes her a moment to find confidence in her voice, and a few bars before she finds the tune, but she manages a decent version of her song from the pub. She's even able to sing her improvised words again: her quartz pendant is a  perfect memory of her, after all.

A short way into the song, "Aha!" -And he turns around again with a large honeycomb, heavy and golden in a big glass bowl.

He sets it down on the counter, listens intently, and starts humming along after a few verses.

"I can't tell what the influences are! It has some recognizable pieces of style common in drinking songs, the kind of thing that makes them easier to sing along to, but the rest, the details? Neither classical nor Baroque nor folk, not even Empyrean or Elder! Excellent. Where did you learn it, do you have more?"

"It's a hand-me-down, traditional in my family, of which I'm afraid I'm the last in the High Wilderness. There's a few others like it: the originals were in a different language, I'm improvising English lyrics. If you'd like to hear one..." 

And she launches into a rendition of another Sigilite drinking song, this time in original Sigil cant. She's sung this one hundreds of times: it comes out confident and clear, if not exactly always on key.

He holds very still during the song, and claps politely at the end.

"Right! Good confidence! That's key to music in my opinion - you must know you can sound amazing. Can, with practice, not already do. Let's start on the basics in my music room, see how well you take instruction."

He brings the bowl with the honeycomb along as he heads deeper in the house.

She follows, smiling at having apparently passed the first test, "be interesting." 

He starts teaching, by example and instruction both. The lesson is erratic in topic but seems effective. The Manic Dilettante, Javier, is not the best singer in the world but he is at least a solid and highly enthusiastic one, if occasionally distracted by asking what the Sigilite words mean. He keeps fidgeting with the bowl of Chorister Honey but doesn't say anything about it.

Though she's naturally contrary, she wants this very badly. She follows instruction eagerly and with a minimum of cursing.

She provides translations. Berk, Cutter and Blood slide into her vocabulary. She refrains from speaking about the Lady or Sigil as a whole. 

Finally: "Thank you for the lesson. How much do I owe you?" 

Javier is perfectly happy to curse when cursing seems called for. He starts stringing together Sigilite sentences and grammar. He starts playing the guitar as an instrument for her to follow, then drums, then a harp, then piano, then his own voice in challenging, complicated patterns - and now she mustn't overwhelm, backup singing is a valuable skill! -And after that...

"Nothing today. It was a trial! An audition of both student and teacher. In future I think eight shillings an hour ought to be fine." He holds up the bowl of honey. "My instruction - You can use some of this when you're ready to actually benefit your learning from it. I got a bargain and will give it to you for what it cost me. When that is, I shall leave to you to judge. Also, I confess I am not much for schedules."

"I'm not much for schedules either, but if we could average an hour each day that would be good. I like you as a teacher; we fit well together. And eight shillings an hour sounds like a steal. The honey I'll leave as a test of my own patience, I suspect. Thank you for your time!"

"Have fun and burn bright! Show up whenever and we'll see if I feel up to a lesson then!"

Back to his hammer-sculpting he goes.

She supposes it's time for her to explore the edges of the city. Is there somewhere she can set up her beacon without being observed by anyone?

The edges of the city quickly decay into overgrown sprawl, thick cords of vines and trees and other plants rending stone and steel and glass alike. Some of it seems to be claimed by the homeless picking through for anything of value, by gangs of children claiming places as bases of operation, by stubborn 'suburban' dwellers who seem to live here legitimately, or by more ordinary gangs of adults as a place to hide things and conduct deals. But there's plenty of abandoned places, and after several hours she can find an area that seems unclaimed and an old house that's still reasonably intact, about half an hour's walk and considerably lower elevation from the city center.

Lovely. She marks the spot mentally, and returns to her rooms at the inn, where she picks up her pack again. From there, to Victoria Market, where she purchases a soul and five sovereign's worth of Hours and stuffs them both in her pack; and then back out to the abandoned house. She sweeps the property for anything suspicious, then sets down her pack in a corner of one of the rooms. 

She digs down to the very bottom of her pack and pulls a squat, chunky device free of its black bag. Setting it down with the cone tip pointing upwards, she taps in a sequence: the device unfolds, digs feet into the floor, and flashes a green light. 

She snaps her fingers, and a door appears.

She picks up her pack, and marches through.

There's a woman who looks much like her sitting at a desk on the far side. She's less scarred, and bears no tattoos, but the face is the same. 

Thorn bows shallowly. "Eva."

Eva laughs. "No need to stand on formalities, Thorn. What've you found?"

"A bustling magical frontier, still untamed, with many curiosities that might be of interest to the OTC. They were selling souls in the marketplace."

"What do you mean by that? Souls can be very different things depending on ambient mana; there's a reason why we need the crystal to fixate ours."

"I thought you might say that, so I brought a sample." She unslings her pack and retrieves the bottled soul.

Eva stands up and comes around her desk in order to have a look at the soul. 

"Fascinating. I'll have to get Grey to take a look at this; it doesn't seem to be sentient, but..."

"Always best to check, definitely. I also brought you these." She hands up the geodelike Hours from her pack. "Some form of unrefined time, if I'm not mistaken. This world might be a good Chron source." 

