Carteret, 2 December

My Dear Rackham,

I am new to this business of spycraft. Feigning loyalty to a man while plotting his downfall is an exhausting business, especially since I would strongly prefer that said downfall be accomplished with as little bloodshed as possible – not a likely proposition, historically speaking. All the while I must take care not to be, as the parlance goes, “burned.” I do not believe I am quite burned, though at this point I am undoubtedly “singed.” Van Dyke thinks it is utter folly to return to Stockport; he would rather escape this damnable island and leave it to its sorry fate.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I have had some days to carefully observe Robards, and now additionally some time well outside his influence, and I think you will find my observations fascinating. His Ability, or Curse, might seem enormous in scope based on what he has been able to accomplish. But the more I observe, the more limited I believe it to be in fact. He possesses a heightened charisma, nearly unconscious in its effect on others, as well as a more directed ability to charm those on whom he focuses his attention. But with these abilities comes a dependence – the adulation of others is now like an opiate to him. In a very real, perhaps even physiological way, he needs to bask in the presence of those who are devoted to him. Similarly, someone ensorcelled by his charm will find the effect ebbing over time, at a steadily increasing rate. Whether he is cognizant of this or is merely responding intuitively, I do not know, but his practice of constantly bringing his aides and lieutenants to meet with him personally in his audience chamber now makes perfect sense. He is simultaneously feeding on their love and reasserting his control over them.

This being the case, what can we say about the hundreds of people who do not see him face-to-face, but nevertheless sing his praises and pledge their allegiance to New Albion? Is there some other facet to his Ability, or is it an ominous critique of the herd mentality of human nature itself? Even outside of Stockport, where I feel confident enough to say that no shred of his Ability is present, still you will find fisherman and villagers happy to accede to his rule. It does, after all, provide some measure of stability and continuity in tumultuous times.

However, outside of town, the majority of the islanders have not been taken in, and they are gradually converging on Carteret, which is where I write from now. But my narrative has not yet arrived there: patience!

First, the College. You will recall that the Brotherhood had swept through there, establishing control and taking prisoners; I was not present for that, of course, but after the escape, Robards sent me there. Until that point I had hoped to find deserted buildings stuffed to the gills with Society secrets that I could archive, index, and peruse. But, to the contrary, the whole place had been put to the torch. Burned-out husks of buildings were all that remained; the only shred of sanity in the whole affair had been to leave the mooring tower and aero beacon intact. From there Alia set off on repeated flights over the island, ostensibly to look for the escapees. I spent some time sifting through the ashes, trying to find anything of value, but without success. Only later did I learn that some things had been preserved – anything with obvious military applicability, in fact – but I have not been able to find out the full extent of it.

Next, the Sigsbee. I had long wondered why they remained in the grotto – surely the repairs must have been completed by now? But some snooping around at the residence and at the docks turned up the answer. To understand it, you must picture Stockport’s bay, a wide U, east-facing. Its northern side is comprised of a high, wide promontory. The grotto housing the Sigsbee lies directly under that promontory, but its opening onto the sea lies opposite the bay, facing north. A road winds around the tip of the promontory and ends in a cave that connects to the larger grotto. At some points it is little more than a track, ten feet wide with a cliff face on one side and a fall into crashing surf on the other; this is what makes the grotto so easily defensible, and the chief reason Robards never stormed it.

Now picture a cluster of a dozen or so shore-based mortar cannons – a collection of artillery wholly out of place for a merchant town of Stockport’s size. Some of them were the port’s original defenses, relics from the days of defending against the pirate threat. More had been seized from some of the vessels trapped in the port. And one in particular, a gigantic mortar not resembling anything I was familiar with, was one of the things claimed from the College before it was razed, some sort of experimental prototype.

Of course, the promontory itself blocked direct line-of-sight from the artillery to the mouth of the grotto. But there is a lighthouse atop the promontory, with a clear view of the waters immediately outside the grotto on one side, and the bay on the other. Robards stationed forward observers there and, through careful calculation and some trial and error, obtained firing solutions for all of the artillery to fire over the promontory and rain fiery hell upon the mouth of the grotto. Sentries were stationed atop the lighthouse, watching the grotto mouth around the clock, ready to give the signal to fire should the Sigsbee ever decide to stick its nose out.

No surprise, then, that not much had been heard from Campbell or his crew in over a month. I was determined to make contact again, but first I took some time to carefully examine the documents you sent featuring him, including the curious Daguerro-graph with Admiral Segismund. What I found puzzling about them was that they were not the secretive communiques one might have expected an undercover agent to have in his possession, but, as you noted in your letter, they included Campbell’s commission document as first officer on the Sigsbee, and their official orders, referring to a military exchange program between Albion and New Columbia, all thoroughly bureaucratic and pedestrian. I was reminded that, while Campbell was the commanding officer when we first encountered the ship, that was only because its original captain, named Tollard, had perished during the Incident-inspired strangeness at Yarmouth.

Wanting to minimize my contact with Robards, I did not want to offer myself up as an official envoy to the Campbell. I doubt he would have agreed to it in any case. That meant reaching the grotto unseen. I might have made use of my Ability in this context, and indeed I considered it, but that would mean leaving the ward behind. I was also not certain I wanted to reveal my capabilities to the New Columbians. And so I turned to none other than Bertram, the smuggler who had secreted us to Machlou and back. He had kept a low enough profile to avoid entanglements with the Brotherhood, though we had met surreptitiously on a few occasions to exchange updates on the state of things. Perhaps it goes without saying that he had not fallen under Robards’ sway. For someone who had invented a way to cross a treacherous seaway infested with vortex-storms, the prospect of a short smuggling run along the coast under cover of darkness presented no great difficulty.

As we rowed up to the mouth of the grotto I thought it prudent to announce ourselves, so as not to be taken as attackers by anyone on duty. The crew were, not surprisingly, in a state of high alertness, and more than a little on edge. We were immediately detained and locked in separate cabins on board; fortunately it was not long before Campbell came by to find out why on earth I had returned.

It was evident in our conversation that he still had some means of getting news from town, but this worked against me in that he believed me to be entirely loyal to Robards. Indeed, for a moment I feared I had made a terrible miscalculation, and that he would keep me to use as a bargaining chip, and do who-knows-what with poor Bertram. But then Alona arrived, took one look at me, and said to Campbell, “We can trust him.”

“And how can you be sure of that?” he snapped back.

“He orchestrated the prison break,” she replied.

I did a terrible job at masking my surprise when she said that. How could she know? But then I realized … I had told Alia as much, and if the two of them had some means of communicating with each other, then that would explain not only how she knew, but also how the New Columbians had managed to stay informed about goings-on outside the grotto. Campbell wanted very much to know how I had managed to free the prisoners without drawing any attention to myself, but I was coy on that point, hoping that it might add to my mystique as an unlikely master of subterfuge.

I learned that the Sigsbee was ready to sail, but could not hope to withstand the artillery barrage waiting for it, to say nothing of lacking a reasonable destination should it manage to escape. For the latter, I suggested Carteret, and as to the former, I allowed that I had a plan for that too, if they could be ready to leave by midmorning, and if Campbell would answer one question for me. “Name it,” he said.

I handed him the picture showing him standing alongside Admiral Segismund. “Who is he?” I asked.

“How did you –” he began, but then he settled back with a look of resignation on his face. I was not prepared, however, for what he said next: “He is my father-in-law.”

I will spare you a detailed rendition of our ensuing discussion. Segismund, a retired New Columbian admiral, arranged for his recently-married son-in-law to receive a commission as first officer aboard an ironside bound for Albion on an ostensibly routine mission. Campbell had reason to believe that his captain, Tollard, also had secret orders, and while he did not know what they were, he suspected that they were from his father-in-law, who, being retired, would only be issuing orders if it was a rogue operation or if his retirement was in fact a ruse. Campbell’s assumption was that he was being carefully evaluated, and that if he proved reliable, he might eventually be let in on the secret. But before that could happen, the strange blight struck Yarmouth, and … well, you know the rest. He was indeed charmed by the early manifestations of Robards’ Ability; when the effect ended he said it was like waking from a dream. He is eager to get out, and to find a way to somehow report back to the New Columbian High Command, but chiefly he just wants to get out of this mess and find a way to be reunited with his new wife back home.

So perhaps Stratham was keeping tabs on him precisely because he was not One of Them, at least not yet, and was therefore an unknown quantity. Did Segismund indeed intend to eventually bring him into the fold? Or was he there simply as a family favor, and therefore (from the perspective of someone like Stratham) an unwelcome complication? And what the deuce was Segismund up to, and what did it have to do with Dr. Brown, if anything? Getting some answers from Campbell has only spawned ever-more questions, in a pattern that is now all too familiar.

Far from being a cagey operative, Campbell seems to be an earnest and rather naive officer just trying to do his best, Deus bless him. It was he who thought me to be a personage of portentious secrets and untold abilities, and, I confess, I did give him one more reason to earn that reputation, the following morning.

The plan had come to me while I was investigating the artillery and the watch-post maintained at the lighthouse atop the promontory. But it was not until I was inside the Sigsbee that I decided it was best to brook no delay. I left the ward behind in my old berth on the ship, and in the pre-dawn half-light I left by way of the path leading from the side cave, and clambered my way to the top of the promontory. One guard was stationed at the door to the lighthouse, but the rest were all inside, either off-duty in a room at the base, or keeping careful watch of the waters near the grotto from the lantern room on top. From a distance I snuck around to the side of the lighthouse opposite the entrance, out of sight of the guard. Then I had to wait for more daylight to spot what I was looking for: the means the guards had to signal the artillery back in Stockport. The main lanthorn could have served them, of course, but lighting it would have been too time-consuming. Finally I saw it: a signal-lantern, small but powerful, of the kind used by ships at sea to communicate through fog and the like. It was bolted to the balcony ringing the lantern room, pointed back toward the docks in town.

To get to it, I climbed up the side of the lighthouse. And no, I do not possess incredible athletic prowess belied by my modest appearance. Just as I had done to get back into my upper-storey room after the prison break, I used my Ability at a sort of moderated level, making my hands insubstantial enough to pass into the stone wall, but not so light as to pass completely through it. The effect was like sinking one’s hands into firm clay, and with the lightness that came with a partially ghost-like body, climbing was surprisingly easy.

I found myself on the balcony, and, looking around for a means to disable the signal lantern, spotted the very wrench that presumably had aided in bolting it to the railing in the first place. I solidified myself, grabbed the wrench, and smashed down on the lantern repeatedly.

I should have realized just how loud this would have been, especially in the peaceful quiet of early morning. The sentries on duty had not been looking for anyone climbing up the outside of the lighthouse, of course, but now they came quickly enough – indeed, one of them had been just inside the lantern room, and emerged on the balcony just a few feet away. He wasted no time in lunging at me.

I have often thought about the fight at Mont-Bré, and specifically about how, in the heat of the moment and quite without meaning to, I used my Ability to propel the reanimated corpse of Dr. Brown away from me as it attacked. It had occurred to me that, with study and practice, I might use my Ability to great effect in a fight. Imagine a combatant who can be hit by neither blows nor bullets, but can solidify when needed to send his opponents flying through the air! And yet, as you well know, that sort of violence is not in my nature. The gentleman assailing me at the moment wore the armband of the Brotherhood, a group of ruffians for whom I had developed, it is safe to say, a rather extreme level of distate, and yet I had no wish to commit any physical harm against him.

So I jumped. As the ground rushed up to meet me, I resisted the temptation to de-solidify too early, for you see, I wanted to build up as much momentum as possible. In the instant before impact I ghosted (that is the term I have been using in my own notes, for lack of a better one) to the greatest extent possible. I wanted to pass through the solid earth not like a knife through clay, slowly, but rather steadily, like a pillow through a cloud. And into the earth I plummeted.

What followed was a time of profound fear and uncertainty. I wanted to be … hoped to be … sinking steadily through the earth, into the promontory, but was not afforded the greater level of perception that would have assured me that that was what was in fact happening. In the utter darkness, with my body ghosted to such an extreme extent, I saw nothing, felt nothing. I was a spark of consciousness in a black void. I held on with desperation to two pillars of faith: that gravity was still working its magic on me, even though I could not feel its effects, and that my rough measurements of the dimemsions of the grotto the previous night had been accurate.

Have you guessed my gambit yet? Forgive me for indulging in a bit of unnecessary dramatics in relating it. Since you are reading this, you know that I am not perpetually trapped underground. True to my hopes, after an indeterminate passage of time, I emerged from out of the earth, falling through the ceiling of the grotto, and splashing into its waters within a stone’s throw of the Sigsbee. After a bit of floundering I called out, was hauled aboard, and told Campbell that now was the time to sail.

The great steam engines engaged and the ship lurched forward for the first time in many weeks. As it emerged from the grotto, all hands braced for the sound of artillery fire, but none came. I imagined those poor guards at the lighthouse spying the Sigsbee and desperately trying to signal. They did in fact light the main lanthorn, and the mortar fire did rain down, but by that time we had already emerged and turned hard to port, and were making headway counter-clockwise around the island, hugging close to the shore so as to avoid the vortex-storms.

Now the Sigsbee is anchored just off Carteret. Its mooring tower has been erected, and if all goes well it will be Alona who puts this letter in your hands. I have been eager to write this so that you are apprised of the situation here, but obviously there are many more developments to come as we all meet and plot our next steps. As I indicated at the outset, however, my own plan is to return to Stockport. I doubt I was personally recognized atop the lighthouse, but I have been absent for what may seem to be a suspicious amount of time … hence my fear that I am “singed.” Time will tell.

You must pass along to Bennington my shock and disappointment that her mastery of Saxonian is not up to the task. I find the whole language nigh unintelligible when spoken, but written is another matter, and I feel reasonably confident that I could have had you on your way a good deal more quickly than you have managed. And so I wish you godspeed, but not without a word of caution. I remain ever-haunted by the Presence I sensed beneath the waves of the channel, that day the Sigsbee was tossed about by the storms. Der untersee is not a safe place, I fear, and if you are passing through it, do so as quickly as you may.

As for Thompson, I shall keep an eye out for him. That is perhaps not as unlikely as it sounds, as Campbell is eager to re-establish contact with his superiors, and as his vessel is the best chance at safety and mobility that we have at the moment. To the extent that said superiors may have been partially responsible for the destruction of Albion, I am not sure that puts me on any better footing than being at the disposal of a deluded megalamoniacal dictator. But my choices are, for the moment, rather limited.

