Strandpiel, Book Two

by A.A. Pessimal

The continuation of the saga of interlocking families and friends, spread across at least two continents.

20. The Chirm Project

Strandpiel Book Two

Chapter Twenty

The Chirm Project

Every so often this will overlap The Price of Flight where the events of that story will be revisited, but from a different direction.

As always, correction is necessary. This is V0.04. Revisions et c will inevitably follow. That problem is back: where the previous chapter got mixed with this and I had to edit. Aaargh! I am sure that will be back.

A continuing family saga charting the interlinked lives of family and friends on at least two continents, with a cast of characters both living and dead.

Frustration: I know what to write and how the episodes in this chapter will assemble, but work is getting in the way: I usually have an unbroken half-hour or so before setting out in the morning, when it inches forward, a couple of paragraphs at a time, but when I get home again the Muse is knackered, and just wants to put her feet up with a drink and a smoke. I really need an unbroken day! (See outline notes for continuation at the end – I'll leave these here as an example of how my thought processes work). Damn – it's growing. Lots of exposition but I hope it still makes a readable tale.

Lots of words, nowhere near the planned end and I'm wondering about splitting it up into two smaller chapters. Am I overdetailing it again? You decide.

At the moment I'm not sure whether to put this long author note as the foreword or into the Notes Dump, but bear with me.

August 2021: Discworld Geography intrudes again. Resolving the under-developed idea of Chirm, a region which is there but which is underdeveloped in the canonical books. Not even the Compleat Discworld Atlas devotes more than a few lines to it.

This all goes back to the original conception of the Discworld, as a straightforward hazily-realised fantasy world, where TP himself probably didn't expect it to be much more than a one-or-two book parody of fantasy fiction of all sorts. He actually said himself "This book has no map. If this sort of thing bothers you, feel free to go out and draw one of your own" as a barbed shot at fantasy authors who draw the map first and then construct a not-very-good story afterwards.

Then, of course, people went out and did. Draw the actual map. And this says something for the books suddenly getting popular and an underlying shift happening – from the straightforward fantasy countries and regions which were only ever intended, originally, to be one-line cameos, joke names and parodies. Rehigreed, the Wyrmberg, Chimeria, Hergen, Pseudopolis, Chirm…

The concept of the Discworld changed and to help the parody work, Fantasy Counterpart Countries emerged, Up to Eleven takes on real places on Roundworld. Fourecks, Djelibeybi; Agatea becoming a portmanteau Far East (China, Japan, with fringe bits corresponding to Thailand and Korea). This expanded. It is a rare European country that does not have its mirror-world image on the Disc.

But the problem of what to do with the original concept and its named "pure fantasy" regions remained. Some bits, like Chirm, were never really resolved: the first Discworld books used "Chirm" and "Quirm" interchangeably. Later books establish that Quirm is the Discworld's France, to the Turnwise of Ankh-Morpork, and develop this a little as a portmanteau Francophonic sort of place.

Chirm, however, is a lingering survival from "The Colour of Magic" and "The Light Fantastic", a hangover from the very early days, frozen in an eternal 1983-86 by our time. (1) It's undeveloped real estate, basically. In every sense.

Geographically, Ankh-Morpork and its surrounding Shires are the Discworld's England. Unlike our world, there is no sea dividing England from Europe. The North Sea, Celtic Sea and Atlantic do not exist and the "British Isles" are integral to the larger landmass. (If only, on this world). The Chalk and Lancre could be taken to be an extension of Ankh-Morpork – definitely not politically, but in terms of language, culture, outlook and customs.

As you might expect in "Europe", everything else relative to "England" appears to slot into position where – viewed from England – you'd expect to find it. The Discworld, probably inescapably and inexorably, is Anglocentric.

What you might expect to see, with no intervening sea, is "Morporkian" (English) shading through dialects and variant forms into the full-blown languages of England's continental neighbours. This does actually happen on our world; the English dialects spoken in East Anglia have a marked affinity with Dutch, Flemish and Frisian, the languages spoken in the nearest continental landfall which has long associations with Eastern England. Widdershins of Ankh-Morpork are the Sto States, which as time passed developed a Benelux association.

