Admiral Whiting drummed her fingers on the edge of her desk.

It wasn’t just any desk—it was the desk of her forebears. Admirals who had once ruled the seas with polished boots and unyielding charts. And now? The seas weren’t quite what they used to be. Nor were the threats.

Her map was a blotchy mess of red and black ink. Too many incidents, too many coordinates to track. Too many reports to keep straight.

Flintlock.

He had a fleet—had managed one for the last twelve years. Some of the ships had been stolen, others built in distant, unnamed countries. To the layperson, several looked identical, easily mistaken for the Intrepid, his flagship. But the real one? That ship had never appeared where they expected it to.

No, Flintlock was already elsewhere—on his way to abduct a girl. And a banker.

The girl, at first glance, seemed of little consequence. But now she was tied up in matters too complex for any mere child. She was seated—at least, last known—in the company of the most obvious buffoon Admiral Whiting had ever laid eyes on: a man named Highwhistle.

With a name like that, she’d half expected steam to whistle out of his ears whenever he got flustered. What she got instead was pure malarkey, of the highest order.

The report had landed on her desk five days prior. The newest Hope & Chalmers luxury liner had been boarded by pirates.

But this wasn’t a typical act of pillage.

No gold, no jewels, no machine parts stolen. Unlike Flintlock’s other heists, this one was oddly restrained. They’d scuttled the ship, yes, but gently, almost respectfully. The vessel now lay at the bottom of the ocean—intact, as if waiting for salvage—and every crew member had survived.

All but one.

An American, shot dead by the pirate himself. Jack Spade.

Whiting had stared at that name in the report. Jack Spade. It sounded like something torn from a dime novel out of the Americas, a yarn told in cigar smoke and bravado.

But eyewitness accounts aligned—naval officers, no less. And though they’d been trained, they’d been subdued swiftly by Flintlock’s pirates. The question wasn’t how, but why. Was it a lack of weapons? Of men? Or had the enemy simply outclassed them in planning?

One thing was certain: in speaking to Highwhistle, she’d found a man who wouldn’t know forthrightness if it bit him on the cravat.

“There’s the matter of the insurance policy, Mr. Highwhistle,” she said, voice clipped. “Is it true you’d taken out a rather large policy? One you couldn’t possibly afford?”

He blanched. “It was my reputation at stake,” Highwhistle stammered. He was sweating profusely, as if the very concept of female authority triggered some primal panic.

Whiting doubted he’d ever been in a room with a woman who questioned him the way she did.

Twice during their interview, he’d seized up entirely—eyes glazed, mouth ajar—like some clockwork device with a missing cog, struggling to formulate a morally upright answer.

It was pitiful. And revealing.

“It’s possible,” she mused aloud, “that a man such as yourself is merely playing a part. A ruse. A gentleman’s mask stretched thin over a coward’s heart.”

He blinked.

“Perhaps you pretend to be a man of character,” she continued, “and in doing so, throw chum into the water, hoping to draw sympathy from the working classes.”

That had not occurred to him.

But he seized on it with mad intensity. “Yes, of course! That must be it! By besmirching my own good name—ah!—as a knight of the realm, I cultivate an image. I... I... attract the sympathies of the common man!”

“You’ve not asked about your niece.”

“She’s not truly my niece,” he said quickly. “A cousin, by marriage, perhaps.”

“You’ve said before,” she reminded him, “that she was your dear niece. That you would care for her. That you would guide her in all matters of the estate bequeathed to her by her father, Guilford Gray—the inventor. Am I wrong?”

“No. No, you’re correct,” Highwhistle admitted. “The poor girl. She must be terrified—or worse. Dead. Likely dead. Washed up on some foreign shore, surrounded by savages!”

“We’ve no indication she’s dead.”

“Well, I have,” he sniffed. “Just received word.”

“A solicitor, was it?”

“Yes, yes, that’s right.”

Whiting turned to another document, flipping it open with deliberate calm.

“It seems to me,” she said, “that someone who stood to inherit those patents and that estate might benefit from spiriting the girl away. Declaring her dead. Do you think that’s possible?”

Again, Highwhistle froze.

He processed slowly, like a jammed gear grinding itself down. “I... believe I’ve earned the right to silence. I am, after all, a knight of the realm. I should speak only to a magistrate. Or a solicitor. This is my... niece. My responsibility. I mustn’t humiliate myself further by... by...”

Whiting let him trail off. Then leaned forward.

“You see, Mr. Highwhistle, I have a job. A difficult one. I’ve been at it for just over a year, after serving ten under my predecessor. I won’t let this pirate be the one who forces my retirement.”

She closed the folder with a snap.

“He wants Felicity Gray. And that has something to do with Guilford Gray’s legacy. I want full access to all records connected to both.”

Highwhistle shifted uncomfortably.

“And I want your assistance,” Whiting added. “You, a knight of the realm, will come aboard as an honored guest.”

“You want me to... sail with you? Against a pirate?”

“You won’t be manning the cannons just yet. But you’ll help sort through the information. And perhaps we’ll get to the truth.”

The Admiral’s right hand motioned to the guards, who gently but firmly removed Highwhistle from the room.

“He’ll let you know where to retrieve the documents,” Whiting said crisply.

When the door shut behind him, she turned once more to the map—her cursed, intricate map. It bristled with marks. There were hardly any places left she hadn’t searched.

She imagined—wherever they were now—it would be the last place she’d think to look.

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Cressida stood watch on the bridge.

The windows were broken. High above the Arctic Sea, the frigid air cut through the vessel. But Cressida didn’t mind the cold. She welcomed it. Cold meant material, meant alive. Vital.

Nearby, Cog muttered under his breath about the cold, each word emerging in a plume of steam. He huddled into his coat, breath fogging the air like a kettle on full boil. Cressida sipped her coffee, warmth spreading through her hands.

“Must we?” Cog grumbled, tugging his collar up.

“There was a time,” Cressida said, not looking at him, “we wouldn’t’ve had a choice. We’ve grown too soft, I think.”

“That so?” he shot back. “Speak for yourself, Roxanne. I’m still down with the boys in the bunks. Ain’t the one with a palatial stateroom.” He rubbed his hands briskly. “I didn’t sign up for the North Bloody Pole.”

Cressida poured him a cup anyway, unasked, and handed it over. He accepted it with a grunt that might’ve meant thanks.

“How’re our guests doing?” she asked.

Cog took a cautious sip. “Well,” he said, “the young miss was up yesterday. Locked herself in again. Wouldn’t take her breakfast with anyone.”

Cressida raised an eyebrow. “Breakfast, you say?”

“Yeah. Breakfast,” he replied, mimicking her tone. “Other one stopped cryin’ three days ago. Now he just sort of... sits. Quiet-like.”

“Confused?”

“I’d say he’s near ready. Butter him up, he’ll spread like the knobbed end of a crumpet.” Cog shrugged. “Took a step back, I did. Never really had a taste for this sort o’ thing, you know? Kidnappin’ fancy folk? Knockin’ mates in alleyways—sure, we all did what we had to. Made a good livin’ rinsin’ the rich. But this...?” He trailed off.

Cressida glanced toward the broken window. “We’ve had to do many things that weren’t in our nature,” she said softly. “We’re building something now. And I do believe in the master plan.”

Cog nodded slowly. “Aye. I believe it too.” He chuckled, low and rueful. “Ask me ten years ago if I’d be flyin’ high over the glaciers, I’d’ve laughed in yer face. Thought I’d escaped all this—left the back alleys behind. Thought I’d do nothin’ with my life. Work till I coughed up my lungs, raise a family, die young. Smoke an’ filth in my chest.”

“There was a bleak sort of honesty to that life,” she said.

“Imprisoned, though,” he countered.

“Aye. We all nicked a bit, here and there,” she said. “Empire says it provides—but it don’t, not for all. Some of us were simply overlooked.”

The door creaked open behind them.

Professor Flintlock stepped in, crisp and deliberate, as always.

“Mornin’, Professor,” Cog said, tipping his bowler.

Flintlock accepted a cup of coffee with a small nod of thanks. “I daresay, there is nowhere else in the world with such an excellent selection of coffee beans,” he said. “Most English would prefer tea at breakfast. But I suspect they’ve never had occasion to sample pure Java. From the island itself, no less.”

Cressida gave him a thin smile. “We don’t serve anything less.”

The professor sipped politely before continuing. “I believe the conversation should begin today, Cressida. But I’d like you to run the questioning.”

Cressida blinked. “Me?”

“I believe young Miss Felicity Gray has been questioned by too many men already. Too many voices telling her who she is, and what she’s meant to be. If she’s to discover anything at all, it should come from someone who isn’t one more man in the room.”

Cressida folded her arms. “A woman, sir?”

“I think that’s putting it mildly,” he replied with a soft smile. “A lieutenant. Someone she might respect.”

“If I go in there and ask all manner of questions, she’ll clam up faster’n a purse on market day.”

“Perhaps,” Flintlock said. “But you also might be the only one who can get through. I’ve laid out all the materials you’ll need. Just take your usual meticulous notes—as I know you’re apt to do.”

Cressida glanced back at the storm-glassed horizon and took a long breath of the chill air. These extreme moments always seemed to happen in extreme places.

“I’m glad we’re here,” the professor said, voice low. “At the top of the world.”

“And what comes next,” he added, “will bring us closer to danger than ever before.”

Cog shook his head. “Still can’t believe a creature like that exists. Seems impossible.”

Flintlock turned toward him, sharp-eyed. “Then perhaps we’ve finally crossed into the realm of the impossible, Cog.”

Cressida drained the last of her coffee and steeled herself. “We’re going to find the truth,” she said, mostly to herself. “And we’ll have to embrace it.”

She turned, coat flaring slightly behind her, and left the bridge.

The captain had taken control of his ship. Now it was her turn to take control of the conversation.

Cressida knocked on the door—a short, strong, steady rap.

On the other side, Felicity looked up from her book.

“Who’s calling?” she asked.

“My name is Lieutenant Cressida,” came the reply, in that lilting, unyielding Irish tone that made no attempt to charm.

Felicity hesitated a moment. Curious, indeed, that a so-called prisoner might be permitted to answer her own door. Some placebo, perhaps—an illusion of autonomy, a subtle mechanism to let her sleep better, believing she could bar intrusion if she truly wished. Still, she turned the knob.

There stood Cressida.