Eva accepts them gracefully, putting the soul onto her desk so she can hold them all. 

"Oh, Grey will love to play with these. Thank you. What about supply?" 

Thorn pulls a five-sovereign coin out of her pocket. "I've been able to sell a few of my gold coins. This is worth five sovereign; one of my gold coins is worth eighty-seven sovereign. And if I can just get my boot off..." 

She sits down and starts unlacing it.

Eva holds the coin up to the light. "This is certainly duplicatable. But you'll have to be careful with forgery, especially if it's a hailstorm of small coins like this one."

"Yes, I'm as aware of the native interference guidelines as you are. Not to mention the issue of attracting attention. That's why I'm here, in part; I'd like you to exchange some of my gold coins for native currency at a fair rate so I don't have to rely on native jewellers." 

She pulls the fifty-sovereign piece out of her bootheel, and holds it up so its central stained glsss can catch the light. "And this is the coin that will make that practical. Fifty sovereigns."

Eva nods. "So two of your gold coins is worth three of those and some change. Seems like a reasonable exchange rate." 

"I have a one-sovereign coin too, of course." She shows the steel coin. 

"How much of your gold would you like transformed?" 

"Let's say five coins. I don't want to be suspected of forgery if there's some larger denomination I've yet to find. Oh, and I'm fairly sure I'll be able to make up another fifty in change: don't leave me with too many fives." 

"Are you sure? There's a reason why we send gold instead of counterfeiting usually. Selling gold is usually not a crime, however much of a risk it is to our covers." 

She considers for a moment, and then sighs. "I don't know enough about this world. They could well have some magical method for detecting counterfeits that we can't foil. Damn it, I liked this plan." 

"That's why we have each other. Anything else?" 

She pulls her nylon tent and camping food out of her bag. "I don't need these, and they risk my cover. I can get period-appropriate ones at the market. Speaking of which, I need to give you a sample of Chorister Honey. Next contact." 

"Next contact. You should get going; Beacons have been discovered by all sorts of people and things in the past, even in the most secure locations." 

"Yeah. Nice to see you!"

"Nice to see you too."

Thorn hefts her pack, draws her pistol, and heads back out the door to the city. She sweeps the room, then kneels to refold and stash the beacon if nothing disturbs her.

Nothing has disturbed the room.

Well then. Time to head back into town, purchase some Chorister for later, and have lunch. She thinks it's around lunchtime. 

It does seem to be around lunchtime, though there are fewer clocks in the run-down edges of the city.

...As she is walking past a storage rental place just on the edge of the actually inhabited bits of town, there is a sudden shrill whistle from somewhere inside the yard of storage units, and then a chorus of soft steam hisses and twangs reminiscent of bowstrings. Followed by shouting and a scream of pain.

... Not her business, but she's going to go against her Sigilite instincts here and actually investigate. One hand on her pistol, just in case.

The shouting and cursing continues. They got Marten! Fucking rats! How are they gonna get out of here?

A rat wearing aviator goggles and carrying a miniature crossbow loaded with some kind of dart pops up over the edge of one of the container roofs and demands, "Friend or foe!"

"Friend! What's happening?" 

"They owe us money and have been blowing us off about it, that's what's happening. So they're paying up. And we're loaded for nonlethal, because we're better than that. Remember that, everyone pays the Clatter Rats what they're owed."

There are a couple more hisses from behind the next row of containers.

She nods, persuaded by the street logic of it. "Fair enough. I'll leave you to your contest!"

"Ain't much of a contest against those amateurs. If you need something small stolen or something significant sabotaged, or want makeshift miniature mechanical marvels, look for the Clatter Rats at 17 Griggs Street!"

She tips a nonexistent hat, and continues on the way she was going. Chorister, lunch. Actually wait, she's forgetting something. Chorister, charts, lunch. 

Where is she going to try to buy charts? There's no obvious place to do so in Victoria Market or along the trainyard.

That's information in and of itself. A specialist store? At the trainyard? She steps more carefully now. Perhaps they're trade secrets. 

Well, a rough sketch of the biggest main routes appear on a map in the station office. And there is also a job ad out for a Navigator which mentions 'charts of the Reach, particularly Lustrum and surrounds, will benefit your consideration'.

Even the rough map is worth something to her. And the job ad... rather suggests that what she's looking for is rare and kept closely guarded, if even an established captain is seeking charts by way of hiring someone with them. 

She'll put this aside for now. But as she's at the trainyard anyway...

"Excuse me, I'm in the market to commision an engine. Is this the right place to inquire?"

"Oh, well, unless you have connections you want the Wolvesey yard for that, and Abraham's Engineering to refit whatever hulk you think is repairable. It's on the south side."

"Thank you kindly." She sets out to the Wolvesey yard, where she asks: "I'm looking to commision an engine. Could you walk me through pricing and outfitting?"

The Wolvesey Engine Yard is a repository of unwanted, unloved, unmaintained, or blasted-from-the-sky engines.