The Chirm Country is where, if there were no North Sea on our world and it were just a continuation of Europe locking Britain into a greater landmass, the "English" speaking peoples would gradually shade into the "Dutch" speaking peoples. What sort of languages and dialects would have emerged there is an interesting thing to ponder – sort of "Frisian"-ish, not fully English, not fully Dutch or Flemish.

Turnwise and Hubwards of the Ankh-Morporkian cultural and language sphere, you get the Celtic world – canonically Llamedos, which gets a more "Gaelic" rather than Welsh continuum as it shades into Hergen (possibly Ireland). And due Turnwise and a little Rimwards is Quirm (France).

The Sto States, the Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland of the Discworld, are landlocked. To their Hubwards is the region of Chirm, sparsely populated, a wilderness, with Chirm City being a failing impoverished port. This is canonical. But this opens up questions. I'm hoping to answer them in this tale.

Also, a few random glimpses of other people.

Wednesday, early morning, over the Chirm Country.

Today, Chirm is an empty wilderness. It is also an enigma to those who don't know its history. Naturally a Hubwards extension of the Sto States, and in area almost as big as all three Stos combined, almost nobody lives here.

Chirm City, on the coast of the Circle Sea, is still a port, just about. These days it hosts a residual fishing trade and small inshore vessels plying the coastal routes, largely to Ankh-Morpork and Quirm. Anyone visiting will sense a faded greatness, long gone better days, in a city which today is not even shabby genteel. Just shabby. The visitor might wonder about the massive sweep of the quaysides along the bay, the furthest reaches falling into disrepair and ruin, with only a small fraction of what was once a much bigger dock still actually in use. The visitor will see there are many grand old buildings, crumbling into disrepair, in a town with no obvious reason for them, and will witness derelict crumbling old warehouses at the sides of the empty ghost docks.

An observer from the air might see a city that has receded, with its more outlying suburbs now empty, derelict, or ruined, with human life having retreated to the centre and to the outlying side closest to Ankh-Morpork. From the air, the observer will see a road, possibly Latatian in its origin or even earlier, which leads out of Chirm and begins a hundred and fifty mile bumpy trek to the bigger city. Sometimes, a necessarily well-guarded caravan leaves on this road, but this is rare these days.

That aerial observer, looking down over the forlorn harbour, might be able to infer the reason for Chirm's decline as a port city and the flight of its population. Looking down, as Rebecka Smith-Rhodes and Gertrude Schilling will shortly do, the observer would see a healthy-looking grey-blue channel across the bay, meandering lazily to the depressingly small part of the dockside still in use. Everywhere else, that healthy blue-grey of a navigable channel shades into a sludgy khaki-olive-deep brown, as if all the colours in the paintbox have been mixed in together. Invisible from the ground, this, as Gertrude will point out to Rebecka, is the graphic evidence of a great port that silted up and became inaccessible to big ships.

However, some ships are active today, on the Chirm waterfront, moving slowly and with purpose. These are ships which are not registered to Chirm. Chirm's maritime trade is too poor to afford the powerful new Steam Ships, for one thing.

Quite a long way inland, a single two-seater broomstick flew over the Chirm hills, alternately grassy, or else patched with heather, gorse and thorn. Periodically there was a clump of straggling wind-blasted trees. In the higher places there wasn't even grass: bare outcrops or crags of exposed stark stone. The co-pilot on the back seat remembered Morporkian Literature lessons, in her long-ago schooldays – actually only three years previously, but she had done so much since leaving that it felt like something that had happened to a complete stranger who shared her name. She recalled a play by Hwel the Dwarf. Something about a king who had got a bit leery. Had to spend a night on a blasted heath somewhere, with only a Fool or a Jester for company.(2)

Bekki looked down on miles upon miles of Blasted Heath, and shivered. She thought about the Jester she knew best, Alison Grosse back in Lancre, and reckoned she could probably put up with blasted heathland for a night, with Alison for company.

"I want to go lower, just for a while?" Gertrude asked. "There's a reason for it."

"Okay." Bekki responded. "Remember you're the pilot, you make the decisions, and you don't need to ask? I'm only here to step in if it goes wrong. Keep me informed, though. And Hanna wants you – wants us both - to use the right vocab."