She was well-built, broad of shoulder and square of jaw, with a severe sort of beauty—like something out of a children’s tale. The kind of character drawn between bold lines and watercolor: a queen in full Gaelic regalia, sword in hand, marching at the head of an emerald-green host across a misty moor.

In her gloved hand, she held a quill.

“May I intrude?” she asked.

“I’ll allow questions, if you’ll allow answers,” Cressida said evenly.

Felicity, still cautious, stepped aside. The room was tight—only a narrow porthole window, a bureau, a bed, and an overstuffed chair with weary springs. They sat across from each other: Cressida in the chair, Felicity perched at the edge of the bed.

Cressida opened a small notebook to a marked page and uncorked a bottle of ink, dipping the quill just enough to keep the nib slick but not dripping.

“I’ll allow you a question. Though I suspect I can guess its nature,” she said.

Felicity shrugged. “Who am I?”

“That’s a larger question,” Cressida replied. “And I fear I may not answer it to your satisfaction. But I believe we can begin.”

She turned the page.

“It has to do with who your father was, I’m afraid.”

Felicity’s gaze narrowed. “I thought perhaps my uncle put you up to this. Some new ploy to get me out of the way.”

“He probably is,” Cressida said. “As we speak, he’s likely obtaining a magistrate’s warrant declaring you deceased. That way he can seize the patents, the inheritance—the only things he truly seems to care about.”

Felicity let the silence thicken.

Cressida went on. “It may well be true. And I’ve little doubt he’ll benefit, more than you know. I’m sorry to say this, but the world is ruled by men. Men in coats, behind desks, writing rules that others must follow. Even empires born on ideals of equality often find themselves back in the grasp of such hands.”

She leaned forward slightly. “Your uncle is just another iteration of the same pattern. Even had we not spirited you away that night, he’d already decided you were more useful dead than alive.”

Felicity swallowed. The truth of it hung in the air.

“I won’t pretend we saved you,” Cressida added. “That was never the goal. It was a byproduct—of a grander plan. One you’re part of.”

She dipped the quill again.

“Guilford Gray was a great inventor—the greatest of his age. A mind like no other. He gave us flight. Modern engines. Entire branches of mechanical thought that shape our world.”

“But he wasn’t a man,” she added, “we believed should have held such power.”

Cressida reached into her coat and withdrew a letter—sealed, yellowed with age.

“He wrote this to a fellow academic, long ago. I cannot show it to you yet. Not until you’re ready. But know that the truth begins here.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Felicity said softly.

“I know,” said Cressida. “But you’ll find your answers. If you’re willing to work for them.”

She looked down at the notebook. “Now—may I ask something of you?”

Felicity nodded.

Cressida read from the page. “Where do you go when you dream?”

The question caught her off guard.

She noticed now that the words had been written in a different hand than Cressida’s. The professor’s, perhaps?

“I do hope you’ll answer me honestly,” Cressida said. “We’ll be forthright with you, if you’re forthright with us. Where do you go when you sleep?”

Felicity took a breath. “I... don’t really dream. Not like others.”

She fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve.

“My mother was a dreamer. She’d visit places of lilies and light, strange and wondrous things. But me? When I sleep, I see... systems. Ratios. I count the measurements between objects. I replay what I’ve seen during the day, tabulating, calculating.”

She paused. “I always thought it was just the way my mind worked. Different. Like how I can solve complex problems without an abacus. Or chart stars without a sextant.”

Cressida nodded, writing it down, her hand precise and silent.

“Another question,” she said, flipping the page. “What do you remember of your childhood? One day, one image—before your primary schooling, before lessons began in earnest. A memory from the first five or six years. Can you give me one?”

Felicity frowned. “There’s... a story. About a brook. My father and I would carve whistles from reeds. My mother told me that. But it’s her voice I hear—not mine. I don’t remember the brook. Or the sound.”

She looked up, stricken. “They’re words. Not memories.”

She paused again. “I’ve always kept careful track of dates, of times. I’m like a walking calendar. But I don’t remember being little.”

“And you never questioned that?” Cressida asked.

“No,” Felicity said. “Why would I have no memories? Why did I never ask myself that?”

She straightened. “Was something done to me? An accident? Some kind of injury?”

Cressida held her gaze. “We’re a few steps along the path. Bear with me a few more.”

From her pocket, she produced a short iron bar—thick, solid, heavy. It clanged onto the bureau like a dropped anchor.

“I want you to try something,” Cressida said. “Bend this bar.”

Felicity stared at it. She doubted she could even lift it properly, let alone bend it.

“Humor me,” Cressida said. “Don’t think of it as iron. Think of it as... saltwater taffy.”

“Taffy?” Felicity echoed.

She lifted the bar, testing its weight. Heavy. Unyielding. Her mind filled with data: tensile strength, carbon content, degrees of annealing, forging temperatures...

And then she imagined it soft. Sweet. Malleable.

She bent the bar.

No—she pulled it apart, slowly, deliberately, as if stretching a length of congealed sugar between her palms.

Cressida smiled. “That,” she said softly, “is enough for today.”

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Sleep did not bring dreams.

No images. No warmth of feeling.

Only data. Cold, exacting.

A chronology of her life, unspooled like beads on a wire, like schematics fed through a calculation engine—measurable, definable, devoid of poetry.

And yet, somehow... beautiful.

When she opened her eyes, the moment was archived, marked, noted. She was—had always been—Felicity Gray. But now she was also something else.

The facts of her life, etched into neural pathways not entirely human, held a different weight this morning. Thoughts came not as words but as blueprints, possibilities branching like rivulets from a central valve.

A fog of sleep dissipated as gears turned in her mind—literal or metaphorical, she wasn’t certain—and her consciousness booted to full capacity. The fragments assembled themselves with mechanical elegance. Her life became a machine of memory.

Sunlight streamed into the cabin.

The walls hummed with a deep, living thrum—engines below pushing steam through iron arteries. Pipes groaned. Gaskets sighed. Somewhere in the bowels of the vessel, men barked orders, boots clanged on steel walkways, welders hissed flame into metal, and someone polished glass with loving precision.

She knew it instantly.

This was an airship.

But not the refined luxury liner she’d boarded as Felicity Gray—daughter of Guilford Gray, heir to a quiet fortune and a quieter legacy.

No.

This ship was different. Rougher. It smelled of salt and cannon smoke. Tasted of adventure.

The Intrepid.

Flagship of the infamous Professor Flintlock.

He was, by any measure the Empire cared to keep, the most dangerous man in the world. Pirate. Saboteur. Radical. A name whispered in corridors of power and shouted in broadsheets with exclamation points.

And yet—Felicity had seen something else in him. Not just madness, but method. He moved like a scholar and spoke like one too, like the men who used to sit with her father playing chess in the parlor, discussing poetry, revolution, science.

But Flintlock was no gentleman. She’d seen his eyes narrow before he drew a pistol. He was a creature of contradiction—equal parts Romantic and rogue, cowboy and alchemist.

Her gaze flicked to the corner.

A ripped evening dress slung over the back of a chair. Her own? No—bedclothes clung to her now, unfamiliar and finely made. Silk, vivid with embroidered blooms, something distinctly Eastern in their design. Not costumery, but authentic—woven from distant ports and smuggled past tariffs.

The material cooled her skin as if it remembered the breeze of foreign markets.

She stood. Her limbs responded stiffly, then smoothly—another detail to log, to calculate. She moved to a wardrobe set flush into the wall.

She hesitated. This would be the test.

She opened it.

Clothes. Many. All tailored to her measurements, and not merely in style but in function: outfits for warm climates, cold decks, laboratories, lounges.

Not a cell, then.

Not a cage.

A guest room—if one granted their host the power to deny exit.

She stepped away and approached the porthole. Outside, clouds drifted beneath the ship’s hull like a silver sea, the sky a dome of cobalt above.

How long had they kept her asleep?

She couldn’t say.

A scent drew her attention—delicate, floral. She turned and found it: a pot of tea steaming in a cupboard, a porcelain cup set beside it. Jasmine. Exotic. Fragrant. Familiar only from encyclopedias, now living on her tongue.

She sipped.

Warmth. A moment of peace. And, oddly, a thirst sated.

Her eyes drifted to the small bureau, where another object awaited: a letter, sealed, addressed to her in elegant penmanship.

She unfolded it carefully.

Felicity Gray,

My sincerest apologies.

There is no respectable way to abduct a young lady, and I will not pretend this was anything but that. I am, as you may suspect, a desperate man.

Your body was seen to by women of my crew. No man touched you while you slept. Should you require assistance, you need only ask them. If you prefer solitude, that too shall be granted.

You will lack nothing, save your freedom—for now. That is the one indignity I must humbly admit.

In the days to come, we shall speak, and I will share with you the reason for your presence here. A reason I suspect you may already sense.

For now, come to breakfast. Break bread with pirates. You may find us more civil than expected.

— Professor Flintlock

She folded the letter with care.

Kidnapped. By pirates. On a sky-ship made of steel and fire.

It was absurd. Impossible. The stuff of pulp adventures and serialized tales sold on street corners. And yet—it had happened.

Felicity Gray inhaled deeply. The logical course was clear.

Escape, yes. But not now.

First: dress.

Second: gather intelligence.

Third... wait. For the right moment.

She moved toward the wardrobe again.

And this time, she did not hesitate.

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Felicity was on the run now.

She darted through the dim corridors of the airship, heart hammering, eyes scanning for any sign of safety—a bridge, a lifeboat, even a maintenance shaft. Anything that might offer protection or escape. Her mind raced faster than her feet, struggling to accept what she already knew deep down.

Her uncle hadn’t been a caretaker. He’d tolerated her presence the way one tolerates a moth in a room—flicking it away when convenient. But now she understood he’d had more than irritation in his heart. He had plans. Designs. For her, for the Gray estate, and most of all, for the patents her father had left behind.

The Guilford Gray legacy wasn’t just a nest egg. It was power—power wrapped in copper wire and steam valves, power that could shape the future.

And her uncle wanted it all.

Worse still was what Flintlock had revealed—that he knew her name. That he’d been watching. That he’d known exactly who she was from the beginning. And Peter Milner? That poor man had simply been a piece of the puzzle, a pawn in a larger game.

But what was Felicity? What piece did she play? She wasn’t brilliant like her father. She wasn’t an inventor. She wasn’t even—she bit down the thought—a boy. In the harsh calculus of powerful men, what did that make her?

A liability. A loose thread. Or a key.

