Clarissa followed an excited Anita down a flight of metal stairs, finding the engineer's enthusiasm infectious. So much so that as they got closer to the ship's engines, the gentle vibrations in the handrails and the stairs brought an excited smile to Clarissa's lips.

At the bottom of the stairwell Anita jerked the metal lever up and opened the door. Warm orange light spilled out from the now open doorway, accompanied by a wave of hot air that pushed Clarissa back and made her grey cloak billow. Anita's tightly curled hair bounced around in the confines of the leather band, but the ship's engineer smiled as she squinted and pushed her way inside.

"Welcome to the breathing, burning, thrumming heart of the Ravens' Child," Anita said, whirling about with her arms extended, dancing to the tune of churning gears and hissing pistons. Clarissa followed her in, to see this large room devoured by the enormous bulk of the engine. They stood on a causeway, with stairs on either side of the room leading down to where the engine was set into the keel of the ship. From a storey below, it rose like a chained giant up above their heads.

At eye level, in the centre of the towering machine, was a steel edifice that shimmered with heat. It rose well over Clarissa's head, with a heavy looking round door in the middle, and a smaller hole in the side where a conveyor belt extended from. Anita stepped up to it and put her hands on the handle. "Here's where all everything we need the Child to do starts from. Fire to turn water into steam. Steam to turn gears. Turning gears for propellers and electricity."

Anita crouched down in front of the door and opened it just a finger's width. A hands-width of orange light decorated the engineer's face, and a gust of air blew her hair back. She peered into the opening for a moment, smiled contentedly, and shut the door again. "My fuel injector's been working nicely, the ship's purring like a well-fed kitten."

"So what are we doing down here?" Clarissa asked, looking around.

"Making sure the engine's running hot. Captain's gonna push the ship hard over the next few hours, and our job is to make sure the engine gives him all the power he needs," Anita explained. "To do that, we make sure the furnace stays nice and hot."

Anita stepped to the side and pointed past the furnace. The new machine she pointed at was surrounded by a large metal frame and dozens of pipes, but there were dials and gauges set somewhat haphazardly all about the room. She turned back to Clarissa and tapped one of the larger pipes with a wrench. "Just as important, make sure we're not straining the steam circuits by over-pressurizing the boiler. So watch the gauges over there in case the pressure is too high. I have relief values and warning whistles built into the machinery, but that don't substitute a good eye and prudent suspicion. Asides from that, watch the running gears to the propellers, let me know if they squeak or groan."

Clarissa nodded, not fully confident she understood what she was looking at. "I get the basics. Keep the fire hot, watch the pressure. What should I do if we run too hot?"

"Tell me," Anita said simply, and she grinned. "Steam spittle, you have that much down already? Haven't seen no one as comfortable with this contraption since the Captain. That monastery education is really something."

"You're impressed?" Clarissa asked. "But I can't do much more than shovel fuel into the furnace and tell you the pressure's tripping the relief valves."

"I spent three weeks trying to get Leslie and Tonya to that point. Mercy threatened to shoot me if I asked her back down," Anita said, and she gently jabbed Clarissa in the ribs and rubbed her hair. "Only person who ever picked it up as quickly as you was the captain, and he's like you."

"Like me?"

"A monastery kid," Anita said, frowning. "Didn't you know?"

That revelation hit Clarissa like a bucket of cold water. But whatever she might have said next was interrupted by a shout that seemed to come from right in front of her. She jumped back, as the captain's voice thundered over the engine's quiet concert. "Tinker, we're getting close. The two of you ready?"

Anita turned to her right and leaned towards a coned cap at the end of a pipe. "Aye cap. Like a blushing bridegroom."

Clarissa snickered and stepped up to the pipe. "I'll do what she says, and stay out of her way otherwise, Captain."

"Good to hear," the voice replied through the pipe. "Prep for an increase to two-thirds, with power to spare. Mercy and Leslie will unfurl the sails in a few moments, and I might need the peripherals without warning."

"Aye, cap," Anita replied.

"What does that mean?" Clarissa asked.

"Means get the furnace door open and get friendly with a shovel, lass. You have a fire to stoke," Anita replied as she dashed off to the side of the engine and began pulling at levers, seemingly at random.

"Okay!" Clarissa shouted, and she stepped up to the furnace door. Taking the latch with two hands, she pulled it hard until it squealed and popped out of position, and the door opened a little. She used the latch to push it open the rest of the way and nearly fell over when the wave of hot air shoved her.

"Fall forever, that's hot," Clarissa cursed as she stumbled backward. She pulled the nearby shovel out of its metal holster and turned to find a pile of small black bricks. Each was about the size of a fist, perfectly square, and looked similar to paper pulp. She scooped up a few and groaned when she felt how heavy each of the bricks were. But she kept them all in the shovel as she spun around and flicked them into the inferno.

"Keep that up for about a minute," Anita shouted over her shoulder. She had a wrench half as tall as she was in her hands and was bent over a gear about the size of Clarissa's head. "Spare power means we should be prepared to run at full speed, and we definitely need more pressure for that."

"Okay!" Clarissa went back and took another shovel full. She tried a lighter load this time, and found it manageable enough that she could fling it into the oven with ease. She grit her teeth and kept shovelling, even as the fire grew and the engine's hum turned louder.

Not only louder. Clarissa could hear the rhythm had changed, the clacking was faster, and the whistling sounded deeper. She stole a glance at the dials between shovel swings, but the dials had only moved a little.

"That's good, keep going. They just engaged the winches for the sails, see if you can hear what the power draw does to the engine," Anita called out. She was putting on a pair of thick leather gloves as long as her forearms. Her face was speckled with grease, and there was a new soot stain on her grease-dyed shirt.