Gertrude hesitated. Then said

"Descending by half-angel, Flight Commander. I will be going into a circular search pattern at half-angel. Over."

"Acknowledged, pilot. Over."

The grey-green of the hills drew closer. Bekki picked out the russet-brown of heather and thorn cladding the sheltered side of the hilltops and decided this was not a good place to land.

"What are you looking for, exactly?" she asked, as Gertrude slowly, and with a little clumsiness, started steering the broom in a wide circling arc.

"It's around here somewhere, I think..." Gertrude replied. "It's best if I show you, then explain. Captain Romanoff and the command pilots want us to look for this sort of thing and monitor it when we see it. As this is your first time here and you're just being familiarised with the area, I get that Sergeant von Strafenburg wants you and the others just to focus on the flight training, for now. She'll get onto it on your next visit. Prioritising, she said. She did say to me to keep a look out, and to explain to you, though. Errr. I guess she likes you. She did say you're a competent flyer. Err. In Hanna-speak, I'm guessing that means she thinks you're pretty good. Errr."

Gertrude made another slow, inexpert, turn.

They passed over the top of a bare hillside, and Bekki said "That looks like a…"

"Village. Yes. Or a place that was a village. Something you need to know about Chirm. Err…"

They circled, from five hundred feet. The regular squared-off shapes on the ground were obvious and visible. Paler lines in the grass and undergrowth suggested where streets might possibly have been. Here and there, a shifting shadow suggested a stump of a wall was catching the light. It was obvious nobody had lived here for a long time.

"What happened?" Bekki asked, feeling a need for whispered awe, as if she was attending a funeral.

"Nothing." Gertrude said. "Down there on the ground you'd see nothing, by the way. Maybe things that might once have been walls, stumps and things, bits of stone or brick, sticking up from a lot of grass. From up here, where a wall or a floor once was, the vegetation grows differently where it marks where the buildings were. That big one down there, for instance, might have been a church or a temple by the size and the shape."

Bekki took this in. She wondered how many people had once lived here. Two hundred? Three? What had happened here? She allowed Gertrude to do the talking.

"I've been here on the ground. With an Army patrol that came out to check. It's dangerous to land in places like this, by the way. You only land if you're in force. Deterrent. Errr. We log them when we find them. Then plot them on the map against records and map of old Chirm, when people lived here. To tick them off the list. Lord Vetinari wants us to do a survey. And other things."

"But what actually happened?" Bekki pressed. "And why "dangerous"? Do I need to have a fireball ready, or something?"

Gertrude hesitated.

"Well. Err. You're Howondalandian, aren't you? A Boer? Would it begin to make sense to you if I told you that five hundred years ago, this place was called Boomgaardensdop?"

Bekki got this.

"Fruit-trees town." she said, thoughtfully. "Orchardsville. Gertrude, you're saying the people who lived here were Kerrigian?"

"Yes. They were." Gertrude replied. "There are lots of villages and settlements like this in Chirm, a long time ago. They're named on very old maps, from when all this was part of Sto Kerrig. Technically, very technically, it still is." They carried on circling. Bekki realised it was more obvious now. The orderly layout of the streets, for instance. What looked, over there, like a canal that had been neglected, crumbled into ruin and dried up and filled up, a wide strip of lusher vegetation hinting at wetter ground underneath, which she'd taken for an overgrown straight road. The regularly spaced out squared ghost boxes alongside it, too small to be houses proper, that at one time might have been windmills, for pumping, drawing up water, grinding corn. The lush green regular line appeared to terminate in a wider, darker green, expanse that looked like a marsh or a bog.

All gone now, just a ghost town.

"It wasn't a war or a plague or anything like that." Gertrude said. "When we get to Chirm City, I'll explain more. Chirm used to be a deepwater port. Where the Sto States met the sea and the wider world. A lot of people emigrated from there. Colonies elsewhere in the world. To take a surplus population. Places like Sumtri. New Pork. Or NieuDamHamster, as it was then. And, err… "

Bekki realised. She looked down, feeling awe.

"Rimwards Howondaland." she said, understanding.