Behind her, footsteps echoed. She froze, then veered into a narrow maintenance passage she knew from the ship’s schematics. Between the walls, through thick piping and cables, she climbed down, aiming for the engine room far below.

But the space was tight, too tight. Her dress snagged on the metal fittings. The beadwork tore, scattering like droplets across steel. Gritting her teeth, she ripped the bottom half away, leaving herself in her underclothes. Modesty was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She pressed on, steam venting around her, the heartbeat of the ship thrumming louder with every level she descended.

Finally, she emerged onto a catwalk above the engine—a space thick with heat and motion.

“Felicity?”

She turned. The engineer stood there—an older man, thick-armed and soft-eyed, worry lining a brow more used to kindness.

“I believe the craft is under attack,” he said, voice steady despite the chaos.

“It is,” Felicity replied. “Flintlock. He’s come for the ship—come for me.”

“A more powerful engine’s towing us off-course,” the engineer muttered. “Can barely tell which way’s forward anymore.”

“Then we need to reach the bridge,” Felicity said. “Maybe we can take control, land the ship before it’s too late.”

The engineer hesitated, then offered her his hand. “Come, child. There’s still time. This way.”

Something in her twisted. Was he sincere? Or had someone else gotten to him too?

She took his hand anyway.

Together, they wound through the lower decks, down forgotten corridors where the ship’s true workings hid. At last, they reached a door Felicity had never noticed before—thick, brass-rimmed, old.

“Just beyond here,” the engineer said. “Safety.”

He opened the door.

Inside the chamber stood Professor Flintlock, hands on his hips, wearing that smug, sharp smile of his.

“Very good, Billy,” Flintlock said. “Thank you for bringing her.”

Felicity spun. “You—” she gasped. “You’re one of them!”

Billy said nothing.

“You needed a spy aboard,” Felicity went on. “To confirm something. Rumors, about the ship? You didn’t need to attack us at all. You could’ve taken it without bloodshed. You could have—”

Flintlock raised a hand. “This was never about the ship, my dear. This has always been about you.”

She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“No,” he said gently. “I don’t imagine you would. Many things have been kept from you, Felicity Gray. But that ends soon. I’ll see to it personally.”

He drew a slim metal case from his pocket.

“Guilford Gray,” he continued, “was more than an engineer. More than a visionary. He was... an anomaly. A leap in human potential. A man who should not have existed—and yet did.”

Felicity took a step back.

Flintlock’s eyes gleamed. “Some are given gifts. My life’s work has been to find them. To understand them.”

“You’re a pirate,” Felicity said, almost spitting the word.

“Do you truly believe that?” he asked softly. “Have I struck you as a common thief? A raider? I seek knowledge. Secrets. The keys to a new age.”

He stepped closer.

“Yes, I’ve done ruthless things. There is no nation on Earth—no democracy—strong enough to hold the truth I pursue. But I believe one of those truths lies in you.”

“I’m just a girl,” Felicity whispered. “I haven’t even been introduced to society yet. I have no say in what happens to me.”

Flintlock’s voice softened. “I know. Your father made sure of that.”

He opened the case.

Inside lay a long, thin device, barely visible, its edge almost non-existent.

“Brilliant,” Flintlock said.

Billy seized Felicity’s hands, pinning them behind her back.

“What are you doing?!” she cried, panic surging.

Images flooded her mind—every fear, every whispered story of monsters in men’s clothing. Her body tensed.

Behind her jaw, where she’d always thought she had a simple birthmark, Flintlock placed the strange device. It slid in with a soft click. Hummed.

And turned.

Felicity’s mind went blank.

And then she was falling—falling into the dream of gears.

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“Is it here?” someone murmured near the edge of the crowd. “Has anyone seen him?”

The air felt tight with anticipation, thick with the scent of coal smoke and machine grease. A hush fell as the crowd parted like iron filings pulled from a magnet—parting not for reverence, but repulsion.

And there he was.

John Highwhistle stood alone in the clearing, just yards from Felicity’s trembling frame. He looked impeccable, save for the faint rumple of his evening coat and a loose strand of hair he smoothed back with deliberate poise. He carried himself with the confidence of a man who’d practiced his posture in the mirror since boyhood.

He didn’t look at Felicity. Not yet. The performance had to begin properly.

Feeling the eyes of the assembly tighten on him like a vice, Highwhistle straightened his waistcoat and braced his back, a reflex from his preparatory school days. Every gesture was exacting—a ritual of refinement. And then, the voice: calm, deep, patriarchal.

“Yes, yes, I’m here. Of course.” He turned his gaze toward Felicity. “Felicity, dear... why don’t you come and stand behind me?”

Felicity stiffened. The words struck like a net, woven from guilt and expectation.

Professor Flintlock grinned, teeth gleaming behind a mustache too grand to be honest. “Now, there’s a touch of theater,” he murmured to Felicity with a wink. “Yes, do go stand by him. The poor girl’s had a fright.”

Highwhistle stepped forward, hesitant at first, then gathering pace and pretense, as if the floorboards themselves whispered confidence beneath his feet.

“Quite the family gathering,” Flintlock said brightly. “And Highwhistle, yes—maternal cousin to the Guilford Gray estate, if I recall. I know all about you, you know.”

Highwhistle’s jaw twitched.

“I know,” Flintlock continued, “that you have designs on the estate’s future. A tidy ambition, wouldn’t you say?”

Highwhistle’s voice was cool as cut glass. “I have only ever acted in the estate’s best interests.”

“Of course,” Flintlock said, drawing out the syllables like thread through a needle. “A man of letters, weren’t you, in the last campaign? Spoke beautifully on behalf of the regime—what did you call it? ‘A beacon of light’? Ah yes... the New Age.”

He clicked his tongue.

“A man of culture. One who follows orders. Lord Harrahed’s shining emissary.” He turned to the crowd. “Don’t mind me—these names, they form a web, you see. One glance and I have them. Up here.” He tapped his temple. “They come to me like echoes through a speaking tube.”

Highwhistle said nothing, but the flush in his cheeks betrayed the sting.

Flintlock turned back, voice darkening. “And you, sir—commanded a regiment that left behind no shortage of civilian graves, did it not?”

The silence thickened. Somewhere, a gear clicked.

“But enough of war,” Flintlock said. “Let’s return to this curious moment. You, John Highwhistle. A man of no true gifts, never one to excel—ah, but persistent. And persistent men are dangerous.”

A hiss of hydraulics echoed from behind as a door creaked open.

Cog entered, clad in his tight black flight suit, goggles reflecting the gaslight. In his gloved hands, he carried something wrapped in oilskin.

“Thank you, Cog,” Flintlock said lightly.

Cog handed over the bundle, then stepped back and wordlessly drew two pistols from his belt—short-barreled, brutal in silhouette.

“I have here,” Flintlock said, unwrapping the package, “proof of just who John Highwhistle is.”

“You have no right!” Highwhistle shouted. “That is private! This is a private affair!”

“Private?” Flintlock sneered. “Ah yes, secrecy—the last refuge of those with much to hide.”

He unfastened the first set of documents, holding them aloft like a stage magician revealing a trick.

“Miss Gray,” he said, “your esteemed uncle has long plotted to claim the fortune owed to you. Patents, you see—technologies developed by Guilford Gray, your ancestor, and protected by inheritance law. These patents belong to direct heirs. To you.”

Felicity’s breath caught.

Flintlock continued, flipping another page. “Now, here’s the rub: if there are no other living heirs, you are the sole beneficiary. But if, say, you were married... your husband might claim a portion of those profits.”

Felicity felt her stomach twist.

“Yes, Miss Gray,” Flintlock said. “Your dear uncle has tried to invalidate your mother’s lineage. Here—documents, slanderous in tone, claiming your mother was not born of her father, but of another man. A fiction designed to erase your claim entirely.”

More pages. More evidence. Seals and signatures. Felicity took the bundle with shaking hands and, as Flintlock watched, read with astonishing speed.

“Remarkable,” he whispered. “You do have your grandfather’s mind.”

Highwhistle began to step back.

“Oh, don’t go,” Flintlock called cheerfully. “We’re not finished. You see, in preparing this confrontation, we had to look into your... finances.”

He gestured, and another paper was held aloft.

“Insurance claims. Filed against the very airship we arrived in. A payout contingent on the ship’s destruction. A tidy sum.”

Murmurs spread through the crowd like oil on water.

“And why would he sabotage the ship?” Flintlock said, his voice rising. “Not just the payout, my friends. No, no. Highwhistle is deep in debt. Not just to the banks. Not just to the ministries. But to the underground. To dangerous people.”

Highwhistle’s face contorted. His body swayed. And then—

He screamed.

And fainted.

Gasps rang out. Several in the crowd surged forward to catch him, but Felicity had already turned. Quick as a spark in a steamline, she darted through the open door.

She didn’t look back.

The glass shattered.

The elegant window frame came crashing down, dragging with it a storm of shards and twisted metal. Screams erupted as gallant men threw themselves over their wives, and women covered their heads with coats and trembling hands.

Glass and rain sliced through the air, striking the stunned crowd below.

Above them, oblivious or indifferent, the fireworks continued their jubilant display—bursts of color masking calamity with celebration.

Inside the ballroom, soldiers scrambled, leveling their rifles at the sky, searching for anything to shoot at.

Then, from above, the Intrepid fired a cannon.

Its thunderous roar dwarfed the whimpering snap of fireworks. This wasn’t celebration—this was war. Thunder, hot and close and deliberate.

The leisure ship had been hit.

The Intrepid‘s shot was precise, brutal. The cannonade—one of the ship’s few true defenses—was obliterated in a single strike. Whatever chance she’d had was gone.

A naval craft might have survived. This was not a naval craft.

From a distant corner of the room, Highwhistle exhaled, a sharp whistle escaping his lips. Adrenaline surged through him.

It had worked.

Ambition and planning had paid off. The pirate himself would come to collect the prize.

Highwhistle would collect too, on the end of it all. He’d taken out a sizable insurance policy—one he couldn’t afford to keep paying much longer.

There was danger now, of course, but it came coupled with elation. A plan well met.

Captain Warden was nowhere to be found. Likely he’d returned to the bridge, scrambling to do what he could.

Highwhistle had done his research. He knew how efficient Professor Flintlock and his men were. They’d surely already boarded.

Crippling the defenses was only step one.

Something fell from above—a small clay pot that shattered on the ballroom floor.

