Chapter Three Hundred and Seventy-Five - Abomination Against Engineering and Good Sense

“So should we just visit the hotel then?” I asked.

“Without the others?” Amaryllis replied. “That seems needlessly risky.”

I nodded. “You’re right, It’s more fun with friends.”

Amaryllis didn’t even react. “Of course,” she said before turning to the old guys. “I’m assuming from the way you two are geared up that you intended to come?”

Tharval snorted. “What, you came here begging for our help, you know? Think we’d just let you walk into the lion’s den on your own? Bah! You folk are so green it hurts to see. I can’t imagine any of you making it out of a fight with your heads still connected to your shoulders.”

“But my head’s more connected to my neck than my shoulders,” I said.

“I don’t think we came here begging for help, as you so eloquently put it,” Amaryllis said, a bit tetchy. “We came here asking for some basic assistance. Besides, we’re not useless in a fight. All of us are in our second tier.”

Tharval sniffed. “That’s the bare minimum to become... not even an explorer, more like the person who carried the explorer’s bags.”

“Now, don’t be that way. We both know that different guilds have different entry requirements. Not all of them are as rigorous as the Stormtower and Snowlander Exploration Guilds.”

“Is it hard to become a member here?” I asked.

“Most are in their third tier, and if they are not, then there’s a year-long training course that we usually insist upon,” Willowbud said. “It takes prospective members to a couple of local dungeons whose difficulties are easy to manage so that new members can learn the ropes, so to speak.”

“Hmph, maybe the other guilds have the right to it. Take raw recruits and toss them into the smelter. If they don’t melt right away then they might be worth forging into something usable. I dare say half the new members we get are a bunch of flower-sniffing morons who don’t know their boot from their ar--”

Willowbud patted Tharval on the head. “That’s quite enough. I’m sure Amaryllis, Broccoli and their friends aren’t that sort. They made it all the way here, didn’t they?”

“Hmph. Get your hand off my head, you--”

I clapped my hands, both to distract them from the oncoming scuffle that I felt was about to start, and because I was a little excited. “You can come and see the Beaver Cleaver! That’s our airship. He’s the best ship that’s ever flown!”

“He?” Tharval asked. “Ships are meant to be fine ladies.”

“Well, I think the Beaver’s a he,” I said. “But honestly, I don’t know how to tell, really. Which bit of the ship gives away its gender?”

“Well, what’s the figurehead look like?” he asked.

“Oh, there’s two! They’re both furry ducks with tophats.”

The dwarf didn’t seem to know what gender ‘fur-covered duck’ was, so he dropped the subject with a grunt. With that done, we left the guild as a small group, Willowbud taking the lead once we were out of the guild proper with Tharval trotting along with the rest of us.

“So, I saw that you don’t wear any proper armour,” he said to Amaryllis.

“I’m the team’s mage,” she replied. “And I’m a harpy besides. Armour weighs us down.”

“You can’t be the team mage if someone pokes a few holes through your gut,” Tharval said. “Now, what you need is some proper plate and to give up on all that silly flying business. If you were meant to fly under your own power you’d manage it just fine, but seeing as you can’t, then you might as well strap on a few thumb-thick steel plates.”

Tharval regaled us with the advantages and glories of proper plate armour while trampling over Amaryllis’ objections and ignoring any cultural misapprehensions she might have about it. It was a little rude, but also kind of funny to see Amaryllis trying and failing to get a word in edgewise. Her huffs grew increasingly huffy as we went.

Eventually though, we reached the docks, and in far less time than it had taken us to get to the guild. Willowbud knew all the shortcuts, it seemed. Once we arrived, we circled around the edge of the tower, and Tharval finally changed tracks.

“Now, this place took twenty years to build, you know! Had to grab steel from seven different mines and stone from two quarries. It wasn’t just getting the materials here that was hard though. We needed to invent entirely new ways of building things just to get this place started. Not to mention all the stigma of building a place like this.”

“Stigma?” I repeated. “People didn’t want to build the tower?”

Willowbud fielded that question. “Our nation, young as it is, is rather divided in some ways. The elven people are used to living aboveground in large, open communities, but the dwarven folk escaped the cold of the north below the earth. There were, and still are, entire groups that don’t like leaving their underground fortresses.”

“Most have reconsidered things,” Tharval said. “The Storm Tower’s the shining jewel of the Snowlands. It’s hard not to want to be close enough to appreciate its lustre. Besides, you don’t think a building this grand could be built without reinforcing the ground beneath, do you? There’s nearly as much tower underground as there is above.”

“Whoa,” I said. “How big is it, really? Because this place is huge already. It might be the biggest dock I’ve ever seen.”

“Hmm, no, the docks back home are larger. Or some of them are,” Amaryllis said. “But none of them are enclosed. The best we have are airship ports tucked away in crags and between mountains. Even the shipyards tend to be partially open.” She gestured over the side of the nearest guardrail to the depths at the bottom of the tower. “It looks like you have entire factories here.”

“Just for assembling,” Tharval said. “Most of the proper manufacturing is done by the coast and brought over by train. Then the shipwrights put things together down there.”