"Towns like this died." Gertrude said. "Families went. A lot of the younger single people went. Overseas. To places where they weren't tenants or serfs. Where they could own, not pay rent. The people left behind were just too few. To sustain it. At the same time… well, Chirm City ran into problems. I'll show you when we get there. Seen enough?"

Bekki acknowledged this. She remembered Mum had once said that while the Smith-Rhodes side of the family had a lot of History behind it, she doubted if you could trace the Kerrigian side of her family back very far. Mum had said she thought you could follow the van der Graafs and the van der Kaboutjies back for as long as they'd been in Howondaland, maybe even identify ancestors who'd arrived on the emigrant boats – and before that, nothing.

Bekki looked down on the nothing, and understood. She wondered if her ancestors on that side could be traced back to places like this. Dead empty ghosts of villages. She took off her flying helmet in a moment of silent homage, and said "Let's go."

On the resumed flight Rimwards, she asked Gertrude why landing wasn't advised.

"People retreated either to the coast or back to what today is Sto Kerrig." she said. "It didn't help the land was over-grazed and the forests were lost. No trees, too much grazing, over-farmed. Which wrecked the land. People gave up and moved back to the heartlands. What you have now is hill-farming, but only in the safe spaces near the city or to the accepted borders with the Stos. In between, you get bandit families. Half the time they're the same people as the last of the hill-farmers. The farmers who aren't bandits pay tribute. Protection money. Some of the bandits hide out in the ghost villages. That place looked deserted, but there could be people down there who would have gone to ground when they saw an Air Watch broom."

"So… the Army presence at the Forward Air Station isn't just there to help you with the building." Bekki said.

"To guard and protect." Gertrude said. "The bandits tried it. Once. They were seen off. Lieutenant Politek was there. She got everyone into the air and pointed out that nobody picks a fight with the Air Watch. She and Sergeant von Strafenburg tracked them back to their base, and counter-raided it. Sort of very emphatically. Then there were a lot of prisoners to be trucked off to the Chirm Bridewell, and after that to the Tanty."

"Ouch." Bekki said. She remembered something Mum had said. Apparently, there'd once been a bit of bother on a Wilderness Training expedition Mum and Godsmother Alice had led into Chirm. Bekki reckoned the bandits now avoided Assassins' School parties in the hills, too.

"Mr Vimes wants there to be law here. Lord Downey was concerned about the attack on the Assassins. Lord Vetinari wants this place to be brought under control. He doesn't want a lawless ungoverned area so close to Ankh-Morpork, you see. He's got plans for it. I'll show you more, when we get over Chirm."

18 Spa Lane, Nap Hill, Ankh-Morpork.

In the early pre-breakfast morning, Johanna Smith-Rhodes observed the things that were, in a manner of speaking, cooking in the kitchen. Her daughter Ruth, with Dorothea the cook watching over her, was very carefully removing the things which had been in the oven overnight, at a temperature she had calculated was just right for curing them.

"I see." Johanna said, as Ruth, with infinite care and oven mitts protecting her hands, lifted another of the things out of the oven and set it on the table to cool.

"It really needs a proper potter's kiln, mummy." Ruth said. "This modelling clay dries in the ordinary air over a few days, but I needed it to go harder still. So I did the working-out, and I got that overnight in an oven at the right temperature would bake it harder, but it's still not completely right for ceramics. And after I paint them, they'll need to be glazed."

"I see." Johanna repeated. Dressing-gowned and slippered in the pre-breakfast morning, she really was not at her best. She frowned. There were now five shapes on the table, free-standing, in diminishing order of size. Even though all were blank smooth shapes in uniform dull grey clay, she had the uneasy feeling they were somehow staring at her.

"Dorothea was really nice to me, mummy, when she said yes, I could." Ruth repeated.

"I saw no harm in it, madam." Dorothea said, diffidently. "Miss Ruth told me about the original dolls, the ones given to Miss Rebecka, and she showed me the iconographs."

Dorothea, a comfortably built black Howondalandian woman in her fifties, sighed wistfully.

"Eve got to see them. I envy her."

Johanna understood. The nesting dolls had captivated her too. Eve the maid had been awestruck. Ruth had asked the clever questions about how they were made.

"I wouldn't touch them yet, mummy. They're still hot."