A bored clerk will show her around to several of the smaller and more intact samples, but she is not a locomotive builder herself. A "Spatchcock" model with eight cabins, a small hold, and all the basic fittings except missing the actual engine bit goes for about 500 Sovereigns, a bit less with various flaws or missing items. There's also a "Tremmington" engine that's a bit bigger and includes the engine bit (albeit a nearly three decade old model that hasn't been started in eight years), but has some distressing ergonomics problems and probably has some crippling subtle flaw given how cheap it is at 325. A "Parsival" escort the same size as the Spatchcock is described as tough and nimble with a second, bigger weapons mount, and starts at 2000.

"Can you recommend a reputable engine dealer, a decent ship-gun manufacturer, and so on?" 

"Wellll, Abraham's Engineering is pretty much the go-to for ship outfitting and upgrades if you want reputable and reliable. Other places might be cheaper."

"Thank you very much." 

She goes over to Abraham's Engineering and asks about what a novice captain should take on their first craft. 

Well, such a novice captain will need a crew of six at the absolute least. Preferably including at least one skilled officer. She needs a sense of self-preservation, a scout capable of high-flight to discover paths or items of interest, a bunch of minor tools and accessories like sky-suits and binoculars and stokers' tools, a cannon and ammo like this entry model C&H "Jerusalem" for 100 Sovereigns, at least two or three units of food and a week or more's worth of fuel, a powerful headlight, spiffy uniforms that are good to work in for her crew, and a destination she can make some money at. The Promise of Days is a captains' club and might be of some help on that last point.

How many running days is a standard barrel of fuel good for? How much would uniforms and skysuits run her per crewmember, and can she purchase a skysuit now? What about a pair of binoculars with stained-glass lenses? Is there a traditional solution to the high-flying scout?

It depends a lot on the weight of your engine and crew and cargo. And the quality of the boiler. For a Spatchcock without a particularly heavy load, a single barrel ought to be good for a day or so. A set of good work uniforms for one person, boots and all, is about three Sovereign.

One Murgatroyd's Insulated Skysuit with a hundred-meter tether is six Sovereigns, here you go! It weighs about forty pounds, a thick all-covering garment with what feels like solid leather under the wooly exterior, with bulky gloves included and just the eye area left uncovered.

If you're observing with ordinary lenses behind the glass of a bridge or porthole it tends to be fine, but someone probably sells stained-glass optics somewhere. For scouts there's bats or Ratronauts in weird steam rockets and such, some of them are people, some just trained to spot and point at out-of-the-ordinary things. 

She nods along with the explanations, and leaves lugging her skysuit. (With a little help from a discreet cast of Levitate.) She drops it off at her room, and goes to the place in the market where stained-glass telescopes were being advertised. Can she purchase a pair of stained-glass binoculars?

Why yes! For the low, low price of 65 Sovereigns!

(Clear-glass binoculars are more like 10 or 15.)

She pauses. 

She considers. 

She digs out her fifty-sovereign piece, and buys the binoculars. She makes very sure to wear the strap as she takes them back to her rooms and stows them in her pack. 

Now... Let's examine a few hiring postings for crew on locomotives. What wages do they earn?

The hiring postings are mostly for officers, not ordinary sailors. Officers seem to demand considerable signing bonuses, and then either earn a cut of the engine's profits or ask for about 20 Sovereigns per week on top of room and board. Ordinary sailors seem to get about six to twelve Sovereigns a week and expect occasional bonuses, which adds up when you don't have any expenses because you live on a locomotive and don't pay for your own food.

She goes back to her room at the inn, and reloads her gun with ordinary bullets instead of enchanted shells. She checks the time. How long does she have before her date with Lenora?

Walking around shopping all day is time consuming! It's about 4 PM.

She'll have a lesiurely early supper and then head down to the range. 

The range is outdoors, on a section of city a ways away from the center and facing the sky, so any stray shots fall off into nowhere. It looks to be about 200 yards long. Lenora is waiting by the entrance, which is about a hundred yards off to the side from the shooting gallery, chatting with the proprietor. She waves enthusiastically when she spots Thorn coming down the road.

Thorn waves back, and double-times her steps to meet Lenora faster. "Lenora!"

She arrives flushed and rosy, but not at all out of breath. "How's your day been? I've been asking around the city all day, planning my grand escape."

Lenora bends down to pick up a case by her feet. "Thorn! Ooh, sounds exciting. Not as busy as yours. Not a lot of demand for a gunner in the city. I'll be back in the sky eventually, but no need to rush it."

"Let's not stand around forever though; we can talk later, but the range closes in an hour. I want to see you shoot."

"Likewise."

The proprietor wants to see their guns. Lenora has a slim semi-auto and a beefy steel revolver. He fusses over Thorn's 'custom piece' a bit but accepts it, charges them a few shillings each for range time and for paper targets, sells Lenora some ammo, then hands them two pairs of almost comically large earmuffs. Lenora's hair, in a plain ponytail, is not much inconvenienced by this.

There's just two other shooters at the moment, and the range officer calls a stop so they can set up targets.

"What ranges should we set the targets at?" She asks loud enough to get through the ear protection.

"Let's start at seventy-five yards and push it out. See who's the first to miss."

Lenora whistles. "Seventy five yards to start, with pistols? You are confident. Bet I'll lose."

She sets the targets up at a jog. Seventy five, and then one every 25 yards all the way out to 200. There are lines painted in the dirt to mark the ranges.