Warm Regards,

Crane

Greysham, 27 November

My Dear Crane,

First permit me a few idle words of congratulations, mixed thoroughly with relief that the real ward had not been surrendered to Robards. Lower sixth at Everwood cemented for me, at least, that you are a man who eschews adulation, prizing more the inherent good of wisdom common to all—to this day, I still recall your impromptu speech about “standing on the shoulders of giants” when Ames had bestowed upon you the year’s award for excellence in the sciences. I had hoped, accordingly, you saw wisdom in our act to send you the artifact; but yours was the truer cleverness, now that Robards thinks he is in possession of the ward, and will (hopefully) not pursue recovery of the lost, but true, one.

I can say that from your descriptions of what had transpired on Garnsey over the last few months, we knew we were taking a chance in sending you this important artifact. I confess that if our trust and faith in our flyers was not as unshakeable as it is, we may have thought better of it. Even then, we understood the present danger of sending the ward into that nest of vipers, as MacTallan called it. (I did not get the sense that Thorpe appreciated the snake reference, but he at least agreed that, among the members of our expedition, you were the best handler for the object.)

As for your prison break (Bennington’s term, said with a friendly smirk) and your subsequent plans to rendezvous with Van Dyke and the others, we say bravo—at this, Thorpe has encouraged me to write that he advises you put your trust in them, regardless of Van Dyke’s past, or that of the others. From your details we have all painted an understanding that you four are united by a common cause and that experiences shared together have created an interdependency. More than ever, we feel this among ourselves as well.

I can also now safely and freely retract the words of false support I personally gave for New Albion, and also rescind the description of the people of Greysham as cheering the “new nation.” No one here truly recognizes Robards’ hegemony or the founding of a new Government; in Bledsoe’s words, “we would rather have no Albion than a false one from afar.”

At any rate, before I give you an update on our progress in outfitting the Jagdschloss for our journey to Skald, I wanted to briefly address something you touched upon in your last letter. You mentioned the word “curse” to describe Robards’ evident inability to see perspective when surrounded by sycophants. I wonder if our Abilities hold hidden disadvantages related to their essential natures, and whether some key is thus held therein. Thorpe seems to possess a superhuman celerity and exceptional sight, but an alarming countenance; I can read memories but only at the cost of crippling migraines; and Robards has his impressive demagoguery but a counterbalancing lack of perception. Bennington, however, seemed to have experienced no Ability, but only the curse of night terrors, which have since disappeared since the Obelisk in the Caledonian highlands—but perhaps she had an Ability, too, which was never really brought to light.

I will move past the more trivial ramblings now, my friend, and report several pieces of more important news and forward progress. We have endured several bad storms here on the coast—the dark funnels have touched down far off on the sea’s horizon at least once daily, bringing with them wind, a gray rain, and mist—but nonetheless the repair work on the H-boat has progressed. In fact we are now in a phase of testing the boat to determine the efficiency of its engines and the rudder’s response to the helm, which is the plan before we make a test of its diving tube apparatus that I described in my last letter. We have been successful in these tests, because, although the storms cause quite a disturbance on the surface of the water, the H-boat travels just underneath the surface, quite indifferent to the rolling waves.

I have several examples to relate to you to illustrate the diligence with which our men, working with Bledsoe’s engineer, have employed in readying this marvel of nautical technology; but before I do, I should first say that Thorpe and I have recently learned the importance of asking the right questions of the right people. You might recall that in my last letter I mentioned a fisherman named Gates, the one who had first sighted the half-scuttled Jagdschloss far off the coast of Albion. As it turns out, after some easy questions asked among his associates, we learned that Gates had served the Albionese navy during the Blood War, on a steamship destroyer in the Third Fleet.

Since Thorpe knew the man was proficient in piloting his own craft, we quickly found that few drinks from Bledsoe’s private stock of liqueurs was all that was needed for Thorpe and I to convince him to recall his training and pilot our H-boat. A reluctant agreement was otherwise smoothed by the promise of payment by me upon safe return, something I spared no time in offering, as well as the argument that Thorpe effected upon him as a former military man himself, appealing to Gates’ one-time service as a permanent calling to aid his countrymen in their endeavors to secure peace for Albion. I will confess, at the point that Thorpe intoned his message of courage, I could not be sure if it was the gin, or Thorpe’s intimidating visage, that finally won the man over.

Turning to the repairs on the H-boat itself, this is indeed a bright spot of hope. Two weeks ago, Greenley, a cantankerous old tinkerer impressed into service by Bledsoe upon Gates’ recovery of the submersible, had already proclaimed the steam-tubes on the outside of the hull “irreparable,” after having spent some time investigating them before our return from the Cairns. But lo, his assistant—a younger man by the name of Hollins, I believe—discovered that the copper of the tubing channels could be replaced using ducts from several of the wood-burning stoves that were common in the town, and in fact, many of the pipes fit exactly, despite a commonly-held (and otherwise correct) belief that the measurement systems employed between Saxonia and Albion are incompatible. Hollins recognized this from close inspection of the joins between ruptured tubes, which had been left undamaged in the scuttling attempt of the ship. While the repair work is not complete on the diving tubes—thus the reason we have not yet conducted tests on the depths that the H-boat can reach—it is widely hoped now that these repairs can be made and tested over the next week. If so, Gates and the crew plan to complete a full test in seven days, with an eye toward leaving for Skald in early December with the addition of supplies and the passengers (namely, Bennington, MacTallan, and myself).

The next challenge was overcome by Bennington and I, pooling our collective knowledge of the Saxonian language to interpret the myriad dials, gauges, plaques, and signs aboard the Jagdschloss. For three days, as Greenley and his men worked, she and I took an inventory of all of the nautical terms we could find aboard the craft; this included a small log book and technical manual for the engines, which we found in what appeared to be a command quarters. The log book and the manual had been missed upon the investigation that was originally made when the fishermen had recovered the ship, but when we asked Bledsoe to consider providing the ship to us for our expedition, Thorpe had ordered a more complete inspection of the vessel.

With a simple Saxonian dictionary in hand recovered from the Greysham library, then, we found that we could create a sort of rudimentary Albionese glossary of sorts, for the purpose of guiding the men that Gates would eventually train in their work of operating the vessel. Critical words such as Tiefenmesser (depth gauge), Geschwindigkeit (velocity), Voll and Halb (ahead full or half, as they relate to the throttle, in combination with the words Fahrt Voraus), and Wasserdruck (water pressure) are now well known to Gates and the crew, making their piloting of the craft not only possible, but efficient. Bennington and I are next setting ourselves to translate as much as we can of the engine manual, with the understanding that if something goes wrong, diagrams and technical explanations in Saxonian will be worthless to an Albionese-speaking crew.

Ah, the crew—I surmise that at this point you must have recognized that Gates cannot pilot this complex machine himself, and at several points I have already mentioned them. We have been pleased to see the progress that Thorpe’s men (Kilcannon, Arasaku, Wright, O’Doole, Laray, and Bell) are all in the stages of becoming successfully converted to sailors. At least Laray and Kilcannon have some sailing experience, and all of them are used to taking orders to learn new things, especially in a military atmosphere. Thorpe has done well in this, perceiving the need for a nervous Gates to be able to direct the men with confidence, and for the time being Thorpe has told the men that they are to take orders from Gates as they train for their roles onboard. In this way, Gates is now seen as the “boat captain” and Thorpe the “land captain,” as Gates certainly wants nothing to do with our expedition once we disembark on Skald, and will wait onboard until he hears further from us. Greenley is too old to serve as an able engineer, but I am told by Thorpe that his assistant may take the reins as the chief officer overseeing the operation of the engines.

Finally, MacTallan has not been idle himself. Thorpe passed him the log book, which incorporated a small fold-out nautical map of the Köningsee, which we Albionese know as the Eastern Sea. From an old and outdated atlas in Bledsoe’s office and some more clues provided in sketches in the book, MacTallan was able to call up his cartography talents to create for us a larger, folding map of the Eastern Sea coasts, including Albion, Caledonia, Saxonia, and parts of the Bjondersland. On the map, he has plotted the location of Skald from what we know of Thompson’s documents, and has made some calculations and estimates of distance, extrapolating from the scale noted on the little log-book map. Using this, he reports confidence in employing a mathematical algorithm to plot travel at sea, given a near-constant rate of Geschwindigkeit and assumedly straight-line travel. We joke that he is now the ship’s navigator—but indeed he is the closest we have to one.

Bennington has mentioned to me that when we are able to confirm the success of the ring-like diving apparatus attached to the Jagdschloss, she would like to test the effects of the water pressure on the men and ensure their safety during the voyage. In my mind, she has nothing but support from me—and of course it means my safety as well, as one of its future passengers. More to the point, however, it underscores her renewed commitment to Thorpe’s leadership and the successful direction of this mission, to the disregard of her orders from the Society, whatever they might have been. Working closely with her on the translation of the manuals has also given me a new perspective on her value to the team, beyond yet what it was before.

One final, perhaps minor, detail. The spy Thompson was reported as having escaped from his prison cell some two nights ago. Bledsoe had immediately brought it to Thorpe’s attention, apologizing for the makeshift cell in which he had placed Thompson. I thought of your description of the granary on Garnsey, which had never been meant to be used as a prison, and how there had been locks on both sides of the door, &c.—in our case here Thompson had been placed in an old, unused wine cellar (devoid of its comforting drink, of course), and one of Bledsoe’s servants had been placed overwatch of its door. Apparently Thompson had found a way to bend the metal of the door hinges over the course of many days, finally breaking them with a kick at a point where he could hear that Bledsoe’s man was temporarily away, at a short meal or relieving himself, perhaps. We still do not know from Bledsoe’s man exactly when Thompson had made his escape, as it was some time yet before the man made the discovery of the broken hinges and the corresponding absence of our New Columbian spy, since Thompson had the time to replace the hinges on their moorings well enough to obfuscate his escape. The only other clue to Thompson’s whereabouts was a farmer who reported that he saw a man steal one of his horses late at night, galloping off toward the south; we learned this yesterday.

For my part, I say good riddance to the man, and let him trouble us no further; we now have the information that we need and the resources whereby to pursue it. The only final note I have to make to you is the strange weather, by which I mean more the climate and not these damnably oppressive storms. Here is it late November and the air has not turned colder. I do not expect snows at Yuletide, certainly, since the world has turned on-end, but yet another mark of this altered nature is the lack of seasons. I can only hope for more clues in the weeks and months to come, but I do not expect to see the world return to what it once was anytime soon.

I hope that by when I send you the next update, it will be from Skald, having set up an aero beacon there. I do not know if we will be able to find a natural place for our flyers to set down; but if we need to, we will take extra time to fashion a landing-place there, as it continues to be vital to our efforts to maintain regular communication. Similarly, I hope for you that you can make contact with your compatriots again in Carteret, and with Campbell, and that your ability to communicate with me continues unrestricted. Until then, we remain steadfast, healthy, and in good spirits here.

With wishes for good fortune, as always,

Rackham

New Albion, 20 November

My Dear Rackham,

It is with great relief that I can write to you frankly once again. I can tell from the tone of your reply that you accurately surmised my purpose: I had reason to believe that our communications were being intercepted, and I thought it better under the circumstances to reassure Robards with some feigned loyalty than it would be to use any sort of code.

Nonetheless, the bare facts of what has been happening on Garnsey, as related in my last letter, are all too accurate. Permit me to take a few steps back and narrate two key incidents from that time that I did not mention in my previous letter, for obvious reasons.

I immediately knew there was trouble when I received your long letter – and the accompanying cookie tin – not from either of our beloved flyers, but from one of Robards’ functionaries, wearing the armband of the Brotherhood. I quickly read that letter and realized that time was of the essence. If it had already been read by this functionary, or some other toadie, or – Deus forbid – by Robards himself, then he would know that you had sent me one of the wards!

I rushed to my wine-cellar laboratory and unearthed from the boxes in the corner some of the fragments we had taken from Mont-Bré. Fortunately the business of archaeology involves no shortage of tools for working with stone. Carving and etching feverishly, I made, as best I could in an hour or two, an exact replica of the ward you sent me, as well as the leather cord used to wear it around one’s neck. Looking at the two of them side by side on the table, it was obvious to me which was the counterfeit. But I daresay the differences were slight enough that not everyone would notice them, especially if they had no reason to be suspicious.

And then I stopped short, paralyzed in thought. My intention, of course, had been to give Robards the counterfeit in order to prevent the real ward from falling into his hands. We know so little about them, except that they are powerful, and that he was willing to risk countless lives on a doubtful mission to reclaim the one he had lost at the bottom of the Channel. But we do know one other thing: that proximity to a ward distinctly inhibited your Ability. If the same held true for Robards – if wearing it again might put a damper on the strange charisma with which he holds this island ensorcelled – would that not be for the best?

And yet again – if I was wrong about that, and wearing the ward did not slow him, I should have little chance of ever getting my hands on it again. And there is a great deal I could learn from studying it. What to do? What to do?

I do not know what decision I would have finally arrived at, given time to reflect and to properly weight the benefits and consequences, ideally utilizing some sort of chart. Because in that very moment when I was staring the ward and its copy there on the table, I heard footsteps approaching the wine cellar. Acting on impulse, or instinct, or just blind fate, I grabbed one of the objects in front of me – the genuine article, not the fake – and stuffed it into my waistcoat pocket a bare second before Robards himself sauntered into the room.

He was all congeniality and warmth, posturing with a feigned sort of curiosity, asking what I was about and oh-by-the-way that thing on the table looks awfully familiar, is-that-what-I-think-it-is, &c. It was plain on his face that either he had read your letter or had had some of its contents reported to him, and that he was here for the express purpose of finding the object you had delivered in the cookie tin. I affirmed that it was, and that it was only fitting that, having lost his previous ward, he ought to wear this one … perhaps it might serve as a sort of sigil befitting the stature of his new office? He agreed, though, ever-mindful these days of the importance of ceremony, insisted that I present it to him officially in his audience chamber (he does not yet refer to it as a “throne room”) in front of his subjects.

Let me pause here to mourn what Robards has become. I never would have described him as crafty, exactly, but he was certainly bright. But now he resembled that sort of politician – you have had far more contact with these kinds of people than me, so you will recognize the type – who, being constantly surrounded only by supporters who affirm and compliment his every decision and whim, loses all perspective on the world. He lacks empathy with people outside his circle, and his sound judgment in the face of evidence contrary to his assumptions slowly withers. Nothing – not my nervous behavior in that moment, not the ample of evidence of recent stone-work on the table between us, not (later) the rather cloying tone of praise in the last letter I sent, knowing it would be intercepted – nothing tipped him off in the slightest. Even as his Ability was steadily elevating him to the status of a god-king it was, unbeknownst to him, eroding his own incredulity and morality and plain good sense. Call it not an Ability, but rather a Curse.