Johanna realised her right hand had been unconsciously moving out. She withdrew her hand, and listened to Ruth explaining how she had shaped clay over oiled glass bottles of the right relative sizes, then allowed it to dry hard in the air so it could be eased off easily. The difficult bit had been crafting the join in the middle so each doll comes apart, but a little thinking and experimenting had solved that, Mummy. Then I discovered the clay hadn't set hard enough, and Dorothea was really nice and let me use the oven.

"Now I want to make sure they all fit inside each other and the insides of the dollies are really really smooth. Then I'm going to paint them."

Johanna reflected that Olga was coming over that afternoon. She was bringing Nadezhda Popova, a woman Johanna recognised and could say "hello" to if they met in the street, but not much more than that.

I'll ask them about these nesting dolls, she decided. Their culture. Their magic. Even a row of completely blank ones is exerting an effect.

"Let them cool off, sweetheart. While they're cooling you can go upstairs, night things off, get washed, clean teeth, brush hair, school clothes on. Time later, once they've cooled down."

Chirm City, on the Circle Sea Coast

Bekki and Gertrude were now flying over what looked, marginally, like more settled land. They could see flocks of sheep on the hills and even the occasional working farmstead, with signs of life. It didn't look prosperous, but at least people lived here, scratching some kind of living.

She was surprised to pass over one ridge of hills and look down on a substantial acreage of rich, verdant, green. This was unexpected. It had a planted sort of look about it, a regular area, suggesting human intervention.

"Acerian Pines." Gertrude said. "About six years old now. Part of the Chirm Project. Vetinari set up the Forestry Commission, as part of a long-term plan."

"Planting trees?" Bekki said, doubtfully. She had heard about tree-huggers. And possibly the last person in the world she'd have called a tree-hugging hippie would be Lord Vetinari.

"There's a logic to it." Gertrude said. "Cities need wood. People need wood. That's why the original woodlands here were lost. Uncontrolled lumbering. And people discovered that when trees vanish, everything else goes. The soil gets poorer, wildlife vanishes, and you can only fix the fence if you can afford to import wood from longer away. Planting new trees enriches the soil, it gives back, it binds soil to hillsides, and Acerian Pines grow quickly. Managed forestry, if it's done properly, gives Ankh-Morpork a source of wood from nearer to. The crucial thing is to replace every tree you chop down with two or three new ones. Ankh-Morpork is investing here for a lot of reasons."

Bekki thought.

"Like giving people from Chirm better things to do than being bandits?" she asked. "You can't jail them all."

"Carrots and sticks." Gertrude agreed. "We're part of the stick. This is the carrot."

They flew on, over the regreening of Chirm, seeing unmistakeable signs of new human activity, over more tree plantations. Signs of new roads, or at least established trails, engraining themselves into the earth. Substantial new buildings. Gertrude explained these were the infrastructure, large greenhouses for safely nurturing saplings before they were transplanted. Bigger sustainable tree plantations. Planted strategically, Gertrude said, where they would shelter and stabilise what would be new farmland, when the soil had time to recover.

"There's a lot of money being invested here." Gertrude explained, as they flew on. "Vetinari really does not want a lawless bandit country so close to Ankh-Morpork. He was talking about Chirm as it is being a neglected backwater, an anachronism in this modern age."

Bekki's Second Thoughts whispered to her.

"Did he use the phrase "no great rush" at any point?"

"He also said reforming a land which has taken at least six centuries of neglect to get into this unenviable state will not happen overnight, yes." Gertrude agreed.

"Ah." Bekki said.

"I get invited to planning meetings." Gertrude remarked. "Captain Romanoff usually lays on a Pegasus for me to get me there and back. I have to report on the status of the Forward Air Base and how work progresses. He's really keen for us to have the base out here for training and things. He says there is no harm in Ankh-Morpork flying the flag in the region and having a Presence. He also asks for Hanna to report back, privately, on the sort of training she delivers. Anyway, while I'm on the Chirm Committee, I get to hear an overview on what other people are up to. That's useful."

Unmistakeable signs of a city were appearing on the seaward horizon. Smoke rising, settling over the sky as it cooled and hit colder air, creating a layered haze. Beyond that, the shimmering grey of the Circle Sea under a weak February sun. Small dark dots on the water suggested ships and boats.