“You know, I never expected to see dwarves on airships for some reason,” I said.

Tharval chuckled. “Oh, we’re awful at flying!” he said, seemingly quite proud of the fact.

“I wouldn’t say awful,” Willowbud said. “Dwarves hold the records for longest flights, highest heights reached, and even the records for fastest flight.”

“May Roberry the Rocket rest in peace,” Tharval said solemnly.

“Dwarves are hardy folk,” Willowbud continued. “Tough and surprisingly nimble, and of course generally quite mechanically-inclined. But, ah, we elves have certain biological advantages.”

“Tall bastards,” Tharval grunted. “Sneaky and quick too.”

“We are more dexterous, as a rule, and perhaps better suited to the work of piloting modern airships,” Willowbud said. “Most Snowlander craft have mixed crews though, taking advantage of each others’ natural advantages.”

“Oh, that’s clever,” I said. “But, ah, I don’t recall seeing many Snowlander ships about. And people say that the Snowlanders are a little isolationist.”

Willowbud considered that, then nodded. “That’s probably not wrong. As a rule we’ve been focused on building a better world for ourselves, impervious to the cold and more recently there’s been a great push towards discovering new machines and contraptions.”

“Lot’s of pride to be found if you’re the first to invent some new thingy-whatsit,” Tharval said. “Especially if it actually has a use of some sort. Now which one of these tugs is your ship?”

I squinted across the docks, then pointed. “That one!” I said. It was still on the fifth level, where we’d left it. I could see tiny forms on the deck, some of the Scallywags, maybe? It was hard to tell from so far away.

Tharval peered at the Beaver then back to me and Amaryllis. “What in the world is that?”

“Uh, our ship?”

“It’s got too many hulls!” he said.

“I think it’s a neat design.”

“Let me see this thing from up close,” he grumbled before stomping off. We jogged to keep up, the old dwarf surprisingly fast when he wanted to be. When we did catch up, he was waiting next to the catwalk leading onto the Beaver’s deck. “Well, going to give me permission to come aboard and poke at this thing?” he asked.

I laughed. “Sure. Welcome aboard, Tharval, and you too, Willowbud!”

The two stepped onto the Beaver, though Tharval didn’t linger on the main deck for long. He practically teleported to the rear, staring at the space between the decks and muttering up a storm. He even threw up his arms a couple of times.

Awen walked onto the deck, looked a lot more awake than when we’d left. “Broccoli!” she said. “And Amaryllis.”

“Nice to see I’m still mentioned,” Amaryllis muttered. Awen blushed, then smiled slightly and hugged Amaryllis first.

“You’re my friend,” she beamed before turning to me and Willowbud. “Hello, Mister Willowbud,” she said with a slight bow.

“Hello, Miss Bristlecone.”

“Awa, please just call me Awen? You were uncle’s friend, so I guess that kind of makes you, um...”

“A family friend?” I asked.

“I guess so,” Awen said.

Willowbud chuckled warmy. “Why thank you. I’d gladly consider myself your friend. Ah, but speaking of friends, Tharval might start taking things apart if we don’t stop him.”

That got Awen to stand up straighter. “He’s going to do what?”

We found Tharval in the Beaver’s engine room, poking at the engine with a wrench that Awen quickly yoinked out of his hands. “Interesting configuration you’ve got here. Terribly inefficient, but I’ll give you points for being different.”

“The Beaver is a very nice ship,” Awen said. “He flies... well, and is very comfortable, even if he has a few little deficiencies.”

Tharval hmphed. “Well, the engine’s much larger than what you’d need if the ship only had one of its two hulls, but probably too small for the twin setup you have. And I can’t imagine the bracing between the two being up to spec. There’s a bridge between the two halves. A bridge! It’s a wonder this thing isn’t falling apart under the strain of flight.”

“I keep him well-maintained,” Awen shot back.

Tharval snorted, but there was no denying that. The engine itself was covered in a nice layer of oil, but Awen had every tool tucked away in its place and she’d asked me to help her clean it once some time ago, so the engine compartment was basically spotless.

“Awa, did you want to see, ah, my repeating self-loading anti-air emplacement?” Awen asked. “It’s illegal in most countries, from what I was told.”

That necessitated a detour to the cargo hold where Awen’s repeating crossbow turret was still folded into the ship. Tharval hemmed and hawed over it, then started pointing to bits and pieces that weren’t well made, or parts that could be improved if approached from a different angle or with a different method.

I left them to it while I ran off to fetch Caprica and see if anyone else wanted to come track down Vonowl with us. I found the princess in her room, dressed in a long blouse that we’d bought the day before and which I supposed could count as a nightshift.

“Is everyone else awake?” she asked. Caprica looked like she had used every spare minute of rest afforded her, and like she could use another couple of hours.

“We have been for a bit. Amaryllis and I went to fetch Tharval and Willowbud, and we’re going to invade a hotel later!”

“Oh. Well, let me get dressed in something more appropriate for that kind of event then,” she said.

“Okay! Join us on the deck when you’re done!”

Calamity was easy to convince. There was trouble around, and he liked the idea of that, I suspect. And so, within a few minutes, the whole bunch of us were ready.

***