At any rate, he proudly accepted – and still wears – the counterfeit. I kept the genuine article on my person, which brings me to my chance discovery of how the ward affects my own Ability, as well as the tale of how Jacobs and Sharma came to be imprisoned.

It all started with a song. A patriotic hymn about New Albion, penned recently by some local songsmith, much in vogue amongst the loyal in town. At the particular tavern where the two of them were prone to habituate of an evening, and where on this particular night I was joining them, concern was expressed by some members of the Brotherhood that Jacobs was not singing along with everyone else in the room. He then acquiesced, and began to sing along, but in a voice so loud, grating, and ever-so-slightly off-key that the effect was to thoroughly spoil the communal experience.

Now, I happened to know from my travels with this man that he had a sonorous, smooth baritone and an excellent sense of pitch, and so any mistakes he was making in the sing-along were quite intentional. All the while I was trying to catch his eye and gesture to indicate that he should not antagonize the Brotherhood goons quite so much. But there is a certain kind of gentleman who, being of a mind to begin a tavern brawl, will not stop until he has induced someone else to swing the first punch. When he hit a particularly dissonant flat note at the close of the hymn, one of the arm-banded thugs obliged, and the melee was joined.

Sharma has a knack for remaining unobtrusive – no one had pestered him about not singing along. He could have steered clear of the entire affair, and indeed, I lost sight of him as the fighting commenced. But shortly afterward, empty bottles came flying out from behind the bar with great speed and surprising precision, stunning one, two, then three of the Brotherhood and allowing Jacobs to incapacitate two more by smashing their crania together as they charged at him headlong. But there were a great many more than that in the room, and I am sad to say that it was not just the Brotherhood, but some of Jacobs’ fellow soliders and even ordinary folk of the town who were all too happy to help bring him down.

I should like to report that at that point that I used my Ability to cleverly turn the tide of the battle. I did, in fact, attempt to join in the fisticuffs, rather impetuously and perhaps not in the best judgment, given the importance of maintaining the trust of Robards. But I am embarrassed to say that before I could make any sort of impact on overall tactical situation, the backswing of a chair-wielding goon caught me on the head and I crashed to the floor, dazed. As I lay there, I realized that, unlike during similar moments of imminent danger, my Ability had not kicked in to protect me. I also had a splitting headache, but given the welt developing near my left temple, that was no surprise.

The fight continued without me. After no small amount of spilt blood and even more spilt ale, the end result was Jacobs and Sharma in shackles. Around this time Robards’ forces took the College as well, and suddenly the granary-turned-makeshift-prison contained prisoners who were either my friends or, in the case of Van Dyke and Sanders, persons of strategic interest. Alia remained free, not having done anything to anger Robards, though I was at that time only able to contact her indirectly – she remained near the beacon at the College, which was under very close guard. Then, when the gallows went up in the town square, I realized that many lives were in danger. Something had to be done.

Late at night, I risked some simple experiments with my Ability. After my success in reaching Van Dyke through the wall, I had some new confidence. Perhaps the knowledge that my time was limited helped as well. Though it sometimes took a frustratingly long while, I found that, with intense concentration, I could pass through the wall into the (now abandoned) adjoining room at will. With slightly less time spent in preparation, I could perform feats of a more limited nature, such as passing my hand and arm through the surface of a table. I could do none of this while in possession of the ward, I should note, but keeping it at a distance of approximately twenty yards, or even enclosing it in a thick metal box, seemed sufficient to allow my Ability free reign.

So far so good. By day, I was largely left in peace, though in my comings and goings to and from town I often suspected the ever-present Brotherhood had been instructed to keep an eye on me. By night I practiced my Ability. I knew Robards planned to give his prisoners a trial, in all likelihood just one for show, followed by an immediate sentence of execution. I waited until the posters went up in town announcing a public trial in two days’ time. That night, I acted.

In some ways the very first part was the hardest. I still slept in a rented room in town, but it was on the third storey of an inn which was perpetually busy – there was little chance of slipping out unnoticed on the ground floor. The single window was tiny and would have been difficult to wriggle through even if it had not been boarded up, ostensibly to protect the residents from the unruly denizens of the docks. And so I drank down one final swig of wine, took a deep breath, backed up, and made a running start straight at the wall. I jumped, passed through it, and plummeted downward into the alley behind the inn.

This was not something I had been able to test, and the trick, I imagined, was to maintain some degree of incorporeality even after passing through the wall, so that when my legs hit the ground they would not break. I was successful – the landing was quite gentle, in fact, and the fall itself likely slower than it would have been otherwise. I felt myself solidify, and was able to slip out of the alley and down the street unseen.

The granary where the prisoners were kept had a simple door and one side and a shipment entrance with oversized double-doors on another; both were of course guarded. But no thought was given to the rear of the building, nestled up against the hillside, a bare face of wood and brick with nary a window. I counted thirty paces from the corner of the building, passed through the wall, and took the ring full of keys from where it sat on the warden’s desk. Then I passed back out the way I had come, counted forty more paces down the outer wall, and entered once again, straight into the room where Van Dyke was imprisoned.

Now, before you begin suspect that I must possess some second Ability involving an inordinate amount of Luck, let me explain. When Robards decreed that the granary should be turned into a prison, plans were drawn up sketching out the dimensions of the place and the areas most suitable for holding prisoners. These plans were kept at the residence, and as I still had Robards’ trust, I had been able to get a look at them without too much trouble. These plans clearly indicated the proposed locations of guard stations, and an office for the warden, as well as the relative securability of various rooms. I rightly guessed that Van Dyke would be kept isolated from other prisoners, in one of the most secure rooms, and there was really only one room in the granary that fit the bill. I suppose my one bit of luck was that said room was on the ground floor along the rear wall of the building.

“That is an impressive trick,” Van Dyke said.

“You don’t seem entirely surprised,” I replied.

“Please do not mistake my demeanor for unflappability. I have seen so much that is bizarre and unexplainable of late that one more discovery simply adds to the pile. I am, perhaps, over-flapped.”

“Very well. Perhaps we can compare notes on our fantastical experiences at a later date. For now, I need you to orchestrate a prison break.” I handed him the keyring. (The door, not being a proper prison door, had access to the keyhole from both sides.) “I trust you will see to your own people. You must also release Jacobs and Sharma and anyone else being kept here.”

Van Dyke frowned. “Does Jacobs still have a fondness for beating my face into a pulp?”

I handed him a note. “Give this to him. It is from me, explaining the situation, and your destination.”

“Which is?”

“Carteret. A village on the far side of the island. Currently resisting Robards’ rule. I will either meet you there or send word.”

“And why aren’t you coming with us?”

“He still has my trust. And … I still hope to reverse this somehow. He is not himself.”

Van Dyke nodded curtly. “How many guards?”

“Six. Two out front, two patrolling indoors, two asleep. Will that be a problem?”

“I should hope not.”

I still do not trust Van Dyke, but I will confess, in a situation such as that, when brevity of word and directness of action were what was needed, his presence was most welcome. I departed, hastened back to the alley behind the inn, and, for my final trick of the night, used my Ability to climb with ease, ghost-like, up the side of the building before passing through the wall into my room.

Judging from the furor at the residence the following morning, and the red-faced rage with which Robards berated his cowering aides, Van Dyke had been successful. Since my departure from my room that night had not been noted, I was above suspicion. The captain even called me into the audience chamber and commanded me to assist in tracking down the escapees. I suggested that the College might be a good place to look for clues as to their likely whereabouts, and perhaps Alia might be convinced to do some aerial reconnaisance over the island as well? He commended me for my ingenuity and bade me see to it personally.

That is when I knew I would have the freedom to put a letter directly into Alia’s hands, and began writing what you are reading now. It will have to serve as an update very much in the middle of things. For I have yet to fully investigate the ward, explore the College, make contact again with Campbell, or somehow reach the escapees in Carteret, to say nothing of finding a way to stop Robards and (hopefully) restore him to his former self.

You should feel free to write openly in your next missive. Either I will have maintained my current level of freedom and will be able to intercept the letter directly, or the situation will have transformed so much that there is no predicting where I will be and how your news will find me. If I had time for a spare thought, it would most certainly be one of concern at the thought of you trapped in a metal tube beneath the waves, hurtling to some new danger. I am not sure which of us is in the less enviable position! Stay safe as ever, my friend.

Warm Regards,

Crane

Greysham, 13 November

Dear Crane,

The news of New Albion has swept the town like a wild fire, consuming all whom it touches with a profound hope, a feeling that has been sorely absent for far too long. That the isle of Garnsey could, despite the horror and destruction of the recent time, birthed a new seat of power and renewed purpose, is a monument to the unfailing nature of the human spirit. Around here, backs have stiffened, eyes have brightened, and glasses have been raised. All hail New Albion, our maidenland, a bastion of courage, shining like a star through the darkest of nights.

I should mention that your name is wreathed in grateful adoration among the town council here; the information that you have conveyed to me, and thus onto Bledsoe and the others, is now seen as a vital link between the town of Greysham and the outside world. I have explained the situation in full, specifically regarding the elevation of the great Robards to position of Steward; his consolidation and leadership over the good Brotherhood; and the struggle against the small bands of partisans and resistors. Here, there is a powerful desire to aid the Steward, and Bledsoe has confided in me that there have been several militant members of the town who wish to travel to New Albion to fight on the Steward’s behalf. Would that the town could spare fishermen and their boats as transport!

Speaking of boats, while I will endeavor to keep this letter relatively short, I ought to relate to you a rather surprising and fortunate turn of events. Apparently, Bledsoe has procured a submersible for our team to command for our journey to the Isle of Skald.

Several weeks before our arrival in Greysham, it seems, a fishing trawler several nautical miles from port became lost in one of the storm squalls that plague the coast. As its dark funnel touched the sea, it swept the boat away, in a manner not unlike your descriptions of the Channel crossing.

Its captain, a simple fisherman named Gates, found himself some hundred miles south-east of Greysham and in no sight of the coast. Without maps to help him navigate back toward the coast, he naturally did whatever seaman worth his salt would do in the same situation—orient his craft always keeping the rising sun at his aft and the setting sun at the fore, heading west in the hopes of making landfall before his fresh water ran out.

Instead of land, however, Gates came upon a bowsprit sticking up over the black, churning waves. This was the tip of the Jagdschloss, a Saxonian submersible that had been, according to Bledsoe, converted into a military ship towards the end of the Blood War. As far as Bledsoe’s Encyclopaedia Albionensis could tell us (a handy tome!), the Saxonian Kaiser had ordered several of these experimental Haischiffe built in a last-ditch effort to turn the tide of the disastrous naval campaigns which ultimately resulted in Albionese victory at sea. Most of the H-boats, as our Sea-lads called them, never saw action.

When a half-dead Gates found shore, he followed it north, and returned to Greysham with word of his encounter. From there, Bledsoe was able to organize three trawlers to find the H-boat and tow it back to the port town. From the way Bledsoe described it to Thorpe, Bennington, and myself one evening over gin, he had hoped only for salvage and parts.

As he soon learned, this one seemed to have been launched relatively recently, and showed several indications of new upgrades and improved machinery on board. In fact, one particular modification seems to be designed especially for deep explorations, as a steam chamber has been converted to an extra chamber to filter and collect cold condensation. This allows the craft to sink quickly and with improved resistance to water pressure, since the chambers are situated as articulated tubes that ring the aft segment of the ship, pushing with extra force against the outside strain of the hull.

Alas, several of these tubes had ruptured, causing the boat to drift listlessly from whatever port it had originated; but the air trapped inside the craft itself counteracted its otherwise complete descent from the bottom, causing it to bob like a cork along the surface of the sea.

When the fishermen returned to Greysham with their peculiar quarry, it was decided that the H-boat would be taken to a covered dry dock north of the town, where it today awaits use. As soon as enough water could be drained from its valves and hatches, Bledsoe’s men were able to peer inside. Instead of waterlogged corpses, they found no crew whatsoever—and no maps, travel logs, or documents could be located on the ship. This caused Bledsoe and his town council to conclude that the H-boat may have been readied for an expedition at one point, but before it was set into use, it had been scuttled—but whoever attempted to scuttle the ship did not account for the amount of air trapped inside the cabin chambers.

Greysham’s best engineers and mechanics spent considerable time attempting to repair it, but as Bledsoe confessed to us, at one point or another he felt he could spend no more time on the find, since resources were already in short supply and his men were otherwise employed with trying to find ready sources of food to feed the townsfolk.

When Thorpe had begun to make cautious inquiries about passage to the Isle of Skald, it took Bledsoe only a matter of an hour to summon our team and inform us about the Jagdschloss (in this we left MacTallan out of the consultations, since his attentions have necessarily turned to the matter of obtaining whatever maps of Skald and the nearby coast are available).

Now, we wait for word from Bledsoe’s engineer Greenley, whose new orders, as of over a week ago now, are to set to working order the steam-tubes that had been damaged in the attempted scuttling of the craft. If we can make a successful test of the repairs, the four of us believe that we can take the existing troupe as well as a half-dozen or so new recruits with us to the Isle of Skald, and traverse the distance in half the time and without fear of interposing dark storms. If the test fails, then we shall have to configure another method of transport; fishing trawlers are only good for six hours at maximum, and many of them have been lost at sea due to the sudden storms.

One complication that we are confronted with is the simple fact that, unlike the Sigsbee, the Jagdschloss cannot mount a mooring tower for aeros, making it impossible that either of our two gallant flyers will be able to meet us when we are out to sea. Perhaps, if you can communicate word back to us before we set off, you might ask your friends among the Brotherhood or at the College for an idea that might allow us to make a sea rendezvous with one of the aeros. Failing that, we will have to hope that MacTallan’s maps—if he can find any of use—can be copied for Alia and Alona so that one of them can meet us when we reach the Isle.

If I can write again before we set off, I will. If I cannot, it means that Bledsoe’s engineer has been more successful than expected and we have already embarked on our mission. Indeed, if we can get this contraption seaworthy and in working order, Crane, then the idea of heading south after we complete this next leg of our expedition to join you and your loyal compatriots in New Albion may well come to joyous fruition.

Until then, please convey to Robards that we pledge our allegiance to the new country and set sail under its banners!

