"Heart of the abyss!" the engineer cried in frustration, as she spun the wheel to cut-off the reservoirs.

Tabitha smirked, as the dial held stubbornly at eighty-four miles per hour. "No land-speed record today?"

"No ma'am," the engineer said glumly, as she began pulling the brake lever. "But if you want to try for it another day, ask for Camille Telvan Lorec. I would love to show my little girl what working with a Crafter looks like. She's pretty sure my job is the dullest thing in the City."

The train squealed and screamed indignantly, desperately pulling the speedometer lower, and hauling the train into a slow gradual stop.

Just past the platform.

"Feel like we did this before," Tabitha remarked to Harold Reeves, who was breathing hard, trying to calm his nerves.

"I'm really not that fond of going that fast, madam crafter," Harold said, as he stepped off the train and onto the rails.

At the platform, Mathias was already speaking with a pair of soldiers, who were acting oddly deferential as they pointed to the nearest cable-car.

Tabitha smirked when she saw the brown armband on Mathias' arm.

"Missing something, mister Reeves?" Tabitha asked, as she stepped down.

"Oh, burn me! When did he do that?" Harold asked, patting his left arm with his right hand.

"Probably just before he jumped off the train without us noticing," Tabitha remarked. "I think he enjoys showing off."

But Tabitha smiled to herself, as she climbed up to the platform and marched towards the already primed cable car. It was more than a small comfort that the man assigned to her was so competent.

Mathias wordlessly unwrapped the brown armband and extended it to Reeves, who took it without comment and reattached it to his arm as he sat down in the car.

Tabitha turned to one of the soldiers standing nearby, and said "the engineer inside that train, a Camille Lorec, is suffering from a broken speedometer. It jams just over eighty miles an hour. Would you tell her I have her peaking at ninety-one?"

"I, of course, madam crafter," the soldier said, just as he shut the door to the car, and released the lock.

"Where does this car go?" Tabitha asked Mathias, who was already leaning on the corner beam in the front of the car.

"All the way to the last wall," Mathias replied. The tall shadow presented a convincing facade of comfort, but the eyes under his hat were as sharp and alert as they had ever been. "The soldiers at the station were surprisingly helpful. Apparently Varnell's project has been quite the fuel for the gossip bonfire."

"Really?" Tabitha asked.

"Soldiers on watch duty struggle to find interesting conversations. Staring at the Gloam is a lot like watching the sky, and just about as tedious," Mathias explained. "So when a group of recruits is working with Valkyries, or a company gets marched along the causeway right past them, it gets talked about."

"Okay. So we're definitely in the right area," Tabitha remarked, as the car carried them along at a brisk pace.

The car carried them for a few minutes into open fields, and Tabitha let herself sink into her own thoughts, thinking of how to handle Gerald once she found him.

It would be easy to isolate him from the squad. Outing him, and claiming that she was here to collect her chosen apprentice would give her all the grounds she needed to lead him off into a witness free location. And no matter how skilled, there was nothing a first-year apprentice could know that could threaten her.

This grim and unfortunate chase was almost over.

"Odd," Mathias remarked.

Tabitha noticed the direction of his gaze, focused out somewhere in the field. She stood up, and stepped next to him, following his extended finger.

She saw it immediately. A crowd of over a hundred people, gathered in a small mob and marching west. They were distant, barely more than a small blot on the landscape.

"Who are they?" Mathias asked.

"I didn't bring a spyglass, sir," Harold said, shaking his head.

But Tabitha closed her eyes, and extended her will.

Three people in the distant mob carried lit torches. Tabitha let her awareness settle into the open flame, until the flickering torch was a part of her.

She opened her eyes through the flame, and looked around.

Some of the people in the crowd were familiar to Tabitha. High-ranking bureaucrats mostly, two members of Parliament, and Benden Tammerlane's Coldstone sword pulled at the edges of her awareness even at this distance.

But one man was a surprise. Plain-clothed, startled expression, and a gaze fixed directly at the torch her will now commanded.

Crafter Everett Cadmus.

Tabitha could feel the pressure of a crafter's heat haze press at her will,  but only for a moment. The crafter then stepped up to the torchbearer, took the torch from the middle-aged woman without a word, and stopped.

He waited as the crowd pressed on, before he said "and you are?"

Tabitha held up her hand, and made a small ball of flame inside of it. She held it up, and let it float nearby, leaving only a tenuous link of her will to maintain it.

Everett Cadmus looked up, and nodded.

The ball of flame flashed gently, and congealed into a small ring.

Harold stumbled back and gasped. Mathias scowled, but a quick glance towards her evidently suggested no reason for him to be concerned.

"Crafter a'Loria," Everett said to the torch in his hand, nearly two miles away.

"Crafter Cadmus," Tabitha said to the small ring of fire.

"Cadmus," Mathias mused, quietly.

"What brings you out this far, with a military courier?" Cadmus asked quietly, with a sly smile on his face.

"It's a long story," Tabitha replied. "But it has something to do with the apprentice papers on my desk."