"Ten shots at each range? Flip a coin for first shooter? ...I'm going to use the model 1906 for this. That six-iron isn't great at target shooting."

"Ten shots at each range, and I'll go first if you don't mind." She taps her fingers on the butt of her pistol, impatient to start shooting but with range safety far too ingrained to do anything stupid. 

Lenora looks at the strange gun carefully, trying to figure out its features.

Presently the targets are set up and the range officer goes over gun safety rules with them briefly, then gives them the all-clear to start shooting.

It's a magazine-fed semiautomatic comparable to a Beretta M9. It has a "decorative" runic tracery along the side of the barrel, which allows it to be keyed in to Thorn's tattoos, "locking" her arm relative to the gun to make a steadier shootung platform, as well as drawing on the mana reserves in her tattoos when she's shooting enchanted ammo - but Thorn wants this to be a contest of direct skill, so she doesn't key herself in. She takes up shooting stance, pistol held firmly in both hands before her, and the gun barks quietly. 

Her first grouping on the seventy-five yard target is about a handspan across. 

Lenora gives a low whistle, peering at the distant target with a little hand-telescope from her pocket.

"Damn. That's tight."

Lenora takes a similar stance, and her grouping is much wider but none actually miss the man-size target. She also has to reload after seven shots, so her last three are as bad as her first three.

She sets up and shoots at the hundred-yard target. 

None of her shots miss, but it's a close thing. She reloads after her second set, using ammo she brought with her.

Several of Lenora's miss. "Tch. Should I have brought my Remington?"

"I've brought what I'm most comfortable and familiar with shooting; I think that's most important, having the muscle memory. In a tight spot, you want to be able to just... let me demonstrate."

She flicks on the safety, and puts her gun back in its holster. 

She draws, flicking off the safety in the same motion, draws a steady bead on the 125-yard target, and fires a shot. It takes her about three seconds, a smooth, unhurried and surprisingly fast motion. 

She hits. 

The rest of her grouping is ragged. She misses four times out of ten. 

"I do tend to shoot a lot of variety... But no, really, that is seriously impressive. I doubt there's ten shooters in the Reach who can hit most of the time at that range with a pistol!"

She really takes her time, steady breathing and focus. Three hits, one right on the edge of the target.

"You're no slouch yourself. There's few who can put up such a good showing compared to me."

She hits three on the hundred-fifty yard target. 

Lenora doesn't get any hits. She fires her last four shots in the second magazine, and gets one.

"I wonder how you'd do at cannonry."

"Probably terrible. Different set of skills. I'm very, very good with this one particular gun; if we swapped it would probably kill my accuracy." 

She manages one hit on the hundred and seventy-five yard target, really taking her time now.

"I'm not even going to try at that range. Should we move the rest of the targets closer and swap, then?"

"That sounds like a lovely idea." 

She passes Lenora her gun.

She conscientiously asks about loading and clearing the chamber and where the safety is just to be sure. She's a fair bit worse with this gun than her own - lots of little things are different. Still a pretty good shot, though.

And then she hands over her gun for the same treatment.

She is still a good shot, but it's far more comparable between the two of them. The small magazine size in particular seems to throw her a bit.

Lenora tells a couple sky-stories about Lustrum, a remote frozen mountain covered in prospectors, between rounds of shooting.

And then she offers Thorn the revolver, praising its stopping power but lamenting the accuracy.

She frowns. "Er, how does the safety work on this piece?" 

"Oh, sorry, it's weird. Here." She stands close and reaches for Thorns hands, guiding them. "Pull the safety switch down, then pull the slide back, then pull the safety up, then pull the trigger."

Click. She steps back.

"And now it's up but not all the way, so safe. The weird safety is the number one complaint about that gun. But it's amazing in a lot of ways, there had to be a compromise somewhere, I guess."

She flushes, a little.

"I can just see that last step leading to some accidental discharges." 

She takes the safety off again, points downrange, and starts shooting. She's clumsier again, definitely worse than Lenora with this gun. "I've barely ever shot a revolver before," she explains. 

Lenora has revolver-related advice!

Not too long after that, the range officer tells them they have ten minutes left.

"Lenora, after this could I invite you back to my room at the inn? There's something important I want to discuss in private." 

"Oh? Sure, I've got time."

She thinks it's probably something to do with the plan to buy a locomotive, and is strangely looking forward to dispensing advice.

"Thank you." They finish up at the range, and Thorn leads the way back to her inn room. She closes the door behind Lenora, and moves over to her pack, right by the sky-suit.

"So, I think I mentioned that I had a small inheritance, yes?" 

"Yep. And I'm not prying because everyone has secrets, but I guess you're gonna tell me something about it now? Is this about buying a locomotive?"

She pulls out her two heavy bags of gold, and plunks them down on the table. She pulls a coin out to show Lenora. 

"This is my inheritance. One thousand five hundred sovereigns in almost pure gold, more or less. Naturally I don't just announce I have this much money in public, but you I trust. And I'm serious about buying an engine, as you might have guessed."

"The trouble with that is that one, I'm a total novice, and two, I'm not sure even this much gold is enough to afford a fully kitted, fully stocked engine. I haven't done the actual calculations; I'm in the middle of gathering the information I need to be certain. It looks close, though." 