With greetings and regards,

Rackham

New Albion, 9 November

My Dear Rackham,

No doubt you have had the experience of waking in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar place, stumbling around in the dark, groping about with your hands. You can imagine what it would be like if, in the next moment, you opened a door into a room fully-lit. At first it would be blinding – you might even raise your arm to shield your eyes – but gradually you could see again, and would be loathe to return to the dark.

I feel these days like a man whose vision has acclimated to the light, and can at last see clearly, as if for the first time. I fear that in some of my earlier letters I was like the man with his arm shielding his eyes, expressing fear and caution when all that was really needed was a moment to adjust. I have made that adjustment now, and am eager to relate all the progress we have made in establishing our bright beacon of hope, New Albion.

I wish you could have been there to see the official ceremony yesterday! The governor has suffered from ill health of late, but he gamely stepped forth onto the veranda, in front of the surging crowds, and placed a circlet of gold on Robards’ head while the band played our new anthem. A barrage of gunfire was heard in the distance, which many in the crowd took for a fitting salute. In fact it was members of the Brotherhood quelling unrest at the docks, but I found it quite serendipitous that it might serve a dual purpose!

The captain – or the former captain, I should say – is too modest, and refuses to fully embrace the role of a monarch. For a year and a day he will designate himself the Steward of the Albionese crown, and only then will he take on the full mantle of kingship if none of the rightful line have been found to have survived. While part of me fears that his hesitation in this matter may prevent him from acting as decisively as will be needed in the coming months, there can be no doubt that his humility endears him to the people.

And while you did not know it at the time, your own actions have played a part in his ascension, and solved a thorny problem to boot! While I hold Robards in extremely high regard, as you know, he is no god, and I have, on isolated occasions, had cause to question his judgment. Even as I dutifully made the preparations to venture to the bottom of the Channel to recover his talisman, I feared that the end of such a mission would be the loss of too many loyal subjects for an uncertain gain. And what should arrive in the middle of all of this but your letter, and the ward you had from Stratham via Thompson! No sooner had I read your letter – and opened the cookie tin – than I eagerly rushed to the audience chamber and presented Robards with a replacement for his lost treasure. He accepted it graciously and wore it proudly around his neck at the ceremony. So you were there in spirit, my friend!

Bringing the justice of New Albion to all of Garnsey has come with some pains, to be sure. While the ranks of the Brotherhood swell with devoted and militant citizens, eager to help in any way they can, some of the soldiers in Robards’ own company have not proven as loyal. I regret to say that my former traveling companions, Jacobs and Sharma, were among those who have been arrested on charges of insubordination and inciting revolt.

A granary near the residence has been converted into a prison for the housing of said soldiers, Van Dyke, and now too Sanders and several others from the College. Robards had made several peaceful overtures to the Society and those who fronted for their machinations, offering to welcome them into the fold of New Albion, but they steadfastly refused to see the light. And so he returned with the Brotherhood at his back, and now the College is fully under his control.

Some allowances must be made, in these times, for the wheels of justice to turn somewhat faster in times of crisis than they may otherwise. Robards is empowering a panel of judges to try these prisoners in the coming weeks. At the same time, he realized that idleness among some of the dockworkers was a growing problem, and so he has conscripted them to construct a magnificent gallows in the town square for after the sentences are handed down.

The one remaining thorn in the side of our restored kingdom is Campbell and his New Columbian crew. They have not recognized the new authority, and the land approach to their grotto is a thoroughly defensible position. And, of course, they are well-armed. Ever the canny commander, Robards has calculated that the cost of assaulting them directly would be too high, and in any case, his forces are needed to address pockets of resistance elsewhere on the island. (Those villages farthest from Stockport, in particular, have been more reluctant to embrace our bright new future.) And so he is content to wait them out. Without reprovisioning they will falter soon enough. If the Sigsbee is repaired they may try to set sail and risk the vortex-storms; naturally, I would rather that they capitulate and come into the fold.

As to our flyers: I regret to say that Alona appears to have thrown in with Campbell. At any rate she is holed up with him in the grotto. I encouraged Robards to require an oath of loyalty from Alia, but in his wisdom he has decided it best to allow her the freedom befitting her profession. That way, when she does pledge herself into the service of New Albion of her own volition, it will be all the sweeter. Her value – and that of the mooring tower at the College, only lightly damaged in the fighting – is beyond measure, and security there is appropriately tight. Not even I am permitted to see her any longer; instead, I will hand this letter to a loyal Brother of New Albion, who will no doubt hasten it up the hill and place it directly into her hands.

I pray you finish your business at this Isle of Skald and hurry south as safely as you may! My daily concern these days is to find some reliable way for larger vessels to cross the vortex-storms, so that loyal citizens such as yourself might come and assist in the rebuilding of our great nation here at its new island home.

Warm Regards,

Crane

Greysham, 1 November

Dear Crane,

Fortune has smiled upon our expedition—finally, I might add—and my first relief is that I will be able to abandon writing in code. I trust that you have a system whereby the agents of the now-powerful Robards do not have occasion to copy our correspondence before sending, and I am doubly glad that we can confide in both of our lion-hearted flyers to the extent that we can. For my part, anyway, I have quite a bit of detail to relate, so forgive if this particular letter seems over-long. I opted for sparing no detail since I had to do exactly that in three of my last four missives.

When I wrote you the coded message two weeks ago, the aero was about to leave again, and I knew I needed to set something down about our current situation, at least to leave a record of our last efforts should our plans go awry, if nothing else. At that dark time, we had brought Bennington back to full health, and she, MacTallan, Thorpe, and I were in league to somehow confront Thompson. With fresh clues regarding the Rexley Device and Stratham’s rather disturbing death, we knew that the time had come to subdue the spy—at the time, we simply had no plan, which I attempted to hint at. I now can explain with greater specifics the events that had transpired at the time I wrote you last, and what has happened since.

I regret that in past letters I had labeled Thorpe a fool (recall my impatience with him during the exploration of the Ravine). While I certainly stand by my assessment of the man as brash, I am glad that at least he is an ally. It was Thorpe who was instrumental in Bennington’s recovery, in exposing Stratham’s treachery, and finally, in confronting Thompson, who now sits in a constabulary prison in the town of Greysham, waiting for our eventual return from the very place to where he had orders to proceed.

I think, then, to spell out clearly the events of the last two weeks, I ought to write more in a chronologically-logical fashion—starting at a point just after my strange conversation with Thorpe in my room at the Downborough Arms—or I will get ahead of myself and leave out details that you may otherwise make use of.

You will recall, first, that I had reported (in code) that some weeks ago Bennington’s mind had gone blank. To be more precise, she had begun to slip into a peculiar catatonic state just around the time that we had left Greysham for the Cairns. I had originally thought that her condition was due to a return of the night terrors that had plagued her in the weeks before our arrival at the Obelisk, since at first her loss of will manifested itself only in a distracted and forgetful demeanor—quite different behavior, I will note, than the headstrong Society doctor that joined us when we set out.

Looking back ay my own notes, I see that I had made mention of a “more alert” Bennington after the trouble at the Obelisk, and indeed, as memory serves me, it did seem that between the time we escaped the loch but before we reached Greysham, she seemed more lucid, somewhat more personable, and able to perform her tasks more efficiently—for example, caring for a shaken MacTallan after his rescue from the cliff by our two stalwart soldiers.

I had not seen Bennington during the time that MacTallan and I were away surveying the curious patterns of dead wood and scorch marks in the woodland areas west of Greysham. According to what Thorpe has explained to me now, during that time—which coincided with his efforts to find the last of the needed resupply items and organize the men for a march to the Cairns—he had noted on several occasions Stratham and Bennington consulting, in hushed tones, often late at night.

It was during a span of three or four evenings that Thorpe, to my compliments, decided to exercise his own Ability. Apparently, his lizard-like transformations have had two beneficial effects, even while his appearance may be startling. First, Thorpe seems to have some limited control over the coloration of his scales. (He has not submitted to Bennington yet for a full analysis—and indeed there has been no time for this—but he reports that the scales now cover his entire torso and have begun to progress down his legs and arms.) Secondly, his body has developed what might be called a tympanic membrane, on each side of his neck, just behind his jaw—a secondary auditory system, perhaps, commensurate with his herpetological alterations.

It was this sound-sensitive “second ear” system that aided Thorpe to learn that the whispered words that passed from Stratham to Bennington were not Albionese but an ancient-sounding and guttural language—which MacTallan was later to deduce were syllables in ur-Samekh. Watching them over these evenings as covertly as he dared, he began to notice that Bennington never spoke back to Stratham; from what he described, it must have appeared as if some kind of worm-tongued advisor was gradually sapping the will from an increasingly powerless victim. As you can imagine, this alarmed Thorpe greatly, but he dared not oppose Stratham outright just yet, recalling the intense scene at the Obelisk.

Thorpe hastened to share this with MacTallan and I upon our rendezvous, which I attempted to explain in my most recent ciphered message. He had made the point that while Stratham had used words in this antediluvian language to help us withstand the power of an activated Obelisk, none of us had never asked the man how he had learned them or what other words he knew. Thus, none of us had anticipated the extent to which Stratham had learned ur-Samekh—nor how he had learned it.

As I noted to you in an earlier coded message, I attempted to read Stratham’s thoughts one evening in Greysham, only to find his mind stirred, sort of disordered, a blur of memory and thought. That was the night before I sensed the ward blocking out my attempt to peer into the mind of our spy Thompson. After that, I did not have the strength to attempt my Ability for a while.

At any rate, I could only conclude from this, and from what was confirmed to me upon successfully reading Bennington’s memories, that Stratham’s influence over her had begun much earlier than when Thorpe observed it, perhaps as early as the time we reached Greysham. I confess I had been so accustomed to her mental impairment (especially after the horrors of Innesmere) that I had simply assumed she had slipped into it again. I now can only guess at Stratham’s motivations for using whatever Ability manifested in him after the Obelisk, and, even more worrisome, what he may have learned from her surrendered mind. I was able to snap Bennington out of her trance, certainly, but I had no way of knowing what transferred from Bennington to Stratham, other than my own inkling that it may have had to do with her research at Elizabeth College.

In addition, what I had not expected was the part that I was going to play in Bennington’s rehabilitation. In my last message to you, I mentioned that when I was with MacTallan in the forest north of the Cairns, I noticed that my migraines had subsided. During our travel from the Obelisk and to Greysham, and during our time in Greysham, my headaches were awful enough that I did not want to attempt my Ability but for the direst of need. When MacTallan and I made our rendezvous with Thorpe, my migraines had returned, to my dismay and confusion.

The next evening after our return, Kilcannon approached Thompson (who was still called Throckmorton among the group) with a plan for a structured and long-term exploration of the Cairns, to begin the next day. Earlier that same day, Thorpe had ordered all of the men to patrol a perimeter so that entering the mapped stone formations would be safer. Thorpe, his lieutenant, and the five soldiers had not been idle while waiting for MacTallan and I to return: they had diligently mapped and sketched out the entire area, from elevated vantage points, during the time while MacTallan and I were doing much the same thing to our expanse of wilderness.

I have not had the occasion to ask him quite yet, but I have a suspicion that Thorpe cleverly engineered a rationale by which Kilcannon would enlist Thompson’s help in beginning the investigation of the Cairns as a vanguard; he already seemed overly eager to scout the location, no doubt because of his orders to “make contact” with someone—or something—at “Rexley.” Including Thompson in the efforts to map the area had played perfectly into our cunning captain’s hands. I desperately wished to use my Ability to scan the memories of our spy, but of course this had been impossible since my failure to do so at Greysham, now knowing he was wearing a ward. The entire time, Thorpe had been in position not only to receive extensive knowledge of the area in the valley, but also to plan which pairs of men entered the Cairns where and when.

Over our simple meal of beans and coffee that evening, MacTallan and I had been reviewing the maps and sketches we made of the patterns we found in the woodlands to the north, and we had dutifully included our captain in our discussion by the firelight. Holding up one of our simple maps for a moment, the light shone through the cold-pressed paper that MacTallan has supplied me with when we left Greysham. Thorpe recognized it in a flash: the arrangements of concentric swirling lines, along key vertices and forks, almost perfectly matched the positions of the larger conical cairns in the low valley below us. Superimposing one of Thorpe’s map atop one of MacTallan’s confirmed this.

An idea occurred to me just then. It struck me that by the next morning, I would be nowhere near the now-known bearer of the ward—and up until then, I had been in his company for almost the entire expedition. Over the week prior, the distance that had been put (at least temporarily) between myself and the object must have caused a corresponding absence of effect over my mind. MacTallan offered that my relief from the aches might also have had something to do with the patterns of lines; in his words, I may have been within a “dampening field” of some kind in the wilderness. If either of those theories were true, I whispered to my compatriots, then perhaps I could use my Ability to hear the words that Stratham used to gain sway over Bennington—by clairaudience into her very memories.

I was loathe to try it the next morning, I must admit; I had fully expected my eyes to water from the pain and convulse from agony as I allowed my thoughts to drift back, immersing myself in the cacophonous backdrop of sound I heard at every moment. Kilcannon was privately ordered to keep a sharp eye on his scouting partner Thompson and after breakfast the men left, in pairs, for three “entry points” identified on the new maps. Thorpe himself chose a fourth entry point accompanied by a dangerously eager Stratham. This was a shrewd strategy, I instantly thought, by our captain, who was gambling on two things: first, that Stratham would find something before the others would, relying upon some hidden knowledge that he had and which Thompson did not; and second, believing in MacTallan’s “dampening” theory, hoping it would cancel Stratham’s Ability (if we ought to call it that), should Stratham turn on him at some point.

I tell you, as soon as Kilcannon and Thompson entered the outermost border of the Cairns, not only did I find instant relief, but also I was able to immediately control the sound that echoed in my ears. Summoning the wave of noise to me and submitting to its power, I could first hear MacTallan next to me, asking himself how I came to develop this Ability in wonderment as he watched. I caught a few memories of his studies at Thornskye, cataloguing ancient texts that spoke of “divine transformations” as both gifts—and plagues—that had worked their ways into local mythologies. Remembering myself and my purpose, I moved closer to Bennington, sitting perfectly still in her tent. Without Stratham immediately in her vicinity, we noted later, she had been rendered incapable of independent movement unless specifically directed. He must have thrown caution to the wind upon hearing the plans to investigate the Cairns, derelicting his usually close overwatch of Bennington in favor of pursuing a goal that we deduced later must have had to do with the Rexley Device.

