The wind was at their backs, catching the newly outstretched sails and carrying the Child on as it followed the Sunward Matilda. The clouds were gossamer sheets, stretched thin like paint over too much wall, and did nothing to hide their quarry. The pirate fleet had scattered, now shrapnel the much as the ships struck by the Banshee.

Their pursuit was going well. Which had Vincent looking from left to right as he steered his ship, waiting for the winds to change.

"Reducing to two-thirds speed," Vincent called out to the speaking tube, as he pulled back on the throttle. "Keep us prepped for sudden manoeuvres."

"Don't trust good fortune, captain?" Anita asked.

"Fortune's a bandit, and she's like to shiv you as soon as you turn away. But we're about two minutes from catching up to the Matilda. Once we're set alongside, I'd like you to come up so you can shut down the other ship's engines," Vincent said. "I'd rather not have to set up the air pumps and hoses just to finish this job."

"We aren't that close to thin skies," Mercy said, wiping grease off her hands with a rag. Probably checking the sail chains as she wound them in, inspecting even new equipment was a habit she had brought with her to the navy. A Wayfarer habit, Vincent had learned.

"How far, do you reckon?" Vincent asked.

"Another three days, the way the Child flies," Mercy said, pointing straight ahead. "Likely seven for the Matilda. But I'm still missing what this ship was sailing towards."

"Their charts and log books might shed some light on it. I'll admit to being a mite curious." Vincent turned the wheel slightly, shifting the Child to the left just a few degrees. "But our answers should be coming shortly. Care to tack us to our quarry, lieutenant?"

"Of course, captain," Mercy replied with a flick of two fingers off the brim of her hat. She turned away, and walked across the deck towards one of the storage crates along the sides of the ship. As she walked, she turned towards the Banshee. "Mister Madrigan, I could use an extra set of hands."

Vincent turned his attention back to the Matilda, just as the Child's bow passed the other ship's propellers. Mercy was already at the prow, tying the end of a long rope to one of the anchoring points. She then went to the rails, jumped up, and pulled herself around them, standing sideways with her magnetic boots anchored on the hull. Leslie was tying other ropes to anchor points along the right side of the deck.

"Setting propellers to idle. We're tacking ourselves to the Matilda now," Vincent said to Anita, facing the speaking tube. "Once you're shut down as well as you need to be, meet us on the Matilda."

"Aye, cap. Idling the engines."

"Leslie, set some balloon spacers along the hull. I'd rather not spend the next week sweeping splinters from the Matilda when it grinds itself into much against my hull," Vincent called out, as he locked the wheel. He marched over to a supply crate, and pulled out a dozen semi-inflated canvas balloons, each about the size of his chest. He began to tie them off along the rails, one at a time. Once he finished, he pulled himself over the rails, lacking Mercy's grace, and walked each balloon halfway down the hull.

He walked back up to the deck just as Leslie began to pull the ships together. The Matilda, with its engines still running, pressed itself into the Child. Once tied together, the two ships began to turn to the left, the Child's drag pulling the Matilda off course.

Vincent gripped one of the ropes now connecting the Child to the Matilda, and took a deep breath. His heart had already begun to hammer in his chest, and his hard grip was the only thing keeping his hands from shaking. He hated free-float, and it was a fine marvel that he hadn't had to reveal it to his crew. It was fine, as long as he was in or touching a ship. Having something solid that he could cling to was close-kin to the pull of an island, and at its worst the fear was manageable then. But being able to see the open sky, above and below, broke through his self-discipline like a sword stabbing through a piece of paper.

With the rope in two hands, and his eyes slightly bleary with water that he worried might be tears, Vincent pulled himself across the narrow chasm between the ships. Barely two dozen feet, his first tug was all the momentum he needed to drift across, but he was biting his lip before his chest hit the Matilda's rails. He climbed over, and breathed a sigh of relief when his boots clung to the metal plates bolted to the deck.

Mercy was examining the Matilda's helm, making a rather exaggerated  examination of the pressure-gauges set along one of the side rails, with her hand under her chin, squatting down for a needlessly close look.

"See anything worth noting?" Vincent asked, his fears lying just beneath the transparent veil of his question.

