So, the Crown was right. He really is just a passenger.

“Heh, I wouldn’t be so quick to call it luck,” said Chester. “I was on death’s bed with the bloody flux half a moon ago. Was fixed by Simian chemists—not alchemists, mind you—and I missed the first trip of the last crew rotation. Now I’m out of synch with the rest, and I’ll be travelling with the other crew on the way back to Penance tomorrow. All ships got two crews these days, see, and we swap ’em every fortnight.”

Farris took a long, deep drink to hide his glee. Chester’s traveling as a passenger, amongst a crew not all that familiar with him. This will be easy. He fought back a smile. Life in the Light of the Lady, indeed.

“What do you trade?” he asked. “Simian arms and armour?”

“Just armour. We’d make a lot more money if we transported crystals instead, but we don’t have a single one on board. That’s what I love about The Glory. It’s the first of its kind.”

Farris leaned forwards. “First, as in it doesn’t carry crystals?”

“Nope, it’s the first that doesn’t use them. Anyone ever tell you how an airship works?”

From the change in his tone, it was obvious that Chester loved talking about technology. His shoulders were more relaxed, his stature more open than before.

“See, you got an engine,” began Chester, making the shape of a box with both hands, “and that needs steam. Steam comes from fuel and a furnace. Now, that’s no problem for locomotives an’ boats. But airships, they need gas to float too: gas that’s lighter than air. That’s where things get a bit complicated.”

“Because the gas is flammable?”

“Exactly. You’d be mad to have a ship that high in the sky with as much as an ember burnin’ inside. I saw an airship catch fire once. All it took was a single spark, and the whole thing turned to ash before it hit the ground. Like that.” Chester clicked his fingers.

Farris looked on, wide-eyed and eager. He didn’t know all that much about airships himself and had only been on one before. It had been docked up, however, and all the crew were asleep.

“That’s where magic comes in,” said Chester with scorn in his voice. “When Elis Highwind built the first airship, he lined the engine room with a huge array of blue crystals, turning the air cold despite the blazin’ furnace inside. That way, the ship could use gas to float an’ steam to sail. Hundreds more ships like that have been commissioned over the past seventy-odd years, but the Church always has the final say on what goes ahead. If you tell ’em your ship plans on leaving Alabach, they don’t give you their magics. Simple as that. So, there’s this great big Skyfleet in Penance right now, but we can’t even leave this stupid little island cause of these Humans an’ their Gods.

“Then, just as we finish building a ship capable of bypassing the Church’s rules, the fuckin’ Triad back in Penance comes in and pulls the plug on the project! It was Borris Blackhand who gave us the go-ahead in the first place, but he only makes up a third. An engineer, a nobleman, and a king. What kind of fair government is that?”

Farris didn’t answer; there was still something he was missing. He raised a hand for more drinks, hoping it would loosen Chester’s tongue further. As they were being poured, Farris pried deeper.

“So, what was it that made this ship so special?”

Chester waited for his glass to fill before answering. When it did, he took deep swig of thainol and smiled.

“It’s the gas. Our chemists, they aren’t like alchemists with their prayers and their robes. They discover and create. We use a new gas they made. Doesn’t burn as easily. Doesn’t burn at all, actually. We can have a proper furnace going, without the need to go through all that shit with crystals.”

Farris took a long, steady sip.

The king doesn’t know this. He told me to be careful with my pipe.

Although King Diarmuid had been half-right about Chester traveling as a passenger, nothing else he had said made much sense. Assuming the Silverback did attack, why would he leave the king alive? How would they have abandoned the dying king until another patrol came to carry him back to Cruachan, a day’s journey away? How could they have ambushed him in a single tunnel and fought off his royal escort of Simian bodyguards without taking any losses?

Now there’s this. How did the king not know about the ship?

Farris stared into his glass. The clear liquid inside was more viscous than water, and the candlelight refracted through at queer angles, making Farris’s fingers appear much larger than they were.

“Interesting,” he said eventually. “Does the Church know about it?”

Chester laughed. “Aye, the Cap’n only rubs it in their faces every other day. Another sign that our technology will someday bypass their power.”

“So the crew would know about it too?”