At any rate, merging with Bennington’s mind and listening to her memories was even easier than I had predicted, given the absence of a nearby ward. Indeed, the first attempt he made at controlling her was during the two days we descended from the highland crags towards the coast. In one particular memory, he inserted an ur-Samekh syllable cleverly into everyday Albionese, in a feigned request that she examine a bruise on his arm; in another memory, he had been more forthright, saying something audible yet unintelligible to her as he stood over her sleeping form early one morning. Once, a pretended morning greeting outside her Downborough Arms room became the vehicle for a string of three whispered sounds, whereupon she recalled fainting, thankfully stumbling back onto her bed before passing unconscious. He must have cast this spell over her gradually, conditioning her to accept his commands.

At one point somewhere during the time we spent at Greysham, her memories become only shifting clouds of truncated and fragmented images, momentary scenes of blurred faces, of vague emotions that range from sudden but powerless alarm to blissful tranquility. I felt as if I were a silent and captive observer of a dumb-show that had been directed by someone working from a theater script whose pages had been scrambled.

In an earlier letter to you—months ago now—I had mentioned a point when I ended my use of laudanum and used my Ability willingly. At that time, apart from the headaches, the effect of reading another person’s memory was not unlike reading a book in dream-scape: I recognized the presence of text but could not fully understand it. This time, it was very different. Although many of Bennington’s memories were suppressed—or completely addled—after she left Greysham, the shapes, sounds, and tones of what Stratham whispered to her in ur-Samekh are etched now in my mind.

I cannot write them out here, and even as I consider doing so, my pen shakes almost uncontrollably in my hand. Crane, all I can say is that they are not a thing that can be learned by anyone who does not already know how to utter them, and that leaves a great deal more questions about Stratham than it answers. We never knew any of this before we left for our expedition: Stratham had been present outside the chamber of the glowing stone at Highmark, and I shudder to think now of what he knew, how he knew it, and what he had intended then.

As I remained in silent concentration next to her, I endeavored to focus on memories of her training at Elizabeth College, of her experimentation, of the first time she found, and catalogued, what she presented as “energized blood.” I saw your Sanders there among the academicians to whom she displayed the vials of blood taken from volunteers and—well, others less fortunate. Apparently, Bennington had completed the first of her series of medical journals describing particular transformations among the local populace—dating back years now—that all had similar features, most notably a union of animal features with human ones.

It was a final memory that I serendipitously tripped upon, one that apparently pulled such a strong memory from her that her mind retured to her. Reading this thus far, you may have expected her colleagues at Elizabeth College to praise her research into the “superstrata” of certain types of human blood, which Bennington theorizes to be uniquely capable of carrying supernatural energy sources. Instead, I can tell you, they roundly rejected it, practically laughing her out of the College; Sanders himself (if he is the same man that you describe) was singularly responsible for her demotion and loss of teaching privileges.

At this, Bennington began to rouse and wake. Not wanting her to feel my eye cast upon her mind—and also, not wanting to make an outward show of my Ability to a woman whose allegiance was, at least at that time, still firmly with the Society—I broke off mental contact, my heart beating quickly but my thoughts clear. I looked at Bennington, and from the first exchanges with her over the dying campfire, it was obvious to us that she had returned to a lucid state, asking (understandable) questions about where we were and what we were doing there.

Four days passed without word from any of the scouting parties, and during that time, MacTallan and I were able to nurse an exhausted Bennington back to a semblance of full health of both body and mind. I did not reveal back to her what I saw in her memories, save only that my readings of how Stratham conditioned her gave me the insight I needed to jolt her out of his hold over her, which as you know now upon reading this, was a half-truth.

It was Thorpe and Stratham who returned a full day ahead of the others, and this fact, besides the fact that Stratham had been knocked unconscious, bound with rope, and hoisted over Thorpe’s shoulder, took us quite by surprise. With a mighty heave, Thorpe laid Stratham out onto the ground. As the three of us stood up in alarm—Bennington quickly assuming guardianship over a badly bruised Stratham—Thorpe unslung his pack and revealed a key. It was heavy, iron and pock-marked with rust, but it was undeniably a key, attached to a torn thong of leather.

“Took this off him when he tried to use that voice on me,” Thorpe explained, unceremoniously, finding a place where he could collapse in exhaustion next to us. “I had to wait until the fool found a way into the caverns.” Without more discussion, we added a cloth gag to Stratham’s restraints. I don’t mind telling you that we allowed Bennington to perform the duty of applying the gag.

We didn’t have time to ask Thorpe how the altercation between he and Stratham had begun, or even—as I immediately suspected—whether it was a case for Thorpe simply to find the right moment to attack the man at some logical point during their explorations, since he already knew what he was capable of, and would need to catch him by surprise. As of the writing of this letter, Thorpe has only mentioned that Stratham had uttered no more than a single low sound before Thorpe’s fist knocked the man unconscious. Perhaps a viper’s speed is another gift that had been bestowed on the half-man, half-lizard Thorpe.

It was then that I noticed a sharp headache returning to me, and it took considerable concentration to block out the hundreds of voices again. Acting on a hunch, I opened Stratham’s shirt.

“I already took it,” I heard Thorpe say, and motioned to his pack on the ground.

Inside was a carven stone on a silver chain, its obverse marked with fine swirling patterns behind the sharper, angular cuts of what could only be ur-Samekh runes; its reverse bore a circular, wavy relief, like the shell of a nautilus. At that point, I believed that Stratham had carried a ward as well as Thompson; it was later that I learned that it was Thompson’s.

“He’s looking for the Rexley Device,” said MacTallan, his gaze fixed on the relic. Something in his eyes told me that the naturally inquisitive mind that this scholar possessed had just made a vital connection. “He thinks it is here.”

At this I looked at the man in surprise, and I could not help but to notice Bennington adopt a similar expression. I feigned an unknowing expression. “Explain.”

It occurred to me at that precise moment that I never breathed the word Rexley to MacTallan, and if I had, we might have had further clues before Thorpe organized the systemic search of the Cairns; I confess I was still building trust in him as time went on. But whatever questions any of us could have possibly had in either MacTallan’s credentials as a researcher of history or as a trustworthy companion, I can say, are gone now.

Apparently, and according to MacTallan, the Rexley Device is a weapon, as I conveyed to you in my coded letter. It was created over two hundred years ago by one Sir Edmund Rexley, an Albionese student of alchemy and physics, to focus “aetherial energies” during “cosmological events.” It was then that I decided it best to reveal the theory to MacTallan that you put forth in your letter of 13 October, and our scholar seemed to immediately follow the logic of it, noting the three reasons that I endeavored to signal to you in my coded message.

We now hunt this Rexley Device—it was not in fact at the Cairns—but lest I get ahead of myself, I will tell you next about Stratham’s death, our capture of Thompson, and what our next steps are. I will be somewhat more brief, as I am told that Alona is due for a takeoff later this morning, and does not wish to be delayed, citing the storms that approach.

I shudder to think about the light in Thorpe’s slit-like eyes when his attention turned toward the helpless Stratham. We have no real reason not to trust him, Crane, and we need him on this mission for his multitude of skills, leadership ability, and knowledge, even if his transformation is unsightly. But there is no other word that I know that can describe what he intended for Stratham—other than “murder.” I wonder if he already had decided that Stratham had to die when he and I had that conversation in my hotel room.

Even Bennington protested it and stood over the bound man when Thorpe got up from his reclining position on the ground and removed a large hunting knife from his pack. MacTallan and I stepped away momentarily, eyes transfixed on the blade. “You know he has to die. He has too much power. You all have seen it.”

Bennington shook her head. “But there is still authority—still fair trial. We can bring him to Bledsoe—”

“I agree,” I heard myself say. “Crane wonders whether the Government still exists in his letters. Where he is, there are men assuming power as we speak. But that does not justify the killing of an unarmed enemy.”

“Unarmed? This man needs no weapons to be dangerous.”

“We have him bound and gagged,” I replied.

“He cannot remain this way forever. Bennington—you decide, then. Do you want him alive so that he can do again what he did to you?”

At this, Bennington seemed to cry quietly and she bowed her head, and turned it slowly from side to side, as if absolving herself from the guilt of what she was about to allow. When our doctor stepped away from Stratham, we knew what choice she had made.

“For Deus’ sake, man, use a gun and make it quick,” called MacTallan, from behind me.

“And risk the sound echoing across the valley?”

A pause.

“Do not worry, good Professor, it will be quick.”

Finally, MacTallan folded his arms, and we all averted our eyes from the scene—but instead of the sounds of killing, we looked again and saw Thorpe backing away from the cot where Stratham lay. Instead of Stratham, there was a paper-white corpse that was rapidly desiccating and dissolving into a fine white ash—exactly like those poor devils Elberts and Graustein at the loch, and many of the folk of Innesmere.

The next morning, we buried Stratham, and the six soldiers returned, right on schedule. By afternoon they had all assembled, were fed, and rested; and more details were shared between the various sets of maps. Thompson had inquired about Stratham. Thorpe thought better of lying to our known spy and told a mostly-accurate story of how Stratham mysteriously died the evening before, having been transformed upon return from the Cairns. The rest of the soldiers appeared worried by this but asked no questions. Thompson, for his part, said nothing.

As for my mention of Campbell, the evidence we gathered was from Stratham’s belongings, which we had looked through before the soldiers returned. To our surprise, he had copies of several military documents mentioning the navy man, his commission and several sets of orders for the Sigsbee, and even a Daguerro-graph of himself and a certain Admiral A. Segismund (as per the reverse inscription). Since you have dealings with Campbell, I am enclosing all of these documents, and the Daguerro-graph. Note that the admiral does not wear a N.C. uniform, and that one document in particular seems to discipline him for not following orders. I will let you make your own inquiries, when and where you should want to.

It was at this point, you see, that I wrote you the most recent coded message as we in the hills of eastern Caledonia. Alona had landed at our makeshift beacon just as the soldiers were returning, having failed to find the beacon the night before (and to be frank I am glad she was spared the horror of what occurred at camp). In my last letter, I would have liked to have set down all of the details that I included here, but Thompson was present at the camp, and I opted for openly writing fake news of our progress to mask what I knew I needed to convey to you.

At this point I have taken a short break from this long account and bargained with Alona for an extra hour as the men finish inventorying supplies from the aero. You must thank Robards, or the Brotherhood, or whomever, as we have needed clothes, ammunition, and food—exactly what she brings us today. Alona has agreed to sit for a meal, and then will leave back to Garnsey.

The full exploration of the Cairns in fact took somewhat less than a fortnight—in fact, a little over a week in total. We arrived back in Greysham a few days ago, allowing us a period of rest before Alona, in good time as usual, arrived here with your letter and the supplies. Included with this letter, besides the documents we found among Stratham’s belongings, are copies of the maps of the Cairns site, including many of the larger cavern structures, for your review. As you can see, even many of the caverns have a distinct concentric pattern to them, whose meaning is not fully known yet.

When we returned to Greysham, we arranged for Bledsoe to put Thompson in custody. You will recall that my fake news of October mentioned that Arasaku had recruited some new members for our team back at the town. There was a partial truth in this, in that I knew our Bledsoe was doing exactly that while we were away at the Cairns. With the aid of these new men, we surrounded a confused Thompson at the Downborough Arms after supper, charging him with treason. In a display of good leadership, Thorpe had convinced us of the wisdom of not ordering any of the soldiers that had been with us these three months to participate in the confrontation of Thompson, in case one or more of them had developed loyalties to the man for whatever reason. Thompson, for his part, recognized that resistance would be useless, and went with Bledsoe peacefully.

One unexpected detail in all of this is that when Thorpe strode forward to take his ward away, he sheepishly admitted that it had been lost somewhere at the Cairns. Thorpe said nothing, of course, about how we had found the artifact on Stratham; it remains a mystery to us, however, how Stratham had it when he and Thorpe had returned first from the scouting of the Cairns. All Thorpe knows is that he tore it from the man’s neck when he knocked Stratham unconscious.

I must also commend Thorpe for putting his trust in Bledsoe as a source of local authority in the matter of Thompson’s custody, and that, despite rumors of a collapsed Government and a forever-changed Albion, our humanity and love of justice endures.

Later that evening, Thorpe shared with MacTallan, Bennington, and I how he had known Thompson was a spy for New Columbia; Thorpe had learned this from an anonymous letter that had been included with his expedition notebooks. At first he lent the message no credence, but kept it anyway, not showing anyone—something that, to be sure, at least Bennington and I scolded him about, as this knowledge may have impacted our mission.

I acknowledged, however, that I had known about Thompson from the telegram I found sewn into his clothing, and in Thorpe’s defense, I related the conversation to MacTallan and Bennington that Thorpe and I had in Greysham on the eve of my departure with MacTallan into the woodlands to the west.

Thorpe then asked Bennington directly about her allegiance to the Society, which took me somewhat by surprise: again, Thorpe chose a brash approach where discretion may have otherwise been wisest. In response, Bennington revealed that it had been her personal mission to stop the New Columbians from gaining access to the Rexley Device, and by signing on with us, she hoped to learn clues as to its whereabouts. In a moment of clarity, I found myself agreeing with her statement that she has choice but to take us into her confidence now, and we into hers.

In response to this, and with Thorpe’s consent, I read my coded messages to our inner circle of leadership assembled in my room at the Arms. I felt that, for better or worse, it was imperative that we all operate from common knowledge and strive toward a common goal. I also knew enough about Bennington’s past—from having scanned her memories outside of the presence of the ward—that I felt I could keep an upper hand, so to speak, especially if she were an outcast from the Society, and no longer a trusted member.

It was MacTallan that put into place the next piece of the puzzle, upon hearing the coordinates mentioned in the telegram to Thompson that I found. As I had mentioned, your coordinates were correct; taking the Cairns as “110,” forty-six miles north and sixty-one miles east is the Isle of Skald, off the Caledonian coast. This is now our next destination, and we must act immediately: we have new recruits, experienced soldiers, trust among the leadership, and fresh supplies. Never before have we been in a better position to unlock more clues about the Incident and what has blighted our fair country. We found no Device at the Cairns, nor any structures that would require a key to open them. However, on the Isle of Skald, perhaps we shall.

Finally, the ward. Thorpe wants to wear it, but we will not allow it, as we do not yet know the power it holds. MacTallan guesses that it either absorbs, or nullifies, transformative activity. It is entirely possible that once a person wears a ward, that person is safe from the effects of “awakened” sites such as the Obelisks at Mont-Bré and the loch, but this is has not been conclusively proven. We took the ward away from Stratham and he withered into a dry corpse within hours. As I signaled in my last message, it can be safely concluded that my proximity to the ward causes me excruciating pain; it may be because I have an Ability, but then again, you did not seem to suffer ill effects such as these during the time when Robards must have been in possession of his ward, having received it from Thompson at Highmark.