"Every ship has its quirks," Mercy replied, answering and accepting his fears without judgment.

"I doubt anyone's on board," Vincent said, as he drew his pistol and stepped towards the door leading to the captain's cabin. "But I've been wrong before."

Pistol pointed at the opening, Vincent slowly pulled the door open. He took two quick steps inside, swept his sights to the corners of the room, and holstered his pistol. "It's clear."

Vincent looked around more carefully, at the large oak desk near the back of the large cabin. Sprawling, with decoratively accented trim, polished so well it would work as a mirror in a pinch. There were nearly a dozen small clamps arrayed along one side, flanking a magnificent chair so large and so ornate even Commodore Nottle would have blushed to admit owning it.

"Well," Mercy whistled, stepping inside after him. "We've been in the wrong business all these years."

"Agreed. That desk might cost as much as one of those rafts we chased off," Vincent remarked, stepping over to the chair and looking down at the papers held under the clamps. "And it looks like Captain Preston left an even richer bounty behind. These are her charts, and her log book."

Vincent glanced at the open charts first. Charts, unlike maps, weren't meant to mark the positions between the islands, since they were constantly changing. But with a sheet of glass overtop of the chart, there were marks and notes about the current location of Volante and Olencia, as well as Drummond's Spite.

"At a glance, it looks like the Matilda is heading towards empty air. There are no islands from here," Vincent said as he tapped his finger on their current position. "To here, where the air is too thin for anyone but the Wayfarers."

"Think Volante's planning some kind of invasion?" Mercy asked. "Gathering a fleet on the far side of Olenica, using the sun to obscure their approach?"

"You really think Nottle would have been left out of the loop? Or that his ship would be allowed so far from either the invasion or home defence?" Vincent asked. He frowned, no more answers coming to him from the charts. He picked up the log book, loosening the clamp to pry it loose, and flipped to the most recent pages.

"She complains about the cargo a fair bit," Vincent noted. "But mostly because she hasn't opened it. Looks like several boxes, varying sizes, strapped-in while at port by navy personnel rather than her own people."

"That suggests the cargo's fairly fragile," Mercy mused. "Blasting powder?"

"Could be. And if it is, I might reassess my stance on this not being a supply run for an invasion fleet," Vincent said, just as the hum of the Matilda's engines disappeared. He slipped the log book into his pocket, turned to look out the window, and watched the propellers for a long moment.

It didn't take long before the propellers spun slower and slower, eventually slow enough that Vincent see the individual blades. "Looks like Anita's cut the engines. Let's head down to the cargo hold, and see what the Matilda's hauling."

Mercy drew a pistol and lead them out, carefully making her way down the hatch to the lower decks. Vincent followed her down, his own pistol out, as the went down the stairwell into the Matilda's corridors.

To give Vincent a clean line of sight, and a clean shot if need be, Mercy kept to the ceilings, rather than following the ground. She drifted from one ceiling beam to the next, navigating her way with little more than gentle taps against the ceiling, her gun never shifting away from her sights.

They took another another flight of stairs down, where Leslie was waiting for them. "I cleared the bottom deck already. Nothing down here asides from the four of us. Anita's just finishing with the engine, says they ran the boiler almost bone-dry. Ship might have caught fire if we had been an hour later."

"That might not be our worst option," Vincent said.

Mercy pushed off the ceiling and set her boots against the metal plates on the floor. She holstered her pistol, and pointed down the hall. "Cargo bay over here?"

"Yeah. There's definitely some crates carrying the navy's seal," Leslie said. "Some of them are, well, odd."

"Odd?" Vincent asked. "If it's deadgrass, I'm setting this ship alight right now."

"No, sir. I haven't opened any of them yet. Only one of the boxes, well, it's less a box and more a raised deck," Leslie explained, waving his arms as he searched for the right words. "Damn crate is nearly big enough to fit the glass dome on the front of the Child."

"Strange," Vincent said, and turned to his left to enter the cargo hold.

The Matilda's hold impressed Vincent. Nearly empty, the space could have comfortably fit every one of the pirate rafts that had been chasing it. Two stories worth of space fall, and a whole minute's walk to the other end, the expanse looked practically bare with only a dozen crates strapped to the floor.