"Wow. Gold, huh? Okay, serious business time. I stand by my prediction earlier - about one thousand Sovereigns, probably, for something that successfully flies. More to really kit it out, though, you're right."

"The information I have from Wolvesey backs that up; five hundred for the hull, something probably in the high hundreds for an engine, another hundred for ship's guns. But then there's skysuits, uniforms, crew pay, supplies, fuel..." She shrugs. "Enough to make me worry. But the thing that I'm most worried about is my own inexperience. I want to captain a locomotive, but I'll be damned if I get myself and my crew killed out there. That means I need officers with sense, and you seem the type. You've experience ranging all over the sky, you're sharp enough to get your engine out of a sticky situation, you get along with me fairly well and you can shoot straight. I want you for my gunnery officer, maybe my first officer. What do you say?" 

Lenora shuts her eyes, takes a deep breath, leans against the wall.

"...It's kind of a lot to ask, you know? I like you, you seem sensible, but - you're right about being inexperienced. And I don't really know you yet, you know? So maybe I have to think about it."

"That's fine. I just wanted to put this to you, since I need someone of your experience. And if you want to know more about me, you can ask. I'm thinking of this as being something like an equal partnership, so even the strangest parts of my life are an open book to you if you feel you need to ask." 

"Heh. I'm not really a nosy person! I don't know what to even ask."

"We can come back to it. I have a budget for staying here for another few weeks without cutting into this gold any more than I already have. I just wanted to get you thinking about it seriously."

She opens her mouth, then sighs. "I kind of want to speak about my tangled history, but it's a long story and I think not best told now. Perhaps when we both know each other better." 

Lenora chuckles, a bit awkward but trying not to show it too much. "Mine's a bit tangled too. Just a bit... So, uh. Should we get to know each other better? Like, how do you even do that... What are your feelings on the color green? I think it's nice there's a bit much in the Reach, honestly."

"Yes, we should get to know each other better. Traditionally I achieve this by having sex with people, or along the way to same." She halfsmiles. "You asked. As for green, it's a decent color, but I generally prefer deep blue. The Blue Kingdom would be excellent for me if it wasn't so terrifying." 

Lenora blushes. "-Fun fact! The Blue Kingdom is not actually very blue! There is a sort of blue tinge to the light but most of it is a sort of off-white or tan!"

"What a dissapointing moniker. I try to live up to "Thorn" a bit more than that, you know?" 

"Pretty but sharp, as in 'every rose has its Thorns...?' I have to wonder whether I'm really very bright-eyed, myself. 'Nyms are a bit silly, but they're traditional at this point."

She laughs. "I think it fits you, you have a kind of liveliness of character to you. I haven't done much wandering in the last day or two, but I'm still the Runed Wanderer. Though I'm thinking of changing the "Runed" part, it's a bit superficial even if my tattoos are quite obvious." 

"Maybe I'll have some suggestions if we hang out more. Ooh- Just had a thought. You need experience, right? Why not sign up for a short trip as crew, learn the ropes? There's nobody I wanted to sign on for good with in town right now, but I know a couple captains who might not say no to two extra crew on a temporary basis."

She blinks. 

"- Yes, that sounds like exactly the kind of thing I should be doing. I could even earn some money from it to make the math work out more in my favour."

"Sounds fun. I can ask around tomorrow and get back to you about it. Also, if you're thinking 'partnership', if I decide in favor of this later... I own a cannon, it's in storage. Old Harold gave it to me when he sold his engine and retired. And I have like - maybe 300 Sovereigns? - in a bank account."

"Thank you; I'll run the math taking that into account. When and where should we meet again tomorrow?" 

"Well, we could meet in the morning and get to know each other more, but most of the people I'm thinking of I'll be able to track down after noon, probably. So, evening again for forward progress on plan get-a-job."

"Works for me. Anything else you'd like to do tonight?~"

-She blushes again and fidgets.

"-Uh. I'm not really... Oh, god, I just realized." She looks mortified. "I called you pretty. And you are! But I'm not- I don't like women that way? Or, I thought I didn't, but maybe that's not entirely true? And I tried to buy you a drink in a bar."

She covers her face with her hands.

"You've been flirting far better than I thought it was possible to flirt accidentally, certainly." She grins. "And it's up to you to decide wether you're willing to try, since I very much do like women that way and you in particular."

She smiles briefly, visible between her hands, then takes them away and shakes her head.

"I. Have to think about it. So! Tomorrow afternoon or evening some time? Where, at the pub again, here...?"

"Let's say five again, at the pub. We can eat together and I'll buy you a drink. And then we'll figure it out from there." 

"Yeah... Yeah. I'll see you then, Thorn!"

Lenora shows herself out.

"See you, Lenora!" 

Thorn checks the time. 

It's about 7:15 PM.

She goes down to Abraham's Engineering and sees if they're still open. If they are, she asks after the price of an engine - the thing that goes in a hull and makes it run. 

They're open eighteen hours a day! Well, if she needs the whole thing and not just some valves or gearing or a boiler, a refurbished used Jemmy series would run about 350 for parts and 150 for installation. It'll suffice and get you to your destination eventually. A nice, newer Britomart-type with a good bit more power and better fuel economy runs 950 for parts and 250 for installation.