“Of course! If you’ve ever worked in a cold engine room, you’d be begging to be transferred to The Glory. It’s common knowledge around Sin and the waterfront here that our ship is the way of the future.”

Farris remained silent. His last question had been direct and phrased strangely enough that he feared it would stir suspicion. Fortunately, Chester called for the barman’s attention again. Farris didn’t interrupt him until after he had given his coins to the barman, now the only other person left in the tavern.

“So,” said Farris. “You don’t usually have passengers on board, but there’s some coming from the Church tomorrow?”

Chester yawned. “That’s it. Doesn’t happen very often, but tomorrow we’ll have a knight and a pair of mages coming with us.”

Farris flinched. “Is that so?”

“Aye, one’s a healer, the other’s a Geomancer… no, fire. What’re they called again?”

“Pyro. They’re called Pyromancers.” He took another drink. So much for things going smoothly. If either of those mages were one of King Diarmuid’s other spies, things would be much more complicated.

“Nothing we can do about it. The Church says jump, so we fly. Could be worse though; we took on some Wraiths a few weeks back. Those things are unnatural.”

Chester shuddered, and Farris recalled his own experiences with Wraiths. Whereas he was an agent of the Crown, Wraiths served the Church and the Trinity alone. Although the Arch-Canon was the head of the Church, it was widely believed that Wraiths answered to the Gods themselves, communicating directly with Lord Seletoth. Farris knew this was nonsense, but he still always felt a chill whenever he thought of the hooded figures, for the truth was more unsettling than the myth.

In his research on the king’s alleged divinity, Farris uncovered an old letter dated from the early days of Diarmuid’s reign. When he was a young man, the king often frequented brothels, much to the dismay of the other lords and ladies of the court. More than once, it seemed, the Wraiths had been sent out to remove any woman unfortunate enough to fall pregnant to the royal seed. The king still went on his nightly crusades around Barrow’s Way, unaware of the spies that followed him. If it wasn’t for them, the king’s Divine Penetrance would have been passed on to a bastard son, and that would have caused all sorts of problems for the realm. Farris gritted his teeth at the thought.

The Church would rather murder innocent civilians than deprive their king of his desires.

Mention of the Wraiths brought a lull to the conversation, so Farris grabbed a chance to change the topic. He asked about news from Penance, and Chester informed him of the Silverback’s bid for a seat on the Triad.

“Wants to usurp Borris Blackhand, but the old bastard’s not even dead yet! The healers say he’ll never recover, but there’s air in his lungs still!”

“And what of the Cathal Carríga? Isn’t he ill?”

“Aye,” said Chester. “The lad’s been sick for a while now, but he still goin’ too. These political types, they really take the ‘till death’ part seriously.”

Another round of drinks was poured, and Chester began spilling his heart out to Farris, telling him all about the family he had left behind in Penance. His daughter, it seemed, would be heading off to work as a servant in a manor out by Ard Sidhe.

“It’ll be hard work, but she’ll live a comfortable and honest life over there.” Farris felt twinge of sympathy for Chester, who was bellowing with pride for a daughter who aspired to change the chamber pots of high-born men and women. “I’ll get to see her one more time before she leaves. I can’t face the thought of having to say goodbye to her.”

Chester paid for the next round of drinks again. He was growing visibly drunk now, slurring and ranting about the Humans on the ship.

“Rats… rats is what they call us. We let them work with our technology, in our skies, and they have the nerve to call us vermin.” He paused and looked over at Farris.

“Do you think I look like a rat? Do you think I look like a creature of disease an’ filth?”

Farris thought it best not to answer.

“When I look in the mirror, I don’t see whiskers. I don’t see a tail, or a muzzle, or beady black eyes. I see something that looks like a Human, but bigger, an’ stronger. As a race, we’re far more intelligent than they are, that’s a fact! We’ve forged our own brand of magic through fire and steam, and now we’ve conquered the skies. In their superstitions, the Humans will never leave this land. But there is more out there, Jacob. I’ve seen it. Humans may have taken Alabach with their magic, but someday we’ll conquer the world.”

Farris couldn’t help but grin. The Silverback often spoke about the lands outside the reach of the Crown.

“But hasn’t the Grey Plague claimed these lands?”