Smoke hissed out, thick and chemical. An ingenious grenade, designed not to maim but to scatter and confuse. The crowd screamed. Panic spread. Guests trampled one another in a rush for the doors—only to find them locked.

Through the haze, descending on ropes, came the shadows.

Flintlock’s men.

The few soldiers in the room were disoriented, their eyes stinging. They swung their rifles toward the cacophony, but between the fireworks and the screaming, they could barely track a target.

Then the smoke began to clear.

At the center of the room, standing on the polished ballroom floor, was Professor Flintlock.

His long duster swept aside as he bowed with theatrical grace, tipping his hat to the men and women trapped with him.

All around him, his crew appeared—armed and grim, rifles in hand.

The soldiers on the ground groaned, nursing wounds. Most had been shot mercifully, in non-vital places.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said Professor Flintlock, his voice calm, smooth, authoritative.

“This is, as they say... a stick-up.”

He raised a gloved hand. “Yes, yes. I am that Flintlock. The dread pirate of the air. You all know the name.”

He smiled, turning to address the crowd like an entertainer commanding a stage.

“I’m sure I cut quite the figure of terror among you fine people. But what a way to travel—high above the world, in opulence and comfort. Truly a marvelous ship. A wonderful ship.”

He sighed. “It wouldn’t suit my purposes, of course. But this—this is what it should be. A party, after all. And what’s a party without gifts?”

He gestured.

“You’ve brought such wonderful gifts—jewels, gold. But they don’t interest me.”

He paced, unhurried, savoring the moment.

“As we speak, my men are moving cabin to cabin, gathering your correspondence. You see, I already have the gold. I already have the jewels. What I don’t have... is information. And that, my friends, is power.”

He stopped and smiled again, teeth flashing.

“What we have here is an opportunity. And I’ll make my demands very clear.”

His voice turned cold.

“I would like to know: which of you controls the banks—specifically the Bank of England? That venerable institution. Surely there’s a lord among you. A titled man gifted the honor of managing it?”

His eyes scanned the crowd, then settled on a stout gentleman cowering behind his larger wife.

“Ah! Yes, you. I believe I’ve seen your face in a quarterly newsletter. A legitimate journal—Modern Economics, wasn’t it?”

The man sputtered. “My name—well, I don’t have to tell you anything. Just... take what you want and go.”

Flintlock’s smile sharpened.

“Oh, but I do know who you are. You’re Peter Milner. Vice President of the Bank of England, are you not?”

The man’s wife grabbed his arm. “Just tell him, dear. He’ll go once he gets what he wants.”

“But it’s not just information I want, Mr. Milner,” Flintlock said.

He gestured again. A pirate approached, looped a rope around Milner’s waist, and gave a sharp tug. A winch above spun to life, and Milner was hoisted off the floor, screaming, vanishing into the rafters.

“In another moment or two, my men will have the rest of the correspondence. Then we’ll leave you to your party. Of course—we’ll have to scuttle the craft. But there are lifeboats. And I’m sure you’ll be found, in a week or so. Hopefully the kitchens are well-stocked.”

“Wait a minute!”

Jack Spade stepped forward from the crowd, striding toward the center of the room with easy confidence. Flintlock’s eyes met his.

“I thought you’d resolved the situation,” Flintlock said mildly.

“Well, one of your boys tried to land on me. Had to lay him out. Hope you’ll forgive the rudeness. But I’ve been hired. And my job, Professor... is you.”

“And who, may I ask, are you?”

“Name’s Jack Spade.”

“Ah—Jack Spade,” Flintlock repeated. “I believe I’ve read a dime novel or two about you. I’m a voracious reader. My tastes are omnivorous.”

“That’s right. Fastest gun in Colorado.”

“And the Territories, I hear.”

Spade nodded. “That’s right.”

Flintlock tilted his head. “Speed. That’s an important thing to an American, isn’t it? I prefer accuracy. A meticulously crafted weapon. A weapon with meaning—a philosophy. But you operate on brute force. At least, according to the stories.”

Felicity Gray, watching from the side, held her breath as the two men squared off.

“In the stories, Mr. Spade, when one gunslinger meets another, they call for a duel. A proud tradition in England, as well.”

“There are rules,” Spade said. “Don’t shoot a man in the back. Look him in the eye. Countdown. Pull your gun.”

“And it’s to first blood? Or first to shoot?”

“That might be how you do it,” Jack said. “In America, we play for keeps.”

“All or nothing,” Flintlock mused.

“That’s right.”

“So you want a duel?”

Spade grinned. “Wouldn’t much matter. I get paid either way. But sure, Professor. Let’s have an old-fashioned quick draw.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

A pause.

Then Flintlock turned slightly, unbuttoning his coat. “Draw,” he said.

Spade moved for his gun—and as he cleared the holster, the shot caught him in the shoulder.

“That’s one,” Flintlock said.

As the smoke cleared, it became apparent Flintlock hadn’t drawn a pistol in the traditional sense—he’d fired a small, wrist-mounted Derringer.

Spade grunted, clutching his arm. “Clever contraption. But I’ve still got a good hand... and another gun.”

“I thought you’d expect a flintlock pistol,” Flintlock said. “But I carry this Derringer to make a point. To end violence. I’m not a violent man, Mr. Spade.”

“Hole in my shoulder says different.”

“I’ll give you a choice,” Flintlock said. “We end it now—or you die.”

“Draw,” Jack said.

And he was fast. Faster than any man had a right to be.

But Flintlock was faster still.

His Smith & Wesson was already out. Just a hair sooner. Just enough.

“What I have, Mr. Spade, is destiny,” Flintlock whispered. “And it smiles upon me.”

He fired.

Spade fell to his knees, then, with a final breath, forward—a hole in his heart.

Flintlock turned, scanning the room, and his eyes landed on Felicity Gray.

She stood frozen, a hand over her mouth.

“You would be Miss Gray,” Flintlock said gently, and bowed once more.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

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Felicity Gray sat quietly, listening. The fireworks crackled overhead, painting the sky in impossible colors. She had never seen such a display—streamers of flame unraveling like bouquets in bloom, blazing furiously before collapsing into blackness.

It was astonishing.

Of course, she knew the components—phosphorus, magnesium, potassium nitrate, alkaline metals and powdered magic. She could name every element used to produce each color, each sizzle. She’d memorized them as a child. But knowing didn’t rob it of wonder.

Around her, the crowd gasped. Dandies in rigid waistcoats, women in steel-boned corsets and parasol hats crowned with chimney-plume feathers—everyone stared up like children, open-mouthed at the sky’s mechanical miracle.

In that moment, only that moment, she let herself feel it: joy, maybe. Gratitude. Perhaps even the smallest spark of affection for her uncle Highwhistle, who, if nothing else, knew how to throw a party.

Jack rose and excused himself from their table, boots clinking faintly against the brasswork tiles. A cluster of colonial governors waddled over, casting him frosty looks. It wasn’t done—a man of his age, his kind, approaching a lady such as she.

Unseemly, said their eyes. Improper. In the Empire, one did not leave a lady alone—especially not with a man like that.

“All right, boys, let’s move it along,” Jack said, grinning like a fox with its tail on fire.

The old governor’s wife hissed behind her fan. “Worst of all companions,” she muttered. “The girl already has bad ideas. Last thing she needs is American ones.”

Felicity didn’t care. She’d accepted a gift from him already - the tattered volume of The Legends of Jack Spade, chronicling his own exploits. Tall tales, most likely. His steamer trunk probably held worse.

He’d even shown her his revolver—pearl-handled, polished smooth from use—claiming it had settled disputes from San Francisco to Shanghai. And while he was a braggart, a con artist, a dozen disreputable things a man had to be to survive the American West, she knew—knew—he wasn’t lying about the gun.

When he spoke of killing, he didn’t glorify it. It wasn’t a boast, but a statement. A grim necessity.

She’d seen it in his eyes.

Felicity thumbed through the book again, pretending disinterest. Each page carried the weight of myth—but scanning the paragraphs, she fell upon something.

A phrase.

An image.

It struck her like a picture caught on a camera plate, etched into her mind. Her fingers stiffened as the sensation rose: a static charge crawling up her arm and into her chest, a faint vibration settling into her bones.

She blinked.

That happened sometimes.

Near large machines.

Engineers claimed humans couldn’t sense electromagnetic fields, not really. But birds could. Cats, even. She’d read accounts of animals sensing currents, navigating by them. And Felicity—well, perhaps some people had that instinct too.

She’d once toured a factory where the walls shook with the force of metal presses, giant copper coils thrumming with potential, charging the air with invisible current. She remembered the hairs rising on her neck—how she’d known, before anyone told her, when the steam surges would misfire.

And now, standing here with a storybook in hand, she felt it again.

A premonition.

Her gaze drifted upward.

Between the bursts of light, beyond the green and red contrails of magnesium sparks, she saw it.

A constellation. Or rather, the absence of one.

There had been stars there. She was sure of it. But now that patch of sky was a void - not a natural blackness, but a silhouette. A shape.

An airship.

Sailing silently above them. Massive. Hidden in plain view.

She shrieked.

A sharp, metallic sound tore from her throat—unnatural, thin and shrill, like a tuning fork dropped on tile. It echoed off the tower walls, bounced through the colonnades, and shattered the glass in partygoers’ hands.

The music halted. The crowd turned.

Spade spun on his heel, eyes locking on hers.

Felicity pointed upward—just as the ceiling above them cracked and gave way.

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They walked in silence, the five of them moving single-file across the narrow ridges of the Intrepid, ghostlike in the chill air, toward the jump point, which was little more than a gap in the outer gantry, rigged with cast-iron bars and cable spools fed from the rig above.

Their suits, cut from heavy leather treated with chemical sealants, rustled faintly, built to withstand altitude winds and shifting temperatures. Brass-and-glass breathing masks covered their faces; their eyes glinted behind copper-rimmed goggles. Small valves clicked as they adjusted oxygen levels. Little of their skin showed, and even less emotion.

The shortest of them led, a man known as Cog, fearless, built like a jackrabbit wound tight on spring-steeled nerves. He raised one hand as they reached the edge of the drop, and the Intrepid pitched forward beneath them. For anyone else it would have meant a tumble into the abyss. These men had invented this maneuver. They’d long since perfected it.

Above, fireworks kept up their calculated distraction as the luxury liner’s brass dome split open in slow, majestic panels, spilling in the dazzling starlight and unwittingly, giving away the Intrepid’s position.