She thanks the clerk and heads back to her rooms. There's not much more to do in the day. 

Before bed, she goes back to counting her money. She has… Her gold. The remnants of her "trip to london" fund, almost cleared out by sky-gear just today. What's left? Twenty-seven sovereigns, ten pence. Despite her lack of a chart, she's still managed to spend most of her small budget. 

It's a shame she can't simply resort to counterfeiting, but Eva is right that she should be wary of becoming a criminal. Even if she was just doing the equivalent of selling her gold coins. Sigh. 

However, she has a better idea of her finances now. Each day's food costs about seven shillings. Add an hour of singing lessons, fifteen shillings. Add good lodgings, thirty-one shillings. That comes to a little over a sovereign and a half a day. Call it exactly a sovereign and a half a day because saturday and sunday are free stays at the inn if she pays upfront and the Manic Dilettante is not going to be reliably present every day. How long can she stay? 

Well, this week's got five more days left in it. The total cost for that is thirty-five shillings plus forty shillings - a little less than four sovereign. Twenty-seven minus four, twenty-three, divided by one and a half… double both sides. Forty six divided by three. Ten, plus five is fifteen, plus a bit left over. Plus the five days that are part of this week makes twenty. She can afford to stay for twenty days on what's left in her jewellery-box. For every sovereign and a half she spends on other items, she can stay one day less. 

Seeing the cold numbers laid out in front of her makes her regret the two sovereign she spent so casually on her bronzewood jewellery-box. She wants every day here she can get, damn it, and if she starts digging into her engine funds it might risk the entire operation. She doesn't want to do anything drastic. 

Speaking of her engine funds, she knows something about supplies now. Travel from Regent's Falls to Port Avon took three days. Travel from Port Avon to New Winchester took one. So even without consulting a chart, she knows that supplies will be reasonably affordable. She could make a round-trip from here to Regent's Falls (eight days) for fifteen - no, call it thirteen - people and a single crate of food would suffice. That's forty Sovereigns. Double that for safety, eighty Sovereigns. Double it again for better range, one hundred and sixty Sovereigns. So okay, maybe less reasonable than she expected. But not outside her budget, not alone.

What about fuel? At five sovereigns a barrel, and one running day a barrel, that's forty sovereigns to get to Regent's Falls and back. Quadruple it for safety and range, and that's one hundred and sixty sovereigns as well. 

Then there's crew pay to consider. She would want at least six crew, based on her experiences aboard the Bramble and the advice she got from Abraham's Engineering. She's one; what about the other five? Each would want at least 1 sovereign a day; five sovereigns per day times eight days' range is forty sovereign, double it for safety, by which she means quality of sailors hired, and double it for range, and it's one hundred and sixty again. What is with this number? It's stalking her. 

As for uniforms and skysuits, that would be six times three eighteen sovereign for uniforms plus another twelve sovereign for another two skysuits is thirty.

Finally there's the cost of the engine itself. A Spatchcock, at five hundred sovereign, plus Lenora's gun, nothing, plus the cost of an engine, five hundred, sums to one thousand exactly. Lenora was right. 

One hundred sixty times three plus thirty plus one thousand equals… one thousand five hundred and ten.

And she has one thousand, four hundred and seventy nine Sovereigns in gold. 

Those two numbers are far too close for comfort, and in the wrong direction. 

She goes and takes a shower. 

If she cuts on safety margin, she's an idiot. But she has room to cut on range. If she only goes as far out as four days, that subtracts… two hundred and forty. Which is within striking distance. Assuming there aren't more costs, like the scout. And now she's regretting the coin she tipped Primrose. It was the right thing to do, but she could have come back to do it so as not to so seriously overtip her. 

No, she's kidding herself. It was overtip or no tip at all. She'll just have to live with her decisions like a big girl. 

She towels off, changes, and goes back up to her room to do more math. She's calculating supplies for thirteen people currently, which is twice her number of crew, so she can save another forty sovereigns by committing to not take passengers. One thousand five hundred and ten minus two hundred and eighty is… one thousand two hundred thirty. Subtract from one thousand four hundred and seventy nine… That's two hundred and fifty sovereigns of leeway. Just a bit more than three gold coins. 

She'll take it.  

She takes out her journal and writes by starlight, her catlike eyes letting her see the page even without a lamp lit. Lustrum. Titania. The Eleutheria Transfer Relay. How far away are these places? She writes down her singing lessons for easy reference. She doesn't practice, not this late at night. 

She writes more star-marked fiction, making up places entirely now. She takes her stained-glass binoculars out to look at the stars. In a quiet moment, she lets herself wonder: If she told Lenora the whole truth, would it help or hurt her?

She goes to bed, and sleeps on it. 

The city continues its daily cycle. There's some kind of scuffle outside at the trainyard early in the morning, and two police officers are interviewing the weird guy with the 'I BUY EGGS' sign when she goes out.

She goes and has bacon and eggs for breakfast at the pub, then heads back to the Manic Dilettante's to hopefully have singing lessons. 

He is on his roof, doing something involving mirrors. Experiments with light? Dangerous, passersby mutter.