MacTallan would like to keep it and study it, but we are about to set off for a voyage, and if the Isle of Skald was designated as a dangerous place by the New Columbian High Command, we might be well advised not to take it with us at all. We have considered keeping MacTallan behind as the caretaker of the ward, but MacTallan, as we have just decided, may be more useful at our next destination than he would be in Greysham. Bennington suggested that we consider keeping the ward here with Bledsoe, but none of us know the extent of his resources well enough to know whether or not he could truly keep it safe, and the fact that Thompson and the ward would be in the same general place—Thompson’s incarceration notwithstanding—gave us strong misgivings.

It became gradually clear to us who should be the keeper of the ward we recovered from Stratham.

Crane, the ward that Brown had worn was shattered at Mont-Bré and the one Robards had sunk to the bottom of the Channel (although I read from you that he has tasked you and Campbell with its return). You are the only documentarian I know that has an active and complete catalogue of the strange artifacts—damaged or otherwise—that we have recovered from either team. Finally, your notes about the dating of the Obelisk at Mont-Bré has convinced MacTallan that your reference material and sketches puts you in the best position among all of us to draw conclusions about ur-Samekh, the relationship between the active sites, the hidden history of Ashkur, and the powers that connect all these clues.

Therefore, in a separate cookie-tin, one that our brave flyer keeps in her cockpit for traveling snacks, you will find one of the surviving Essen wards.

Keep it secret; keep it safe.

With hearty regards,

Rackham

Stockport, 25 October

My Dear Rackham,

If things were different, it would be job enough for any man to simply be your correspondent, perhaps a sort of amanuensis, dutifully reading and recording your fantastic exploits and providing what research assistance and advice you might require. Instead, I have my own swirling intrigues to contend with, and in these letters we barely have space to catch each other up in the barest detail, let alone dwell with leisure and contemplation on what the other is experiencing.

I am opting for the double-letter approach again, rather than that of Martineau. I picture you having to write shoulder-to-shoulder with others, encamped in the midst of underground caverns, with no way to prevent them from seeing what you are doing. On the other hand, I am afforded my privacy, at least for the moment. And so I will write frankly and trust our flyers to deliver this to you only under secure circumstances.

Life on the island of Garnsey is increasingly surreal. I have a small room in town, where I am joined for meals most days by Jacobs or Sharma or both. Even though we are technically on Albion soil, in a civilized and peaceful place, sometimes it feels like it did when we were hidden in an attic in Machlou – surrounded by strangers, trying our best not to attract attention.

The Brotherhood of New Albion is a local militia that has sprung up in response to unrest near the docks. With a diverse assortment of trading vessels still trapped here due to the vortex storms, and with more rumors trickling in about the effects of the Incident, really it is no surprise that tensions have been high. Things came to a head when some opposing factions came to blows on the streets, but very soon after, this Brotherhood appeared: ordinary natives of Stockport and the environs, each wearing a blue armband with a red stripe. They put an end to the infighting among sailor-gangs with sudden and brutal efficiency, and have been patroling the streets and keeping the peace ever since. I thought it peculiar how quickly this local group came into existence, until, on my way to my wine cellar work-space one afternoon, I spied one of their number making a report to a member of Robards’ staff. I suspect the group’s origin is far less spontaneous than it appears to be. It goes without saying that the Brotherhood of New Albion supports Captain Robards and deeply appreciates the aid he is lending the governor.

Why “New Albion?” I asked one of their number that question on the street one day. He was of the belief that nothing remains of Albion proper, that everyone has been killed or transformed into monsters, and that Garnsey is all that remains of a once-great empire. Therefore it is time to start again. I assured him that, while things were definitely bad, it wasn’t as bad as all that, but he would have none of it. Though it did give me cause to wonder about the full extent of the devastation. Specifically, what about the capital? Alia and Alona have both reported too much storm activity in that area to even attempt a fly-over. It would be good to know whether we even still have a government. I’m sure you are curious whether there is still a Bank that holds some of your riches.

But I digress. Things have been very quiet and peaceful in Stockport since the Brotherhood arrived. I would prefer a little more noise and chaos in exchange for not having a populace enthralled under the eldritch will of their unofficial new leader. Jacobs and Sharma and I cannot be the only ones who, for whatever reason, have not fallen under Robards’ sway. But whatever others there may be are probably like us, going about their business quietly, meeting in private in the back rooms of taverns.

It was six days ago that Sharma told me that he had been called in to report to Robards. They had met in private, and the Pandjaran had given a full accounting (from his perspective) of everything that had happened at Mont-Bré. He was visibly shaken after the interview. As a loyal soldier, he would have told his commanding officer everything in any case, but he reported feeling a terrible weight from Robards’ gaze, as if, even had he wanted to lie to the man, he would not have been able to. That was troubling, but what was equally strange was that Sharma had been called and not me. I had, after all, made a public report and all but begged the captain to meet me in private so that I could tell him the whole story.

Two days later I was sent for, and for a short while I thought that he was simply debriefing each of us in turn, separately. A bit paranoid perhaps, but understandable to a point. It turned out to be something quite different.

The banquet hall that Robards was using as his center of operations had changed since the last time I was there. The desks and chalkboards and bustling activity had all been moved to adjoining rooms, giving the hall a much more cavernous feel. Earlier, the captain had sat behind a desk on a raised platform, suitable for performances, at one end of the room. That desk was now also missing; instead, Robards sat upon a high-backed, Gothic, ornamental chair. The sort of thing one might find in the foyer of some country estate, an heirloom, not a chair for actually sitting in. But there he sat.

“I understand you have been to see Campbell,” he said without preamble. This was at least a week after we had gone to the grotto, as I related in my previous letter.

“Indeed,” I replied. “He wants for some supplies to complete his repairs.”

“He shall have them,” he said. “But only because I need his ship. You must make that clear to him.”

“If you wish,” I said, “But captain, we have much else to discuss. Would it be possible for me to give you a confidential report?” I glanced at the half-dozen or so functionaries who stood around the room. One of them seemed to be dutifully recording everything that was said.

Robards gave a curt nod, and they all filed out of the hall, closing doors behind them. A good bit of the light had been spilling in from the adjacent rooms, so now the two of us found ourselves shrouded in a half-darkness, me feeling very small standing in the middle of the floor, Robards up on his – I hesitate to say it, but there is no way around it – his throne.

I started to speak of Mont-Bré, but he raised his hand to stop me. “I have all I need from Sharma on that matter,” he said. “The situation is in hand.”

“We really need to discuss what, if anything, we should do about Van Dyke. Whatever his connection –”

“It is in hand,” he interrupted. “Van Dyke is in custody. I need your attention on other matters.”

I was flabbergasted. “In custody how? And what other matters?”

“When the Sigsbee is repaired I need her to perform a salvage and recovery mission. Campbell seems to trust you, and you have a particular insight into the thing I want recovered.”

“And … what is that thing?” I asked, fearing to hear the answer.

“You know very well. The object you saw falling from the ship in the storm. My pendant.”

“Robards!” I stammered, “I hardly know where to begin! The vortex storms have not abated! That thing is on the bottom of the Channel, hundreds of feet deep! And when last we spoke of it, you said that when you lost it it was as if a weight was being lifted from your shoulders! Why the deuce would you even want to go back for it now?”

“As to the last, that is my affair. The depth is a concern, but the Society has some expertise in underwater exploration. They have equipment that will serve.”

“I have not seen them coming to pay their respects,” I said, “Even if they have such equipment at the College I hardly think they will hand it over.”

“I can be very convincing,” he replied. I searched his face for a hint of smugness, since that is just the sort of thing the Robards of old would have said with an grin, plying his boyish charm. But this Robards hadn’t an ounce of humor in him. He simply meant what he said. “As to the storms,” he continued, “We will simply have to risk it.”

“Listen to me, my friend,” I said. He stiffened a bit at my use of the word “friend.” “Please trust me when I say you must not do this. Whatever lies beneath those waves,” – I shuddered in spite of myself – “Leave it well enough alone.”

“You have your orders,” he said coldly. Then he fixed his gaze on me. And I sensed what he was attempting, bringing his Ability to bear on me. I could feel the weight that Sharma described, but only as an abstract concept; it did not sway me. But in a sudden (and rare) moment of devious insight, I feigned acquiescence.

“As you wish,” I said, bowing my head.

He nodded, satisfied. “I may need you at the College when we get the equipment. You will be sent for.”

Then, as if by hidden signal, the doors to the hall opened and his functionaries streamed in. The interview was over.

I have taken the liberty of relating that entire conversation in detail, given its importance. It should be clear that I had no opportunity to discern in what sense Robards may or may not be a “turncoat.” But I am beginning to wonder whether his previous associations and loyalties are in any way steering his current activities, or whether it all stems from his Ability in some way. He seems to feed off of the devotion that he is now able to engender in others almost effortlessly, creating a loop of ever-expanding influence. My intuition says that his desire to go after the ward is a personal obession and not part of some larger agenda. But of course I cannot be sure. And I need hardly tell you just what a very bad idea I think that would be. I still have nightmares about what I sensed beneath the waves.

But that fateful mission has not happened yet, so I hold out hope that it may yet be averted. In the days after the meeting with Robards I tried to discover where he was holding Van Dyke, and this proved far easier than I would have guessed. I was in the wine cellar one afternoon – in point of fact my work with the artifacts from Mont-Bré is more or less complete, but keeping it going in order to have access to the residence seems like a good idea at this point – when I saw a guard walking past the open doorway holding a tray. Peeking out into the hallway after him, I saw him unlock a door and deliver the tray, which was indeed bearing a modest evening meal, to the occupant of the room, then lock the door again behind him.

It could only be Van Dyke, I supposed, and here he was, my veritable neighbor, with only a wall and an empty wine rack between us! I stepped into the hallway, thinking to examine the locked door, but that is when I saw another guard stationed at the end of the hallway, very alert, and so I feigned another errand before returning to the cellar. Observation over the next couple days verified that he was being kept under very close watch. (For that matter, perhaps I was, as well.) So frustrating, to have him so close, and yet have no way to reach him.

Then I thought: all that lies between us is a wall.

Every other time my Ability has manifested, it has been outside my control, usually the result of adrenaline in the face of imminent danger. It had been some time since I had even tried to accomplish anything by will alone, but this seemed like as good a time as any to give it another go. On the theory that my conscious, active mind had not been of much help with this in the past, I helped myself one night to one of the bottles of wine still lingering in the cellar, drinking steadily until I felt fuzzy around the edges, as it were. Then I set my attention on the wall.

Let us sail past the hour or so of failed attempts, including the one where I bruised my forehead walking into the wine rack with considerable force because I was absolutely convinced that I was, at that moment, incorporeal. The time when it actually worked, it came as something of a surprise. It did not feel like it was going to be a successful attempt, for one thing, but also, the increased perception that had always accompanied my altered state in the past was not there. I experienced a momentary panic thinking that I had gone blind, but then I realized that I was inside the wall. Taking the next step forward was surprisingly difficult, and I shudder to think of my fate had I not been able to take it. But I did, and found myself in the bare room serving as Van Dyke’s prison. He sat on a cot, reading by the light of a single dim lantern. He only noticed me when I took another step forward.

You must forgive me if I do not render my conversation with Van Dyke in exacting detail. For one thing, it was rather long. But more to the point, I was drunk, and any specific dialogue I might relate would be more invention than recollection.

He was, of course, surprised to see me. At first I found it odd that he was merely surprised and not agape at my astounding entrance, but I gradually realized that, not having seen it directly, he simply assumed that I had come in quietly through the door and he had somehow missed the moment. We spoke quietly; it was understood that this was a surreptitious meeting, and that the reason for this was that something was amiss with Robards. Nonetheless, I made it clear that I was not there to give assurances, but to receive answers. And he gave them. I count it for little that he seemed completely sincere and forthright, for that is one of the skills of his profession. Who knows where the truth ends and the lies begin? With that caveat, here, in summary, is what he had to relate:

While the Society’s chief interests lie in scientific inquiry and the development of technology, there is a faction in their membership concerned with historical research; these are the ones who would throw a fit whenever Von Neumann or one of his protegés would utter the word “Ashkur” at an academic conference. But at the same time they apparently saw fit to insert one of their own spies as a student working under the old professor himself. Unbeknownst to us there was a very important dig in the Ruhr valley two years ago; the destruction of Essen in the Blood War had laid bare a heretofore unknown network of caverns beneath the city. Brown was the chief archaeologist on that expedition. That is where they unearthed what we now know as the “wards.”

Moving briefly to another track: you will recall that, after the Blood War, the Crown allowed the Society to share aero technology with New Columbia. This established connections between our scientists and their military; these connections have been maintained. Unlike the Crown, the New Columbians, perhaps insulated somewhat from the horrors of that war, seemed eager to utilize new discoveries in order to create better and more destructive weapons; in this they found willing partners in the Society, always eager to press the envelope no matter the consequences.

Apparently the discovery of the wards was a rather sensational affair, involving unexplained powers and dangerous creatures, the details of which Van Dyke either does not know or will not share. Word reached the Society via their mole, then reached the N.C. military via the Society, and they in turn reached out to Brown, who, in addition to studying under Von Neumann, had his own military connections, having served in one of those rare N.C. detachments in the Blood War. Whether it was the wards themselves, or some other information discovered there, something was valuable enough that they instructed Brown to abandon the expedition and return home, taking the wards with him. In doing so he undoubtedly had help from the Society spy who had posed as a student.

Now we reach an important period where Van Dyke avers complete ignorance; he describes himself as an “operations” man, valuable because he gets things done without asking too many questions. At any rate, for a long time work was done in New Columbia investigating the wards and whatever else they may have taken from under Essen; this work was a close collaboration between the N.C. military and the Society. The end point of that work was bringing the wards to Albion – Van Dyke’s personal involvement came in getting Brown and others in and out of the country undetected. He confirmed that one of those he helped Brown make contact with was Thompson/Throckmorton. He also acknowledged that “Rexley” was much in discussion among them, though he could provide no additional information about it.

This would have been a scant ten days before the Incident, which of course threw everything into chaos. And while no one at the Society had anticipated anything like it, they grew increasingly concerned that they did not have all the information, and that the Incident was indeed anticipated by, and perhaps even welcomed by, our dear departed Dr. Brown.