It was no surprise to the man piloting the Intrepid that they’d been spotted. Professor Flintlock stood tall at the bridge, his steel-gray eyes catching the flickering light, his broad mustache quivering as he made minute adjustments to the controls.

He was a striking figure. Tall, thin, and undeniably sturdy, with white hair swept back like a storm cloud, a long brown duster whipping around him, its seams lined with pockets, tools, and a holster holding a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson. Goggles hung from his belt. When the occasion called for it, he wore a stovepipe hat snug to his head, reinforced with brass bracing.

Beside him stood Cressida, in a leather-trimmed longcoat and high-collared shirt modeled on Flintlock’s own, tailored with a feminine grace that made her impossible to ignore. Her auburn hair was tied back, gloved fingers hovering over a set of backup controls, a series of knobs and dials. She’d climbed out of the slums of Belfast with nothing but her wits and a genius for adaptation, and in twelve years had worked her way from apprentice to Flintlock’s most trusted lieutenant.

“This has the smell of a trap,” she said, her voice low and even, her Irish brogue only slightly chipped.

“Every altitude we climb to is a place for someone to set snares,” Flintlock replied, barely glancing at her.

“And yet,” she said, adjusting a dial, “here we are.”

“Indeed.” He grinned, lips tight beneath his mustache. “But we have a man aboard who assures me the fellow setting this trap is a particular form of imbecile. We’ll see, once the mechanism springs, just how clever the trapmaker truly is.”

The notion pleased him—it always did, outwitting men who fancied themselves clever. He relished games of misdirection and miscalculation. There were days he moved through the ship grim and silent, his mind a clockwork storm; other days he was warm, even whimsical. Cressida had come to think of him as a collection of storms, each waiting its turn.

“All right,” he said suddenly. “Tell Cog. Send the signal.”

“We’ve just crossed the backline,” she confirmed, and flipped a small brass switch. A click, then a thrum, as a filament inside a glass tube glowed orange.

Crouched at the jump rig, Cog caught the flash of light. He leapt without hesitation. The four others followed, tethered to spring-loaded cable spools, arms spread wide as the fabric between their limbs unfolded—wingsuits stitched from waxed canvas and fine glider silk, catching the wind.

They did not fall. They glided.

Each soared silently toward the Aurora, the luxury airship drifting unaware below. Cog landed first, clawed gloves biting into the thick silken skin of her upper gas bladder, and scrambled across to tie off the first line. The others came down just behind him, clipping their lines and cutting loose from the Intrepid. Whatever happened next, the two ships were bound together now.

Below, the winches groaned to life, drawing the Intrepid in. In moments, the Aurora’s crew would see them. By then, it would be too late.

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^{Professor Flintlock’s Marvelous Machine}

Brian Wolf

Chapter Three

Sir John Highwistle moved through the party with the energy of a minstrel in mid-tap dance - relentless, polished and slightly maddening.

He knew just enough about every guest in attendance to offer a comment, a knowing look or some glittering piece of gossip - about a scandal, medical affliction or some bit of family lore. It was the sort of rapid fire flattery that struck quickly, vanished as smoke, leaving the listener vaguely pleased without remembering quite why.

If Highwistle had any sort of talent, it was this: the performance of insincere charm at such a breakneck pace that one could hardly tell if they’d actually spoken with him. Only afterward did they realize that something had happened and this person - whoever he was - it must surely be important.

Highwistle never gathered more gossip than he gave. He never said anything unguarded or revealing about his inner life, secrets or jealousies. Those that were attuned to these dark arts of social manipulation could recognize it for what it was: a calculated blur of talk and charm designed to get him wherever he desired to go. Highwistle had no use for friendships, these people were only keys to the doors which opened the future he wanted.

He wanted access.

Behind the charm was ambition. Behind that ambition was fear. Money was always a concern. But more concerning was the company he worked for, a fragile network of wealthy individuals stitched together by promises and little else. He was essentially a figurehead, the face of this company, he had received a Knighthood by the Imperial Council itself, this made him an important figurehead.

But Highwistle was in debt right up to his eyeballs. It was something he had shared with no one, besides a bookkeeper paid handsomely for silence. His life was an elaborate house of cards - glass cards - stacked on sand. The slightest scandal would bring the whole rotten thing to a shattering crash.

Highwistle spotted Lady Weatherby, draped in a tremendous peacock stole, the kind that made conversation feel like addressing a parade float. Every color of the rainbow was represented in her display.

“My splendid Mrs. Weatherby.” Highwistle cooed. “What a magnificent bird! I’ve heard you have an unmatched eye for plumage. Why, the birds themselves must compete to be plucked and worn by such a discerning woman. I daresay they must throw themselves upon your doorstep, eager to be your next fashionable achievement.”

The amused, but slightly startled Mrs. Weatherby gave a single blink of acknowledgement, allowing for the man to touch lip to glove, before the turned back to her party, as Highwistle had already drifted off to warmer waters. The flattery didn’t need to land now - after all - it was all ammunition for later. Something she may recall in a week or two, hearing the Highwistle name in casual conversation, and Mrs. Weatherby would say, ‘Oh, yes, that Highwistle - a man of taste. And such impeccable cuffs.’

She would remember precisely nothing about him, except a lingering fragrance of flattery. And it was just as well, there was not much substance beneath that. He wore only the finest clothes, employed only the most discreet servants. And though he was currently spending far more than he earned, it had yet to catch up with him. The bondsmen, their legbreakers, and the pauper’s prison had not come knocking - not yet.

That odious American gunman - Jack Spade - was seated too casually at a nearby table, his long legs stretched, coat slung over his chair, the handles of his revolvers visible for all the ballroom to see. He was something out of a penny dreadful, a ghoul masquerading as a man. Highwistle didn’t know which part of the man he disliked more, the flirtatious rudeness he cast about or the very fact he was from the worst breed of man: An American. Next to him sat his niece, Felicity Gray, young and bright-eyed, sipping tea with an unassuming grace.

Spade was reading to her from the battered dime novel he had now twice pulled from an inside pocket, flipping pages and showing the girl the lude drawings from within its harlequin chapters. A barmaiden in a saloon, surprised to see the Gunslinger, wearing nothing but his hat and two pistols.

Highwistle had no patience for such vulgar reading material. He’d taken one look at that shabby book and dismissed it as pure tabloid trash, not worth the ink spilt nor the pulp pressed.

Spade, however it may seem, was no fiction. He was a known quantity: a man who had in his checkered past done violence and not in the name any Empire, often for the sake of money or his own twisted honor. This much was not in dispute, he was a killer.

The Anglican Empire, in these uncertain days, found itself in need of such men. It took a villain to stop a villain.

Highwistle fancied himself a chess master, though in reality he had never taken up the game. What he took from his rudimentary understanding was moves and countermoves - and sometimes the key to winning was luring the opponent into a trap built for them. He didn’t have to draw blood - he just had to make sure the right pieces moved where they must.

When all was said and done, he would collect his justly earned rewards: Guilford Gray’s patents, the admiration of the Imperial Council, and if luck held - the severed head of the most infamous air pirate in the world.

Not to mention, all debts paid.

It would bring his own head out of the noose. Professor Flintlock would come. Highwhistle was sure of it. He had created a buffet of temptation – the ship was filled with goods and the powerful rich. Whatever was to happen, Highwistle had covered the angles, the insurance settlement alone would fund his next dozen ventures. They moved slowly like a wounded animal, the predator would surely come pouncing.

Captain Warden approached Highwistle, who stood aside casting his eyes around the ballroom. The handsome figure of the captain, a sort of wood-carven ideal of a man, his moustache sharp, hair under a bright white hat, his chin more tree-knot than bone.

“Sir Highwistle.”

“Captain, shouldn’t you be at your post?”

“You asked us to go off course.” The Captain said. “We’ve reached your destination. But I must warn you - we’re a sitting du-”

“The skies are open now.” Highwistle said. “Clouds have cleared. Let the fireworks begin!”

Captain Warden’s brow twitched. “Fireworks pose a risk. At this altitude, they’ll be seen for miles. We are in the middle of nowhere, yes, but in this world or airships - we’re never alone.”

Highwhistle smiled, placing a practiced hand on Captain Warden’s broad shoulder and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial purr.

“I’m sure you’ve taken every precaution.” Highwhistle said. “I trust you and your men. And if there’s any danger I am sure you can deal with it expertly.”

The Captain gave a slight nod and turned on his heel and vanished into the crowd.

Highwhistle sighed. He hoped the man was right. He turned back to the party, clapping his hands sharply above his head. The music quieted. Heads turned. Flutes of glass were lowered.

“My wonderful, sparkling elite. You are the first and greatest guests on the greatest voyage,” he declared, beaming. “Thank you for joining us on the inaugural journey of the Aurora.”

There came a polite round of applause.

“We’ve had a blessed trip thus far,” he continued. “And with New York less than a day’s travel away - should the winds continue to favor us - I must warn you, you may be subjected to yet another night of fine food, drink and company!”

Another light round of applause and the faintest amount of laughter.

“Tonight,” Highwhistle continued. “We honor not just the Empire, but elegance. Now Maestro, if you please.”

He gestured towards the conductor, who raised his baton, the quartet had now expanded to a full company of instruments. They began a waltz. Above them, the ceiling panels whispered open, widening, allowing for the great dome of polished and telescopic glass to be revealed.

Beyond the glass, the black and velvet sky.

The music softened, allowing the first burst of flame to puncture the peace. The first firework split the night. Crimson and gold. A wheel of light. Far across the sky, an answering ember blast flared.

Red.

Not a firework, but a signal.

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Chapter Two

The party was lavish, well-attended and sparkled with the polished gleam of wealth. It seemed as everyone aboard the Aurora had emerged in their finest attire - tailcoats brushed clean, dresses stitched with pure white pearls, and collars starched to perfect stiffness. A quartet of musicians played a soft harmony from the end of the grand ballroom. The music never rose above the murmur of conversation, though no one made use of the ornate dancefloor in the center.

The ballroom itself- gilded, domed, and crowned with a massive curved observation window as a marvel in its own right. There was a subtle telescopic quality to the glass that to look up at the night sky was to feel as if the ship itself were pulling the stars out of the heavens. At some point, later in the evening, the crew of the Aurora would send glittering fireworks into the sky, a dazzling display of wealth and chemically reactive jewels. This was what held Felicity’s interest, by now she would have excused herself and made her way back to the cabin, if not for the prospect of this light show.