"Ah. Dry reading, that. Though I heard someone wrote theirs with the Craft. Any good?" Everett Cadmus asked.

"Interesting," Tabitha admitted. "I didn't think you were much for hiking."

"I'm not," Everett Cadmus admitted, scowling. "There's some kind of incident happening at the unfinished section of the wall. It's gone dark. The ceremonial guard for today's event went to investigate. There's another crafter out there, Peyter Thawn. Didn't think he had it in him, but someone's warding the Gloam with dozens of crafts stretched in a long line. Decent work."

"I see. Anything else?"

"I've caught flashes of fire in the peripheries of my awareness, but it only just started," Everett said, looking back.

"I would look into it, but Colonel Tammerlane specifically ordered me not to," Everett Cadmus admitted. He glanced over to the mob ahead of him, and added, "I suspect he would order you not to, as well."

Everett leaned forward, his forehead nearly touching the torch. "So unless you really want me to, I'm not going to share this news. I'm already bitter with him for dragging me out here in the first place."

Tabitha laughed. "Thank you for that. I'd prefer keeping a low-key presence."

"That would be unprecedented," Crafter Cadmus said, shaking his head ruefully. "Happy hunting, a'Loria."

The ring of fire winked out of existence, leaving only a small puff of smoke.

"Crafter Everett Cadmus?" Mathias asked.

"Yes, he's with the group down there. It seems a section of the wall went dark. There's a crafter holding it, and Varnell's honour guard went to investigate the cause," Tabitha explained.

Mathias looked at her, and his expression looked anxious and pained. "Did you see an elderly woman with a heavily-patched, dark green coat? Tall, almost your height."

"No," Tabitha admitted, shaking her head.

"I may murder Tammerlane over this," Mathias said. His soft, quiet voice quivered with wrath and menace.

"Your mother, you said she was a botanist. Is she supposed to be down there?" Tabitha asked.

"Yes," Mathias said.

"Right," Tabitha replied, as she extended her will, she felt for sources of flame, and found one.

A pair, one an old woman in a coat almost entirely made of patches, and a middle-aged man holding a torch. They stood in front of a small shrub, and stared off into the east.
"I think I found her," Tabitha said. "You weren't kidding about the patchwork on her coat. She's with a civilian carrying one lit torch, and several spares."

"Good," Mathias said. "Thank you."

Tabitha didn't reply to his uncomfortably emotional thanks. But she smiled at him, before extending her awareness out, and listening for the disturbance Everett Cadmus mentioned.

She found it after only a moment, her awareness prickling as she heard a distinct staccato of irregular flashes of fire. Dozens of flashes batted against the very periphery of her perception, an eruption of fire and noise that took her a minute to understand.

"There's a battle up ahead," Tabitha reported. "A lot of Salamander fire."

"Keep listening," Mathias urged.

Tabitha closed her eyes as the cable car trudged along, its pace now irritatingly slow. Her thoughts instinctively turned to her new project, and the incredible possibilities the technology might present, if she could overcome the physical limitations of the lift mechanism.

Tabitha extended her awareness, stretching it thin and casting it as far as her awareness allowed. At first, she heard nothing, until the could focus on the air-cracking cacophony of Salamander fire.

She heard screams between the thundering guns, cries for help and hoarse cries as officers tried to make their orders heads over the din. She saw a brighter flash of light, soldiers diving into a trench, and others charging in pursuit.

Further away, close to the wall, she could see two squares, of forty men apiece, flanking a single man in a rust-red coat, advancing towards the battle.

"There's a battle, the side trying to approach the wall is outnumbered, but they're winning. From the wall, the crafter looks like he's about to join the fray."

"Which side is wearing parade uniforms?" Mathias asked, still staring out the window.

"The side that isn't about to be reinforced by the Crafter," Tabitha said.

"We're getting close," Harold said, pointing to the now visible flashes of Salamander fire.

"We can't intervene," Mathias said. "You said that crafter is holding the Gloam back. I didn't think there were many in the Guild who could do that casually."

"There aren't," Tabitha admitted. "He's using dozens of crafts to hold the line. Most crafters would need to use larger crafts, to stretch that distance. Cadmus knows that Crafter down there, and was surprised that he could manage that feat."

"And he's confidently marching into battle now?" Mathias asked. "Does that strike you as more than a little incredulous?"

"It does. Damnit," Tabitha said.

"What is it?" Harold asked.

"Colonel Cavilla tried to kill Tammerlane, by cutting off the fire and letting the Gloam in. Cadmus was plain-clothed, Cavilla wouldn't know Benden has a Crafter with him," Tabitha said. "Cavilla's trying to kill Benden, and that crafter his helping her."

"Then that crafter down there isn't holding the Gloam back. Can you intervene?" Mathias asked, as he stepped towards the door to the cable car.

"I, yes. Can you get down there?" Tabitha asked.

Mathias opened the door, and fiddled with a handle just in front the door. He opened a hatch, and unrolled a rope ladder by tossing it off the side. "I can. What is it?"

"That crafter is about to enter the fight."