Sending Van Dyke along to Mont-Bré, then, was not just your typical nosy Society behavior. He had specific instructions to aggressively neutralize any threat, especially anything related to the wards, or to triggering ancient mechanisms or invoking ancient rituals. He recognized Brown, and, hearing what he had to say about “activating” the Obelisk, decided to follow his orders to the letter.

I wish I had more to report, but after having discussed that much, we heard noises in the hallway. The guards apparently checked on Van Dyke at regular intervals, even through the night. The next moment we heard the sound of a key turning; the suddenness of the danger perhaps worked to my advantage, since when I dived headlong for the wall, hoping for the best, I did indeed pass right through it and back into the wine cellar. I only wish I had thought to glance back and catch the expression on Van Dyke’s face as I did so.

It is at least somewhat gratifying to learn (if it is true, of course), that the Society has realized it made a bad partnership and now seeks to undo damage it may have been complicit in causing. But as Van Dyke was quick to point out, said Society is no more than a collection of individuals, many of whom were lost in the Incident, with the remainder desperately trying to piece things together and stay in contact just as we are.

It seems clear that Brown was some sort of apocalyptic madman. Maybe something he saw at the Essen dig drove him to insanity. But rather importantly: was he the only apocalyptic madman, or are there others still intent on carrying out his plans? You are, at this very moment, in the company of both a New Columbian spy and a Society scientist – what, if anything, is their connection to each other? Thompson’s relationship to all of this is undeniable; Bennington’s is less clear. I wonder too whether her research, these vials I still have, are part of this in any way, or are a separate affair.

Oh, and as to that, Van Dyke did confirm that Elizabeth College is far from being a backwater educational institution, and indeed hosts some of the Society’s most sensitive and secretive endeavors. Unfortunately he felt certain that somewhere on the campus could indeed be found the sort of underwater exploration gear that Robards was seeking.

I have not risked another walk through the wall in the days since. I am trying to decide just what I can do to dissuade or hinder Robards while overtly remaining in his good graces. I would ask your advice in all of this, my friend, but I fear your reply may reach me too late to do any good. Nonetheless, any insight you can give I will happily take, even if it arrives belatedly. Especially, I seek further clarification on what you have discovered about Campbell. He may be a “rogue from government,” but if he is a rogue from those New Columbians who may have set Brown on his path, that is a good thing to be. Or perhaps all of them who are involved themselves constitute an independent faction carrying out their own monstrous business, and Campbell is in on it. But I think of the orders that Thompson received, coming as they did from the N.C. High Command, and I fear the former is more likely the case.

I hasten to finish this while Alona stands waiting; she reported being harassed by Brothers of New Albion on the streets wanting to know her business. An ominous sign. I have instructed her that your reply is to be delivered only to me directly. Stay safe, my friend!

Warm Regards,

Crane

The Cairns, 19 October

Dear Crane,

The foray we completed this past week reached a zenith of success: the current experience at the Cairns is expected to confirm Rexley as a town that is the cold epicenter of a catastophe, like Innesmere. “A weapon that is now defunct,” Stratham opined regarding the Obelisk. “Is it?” I asked. “Quite dead, I can assure you,” he replied confidently—and loud was my satisfied sigh! A transformed evil, then, one that I was very glad to believe was behind us.

Thus, the mysteries of the desolate Cairns, if anything at all, are similarly false. I suppose one could be fooled by one or two features; however, zero evidence is apparent to my eyes that the Cairns ache from The Incident. They had already used the word “vanished” to describe the effects when we arrived. Bennington and I observed today that it was with great difficulty and with extreme, dutiful caution that MacTallan inventoried only sparse outcroppings—now that we are here, it seems useless.

Bennington rightly feels that we waste time. Like her, I am anxious; a keening sense of the weight of past scholarly ignorance twists my pride, yet makes my thoughts focus my addled mind, bending them toward tomorrow. MacTallan wishes to return; he supports Thorpe’s proposed idea that your fruitful sea voyage, in theory, will yield similar fruit for us. I give us three days more to decide: reasons such as the insistence Stratham continues to make regarding used, outdated equipment are only one piece of the puzzle.

Word has now widely spread of our expedition; for over three weeks now, people from parts unknown have sought us at Graysham. If the ominous Obelisk taught us anything, any cuts of fortune, expected going in, are never set in stone. Those of us who are the leaders take a straight percentage (myself holding the edge of majority there), and from what we hear, these simple folk are merely the instruments of greedy Bledsoe.

A comet of inspiration hit me from the blue: today’s clear sky, devoid of black clouds, coincides neatly and somewhat propitiously with the anniversary of our shift in plans, made hurriedly in those fateful days. The ancient doorway was destroyed; the Society blessed us with Bennington, before we received the secret flood of information about her. The decision was made. Our ward was Caledonia, come what may. But today we all hold a fresh hope for a welcome lack of any key findings here, and if Thorpe agrees, it means new plans to leave here—perhaps to follow your team south. Take heart especially, Crane, that it yet unites us, although away you may be.

If his face is changed, Thorpe’s body is hale, and it is obvious that he is changing only outwardly. His mind more acutely computes strategy, and Bennington agrees that his iron will is untouched. Thus, to assist him further, we have found him a new lieutenant. Evidence of bravery and a showing of recent leadership at camp led to Arasaku; a bell rang when I proffered a memory of a lost, rogue, but herocially rescued MacTallan. From there, Bennington recalled Arasaku’s government had once awarded him the high honor of Bushido. Captain Thorpe was thrilled; he waits for Arasaku’s expected return. No better lieutenant could be chosen, we conclusively thought.

The path forward, therefore, is clear, yet we tarry needlessly. While the days pass and the Cairns yield nothing, our supplies are rapidly dwindling during this maze of indecision. I think of Thorpe’s map, which depicted caverns here, but no sites that attracted attention. An interesting twist—MacTallan’s torn, pencilled maps and charts are superior, and will now be used to take us through this territory.

A proposal I made a fortnight ago to Thorpe (and to Bennington) was that we explore the coastline. Perhaps eagle-eyed Alona can make some helpful reports from the line of clouds, thinner along the sea. Heavier cloud cover still remains on our horizon, but no approach is evident, thankfully, that may indicate that we will have to move north. A rendezvous will take place tomorrow at Greysham, between Arasaku and another squad of recruits. They place their trust in Thorpe; I commend them.

My enduring trust goes with him too; Alona holds him in regard but does not know his will in full. You can use a different measure and code of conduct for Robards; for all immediate purposes, he now commands an island. That must mean something, after all. Stay in his good graces—patiently, you may ultimately find in his new power some secret advantage.

Wishing you farewell,

Rackham

[to see the hidden message embedded in the above letter, mouse over the text below]

WE REACHED THE CAIRNS – REXLEY IS A WEAPON – STRATHAM IS DEAD – HE WAS TRANSFORMED – I BELIEVE THE CAIRNS ARE “110” – MY ACHE HAD VANISHED WHEN I WAS WITH MACTALLAN NOW IT FEELS LIKE A WEIGHT TWISTS MY MIND – MACTALLAN SUPPORTS YOUR THEORY FOR THREE REASONS – STRATHAM USED ONE WORD OF THREE PARTS AT OBELISK – CUTS IN STONE ARE STRAIGHT EDGE FROM SIMPLE INSTRUMENTS – COMET FROM SKY COINCIDES WITH SHIFT IN ANCIENT SOCIETY BEFORE FLOOD – THE WARD MAY HOLD A KEY – THORPE PLANS TO TAKE IT AWAY – HIS BODY IS CHANGING MORE – BENNINGTON WILL ASSIST – FOUND EVIDENCE SHOWING CAMPBELL A ROGUE FROM GOVERNMENT THE CAPTAIN WAITS – NO CHOSEN PATH YET – THE CAIRNS ARE MAZE OF CAVERNS THAT TWIST AND WILL TAKE A FORTNIGHT TO EXPLORE – ALONA REPORTS CLOUDS HEAVIER ON APPROACH – MAY HAVE RENDEZVOUS AT ANOTHER PLACE – I TRUST ALONA BUT WILL USE CODE FOR NOW – MUST STAY PATIENTLY IN SECRET

Stockport, 13 October

My Dear Rackham,

It has been good to engage in simple old-fashioned archaeological investigation for a few days. There was some of that at Mont-Bré after the action, of course, but at the time we were constantly on the lookout for unexpected arrivals, wary of Van Dyke, traumatized by what we had endured, and mostly concerned with gathering what we could and getting out of there. Now I work on a series of long tables set up in a musty wine cellar devoid of wine, sifting through all the fragments and detritus we were able to carry out with us. My work has been free from significant interruption, and your letter has, in most timely fashion, provided an additional piece to the puzzle.

First let me say I was overly pessimisstic in my earlier assessment of how much evidence had survived the explosion. With some careful and tedious work I have been able to reconstruct a few pages of Brown’s notes, and many more ur-Samekh runes from the shards of the Obelisk than I would have thought possible. Analysis of these led me to scribble “Von Neumann cxn??” in the margin of my notebook, so you can imagine my sense of delight and vindication when I read that name coming from you.

I was never a student of Von Neumann’s, as you know, but even my curiosity concerning his theories of ur-Samekh and Ashkur was enough to embroil me in a huge scholarly debate. Your work has kept you in proximity to that sort of thing, but since your mind is usually on the business side, perhaps you do not appreciate the full extent of it. I will attempt a summary, since, as is becoming increasingly clear, what I once would have taken as nothing more than an academic curiosity now may prove to be a critical question for the fate of humanity.

So then: Ashkur. Center of an ancient, and yet somehow incredibly advanced, civilization. A sort of near-Eastern counterpart to Atlantis. But whereas those who argue for the existence of Atlantis need only posit that some limited cataclysm caused it to sink beneath the sea, conveniently removing it from view, proponents of Ashkur can only explain the lack of archaeological evidence of its existence by recourse to the Deluge. Whether one interprets it as a Flood in the biblical sense or some other world-spanning event, something must have wiped the proverbial slate clean.

Von Neumann came to believe in Ashkur from the linguistic side of things. Even before he was aware of physical artifacts bearing ur-Samekh runes, he believed that there must be a root language, and that the civilization bearing that language was a sophisticated one. So convinced was he of this that he was willing say “Occam’s Razor be damned” and put forth a far-fetched antediluvian hypothesis to explain why no one could find physical evidence of Ashkur. Our own work investigating ancient sites played into all of this, of course. Von Neumann and his devotees took our findings as evidence supporting their own ideas. You know that I most often ran afoul of the Society by criticizing their, shall we say, ethical corner-cutting – but just as scandalous (to them) was the fact that I refused to denounce and/or distance myself from the “Ashkur nonsense.”

I have a new theory. Lacking the time, resources, or linguistic acumen to even attempt to prove it, though, let us call it a “working assumption.” There is a certain circularity to our current understanding of ur-Samekh. To wit: Language tells us there must be an ancient advanced civilization, but we can find no evidence of Ashkur, therefore it must have all been wiped out. Since it has all been wiped out, these strange runes we find at ancient sites must be from a language derived from Ashkur, not from Ashkur itself. But while this has been perfectly plausible from a linguistic standpoint, the dating of it all has never quite sat right with me. Granted, I am working here with evidence in the aftermath of a literal explosion, but nevertheless, it seems clear to me that the Mont-Bré Obelisk was impossibly, incredibly ancient. What if ur-Samekh is not derived from Ashkur, but in fact is itself the language, or at least a language, of Ashkur? What if these Obelisks come from a time before recorded history, and a civilization out of legend?

They have in some cases been literally interred, possibly rising from the ground, as you note, only in response to some meterological event, which would help to explain why nothing had been found until recently. And if we assume that the devastation in the Pandjaran and Coptic Colonies is in fact related to all of this, well, that would correspond to the supposed reach of Ashkur’s empire at its height.

I would say that all this sounds fantastical and improbable, but given all that we have seen and experienced in recent months, the mere fact that something seems unlikely in “normal” life hardly seems like a reason to discount it. I am including some notes of a more technical nature, especially concerning the dating of the Obelisk. I would be gratified if you would share them with MacTallan. If he agrees with me perhaps there is something to it; else you may safely discount the preceding paragraphs as the ravings of a man who has endured a little too much these past weeks, and is perhaps going a little bit mad.

Whatever we make of the past, it would seem that we have more than enough to contend with in the present. I, at least, need not worry that a lizard-man is reading my incoming mail. But I have much to unravel between Robards, Van Dyke, and Campbell, and that work is ongoing.

My first encounter with Robards since returning was a peculiar one. I expected him to want to see me right away, but it was three days before he sent for me. An aide escorted me to the governor’s residence, where the captain had converted a banquet hall into a sort of office-cum-audience-chamber. I expected that we would meet privately, but he wanted to hear my report right there, amid numerous members of his company and quite a few additional functionaries that I did not recognize – they must have been recent hires from among the local population of Garnsey. (Or perhaps members of the governor’s own staff, though I never saw the governor himself anywhere.) As a result I delivered a somewhat abbreviated and rather more circumspect version of events, with hints that there was More to the Story that I hoped would cause him to ask for a private meeting. But he thanked me for my report and dismissed me. On the way out, I could not help but notice that everyone around seemed very busy – but doing what exactly? I would have thought they were cooling their heels, waiting for repairs to the Sigsbee, and that my mission to Gallia would have been the very center of attention. Instead, I was practically ignored.

I was able to find out a little more in the following days, largely by making the rounds in my capacity as expedition’s physician, checking up on soldiers still recovering from injuries over the past months. They were, to a man, bursting with pride that their captain had seen fit to extend the umbrella of his benign wisdom and leadership to the people of Garnsey. And indeed, the general populace appear to look up to him as well. For no good reason, he seems to be taking on the administrative duties of governing this island!

Whether he is wielding it consciously or not, I suspect his Ability in all this. His charisma is literally supernatural, and he seems to be deriving deep satisfaction from the devotion of others. One the one hand, this has left me free to continue my research unhindered. On the other hand, it is a little disconcerting to watch those around me fall increasingly under his spell. My meals and leisure time are now spent with Jacobs and Sharma, who, despite having almost nothing in common with me, remain immune to Robards’ charms – perhaps as a result of our extended absence. Make no mistake, they remain loyal to him. But when the bawdy songs sung in taverns or at the mess hall were replaced by rambling, multi-versed odes to their commanding officer, they found it difficult to share in the general level of enthusiasm.