There were young men and women present at the gathering, though none of the prissy well-mannered boys paid her any mind. She was surely noticed the day that they boarded the Aurora in London, she had even been offered typical greetings - stiff, polite. Perhaps it had been her immediate reactions to them which had sealed her fate, for Felicity Gray had a way of drifting apart from others, her mind frequently towed elsewhere, or eyes focused inward. As a girl out in society, she measured up in many of the ways most found appealing. Her porcelain features and delicate manners might have drawn attention, but her obvious detachment held them all at bay. If someone had asked her to dance, she would have performed the maneuvers admirably, her mother had taught her after all - but no such invitations had come - and none were likely.

Instead, her thoughts were far below, back in the engine room, replete with its humming gyroscopes and spinning metal guts. She was considering lubrication ratios, the physics of friction and it would correspond to metallurgical rigidity. Felicity considered the math of propulsion, the drag coefficients of brass fins. If the angle of thrust could be adjusted just slightly, she mused, the ship could accelerate beyond current tolerances. Of course, there was the simple fact that a luxury liner like the Aurora had no need to move any faster. Even so, Felicity imagined a future: one where airships circled the globe in only a matter of days. That future, she hoped, might even carry her name - building upon her father’s legacy.

The dessert course had been served when Felicity noticed the man seated across from her - a special guest of her Uncle, Sir Highwistle. This creature was tall and lean, deep cracks at the corner of his eyes, a tailored suit, but one that stood out from the crisp blacks and lace of the ballroom attendees. This was an American. He was unlike anyone Felicity had met before. Most of Felicity’s admittedly brief interactions with Americans, had been with military men, visiting her father. They were thick-necked types with moustaches and medals and no imagination. But this man was different.

His cigarette crackled as he lit it, a thing of sweet tobacco rolled in brown paper, quite unlike the pipes men favored in England. There was something uniquely American about the way he sat, a kind of forward leaning casualness that felt brash and romantic all at once.

He caught Felicity’s gaze and returned with a slight tilt of his hat. He spoke in a drawl that was slow, deliberate and thick as molasses. “Hello, darlin’,” he said, a grin curling beneath his moustache. “You’re Highwistle’s niece, ain’t ya? Been told you’ve been raisin’ a bit of hell ‘round here.”

Felicity blinked, a flutter of embarrassment that the news had come round to the American. She hadn’t expected the man’s directness - or the strange musicality of his voice. She filed away the cadence and rhythm like an engineer noting a fabulous new design.

“I suppose,” she replied cautiously.

“Well,” the man said, tapping his cigarette ash into an ornate brass dish. “Your good Uncle has seen fit to hire me to see this voyage safely to New York.”

“The name’s Jack. Jack Spade.”

The American reached into his coat and drew out a slim, weatherbeaten and dog eared booklet. He slid it face up across the table, the cover read: 10 cents - The Legend of Jack Spade - the Fastest Gun in the West.

Felicity raised an eyebrow. “A legend? Doesn’t that mean untrue stories?”

He chuckled a deep rib shaking laugh. “Legends just mean passed down. It’s stories that folks tell about you. And the ones we tell ourselves.”

Jack Spade leaned back, crossing his arms, the shine of candlelight dancing across the brass buttons of his long coat. “The truth is I am fast on the draw and I had occasions to use it. Where I’m from, it’s a fight, and I was fortunate to come out the better of them. That’s all you really need to know. The folks back home who have heard of me, most of the time they leave me be. Nine outta ten, anyhow.”

“And the tenth?” Felicity asked.

There was a shadow that crossed his eyes, and Jack Spade looked different, dangerous. “The one who wants to test the legend.”

He tapped his coat, she glimpsed the grip of a pearl-handed Colt six-shooter on his hip.

“That’s when they add another chapter in the book.”

She smiled, despite herself. “And who are you really here for?”

He looked away, as if caught. “What do you mean, darlin’?”

“There are fifteen naval guards and security on the Aurora. There’s not much reason to add an American Gunman. If that’s what you are.” She tapped the cover of the book, the drawing of Jack Spade didn’t really favor him, it was a generous image.

He exhaled a thin stream of smoke between his lips and cocked his head to look at her. “If I’m being general, I would say they need a dangerous man such as myself to nab himself his own dangerous man.”

“Flintlock.” Felicity said softly.

“Professor Flinlock,” Jack corrected, the tone of voice suggesting a well of respect. “You got to hand it to the fella - that name’s got some grandeur to it. It’s literary.”

“Like Jack Spade?” Felicity said.

“My real name is Lewis Morganthal. Doesn’t have the same ring as Jack Spade.” Jack said.

“Have you read up on him?”

“A bit.” Jack said. “King of the sky pirates.”

Felicity, in truth, had read quite a lot about the mysterious Professor Flintlock. The pirate’s real name was a mystery. His background was hidden by tall tales told in the taverns of the world. He was a contradiction. Pirate, thief, saboteur - yet every so often a story would slip through painting a more sympathetic figure. The Pirate freed a colony of forced laborers in Madagascar. Another time, he’d redirected a shipment of food to a village experiencing a famine.

“A virtuous scallywag,” she uttered. “You think he’s going to target the Aurora?”

“Can’t say for certain. He’s a slippery fellow. He keeps your Empire on its toes. But I wouldn’t want to spook these fine guests.”

Jack Spade tapped his cigarette on the heel of his boot, replete with spurs that dingled as the red cherries rained to the floor.

“Truth is, darlin’, this boat is a perfect target. Hundreds of the well-heeled, goods of art, jewels and cash in the hold. You’ve got the important muckety-mucks all in one spot. You couldn’t design a better treasure chest for an old pirate to break open.”

Jack Spade gestured around them at the polished marble, its gold trim and incandescent chandeliers swaying ever so gently with the motion of the ship.

“I don’t think Flintlock’s after trinkets. That old dog is up to something bigger.”

“And what will you do,” Felicity asked, eyes narrowing, “when the Pirate comes?”

Jack brushed back the lip of his coat once more, revealing the revolver nestled like a sleeping rattlesnake.

“I suppose we’ll both find out,” he said, “When the next chapter begins.”

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^{Professor Flintlock’s Marvelous Machine}

Brian Wolf

Chapter One

Unlike any ordinary dirigible, the Hope & Chalmers Airship, the Aurora: was a wonder. It was a machine so graceful in motion it might as well have been kept aloft by magic.

It moved not by the random drift of wind or the lift of hot hair, but with the careful poise of a dancer. So much steel, so much brass - none of it had any business gliding so artfully through the sky. The mass of the thing alone defied comprehension. Its bulk could dwarf a Cathedral, and yet it floated on the Northern winds like a feather.

Felicity Gray, alert and pretty at sixteen, stood atop the catwalk above the dizzying array of mechanisms within the engine bay below. There, spinning gears the size of carriages turned with their hypnotic rhythms, driven on by the whirring gyros, vacuum-sealed pistons and the stream of steam that cut through the ship’s maze of pipes like blood in an artery. Each careful component had the words Hope & Chalmers etched onto them, the proud signifier of an engineering guild that cared about their legacy. The ship had no propellers, these were the harmonic gyroscopic thrusters designed to defy gravity at every pitch and turn.

It was a smooth bird, one that could strafe sideways, pivot in place or roll end over end without disturbing the fragile champagne flutes of its upper deck tenants.

Other airships might drift lazily like barges, but this one could roll, flip and glide as effortlessly as a hawk. A voyage aboard the Aurora meant one was experiencing luxury at its finest. There were croquet lawns on teakwood decks, ivory billiard tables and promenades filled with laughing aristocrats in waistcoasts and lace, enjoying the most perfect sunsets God ever imagined.

Of course, such elegance would devolve into screaming chaos if the gravity-directing stabilizers ever failed.

Felicity could imagine this scenario with fiendish delight - one great spin of the control wheel and all the silks and satins draped Gentlepeople would slide across the deck like an avalanche of snow on a mountain pass. Part of her itched to sneak down to the helm and see what a nudge could do.

A voice cut across the Catwalk.

“Hullo there, Miss Gray.”

A broad woman with black hair lined in streaks grey, swept back into a braid and tucked under an engineer’s cap, stood rosy cheeked with a laugh in her eyes, walking towards Felicity from the other end of the catwalk. She had thick arms, rolled up sleeves, with a large wrench the size of a battle axe across her shoulder. Her hands were gloriously filthy, caked with blackened oil and fine, powdery brass shavings.

“Oi, Mary!” Felicity grinned, slipping into her best approximation of inner-city London common speak, one she had learned from puppet theater.

The engineer laughed, “A young lady dressed finer than the whole of the aristocracy and the Imperial Council? Saying “Oi, Mary?’ I’d think I’d wandered into a stage play!”

Mary Lufkin was a short, thickset woman - not fat, but built like a bundle of firewood. Functional. Solid. When she moved, the thickness of her fingers betrayed a grace that came only from many years spent whispering to machines.

“Watch your head, luv,” she said casually.

Felicity ducked in just enough time to avoid the hot steam pipe, perfectly camouflaged as to post the greatest danger. “That one carries the mainline vapor. Sizzles the skin right off the scalp if you’re not careful.”

“You should paint them red.” Felicity said.

“I’ve asked the bleeding lot of them to paint the hot pipes red.” Mary muttered. “A hundred times. But my suggestions fall on blessedly busted ears. Go ahead, pass it along to your dear uncle, if you like. Not that it’ll help. Says it would unbalance the aesthetics - whatever that means.”

“I’d be acting as your envoy.” Felicity said, her eyes twinkling. “Might be an inappropriate use of my time.”

“Mighty un-ladylike.” Mary said.

“That’s right.” The girl smiled with a small wicked twitch at the corners of her mouth.

Mary sighed. “But I’ll bet there are many inappropriate uses of your time aboard a ship as fine as the Aurora. Card games with the crew, you reckon?”

“No one will play cards with me,” she said dryly. “Once they figure I nearly never lose. The moment they realize - well, no one likes to play a losing hand.”

“Then perhaps you should play my boys in poker,” Mary offered. “Though, most un-ladylike.”

“I’d rather tour the ship. For the thousandth time. “Rather be down here, in the guts, seeing her in all her splendor.”

Mary looked at her - looking through her - and lowered her voice.