"We're over Chirm in about ten minutes." Gertrude said. "I can explain to you what's happening there. Vetinari is putting a lot of importance on that, for a few reasons."

They flew on.

The Street of Cunning Artificiers, Ankh-Morpork

Marianne de Menières and Sissi N'Kima arrived at the address where the Technical Conference was due to take place. Marianne understood this could not be on any property or location owned by the Ankh-Morporkian government. But she had gathered that Lord Vetinari was taking an interest and was favourable to her ideas, for reasons of his own. Sissi and La Comptesse Emmanuelle had both implied that his reasons were not all to do with offering covert support to Queen-Regent-Elect Ruth in the power struggle in the Zulu Empire. She wondered what the other reasons were. Chirm had been mentioned, bafflingly enough. She struggled to find a connection. A fading backwater port, once a mighty maritime centre and a rival to Ankh-Morpork… but that had been centuries ago.

She shrugged. Maybe she would find out, maybe not. Rien à chose. No matter.

The business was called Denny and Froude's, 3(3), Marine Architects. It was an unremarkable, plain, unadorned door that had the proprietors' names and business engraved on a brass plaque beside the door. Their names were followed by lots of letters. Marianne recognised some of the letters and realised she could, on some levels, talk Engineer to Engineer. That was reassuring. The rest of the professional abbreviations were ones she did not recognise.

"On this street, you can find people who can craft, engineer and visualise practically anything." Sissi said. She indicated Cunning Artificers, one of the longer streets in the City, which ran for nearly two miles in between Upper Broadway and Short Street. There were no vacant or unoccupied premises on Cunning Artificers, and activity spilt out a long way into the side streets behind.

"Visualisation is important." Marianne agreed. "Without visualisation, how can there be innovation? Better engineering?"

Sissi agreed.

"It's no accident this street runs parallel to Small Gods." she remarked. Religion there. Science here. Parellel tracks. And both those streets kind of swing round in a broad curve. Pointing, more-or-less and in a haphazard sort of way, at the University."

"Ah, oui. Symbolic."

Sissi grinned.

"And this is where we turn symbolic into actual." she said, "I lived here for long enough to know this is what Ankh-Morpork is good at. Coming in?"

Marianne adjusted the set of the bicorne hat that marked her as a Quirmian Army officer.(4) She adjusted the coat-tails of her uniform jacket and rested a confident hand on her sword hilt.

They went in.

Sissi, sidelined, observed the two men who greeted them. Both were prosperous-looking and in their fifties; the more substantially-built one in the smarter suit, with what looked like a gold-chained fob watch in the waistcoat pocket, had the look of entrepreneur about him, one who understood money and how to convert a skill into cash. She knew this was Mr Denny, the man who made and sold ships. The other, thinner, leaner, with the thoughtful reflective look, who was deeply interested in Marianne, was Mr Froude, the designer and experimenter. In case of complications, Sissi noted his wedding ring, then realised: his interest in Marianne wasn't what she had suspected it was at first. This was engineer stuff. They'd identified themselves to each other as engineers and were testing each other's credentials, talking about things like thermal coefficients, drag factors, hydrodynamic pressures…

"I saw the iconographs of the city walls you built in the…. City of the Ingonyamzi, Major de Menières? Although that's not my field of expertise, I am deeply impressed. And sixteen months, start to finish? Including the castle keep?"

Marianne shrugged.

"I am schooled in military fortifications, Monsieur Froude." she replied. "My employer in the Zulu Empire made sure I was not lacking for labour, or for financial resources. Dwarfs were arriving who helped source and hew the stone. My employer also hired skilled workers from Ankh-Morpork and elsewhere, masons, woodworkers, builders, to train and direct. And previously I had enhanced the original native kraal by digging a deep ditch along its outer perimeter, so that an enemy assailing the brushwood wall had a defensive moat to contend with. With that original wooden wall marking the perimeter, it became a matter of progressively replacing it with stone, and organising the work. When things are in the correct order of priority, an engineering work becomes simple. As you will know."

Mr Froude signalled approval.

"One of the most basic principles of engineering." he agreed. "When faced with a complex problem of design and construction, you break it down into many smaller problems, and approach them in the right order of relative importance."