She calls up to him. "What's the muse call you to today, Dilettante?" 

"I read a scientific paper on possible beneficial effects of the light of particular stars on cats! But I must say, my cat is not enthused! Perhaps I must give it up."

"Have time for a singing lesson? I'm still hungry for more!" 

"Bah! Fine. Help me get these back inside first, then!"

"Certainly! Which way to the stairs?" 

He shouts down directions, then takes her to the music room again after they return the mirrors to various bedrooms and bathrooms. "The neighbors complain more when I'm loud out of doors. Now, where did we leave off?"

She reminds him of the exercises they did last time; the scales, the backup singing, and so on.

He is just as enthusiastic this time, but a bit less sporadic. He'll let the lesson continue for almost two hours today if not interrupted. He also teaches her a series of hand signs a conductor or fellow singer shows to guide one's voice, then keeps using them through the rest of the lesson.

"You do need to practice on your own too, you know. I can tell you didn't. Here, take this for now." He tosses a pamphlet of sheet music they worked from earlier. "The third and fifth ones are good all-round practice. And you need to get your pitches right first time! Do you have a phonograph? Tuning forks? Metronome?" (All of the named devices featured in the lesson.)

"No, I don't have any of those. I'll have to purchase some tuning forks and a metronome at least; I don't think I have anywhere for a phonograph." 

She pays sixteen shillings for a two-hour lesson and returns to her rooms at the inn, where she picks up her pack and makes another trek out to the abandoned house at the edge of town.

There's a pack of wild cats hanging around in the general area this time. Several of them follow her for a while.

She's not too worried about a few cats, though the possibility of shapeshifters is potentially alarming. She makes sure she's not followed all the way, at least.

She sets up her portal again, and steps through the doorway.

Eva waves from behind her black-hawthorn desk. "Hello again, Thorn. What's the plan this time?" 

"I need reloads for my gun, a number sixty combo, a table and chairs that'll fit through the door, tuning forks for each pitch in the scale, a metronome, and a ceramic four-liter of this." 

She sets down her ampoule of Chorister honey on the counter. 

"Don't judge me on my life choices please and thank you." 

"... oh, now that's an interesting intoxicant. Like liquid poetry. Go ahead and have your romance dear, just remember to drink responsibly. We can't afford the Wish Time for you to get a habit." 

"I did say not to judge me on my life choices."

Eva's desk populates with ammo, a brown paper bag, a set of tuning forks, a metronome, and after a few seconds, a four-liter ceramic jug of Chorister honey. A small table and two chairs in victorian style appear as well. 

Thorn fills her pack with everything that fits in it, then waves goodbye and takes the table and chairs out the door. The jug of chorister honey is last to be plunked down outside.  

Eva waves goodbye, and closes the door after her.

She takes the tuning forks and the metronome out of her pack, and lays them out on the table next to the jug of chorister honey. She puts the number sixty combo down next to them. 

She packs up the beacon again; then she reaches into the bag and pulls out the burger and fries therein. 

She could have gone far more exotic on this. Really shifted things around. But... she wanted comfort food, not something radical. It's just a burger that will help her learn faster. 

She chows down. She drinks a slurp of Chorister to go with, then forces herself to finish eating the burger and fries. 

Then she starts the metronome, sounds a tuning fork, and sings. She sings until the Chorister wears off, or until she's interrupted by something or someone she's disturbed.

She slowly acquires an audience of cats. One at first, then half a dozen, taking up watchful positions on worn furniture and windowless windowsills in the abandoned house.

That is somewhat unnerving but it's already happening. She'll continue singing to the cats.

Eventually, the cats start to look bored instead of watchful. Two wander off. The others aren't looking at her exactly anymore. One investigates the new furniture.

She lets out a breath, and continues to sing until at last her Chorister runs out.

Then she heads back to the city, content with a few hours' time spent. She stops by the Clatter Rats on the way back, a thought having occurred to her. 

The address they named appears to be an old warehouse with rusty shelving and scrap piles and a few rusty old tools...

...Until a voice squeaks out, "Oi, you mice, I recognize 'er and I'm pretty sure she's not a cop, come on out!"

Rats pop out from nooks and crannies to look at her. The rat with the aviator goggles and dart-crossbow from yesterday scurries up near her on some kind of duct along the wall.

"What's your noise today? Didn't get your name, I was kind of busy. I'm Three Grease. Oh, and we got our repayment just fine, by the way."

"I'm Thorn. My noise today is - you say you do miniature mechanical marvels, yes? What about a larger one like installing an engine into a locomotive?"

"Rattus faber are quite known for our mechanical prowess. Depending on the details, that's a maybe, or maybe we can find a rat who'd help out."

"A Jemmy into a Spatchcock, the heavy lifting not your problem."

"From Abraham's?"

At the nod, he clambers up a pipe and has a rapid, jargon-heavy conversation with four other rats.

"Dependin' on how heavy the lifting you mean, we can do that for sixty sovs. You'll need to be there all week and not muck anything up."

"I'll have to see about contracting some reliable people for the heavy lifting. But it's a hell of a deal compared to the price Abraham's would charge. I'll get word back to you once all the pieces are lined up - might take a month or two."