But one crate, in the middle of the hall, was unnervingly large. By length or width, the massive square of wood could have reached the two storey high ceiling if stood on its side. Every foot along, it bore a wax seal with Volante's coat of arms. But despite the massive size, the box was perhaps as tall as Vincent stood.

There were several smaller boxes close by, all of them square. Long, wide, and in height, short. The only boxes that weren't square were four crates along the wall.

"Well, guess we can rule out blasting powder," Mercy said.

"Or deadgrass," Leslie added.

Vincent stepped over to one the smallest crates, took out a knife, and pried open the lid.

Inside, drowning in a cushion if pillowing, was a long tube, wider on one end. Brass body, nearly as long as his outstretched arms, and complete with a tripod. Too ornate for a creation of his childhood home, the Monastery. And of all the great isles, there was only one other place that had the specialized knowledge to make it.

"Captain, what is it? Some kind of new gun?" Mercy asked.

"A gun? Nothing of the sort. It's a telescope," Vincent said. He picked up the telescope, and immediately put it to his eye. "Magnificent work. Likely from the same glasswork foundries that made the dome for the Child."

"A telescope. So it's a kind of spyglass?" Mercy asked.

"Yes. That's exactly it," Vincent said. "Leslie, pop open the big box. From the middle of one of the sides, rather than a corner. Tell me what you see."

Leslie complied, taking a crowbar from a nearby shelf, and prying open the top. He peered inside, and frowned. "It's glass, sir. One big glass disc."

"Why make a spyglass lens so large, captain? Does it help them see better?.

"Spyglass," Vincent murmured, clinging to a thought as it sailed through a sudden storm. "Massive spyglass, sailing towards the sun, towards nothing, with a telescope as large as the Monastery's observatories on the-"

Mercy hit him on the shoulder, hard. Vincent coughed abruptly and shook his head. "But why would they bring it out here, on the far side of Olenica? If there were an island out there, we could see it. Unless..."

Vincent rested the telescope over his shoulder, and picked the tripod out of the box. He passed Mercy, marched to the stairwell, and began heading back up to the top deck.

"Captain, what is it?" Mercy asked.

"It's spyglass. You're more right than you know. There's no way the navy would have chartered a ship like the Matilda, given her a cargo as expensive as these specialized pieces of glasswork, and sent her off into empty skies without a good reason," Vincent explained as he reached the top deck. He stopped in the middle of the deck, and tested the feet of the tripod, pleased to see the feet were magnetic. "And what better reason could there be, than if this part of the sky wasn't actually empty?"

Vincent set the telescope on the tripod, and turned it to face the sun. "Mercy, is Anita nearby?"

"Right here, cap," Anita replied.

"Lend me your welding goggles, would you?" Vincent asked, holding out his hand wit horn looking away from tightening the tripod to hold the telescope in place. He felt her press something into his hands, and pulled it over his head.

Settling the goggles down, the world turned dark. But when he put his eye to the telescope, he was able to see the outline of the sun without difficulty. And just to the right of the sun, completely obscured normally, a small black sphere.

"There you are," Vincent said. "The Matilda's destination. Perhaps a hundred miles away, as long as it's small."

"There's an island out there?" Mercy asked.

"Take a look." Vincent took off the goggles and handed them to his lieutenant. Mercy put it over one eye, took a quick look through the telescope, and gasped. "Puss boils, they found an island there!"

"A small island. Hidden from all of Olenica by the sun," Vincent said, turning to Anita and Leslie. "These lenses are used to make telescopes, a powerful sort of spyglass that can let you see incredible distances."

"But why take them all the way out here?" Anita asked.

"Because the navy is using that island, and these lenses, to spy on Olenica," Mercy concluded, handing Anita her goggles back. "From a vantage like that island, they can track where the Olenica navy is, learn their patrol routes, study shipyard defences in detail, monitor shipping, trade, food storage, absolutely everything. Having an outpost on the far side of Olenica, undetected, would give Volante an enormous advantage."

"It might have meant a war, if the Olencian navy had found the Matilda," Vincent added.

Leslie scowled, and gave Vincent a wry grin. "All of a sudden, I think Commodore Nottle got the better end of his bargain with you."