“I know who you are, Miss Gray. Known for quite some time. I know who your famed father was. I’ve seen the schematics - for Aurora herself - I studied them. It was important for me not just to understand the splendid machine - but the man who had made it.”

She paused with reverence.

“You’l be remembered too,” Mary said. “Of that I have no doubts.”

Felicity didn’t let that hit the mark, she was after all, a girl who could not even attend a boarding school without being chucked out.

She wallowed hard, “I feel close to him, down here,” she said. “Near the machines.”

“What was he like?” Mary asked. “The Great Guilford Gray?”

“He liked long walks. He was patient with me. He drank his tea with too much sugar. I suppose the world doesn’t know much about him. Not much was written. His patents, some papers, but he was quiet. And gentle.” Felicity laughed. “We would play chess.”

Mary stayed silent.

“He’d speak of machines as if they were his friends. But he didn’t know how to give person to person advice. He would listen to my mother as she explained to me what it was to be a girl. He’d listen right alongside me, like he was just another student in her class.”

Felicity ran her fingers across the catwalk railing, listening to the churn of movement in the engines.

“Maybe I was a peculiar child,” Felicity admitted. “But I needed those lessons. On how to speak with others. How to be - ordinary. I’ve never had the instinct for … connection. Never seemed to come naturally.”

She paused again, almost whispering.

“And sometimes - I just want to be back home. I want to sit with my legs drawn up on the chair, listening to his stories - his theories - playing chess with the old man. Mother and he are gone now - all that’s left of my father is here - in these machines. When I look at them turning and spinning together, I can see his face.”

There was a slight stutter - and then the catwalk rocked.

“Damn,” Mary said, looking down. “These damned fine instruments-”

Felicity followed Mary as she took the ladder down - and the engineer looked from one set of gauges to another.

“It needs to be quarantined.” Felicity said. “You’ve got too much pressure built up on the port side.”

Felicity flipped a lever.

The stuttering stopped, steam poured out of a conduit high up.

“Normally it takes a wrench and two men to turn that lever.”

“Oh.” Felicity said, stepping back, withdrawing her hand.

“There you are.” Said a voice from above on the catwalk.

It was her uncle, the esteemed John Highwistle, looking bothered and harried.

He stood at the far end of the catwalk, flanked by a pair of uniformed officers gripping sticks in belt holsters. His jaw was tight, his eyes sharply narrowed.

“Has she been keeping you from your work?” he asked Mary.

“Not at all, sir.” Mary said instantly. “Just showing her a bit of the engines and sending her back up. Didn’t expect she’d be down here.”

“She knows the machine better than any man aboard,” Mary added. “I value her input.”

Her uncle raised a brow. “I half expected to see you covered in grease, Felicity.”

She smiled faintly. “I was tempted.”

“Well,” he said with a sigh, “I suppose you look presentable enough. Join the party. This is an important night.”

The moment was over. Felicity nodded to Mary, and headed up the ladder. The gig was up.

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^{Professor Flintlock’s Marvelous Machine}

Brian Wolf

PROLOGUE

Part Two

Perfection was a tool to a genius. It was the whittling down of material until only the perfect gear remained.

Guilford Grey was such a genius, the world’s most renowned clockmaker. However, to call him a clockmaker was mostly inaccurate. There was a time when the fashioning of gears into the rudimentary machines that counted seconds, minutes, hours was the absolute height of technology. What came after it was more important, it was the idea of Clockwork Perfection. That was the calling of the truly great minds of the Age.

They sought purpose within the machine itself, they were grand explorers in the realm of precision. Some great men studied the planets, their swirling ballet in space, others looked within the human body for the answer to life’s purpose and longevity, and Guilford Grey toiled in the same spirit, though his obsessions were somehow out of his control.

He was an instrument the universe spoke through, and his life’s greatest achievements were out of his hands. He was working on the imperceptibly small, the perfect, the impossible. It was timing. Movement. Memory. It was alive within the tiny gears of the machines his practiced hands had forged.

He worked with the precision of a surgeon, his thick spectacles marching down his nose, rows of magnifying lenses, a tool of the optometrist to examine even the most miniscule of details with absolute focus.

In his youth, he spent time toiling as a toymaker. As he grew, he helped to design the great machines of the Age. Powerful steamships that could travel the globe in months, locomotives that connected cities from one end of a continent to another. Airships that opened a new world of travel, tying together the loose ends of the world’s great Empires. He had even been pressed to make machines of War.

But now, in his fifties - a time that might have offered him the twin solace of rest and comfort, Guilford Grey coiled himself around a new, obsessive, secret project.

He no longer worked from the intense and intricate plans built on the shoulders of other inventors and their regimented patterns of thinking and patents, he moved with something beyond inspiration or intuition, he was driven by something profound and all-consuming. He led with his heart.

Even the woman of the house, a kind second cousin who had come to serve him and care for him, one who had taken up residence in his country manor, had little inkling of what he spent his time building.

Guilford locked himself in his study throughout most of the waking hours of the day. She brought him the same three requested meals, scheduled to the moment of his desires, a constant schedule. Breakfast was a bowl of porridge rimmed with berries and sugar, a plate of crisp, thick bacon at its side. Lunch was another bowl, soup and a thick crust of bread. Dinner was an entire chicken, roasted with a bed of potatoes cut and seasoned with whatever was around, the only greenery for the day were turnips from their garden, one Celeste had kept lush with green thumbs.

He had one glass of brandy before bed. The rest of the time, it was a steady stream of boiling hot tea, sometimes ten pots a day, beginning at dawn.

Celeste would come to the study to clear his dishes, it was after dinner. Birds were beginning to sing their nightsong as the sun rode low on the horizon. She made sure Guilford was warm and well. She saw - day by day - tools and parts laid out in the forge begin to take on some kind of a form.

Guilford never seemed to mind her company, whenever he was bothered to look up from his notebooks and machining tools. She was a pleasant person, she carried with her a sort of unhurried grace, not overwhelmed by the need to gossip or pepper himself with what he was sure were ten thousand and one questions about what he was building. Not that he would have been able to answer them, sometimes he himself would be stunned at what he had come up with during a day’s worth of labor.

Guilford Gray was a serious man consumed by serious work. But he had always been a bachelor, and some may have said as Celeste had come to live at his manor, there may have come a future with a certain matrimonial flavor, but five years had passed and he was no closer to ending his bachelor life as he had been before she came to his door.

He had, after all, long ago earned a sizable fortune. The extended family had their investments in him returned, but Guilford was sitting on a fortune in patents and pensions. Some thought he had never meant to work again. The great companies of the world, most notably Hope and Chalmers, paid him handsomely for the right to use his patents - of which there were many.

Occasionally visitors came to the country Manor House, through the iron gate and past the orchards, knocking on the doors, looking well worn and tired from a day’s hard travel, not knowing whether it was the day Gray would allow them entry. These were serious men, men of rank, letters and position, some with prefixes like General or Secretary. A few would share a drink, a chance to warm their sodden feet by a crackling fire and a game of chess before being sent on their way.

This was the quiet monastic life of the world’s greatest Inventor.

________________________________

It was another morning, a Tuesday. Celeste rose with the crow of a rooster, and stoked the stove in the kitchen while battling a fit of yawning. Days were growing shorter, and she missed the long, quiet summer nights. Celeste filled the teapot with his favorite - Earl Grey, a fragrant leaf, cubes of sugar purposely stacked into a pyramid onto the tray waiting for his deliberate attention. She brought the whole tray up the narrow steps to his bedroom, knocked with a practiced escalation of taps until he opened the door, awake and dressed in his best coat and cravat.

The cloth was tucked neatly around his collar, it was the periwinkle blue of his eyes, which looked alert and shimmering in the morning’s light.

“Two cups, Miss Celeste,” he said.

“Two cups?” she thought.

“I’ll have to return to the kitchen,” she said.

“Ah. I see,” said Guilford. “And if you wouldn’t mind … you might even bring along a small cake, if it’s no trouble.”

He spoke softly, with the high and deliberate speech of a gentleman.

“Yes. Of course,” she replied.

Celeste returned shortly, balancing a second teacup on a plate with two small cakes that had been prepared only the day before, wrapped in a cheesecloth.

In his study, the two of them sat together neatly and properly, on the couch by a large window that opened smartly onto the countryside. Below them, in the shadow of the manor house, lay Guilford Gray’s forge - a small hut where he would sometimes mold metal into intricate parts that he required. Most of the time, smoke would steadily curl from the hut’s chimney. But not today.

It was still morning. The gardeners below worked quietly. Chickens roamed freely, pecking their discerning beaks into the soft dirt, searching for breakfast.

Celeste saw something she had never noticed before.

Guilford Gray, the master of precision instrumentation, moved from sugar, to milk, to honey - with the delicate alchemy of a chemist mixing the perfect drug. He was making her tea. She wondered whether he did everything this way.

Fastidious. Serious and intentional in every careful movement of his hands.

“I suppose,” Guilford began, “we haven’t had too many conversations since you’ve come to stay at the Manor House?”

He seemed almost embarrassed by this admission.

“In my youth, I was more adept at such things. Conversation would flow freely from me - before the churn of this life of craft. It all must have changed the way my brain operates, I suppose.”

He paused.

“As a young man, I could offer humor. Compliments. And please understand - my absence has never been through any fault of yours. It has been entirely my doing. But it has a purpose. In fact, some days, most days I’ve been compelled to be away, in mind if not body.”

He looked at her.

“I’ve completed my work, you see.”

Celeste felt in her stomach a strange flutter, a surge of panic beneath her ribs. It was a sense of uncertainty, she was on the cusp of something, a cliff or a fall.

“What do you mean by this?” she asked.

“I suppose I must do a better job explaining,” Guilford said. “You are a fair creature, Miss Celeste.”

“And though we are second cousins, I believe that customs would not be off-put, that is to say, it would not create a scandal.” He smiled faintly. “The last thing I would wish is for you to feel … put out. I believe you are gentle, hardworking and … curious.”

Guilford adjusted his seating, turning more towards her, a hand over hers. “May I ask, Miss Celeste - Why is it you never married?”

“I had been,” she said quietly.

A searching part of Guilford wondered whether he had been told this information, and somehow misfiled it. Perhaps it was told to him in a moment of his compulsive focus.

“He was lost in the Great Campaign, at the front years ago. I’m afraid there weren’t many suitors willing to take on the obligation of a widow.”

Guilford considered this.