She waves goodbye and goes on her way. Lenora mentioned a bank, and she's not exactly comfortable with her gold sitting in her pack alone at the inn. She needs a safe-deposit box. So she'll go and see if she can find a bank.

There are two banks worth the name in Victoria Market. A grand edifice simply named Hallidge's, and a more humble one called New Winchester Secure Investment Bank

She'll go to the more humble one.

They'll rent her a safety deposit box for 1 Sovereign per month. Would she like to open a checking account as well?

She would like three months of a safe-deposit box and a chequing account. 

Without paperwork from City Hall or a stable address to refer to they have no way to let her claim her box or account again if she both forgets the security code she can set up and loses her keys, is that alright?

That's perfectly fine. She'll start her chequing account with a deposit of twenty sovereign.

Alright! And here's some cheques if she wants them. They don't have much in the way of fraud protection except the bank's assurance to delay payment of questionable claims and investigate, though.

She'll take the cheques, and her keys, and lock away her gold in the safe-deposit box. 

Now, to Abraham's Engineering to inquire after pricing on different scouts. 

There's a guy who sells trained bats of indifferent quality for around twenty to fifty Sovereign. The bats are sort of cute from the right viewpoint, fuzzy, have three-foot wingspans and somewhat sullen attitudes and fairly voracious appetites for treats. A scout is not absolutely essential for every engine, they clarify, but certainly helps a lot. Especially with exploring. Better scouts are a specialty good that they have no immediate advice for, the very best supplier of them - Mr. Menagerie - is constantly travelling the Reach and never in one place for long.

She thanks the seller, and asks directions to the Promise of Days. Which she follows. 

It's a pub, but a nicer pub a street away from the engine yards, where they can still be heard but not as overwhelmingly. Old pistons gleam on the walls. The shelves are crowded with mementos from across the sky. The clientele raise their voices to be heard above the comforting clamour of the railyard.

There are a few interesting patrons in right now. A masked man, a professorial-looking man, a posh-looking woman with fancy hair, and a scarred woman with a harpoon at her side sit together at a table that looks older than the others. The other patrons all tilt their hats as they pass the four, clearly respected seniors. The rest of the drinkers are in ones or twos, variably fancy uniforms and hats blending together somewhat.

She doesn't make the mistake of walking up to a table full of bloods and asking them the time of day. She settles in alone at the bar, and looks at the menu, and listens.

"Has anyone been out to Hybras recently, do you know?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"My Aunt says she hasn't gotten any letters from her friend there in months. I would go that way myself, but..."

"There's not much money in it, is there? Middle of nowhere, Hybras."

"Right."

"-Tried to nail the cook's hat to the cook! Rambling about 'everything in its place'. Too much starlight, I think. She got over it after a few days locked up."

"And you still have her aboard?"

"We all make mistakes. Plus, it's hard to find good signalers."

"-Prefer a rapid-fire, short range weapon for hunting sky beasts."

"But that's the thing. I'm not going to hunt sky-beasts, I just want to be on my way."

"Ah. Listen, I know a bloke who makes this clever thing called 'mines'..."

"Anybody recognize the name 'Rattington Rest'? We found her wreck out by the L-and-S Reserve a week ago. But no bodies."

"Damn. Always a shame to see wrecks. I don't recognize it, but that's creepy as hell."

A third voice interjects. "Well, it's the Reserve. That explains the bodies vanishing, they just got eaten by something from the jungle."

She eats, and lets the atmosphere of the place sink into her a little. She's been to bars like this in Sigil, places reserved for cutters and bloods hunting adventure. And - there's an opening! 

She approaches the pair talking about Hybras. "I heard a woman with a movie camera offer a hundred sovereigns for passage to Hybras just yesterday," she says. "Not sure if that makes enough of a difference to you that it'd be worth the trip, but I thought I'd mention it." 

"-Yeah, I think that's enough to justify going out there. Thanks for the tip. Did you happen to get a name?"

"Haven't seen you in here before," the other one comments. "Welcome."

"Didn't get a name, sorry. I'm Thorn; I'm new, looking into comissioning an engine of my own. Figured I'd come here to listen to someone who actually knew something about the business."

"'Commissioning', that's a fancy word for it. Getting something cheap from Wolversey and trying to make it fly, right?"

"Word of advice, then. The sky's bloody dangerous and you might die. How about a description better than 'a woman with a film camera' at least? Or a round of drinks. Or both."

"Yeah, pretty much. I've heard enough sky stories to understand that I'm sunk without some proper experience guiding me. As for the description..." She focusses for a moment, then rattles it off precisely. "And the next round's on me."

"Cheers!" He shouts to the bartender for drinks.

"I haven't ever given advice to a total novice before. There's a lot out there that can hurt you. Be cautious and diligent, I suppose. Have you served aboard before, at least?"

"Watch out for the wind. Engines are big and heavy, but winds can still push 'em around dangerously. And don't try to fight anything except maybe a Cantankeri or especially pathetic batch of pirates, if you can help it."

She pays, and tips the bartender a shilling. "I haven't served aboard before but I intend to fix that, spend a good month as crew at least to get some sky experience. And as for fighting things, I've seen the results of a failed scrive-spinster hunt so I've no intention to borrow trouble."