"Why does the captain call you 'Tinker'?" Clarissa asked as she shut the oven door.

Her hair was plastered to her head like a too-tight hat, and her shirt was stained with sweat-soaked soot. Despite Anita's earlier advice she had wiped her face with her leather gloves, and could feel the crust of ash on her forehead when she moved her eyebrows.

As Clarissa blinked sweat away from her eyes, she watched Anita as the woman fiddled with a pipe connector. The ship's engineer seemed chronically incapable of holding still, always examining a piece of the engine or some nearby machine. Even when she stopped to drink some water or catch her breath, it was always with a tool in her hand.

"You'd have to ask the captain," Anita replied with a shrug. She didn't turn away from the pipe she was examining and eventually scowled in disgust. "Gotta redo the coating on these fittings, could rust faster than an Avantillian ship of the line flees a fair fight."

"He didn't tell you?" Clarissa asked as she took a sip of water and set the shovel back in its wall bracket.

"Nope. Thought it was a shot at my parentage at first, but he's never called anyone tinker except me, and Mercy's liable to have shot him if he did it to be cruel," Anita explained as she examined the pressure gauges again. "Okay, that should be good for a few minutes. Grab that took satchel on that table over there and tie it to your waist. I'm hereby graduating you from 'shovel slave' to 'lackey'."

"Didn't know I had an actual job title," Clarissa said, but she laughed as she spoke, and grabbed the small pouch. It had two belts, one quite a bit larger than the other, with the tools sticking out of the bag in a way that suggested the pouch should be worn on the waist.

"Second strap goes around your thigh, bit above your knee. Put it on and get over here, I could use your help to expand the outflow pressure lines to the directional rotors," Anita said, pointing at a piece of machinery as if Clarissa were supposed to understand what it did.

"Okay," Clarissa said, trailing off as she tied the belt around her waist.

"Now, we're heading into a place called the Pillars of Volante. It's a rock formation that connects to another nearby island, and the winds are mighty unpredictable. Captain's going to need the peripheral propellers to spin around pretty quickly to make tight adjustments, so we don't become the newest shipwreck. So we need to expand the pressure we allocate to those machines by rerouting the outflow lines here." Anita tapped one of the pipes with a wrench.

Clarissa gaped, uncomfortable with her own confusion. Thankfully Anita seemed to noticed, because she smiled and winked, and tapped another pipe. "Relax. We have a fair bit of time before the pillars, I'll go over this nice and slow."

But Anita's good cheer evaporated when the captain's voice roared out from the speaking tube, "Tinker, prep for hard and unannounced manoeuvres. We might have a fight on our hands."

"A fight?" Anita blurted out in confusion. She shook her head, as if trying to wake up, then dashed over to the speaking tube. "What in the sunless skies do you mean a fight?"

"Volante pirate hunter lurking at the pillars. Mercy's sent our marque codes, but whoever's captaining that ship wants to inspect the letters in person," the captain scathed, angry enough that Clarissa jumped just at the tone. "Leslie's prepping the Banshee as we speak."

"Aye, cap," Anita's timid reply was barely more than a whisper. She turned away and was already swearing under her breath as she ran back over to the pipes she had been pointing at earlier.

"Okay, kid, we're doing the quick and dirty version of engineer-in-training," Anita said. "Grab the one-inch wrench and cut-off valves three and four over there by the boiler."

"Valves three and four?" Clarissa asked.

"Red panel on the left, they're numbered!" Anita shouted as she yanked a lever which sparked several whistles. The pressure gauges beside Clarissa twitched, then began to climb with alarming speed.

Clarissa sprinted over to the valves and fumbled with her pouch. She scanned the neat row of wrenches at her belt and took out the first one she saw that didn't have a fraction embossed on its shaft. She set it against the socket on top of the operating nut and started to twist.

"Other way!" Anita shouted. Clarissa glanced back at the engineer, and was shocked to see she wasn't looking, fixed instead on her own task. "Right is tight, left is loose. Tighten those valves!"

"Right!" Clarissa shouted back, and she shoved the wrench as hard as she could, only managing to make it move a few inches. She pulled again as soon as she could, bracing one boot against the furnace despite the rush of acidic smoke that stabbed at her nose, and pulled again until the valve was shut.

Clarissa did it again with the other valve, just as Anita finished her own task and came running back. "Okay, that's good! Now back to shovelling, haven't the foggiest how hard we could be pushing the Child if we're in a fight, so we run her as hard as we can. Shovel until you can't."

Clarissa nodded, fear washing away her fatigue and carrying her forward. She wrenched the oven door open, took the shovel out, and flung more bricks into the fire with a vigour she didn't know she possessed. She started by counting her shovels, but gave up after three or seventeen. All she could think as she tossed another brick into the coals was to get the next one. The leather gloves were so slick with her sweat it felt like holding a warm cloth in a sink. Her sweat carried grey ash from her forehead and into her eyes, her shirt stuck to her sides and back, and her breathing came in ragged gasps.

"Tinker! All ahead, flank!" the captain's voice rang over the din of the engine. "Adding peripherals to forward momentum. Can we keep it up for three minutes?"

Clarissa felt a fresh wave of fear hit her like a bucket of ice water. Cold despite standing so close to the ship's open furnace, she threw herself back into her job. Anita had to leap over the fuel Clarissa was shovelling to reach the speaking tube.

"Child's eager to play, cap! She has all the power you need!" Anita shouted back, and when she turned around, she had another shovel in her hands. She practically slid to a stop near Clarissa and began to shovel alongside her.

"We take it in turns," Anita said as she scooped up some bricks. "Full shovel goes in low, empty shovel goes out high. When I'm scooping, you're tossing bricks in the fire, then we swap. You follow?"