Clarissa kept shovelling, but she kept listening as she worked. The whistling might have dimmed a little, and the clack of the gears might have gotten a hair quieter, but that could easily have been her imagination. Instead she kept shovelling, her hands already beginning to turn slick, and sweat trickling into her eyes.

"Oh, you handled that nicely, you beautiful beast," Anita exclaimed in delight. She patted one of the pipes just above her head. "All the effort Leslie puts into lifting a coffee cup. Clarissa, put another six shovelfuls into the oven and close the door."

"Okay!" Clarissa complied, happily counting down until the last one, when she set the shovel back in its little slot and shut the furnace door.

"There's a tap beside the fuel bricks, it's drinkable. Should be a cup hanging off it," Anita said.

Clarissa complied, filling the glass before she raised it to her lips and drained it so quickly it gave her a short headache. She laughed as she returned the cup and leaned back on one of the foundation pillars while she tried to catch her breath.

"While we have a minute, why don't you look out the window?" Anita asked, as she scanned a nearby shelf of supplies. "Rather doubt you'd want to miss what's out there."

"Why, what's out there?" Clarissa asked, even as she pushed off the pillar and walked towards the pair of large, round windows near the front of the engine room.

"Vol Ayre. The capital city of Volante, and home of the largest harbour anywhere beneath the endless blue," Anita replied. "Which also means if the captain crashes, there are more people to mock us than anywhere else."

"Is the captain really that bad at flying?" Clarissa asked, as she approached the window.

"No," Anita said. "But he can't close the speaking tube, so he has to listen while I make fun of him."

Clarissa chuckled at that, as she set her hands on the brass frame of the window, and looked out.

All she could see was city. A forest of jutting towers stretched from left to right, from up to down. There were too many buildings to count, and too distant to see each structure as anything more than a tiny part of a singe, sprawling man-made jungle. A waterfall fell from a cliff near the heights, and wound down through the city like a body's arteries.

"Wow," Clarissa said breathlessly, as she stared out at the sprawl of buildings that wound on for what must be dozens of miles. Train lines and streets stretched throughout the city, and tall towers weren't only clustered in the core.

"There are only three cities beneath the skies that are larger," Anita said. "And none of them are as beautiful."

"It's," Clarissa trailed off, fumbling for words as her eyes fell on a palace that might be larger than all of Bankerloft. One of only several, by the looks of the heart of the city, where the lake drained into another river.

Clarissa smiled as she stared down and whispered the city's name to herself. "Vol Ayre. I promise I'll see you someday."

"That's the spirit. There's a lot to see beneath the sky, and that waterfall alone is worth the docking fees," Anita confirmed.

Clarissa shimmied over to the side of the window to look over at something obscuring her view of the distance. Ahead of them, towards the nose of the ship, sky-blue canvas was stretched taut by the wind. The sails had to be massive, Clarissa guessed they could cradle the lift-bag of the ship. There were two, one extending from the deck and down far enough that Clarissa couldn't see the bottom, and the other extending up until it connected with the lift bag.

"We're in the slipstream now," Anita mentioned while Clarissa stared at the sails. "Fiercest winds you'll find near the great isles. They'll tear an unprepared ship or an incompetent pilot into pieces and feel no remorse. But they're also the fastest winds in the endless blue, and using them can save time and fuel."

The ship rattled gently, a subtle clatter that Clarissa disbelieved for a moment, before she noticed her fingernails rattling rapidly against the glass. She gasped, stepped back from the window, and looked back at Anita. "What is that?" Clarissa asked.

"Captain's looking for the right position 'tween the slipstream current and the warm air coming off Volante," Anita explained nonchalantly, which was an immediate relief to Clarissa. "He ain't Tonya, doesn't have that same feel for the winds, but you could fit all of Volante between Tony and incompetent. Just don't get too far from the shovel. We might-"

Anita was cut off by the captain's voice coming from the speaking tube. "We're going to start and maintain a lateral tilt, five degrees to port. Prep the engine for half power on the peripherals. No other changes."

Anita glanced over at the dials near the engine for a moment, then stepped over to the speaking tube to respond. "Aye, cap. Pressure's comfy for half-power on the peripherals."

"How's our eighth share?" the captain asked.

Clarissa smiled mischievously and pointed at the speaking tube. Anita nodded and gestured to the speaking tube. "Right as sunlight in the monastery loft, captain," Clarissa replied.

There was a short pause before the captain responded. "Been telling her about my childhood, Tinker?"

"Course not, cap," Anita responded airily. "I'd need to know 'bout your childhood to do that."

"The indignities I indulge on my ship. Maintain some power to spare, just in case we need to outrun an over-eager pirate hunter. I could be halfway back from Calmooria in the time it would take to convince a newly commissioned captain my papers aren't forged," the captain replied.

"Will do, cap," Anita replied, before she turned away and pointed at Clarissa. "You heard him. Better get that shovel."

Clarissa groaned, though not wholly sincerely, and took the shovel in her hands again. "Hello, old friend," she said to the tool in her hands. "Suspect the two of us are going to be well acquainted before lunch."

"Lunch?" Anita asked with a laugh, as she took a wheel and began releasing some kind of valve. "You think Leslie makes crepes on a whim? Afraid you and I are here until we clear the Volante Pillars and the winds ease up."

"And how long is that?" Clarissa asked.

"Less speaking, more shoveling," Anita said, though not unkindly, as she kicked a lever with her boot and sent a gout of steam whistling into the air. "Rent and scattered to the winds, we're definitely putting you through your paces today, my child."

Clarissa wasn't sure if Anita was speaking to her, or the ship.