Robards did set up me up with this wine cellar below the residence to do my work, but since then I have not seen him. I also have nothing to update when it comes to Van Dyke. When Bertram let us off at the pier, he wasted no time in disappearing into the mist. If I ever do get an opportunity to make a proper report to Robards, I will leave it up to him whether to seek out the spy and take further action – although now, hearing from you that Thorpe considers him a “turncoat” makes me wonder whether I should say anything at all. At any rate, I have often gazed at the college on the hill and wondered what Sanders and Van Dyke have going on up there. All I know for sure is that they have kept to themselves and, as a result, presumably are not under the captain’s sway. I still have the vials we took out of Bennington’s lab there, but have not had time to properly analyze them – just one more thing I have yet to do but have not done yet.

My work investigating all the Mont-Bré evidence did yield one interesting tidbit possibly related to the Society. I discovered some encoded messages in the innocuous-seeming documents we took from the encampment at the chapel. It turned out only to be a schedule for delivery of additional supplies – but among those supplies they were due to receive was an aero beacon. This is significant because if we assume Brown was operating on his own, I cannot imagine how he would get his hands on one. But with military connections, or a Society connection, it becomes much more plausible.

This brings me at last to the one decent bit of legwork I have accomplished since I last wrote. Yesterday I went to the grotto to pay a visit to Campbell and the other New Columbians on the Sigsbee. By his orders, reportedly, they remained near their ship and did not get out into the populace much, if at all. Not knowing whether he was in on whatever N.C./Society conspiracy we may have going on around us, I thought it best not to go alone; Jacobs came along, eager for a change of scenery, as did Alia, recently-arrived, and herself eager to check in with her sister-in-flight, Alona.

Campbell was at his wit’s end. Apparently, ever since Robards set himself up in the governor’s house (and helped himself to most of the man’s responsibilities as well), he has lost all interest in helping the New Columbians with their ship. The Sigsbee is very nearly seaworthy again, but final repairs had been held up for days waiting for a delivery of supplies from Stockport. We spoke at length and he implored me to intercede on his behalf. All the while I was examining his behavior, looking for a sign of some hidden agenda. He seemed for all the world like an exasperated officer just trying to get his ship going again – though it’s not at all clear where he would take it even it could go anywhere.

While we spoke, Alia and Alona had their own conversation. (Jacobs in the meanwhile arm-wrestled with members of the Sigsbee’s crew. Or perhaps it was a head-butting competition? At any rate, he won.) These flyers that we rely on – they are an enigmatic bunch. I remember when we lost the Skylads, and there was talk of how females might be better-suited, physiologically speaking, to the task of piloting aeros. It all seemed very sensible. But I am beginning to suspect that they learned a good deal more in their training program than just how to fly. Of necessity the Society had a hand in that program, but the flyers do not seem to be loyal to anyone but themselves. Alona is technically a member of the crew of the Sigsbee, but while most of that crew has been confined to the grotto, Alona has been plenty busy making deliveries and performing scouting operations.

We emerged from the grotto safe and sound. On the way back to town, Alia informed me that Alona would be making the next run to Greysham, and if I wanted a letter to be sent along I should give it to her. I must have betrayed my concern with an expression on my face, and indeed, I did start to say something, but then she gave me The Look. No doubt you are familiar with it. No words accompanied it, but what I understood it to mean was something to the effect of: “You don’t know if you can trust Alona, but you have put your trust in me, and I say you must also trust her, and this is my way of demonstrating it. You could object, but that would make our ensuing conversation a tedious one, so think carefully before you speak.”

So this letter is hopefully reaching you via Alona, who, in answer to your question, may well have been running missions for the Society, or someone else entirely, but if you object to her, you will have to take it up with Alia.

I read your account of the spiraling patterns in the forest with great interest, but have no insight to add at this point. Whether the Cairns will have brought you new revelations, or betrayal, or both, I am eager to hear.

Warm Regards,

Crane

The Cairns, 8 October

Dear Crane,

I am quite glad, at least for this chance, not to have to write in code for this letter; the reasons why will become apparent as I continue on. I expect I may have to revert to the Martineau cipher at some time, but I can do so now in the knowledge that you remember it from our days at Everwood, and it will allow us to continue communicating in any case.

I have appreciated the descriptions of your compatriots that made the landing with you into Gallian territory, not the least of them Van Dyke, who seems to have played a vital role at several points. At first, reading your description of events, the thought played in my mind that perhaps things went too easily, too smoothly for Van Dyke; and then learning of a connection between your spymaster and that strange Dr Brown made several pieces of suspicion and partial understandings come together, in a sense.

Perhaps I ought to provide a thumbnail-sketch, as artists might say, of my erudite traveling companion these last six days, and then my drift may become more apparent in your mind. I will also say that I now have a better view of the man myself, and I have learned that although reading a person’s research certainly provides one with a tone and tenor of an academic voice, that is but one aspect of many.

If after reading those journal articles I had sent you years ago, you thought (as I did) that Dr Hugh MacTallan was a wizened, dusty librarian type, a desk replete with forgotten, yellowed notes and bits of torn maps from archaeological digs, then you would have been in error as much as I confess I was. Hugh (as he has asked me to address him) is younger than I am by five years and considerably less portly around the belly; his young eyes leap from his face, and behind an unkempt beard he has rather an unshakeable grin. If he is scarred from his losses, he does not show it, and I daresay that he has found new energy in continuing his work. His curiosity is infectious.

The Incident claimed his young wife and his child, as well as his sister, the only survivor from their family. Over a wet campfire one evening MacTallan became emotional recalling the scene of how he found his wife and child, and I bade him recount the horror no more, and I most certainly did not have the heart to scan his memories for additional information that would have only taken my soul, too. His sister Penelope—or Penny as the family called her—had been a teacher at The Waterford School in Innesmere, I am also sad to say, and must have seen first-hand the horrors of the changes brought on by the Incident. I shuddered as my mind swept back to the detritus and carnage we found, and I could say nothing of it to him.

For this reason and others, MacTallan vowed to pursue his research, lucky enough to find refuge at Greysham after the Incident, even if he was without any source materials from which to draw his conclusions. He has made many forays into the countryside, straying as far as his energy and bartered supplies would allow him, until our group found him that fateful day last month. Now he intends to lead us to the sites that have become “active” in the last eighteen months, with the purpose that the information we learn, as well as what is compiled by your team, can shed light on the causes of the Incident—and perhaps onto its cures, if a hope like this can be had.

Since having been made a research fellow at Thornskye three years ago, MacTallan might well be the best authority on the events surrounding the Incident among our group—perhaps moreso even than Stratham, with whom we are both eager to rendezvous tomorrow at the Cairns. MacTallan believes that a meteorological event was the cause of the Incident, but only inasmuch as it had been foretold by ancient peoples long ago, and “energized” powerful objects that have been interred for millennia, undiscovered by man. According to him, the Obelisks at the Caledonian loch and at Mont-Bré, and what we may find at the Cairns, are examples of this, and there may yet be others that have become “activated.”

Since Greysham he has taken me fully into his confidence, sharing with me everything relevant to both our mission and expeditions that have gone before. As you read in the last paragraph, I have accordingly shared with him news of your expedition as well as what I could remember from the last three months of our experiences here. Significantly but not altogether surprisingly, MacTallan and Brown were students together, having studied under the prestigious Von Neumann at the Extern-Universität in Tyrolia. It is from Von Neumann that both Brown and MacTallan got the idea that the variant of symbols that we know as Ur-Samekh descended from the same language branch as the speakers of the antediluvian city of Ashkur.

Crane, I did not inform MacTallan of the harrowing account regarding the re-animation of the dead Brown and his companions at what I can only surmise was the “activation” of the Mont-Bré Obelisk, nor did I mention your Ability. MacTallan has seen enough devastation in the recent months, and since I did not know if he still felt friendship or colleagueship to Brown, I dared not mention either his death—or his short but disturbing unlife. However, quite casually, MacTallan volunteered information about the existence of a certain number of “ancient amulets” that were said to be magical wards—this was the “ward” I had referred to in my coded message. From what you described in your previous letters, I can only conclude that Brown had one, and Robards had one but lost his; and I now believe that Thompson wears one.

I make a couple of short notes still before I stuff this letter into the false medical box that Alia intends to include among the other supplies on her aero tomorrow evening. Thank the heavens above for good Alia, and know that while you counseled right in recommending discretion before confronting the spy, it may turn out to our advantage, at least in the short-term, to have the spy in our midst whilst feigning ignorance. MacTallan and I will make it back tomorrow afternoon for our rendezvous with the main part of the group on the periphery of the Cairns locale; the reason we had been able to gain leave to do so was because of Thorpe’s intervention.

On the morning of our departure, Thorpe asked to speak to me privately; I will relay the conversation in my hotel chamber with as much detail as I can muster. “Rackham, we have private matters to discuss,” our captain began, taking me rather by surprise, as I packed up the last of my clothing. I looked at him and marked his changes: he now has a very reptilian-looking head, having lost all his hair now, with colored scales in swirling patterns beginning to descend across his face and down his neck. “We have a spy among us.”

“The New Columbian,” I said, boldly, after a pause. Thorpe seemed surprised at first, but his expression—still apparent even with the changes to his skin and eyes—told me that his military training favored a matter-of-fact approach rather than one that signaled the failure of forethought. “Yes, Thompson. I was the one that selected him. I knew he was an NC man since the passage.” We allowed that sentence to hang in the air some long minutes before I spoke again.

“What about Robards?” I asked, clumsily, despite myself. Thorpe was calm, deliberate. “I don’t know what you have heard from your scientist friend from the other team,” Thorpe seemed to hiss, “but I shouldn’t worry about him. Even turncoats have to be employed somehow.” This word stuck in my mind; Thorpe’s intonation cast an icy chill, and I found myself lost in confusion for a moment, trying to unravel the meaning behind it.

“I suspect New Columbia and the Society are in on something together, and it has to do with these stones.” I nodded, desperately hoping Thorpe would reveal details that I did not need to scan his memory for later, as I did not know if I could endure another crushing migraine. “What has that to do with us, then?” This was my best attempt at probing delicately for more information—anything, I thought, that I could tell you.

“I don’t quite know yet, but I trust my men,” Thorpe replied, head bowed. He had not replied with the direction that I had expected, and if he had sensed the reason motivating my question before, he did not let on. “I know many of those lads served under you,” I began, appealing to his sense of leadership. “But we can’t have both the New Columbians and the Society having their claws into us—they’ll rip us apart. We’ve already taken losses these last three months.”

At this I was tempted to mention the considerable money I had fronted in order to fund our undertaking, but I thought better of it: it would only distract Thorpe momentarily onto a topic that he cared little about anyway, and may have inserted yet another untoward motivation underlying our efforts—in error, I might add, but to Thorpe might have been indistinguishable at that moment.

“I think I know where we can find more volunteers for this expedition,” Thorpe replied, and it was then that I recognized his true reason for speaking to me in private. “I will need your loyalty and agreement that after the Cairns we make…some personnel changes.” His flashing eyes fixed on me, scanning me for my reaction. I raised my eyes, not in protest, so much as alarm. “Murder?”

Thorpe shook his head. “Not if we can help it,” he replied, but something in my gut twisted. My sense of calm and caution kicked in, if only for a desperate moment. “I did not fund a mission of killers, Thorpe.” I knew that even then, whatever warning I was to give was one that he had already considered and was well past the point of indecision on the matter.

“Go with MacTallan back to the woods he keeps talking about, just you and him.” Thorpe’s voice was low now and he paced a little as I sat on the bed and watched him. “You’ve told me he has done research out there, the lines he has found among the trees. Then take the next few days to find out more about him. When you come back, if you say he is on our side—then he stays.”

I nodded, mute, but fully understanding my charge. “And Rackham—if you can, look into his mind.” At this, I stood up. “How?” was my only word. “You’re not the only one who has read your letters to Crane.”

I am not a fighting man, and I knew enough that if I were to attempt to inflict any kind of harm on a man as robust as our captain, it would be mere seconds before he would have me on the floor in pain. Yet he could sense my rising ire: and in recognition of this fact, he said simply, “He passed me your copies of the letters after reading them himself.” As a clarification, Thorpe offered, “Thompson thinks I am on his side—and I need to keep it that way for now.”

Thorpe then assured me that my copies had not disappeared, but he could not return them to me without some suspicion being raised: at this I consented, finally, more stung with all of this intrigue than truly outraged at the loss of my personal property, even if temporarily. Thorpe also offered another idea that I was glad to see you catch onto: a false letter will be sent with Alia, openly, with this letter being smuggled, for lack of a better term.

The last six days, then, have been an adventure that I did not expect to take. In order to accelerate your understanding of what MacTallan has found, I offer two maps on the backs of each of these pages: they outline—crudely, forgive me—what are unmistakable interlocking spirals created by dead and rotting wood, within an area of five square miles, centering roughly a mile and a half due west from Greysham. At points the dead curving pathways cut right through whole trees, turning them into piles of splinters in a five- to seven-foot swath. On the ground the plant cover seems blackened and aged, and the line of the sickly plants marches perfectly in line with the dead trees and missing branches high overhead. Complimenting these lines of dead greenery are more scorches, much like the ones we saw on the road toward Innesmere and other places; but these are also deep gouges like scoring, not unlike what we saw at the Ravine but in smaller scale. The deep scorch marks are more random, haphazard, and linear, and they do not seem to match in pattern the concentric spirals.

It took us five days to map it all out and to find the extreme edges; we took a supply of food and my canvas tent, and I am glad to say that one the last day not only did we find the rendezvous point in short order, but we also had some time to rest—thus I thought it best to take that opportunity to write down all that I have learned this last week.

I can say that any suspicion I may have had of MacTallan is gone, and I see him as an important ally to our expedition. He is eager to speak to Stratham tomorrow, especially based on what I told him of Stratham’s dramatic act at the Obelisk at the loch, but also because both MacTallan and I are of the opinion that the design of the spiral patterns are very close to rubbings that Stratham made of the stones near the Obelisk and at other locations. Perhaps they have meaning beyond decoration.

If you are reading this letter, it means that Alia has made another successful air voyage, and without her, Crane, I do not know how we would survive. One question that leaps to mind as I close this letter with my fondest wishes to you concerns Alona, who I had met at least once after we escaped the Obelisk. Is she still running aero missions for us, or have the Society at Elizabeth College set her to other purposes?

At any rate, Crane, I wish you well, and if my next missive is coded then you will know that I have taken up the ruse of ignorance of our New Columbian friend again; in that case, look for the keywords only you and I know.

Toward truer revelations,

Rackham