Clarissa nodded, saving her breath. But Anita, as she put her shovel into the brick pit, began to sing.

"Feed the flame, carry my name. Feed the flame, mark my claim. Feed the flame, sing my fame. I soar in the skies, I'll forever rise, the winds are mine," Anita sang. Her shovel was under the bricks when she reached 'flame', and in the fire by the time she reached the end of the verse. She didn't sing loudly, her voice barely rose above the roar of the oven. But Clarissa found it remarkably easy to keep in time with Anita's work, so they didn't slow each other down.

Clarissa lost track of the time they spent shovelling. Each time they took bricks from the end of the pile, the weight of the fuel pushed more down. The Child's engine devoured the bricks with zeal. But somehow, without looking up from her task or missing a note, Anita seemed to know exactly how the ship's engines were doing.

"She's keeping up nicely," Anita said, stopping her song. "Do you hear her? The child's singing. She ain't happy less she's really running."

Clarissa shook her head and kept shovelling. She couldn't hear much at all besides her own pounding heart and ragged breath.

"Aft propellers stop, prep for corkscrew turn, ninety degrees starboard," the captain called out through the speaking tube.

"Spite and malice, we're already through the pillars!" Anita exclaimed, as she shoved the oven door shut. "Grab some water, but don't get comfy. No telling what'll happen next."

Clarissa nodded, slumping against the side of the fuel box. The bottle of water near her hand might as well have been back in Vol Ayre for all that Clarissa was willing to try and lift it. But as she planted she stared out the window, and towards what she realized must be the Pillars of Volantis.

Stone stretched from the forests below for what must be a hundred miles up. Long lengths of smooth stone, each a dozen times thicker than the length of the Ravens Child, the dozens of tall pillars stretched up until they reached and grasped an island up in the distance. More pillars jutted out in other directions, shorter pillars that ended in the open sky.

But straight ahead, a small blot of white hung between two of those pillars. A white, round blot, with a wooden ship tethered beneath.

"Is that the pirate hunter?" Clarissa asked, pointing to the white speck in the distance.

Anita stepped up beside Clarissa and stretched out a spyglass. She looked for a moment, then handed the telescope to Clarissa. "Take a look," Anita said.

Clarissa complied, and held the glass to her right eye. She could see the bulky shape of the ship's hull, and a dozen tiny specks dashing about on the deck.

"A privateer's sloop. 'Bout ninety feet long, crewed by about fifty people. Twelve guns. Flying Volante colours," Anita explained. "Damn thing is supposed to let us go when they received our Marque Codes. It's always possible they think we're not who we say we are, but the Child is a rather distinctive ship. But if we've stopped, it means the Captain's about to..."

"All hands, brace. We're firing the Banshee." The Captain sounded distinctly irritated by having to make the announcement, he growled out the last few words. "Paint round."

"What is the Banshee?" Clarissa asked.

"Hold on to something," Anita said in response as she grabbed a support beam.

Clarissa grasped the pillar she was leaning on and hugged it closely, just as something thundered up above. The entire ship shook, trying to throw Clarissa to the far side of the room. She hung on through it, and the ship's sway turned gentle a few heartbeats later.

Anita tapped Clarissa on the shoulder, "Quick, look!"

Clarissa looked through the spyglass again, just as a cloud of red bloomed over the deck. The tiny people on the little deck flailed about and pointed, sprinting away from the spreading cloud.

"What is that?"

"Paint round. The Banshee is a cannon, and we fired a shell at them stuffed full of powdered paint. If I may?" Anita held out her hand.

Clarissa handed her the spyglass. "Yep. Leslie put that shot right into their captain's cabin. They're still in the pillars, so they have no room to manoeuvre laterally. Their only chance to dodge the next shot is to bleed the bag. Mercy's probably signalling them right now to send their Marque codes and prove they're not pirates."

Clarissa noticed a small but bright light flash from somewhere on the other ship's deck. A series of small, quick flashes that she could see was some kind of code, but nothing in a sequence she recognized. "Yep. Volante marque code. Now unless that captain and his crew have a death wish, they should break away as soon as they clear the pillars."

Clarissa sighed in relief, and felt a wave of fatigue try to knock her over. She stumbled, reached for the side of the fuel box, and would have fallen over if Anita hadn't caught her. "Ah, Clarissa, you did great. Don't know many folks your age who ever learned to push themselves like you just did. If you need to vomit, I'll even clean it up."

Clarissa shook her head, but she didn't stand again without at least one hand resting on something solid.

"Looks like the excitement is over," the captain's voice came over the speaking tube. "Make sure the injector system is running, we should be able to run on half-power for a while. Tonya's awake, I'll take over in engineering."

"Thanks, cap," Anita said, somehow already standing next to the speaking tube.

"You two were superb," the captain replied. "Leslie said the Child danced like a Calmoori Princess looking to embarrass a suitor."

Clarissa looked at Anna and shrugged. Anna smirked and turned to Clarissa. "Leslie's convinced no one under the sky dances like a Calmoori princess. Says when they really put on a performance, it's meant to show a suitor how inadequate he is."

Clarissa watched Anita glance up at the ceiling and sigh, whispering, "Would love to see it someday."

Clarissa stayed where she was, leaning against the fuel box, while Anita went back and began to examine the pressure valves again, poking a few and tapping the gauges. Despite their exhaustion and the recent relief, Anita kept checking over the engine, looking for problems, tinkering with the machinery even when there was no obvious cause to.

Clarissa smiled to herself, seeing the cause for the captain's nickname.

Tinker.