“Cultures dictate these norms, do they not? They praise a woman’s youth, her vitality, beauty, her … virginity - and discard all those who have missed their mark.”

Celeste thought it odd the way he spoke of culture, not as a privileged man born into it, but much like a scientist studying an ant colony from a distance.

“Truly unethical,” he added. “But perhaps, in its own way … fated. You see, you are of such a disposition that I believe - you would make a very good mother.”

Celeste looked up at him, the breath stolen from her chest.

“I believe I’m too old to have a child. Not without enormous risk,” she said.

I do not know that I would,” Guilford replied, gently, “Not in the usual way, I mean.”

He cleared his throat.

“There are many ways to be a mother,” he said. “I have seen your spirit, Celeste. And if you would have me - I could be your husband.”

Her heart fluttered again. She had wondered - long wondered- if this studious man of a good estate and gentle demeanor would ever choose to propose. But here it was, the words floated in the air like a sturdy fleet of dirigibles.

“Yes,” she said, quick to get the reply out. “I believe I would be a good wife to you - if you believed you would be a good husband.”

“I do believe I have it in me,” he said. “So it is settled. We shall be married and I suppose - very soon.

She blushed.

“But before you accept me fully,” he added, standing suddenly, “you must understand just what I’ve been doing these last five years.”

He crossed the study to his rolltop desk. Pulling back the lid, he turned to her.

“Come and see.”

There in the center of the desk, amidst the scale models, notebooks in moleskin, ink bottles and ratty quills, a small box, no bigger than a woman’s palm, lay with no frill nor fanfare.

“Listen,” he said, holding it towards her, a slowly widening grin on face, turning a rugged face into something considerably more boyish.

Surely it wasn’t an engagement ring. No piece of jewelry lay within, she put her ear to it. From the box came the unmistakable sound - Of a beating heart.

“A music box?” she asked.

Guilford carefully removed the lid. Inside, a strange ornament, it clicked whirred but the effect was pure and simple and certain. It was beating.

It was a clockwork heart.

Perfect. Intricate in its mechanism. Alive.

It beat with the steady thrum of vitality.

“There will be a child,” Guilford Gray said. “This heart belongs to her. And the thing she will need the most in all the world - is the love of a mother.”

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^{Professor Flintlock’s Marvelous Machine}

Brian Wolf

PROLOGUE

Part One

Chapter 1

Ireland, 1601.

A brisk chill settled over the Irish Moors, clinging to the grass like a blanket. Above the cliffside fields, the black seas rolled restless and unseen, the sky itself had refused to show its face.

Not on this night. Of all nights.

There were no stars glittering above, only heavy, ink-thick clouds that curled through sky and the sounds of impudent waves crashing against a rocky shore called the night to order.

This was Ireland, though it might as well have been anywhere - a lonely place at the edge of the world where hidden secrets stayed buried under dirt and rock for centuries.

The procession came cloaked and silent as fog. Town elders, six in number, moved along the slick stone paths with an heir of solemnity. It was only the shimmering light of the torches that gave them away. A parade of yellow orange light that glowed against the clean limestone walls. They moved downward, one stone path and then another towards the hidden cave carved into the very bones of the Earth.

The night had of course, been prophesied. As most of the important things in History’s tangled web had also been spun. It was a legend passed down, mouth to mouth over unbroken generations. It was to be a night when the stars refused to show, the oceans boiled, and the great chosen of the village were to assemble, prepared and with perfect focus to fulfill that which had been set in motion long before any of them were born.

None had ever seen a night like this.

The many signs had presented themselves like an accountant ticking the beads of an abacus. A two year drought followed by a wet season that flooded the plains. A plague that wiped out nearly half the children in the village. The building of a new monastery in the hills to the South. Some of these things were choices men had made, but most were only in the hands of God. This is how they knew tonight to be the one and only opportunity.

It was the eve of the sixteenth year of her birth. She walked at the front of the procession, standing just in front of her elder, she had sand-blonde hair and a freckled face. The man behind her wore much the same features, though weathered by the wind and age. Beneath his hood, the Elder’s eyes were clear, burdened. He looked skyward once more as if looking for a sign, but the Heavens held their tongue, the Prophesied Night was upon them and there was no changing it. It was a dark task ahead. An Un-Christian one, some would say. But he had known this night was coming, it was impossible not to see the signs. They had all known, these gathered six, from the moment they had taken their blood oaths, it was the inevitable conclusion of a life spent with secret knowledge: this night had a dark end.

It was now. The great cosmic patterns that swirled above them had aligned - the Planets all in their places like Actors upon a stage. All omens fulfilled.

The girl was bound.

She whimpered softly, the sound was barely heard above the sea wind and crashing waves. Rope twisted from straw and heather bit into her dainty wrists. Flowers crowned her head - tulips, roses, and stranger blooms that were not native to Irish soil - all woven into a garland that was like an explosion of color atop her head, lit by torchlight.

Her eyes, cotton-soft blue, darted wild and wet with fear. Gold flecks shimmered in their depths, like fire trapped beneath glass, with specks of green that shifted when she blinked. There was no question: this girl was the one. She had always been the one, though she had not been given that information until an hour past supper as they roused her kicking and spitting from her bed.

Sixteen years they had raised her - pampered, protected, praised, she was loved like a living treasure. But all the while the plan for the end of her life wound tighter around her like a snake encircling a throat to constrict. Her parents, who had professed to love her best of all, were there among the cloaked figures. Even they had bowed to their duties - offering her up to the cruel strings of fate only to be plucked.

The Cave greeted them like an open wound in the side of the Earth. Here, the tides had acted unusually, pulling back for a time to allow their entrance, the pull of the moon proving to be weak, perhaps another of the omens unwritten. They took steps into the dry shelf inside her, as their passing firelight flickered against damp, cold walls. Here, in the glow of the procession, the dark runes revealed themself, perfectly etched into walls - marks that had been passed down through all generations. The keepers of the prophecy kept these truths hidden, long before there was written word, nor before anyone alive could read them, they had been here, legible and mysterious, waiting for time and literacy to make its way to this wild land.

Here was the Prophecy.

Here was the truth, hidden in plain stone.

In the center of the cave stood a post, driven into the stone: all birchwood, smooth, pale and carved with symbols by the many keepers blessed to hold the secret, not to be cursed as this procession, who would have to see it all through.

Surrounding the post, they lit a ring of torches, enough glow to make it as day, though the witch’s hour approached swifter than any here would have liked. As they bound the girl to the post, and she pleaded with men and women whose eyes cast down and away from her pleading face, the crystals hummed and glowed.

They began their chanting, a rhythm of strange syllables and the largest crystal blazed white. The Prophecy spelled out in Phonetic Letters, impossibly given to this wild part of the Irish Coast long before the Phoenicians had even formed an alphabet.

Here it was written, and so did the Keepers recite its passages the carved graffiti on the walls:

When moons lie still and stars do hide,
And oceans burn with wrathful tide,
When rain forgets the thirsty plain,
Then drowns it deep in weeping rain—
Mark then the sign. The hour is near.
The cave shall hum. The stone shall hear.

After famine, after flood,
After children lost in blood,
After silence, cracked and wide—
Comes the girl with fate inside.

On the eve of her sixteen year,
Take her swift and take her clear.
From hearth and hall, from kin and keep,
Steal her soft from out her sleep.

Bind her in the heather bloom,
To mark her for the crystal tomb.
Garnish hair with flowers grown
In fields afar and fields her own.

You six, the chosen, born of prayer,
Shall walk the path through midnight air.
Take with thee this sacred load:
A dagger sharp, a pouch of gold,
A cloak of dusk to wrap thy form,
And food to keep thy bodies warm.

At witch’s hour, speak this cry,
Beneath the stones, beneath the sky:

“Stone of sorrow, womb of light,
Take the maid and seal her right.
By flower and blade, by coin and cloth,
By drought and flood, by plague and wrath—
We give her not to death, but grace,
To turn the heavens to their place.
Let no star weep, let no heart break,
For God shall give what we now take.”

Speak it thrice and bow thy head,
Or naught shall grow where men have bled.
But speak it true, and light shall fall
On thee and thine, and bless ye all.

The Girl Screamed.

The light, hot white, filled her. It seared the air, passing from one elder to the next like a firebrand of pure energy. They all staggered, nearly losing their footing on the slick cave floor, but what happened, happened quickly. They were entered, it rewrote them, refilled them with something foreign and new.

Then - Silence.

The torches lining the strange cavernous altar still burned. Distant waves made their cacophonies. Drops of water beat a timpani on the cragged surfaces inside. The wind swept through with a banshee’s scream. The crystal dimmed. The young girl in the bonnet of flowers, now calm, opened her eyes and smiled.

“It was a success.”

The gentle lilting brogue was gone. In its place was a voice of something - or someone older. It was clipped and colder.

She looked upon the cast of elders and named them - not the names the bodies had been born with. They were names from somewhere else. Some other time.

They stared, blinking at one another and the strange place they stood. One by one, they pulled back their hoods, their faces slack with awe and dawning comprehension.

They too, remembered.

It was just moments ago that they had been elsewhere - a gleaming future of humming towers and electric air, of machines that thought, but a broken place. It was a place with hatred and greed and smoke thick with acid and a future unspooling into misery and fear. And then they were here, in rough robes, in bodies not their own. But the mission remained.

“It really worked.” she said again, almost to herself. “Now is the time.”

She counted them. Six. That was right. Plus her, the Seventh.

Sympathetic frequencies across time, a crystal of immutable power, it was all just a hail mary. But it had worked, after all - she was filled with purpose.

“You know what you need to do. From here, you must go to the six corners of the world. It won’t be easy. This world is not like the one we left. There are no generators. No light without a flame. No medicine except what the plants provide and no food unless you source it yourself. You’ll know hunger, maybe for the first time in your lives. You’ll know pain.”

Her voice dropped, becoming grave. “Some of you may have to take a life. But we trained for this, we must live. We have to succeed so that the world can change. We will steer our broken age toward something better.”

The Elder - now the Travelers - nodded.

“Build your Empires,” she said. “Justly. Ethically. Make something that can survive humanity’s worst instincts and deepest flaws.”

They departed, one by one, into the dawnless dark. No tools save what the prophecy permitted. A pouch of gold. A dagger. Rations for the road. A borrowed horse and a cloak to keep them hidden, fair features travelling to foreign lands. They moved out along the ley lines, six lines of fate stretching out across the world.

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