"And build those simple smaller sub-assemblies into progressively more complex assemblies." Marianne agreed.

"As we do here, with ships." Mr Denny said, briskly. "Speaking of which, and this is something I'm more familiar with in my own engineering discipline, your plans for this place called Sagalo? I've seen the iconographs and the plans, and it occurs to me if you can help build a city out of nearly nothing, you can certainly build a port."

"Ah, oui. We can perhaps be of assistance to each other, and any ideas you have would be extremely welcome. One day your ships, Gods willing, will dock at Sagalo. The Queen-Regent-Elect is keen for profitable trade between our nations."

Sissi smiled slightly. Marianne was off to a good start.

Chirm City, on the Circle Sea

Seen from above, Chirm reminded Bekki of a really old onion that had been left in the pantry for too long. If you took one of those and sliced it through the middle, you got layer upon layer of dead, papery, brown skins that had once been plump and white and healthy. Then you got layers of inedible onion that were drying and going brown, but as you got nearer the core, were just wet and sticky and, slimy, but provided the onion hadn't been left too long, you might still rescue some good edible stuff right in the middle, provided you cut off all the dead yukky stuff, and then took what was left, and thoroughly washed and cleaned it.

Bekki thought there was still some good onion left at the heart of Chirm. Provided somebody cut away all the dead matter in the outer layers. As she looked down, she suspected the dead layers of Chirm were indeed being trimmed away. There were definite signs of demolition going on in the dead old town. Work gangs appeared to be down there, knocking down the ruins that were too far gone to save. She saw what looked like encampments on the outskirts, tented accommodation for a workforce, secured and protected behind what looked like miles of the relatively new idea, of chain-link fencing. She remembered her mother had got in early on this, the sort of light economical building-material depending on tightly woven strands of steel wire pulled tightly into a hexagonal pattern. Mum had seen the massive potential and had Invested. One of the first big users of the new idea had been the City Zoo, her mother's creation. It had taken off, after that demonstration of its practical utility.

Bekki wondered exactly how much money her mother had made off the back of this idea. Were there enough noughts?

She also noted lots of men in Ankh-Morpork's red Army uniforms. That is, where they hadn't stripped the jackets off to participate in manual labour. And there were Dwarfs. And trolls. And golems.

"Are we, you know, colonising this place?" she asked Gertrude.

Gertrude paused for a long time.

"Well, I've heard Vetinari doesn't like the word." she said. "He stamps down hard on anyone who thinks Ankh-Morpork should build another Empire. But a lawless place, he said, needs a reminder that there will be civil order whether they want it or not. He thinks the civilian labour coming out here to work needs a military presence to back it up. Military Assistance To The Civil Power, he calls it."

Bekki considered this.

"Who exactly is the civil power?" she asked.

"Nobody knows." Gertrude said. "Err. Ankh-Morpork is pretty much the immediate neighbour to the Turnwise. So it's natural for Vetinari to want to stabilise the border on his immediate widdershins. To the further Turnwise, just over the Morpork Mountains, you get Skund. If it's still there, that is. That's technically Further Überwald. Where Lady Margolotta rules. So she's probably all behind Vetinari solving a problem that affects her too. There's a bit of a hazy border on that side that touches on Kazakhstan and Klatchistan. Klatch still claims an interest there. Istanzia, or Cenotia, these days, isn't all that far away as you go round the Circle Sea"

"So everybody's in favour of somebody stabilising the ungoverned bandit country that poses a problem for everybody." Bekki said, thoughtfully. Her Second Thoughts prompted her.

-Mum, you're being cynical. Again.

-Ag, Rebecka. All the other big established countries bordering onto Chirm are perfectly happy for Ankh-Morpork to take over. Because they get a problem solved, and they do not need to pay for it. And all this is costing money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps getting into seven figures. Now ask what advantages Vetinari sees in this desolate place that will be worth the investment.

Bekki thought.

"Gertrude, what's underneath Chirm?" she asked.

"Oh, the usual." Gertrude said, cheerfully. "Lots of coal and iron, probably. Coal to feed the factories, the Rail Ways, the new Steam Ships. Iron because, well, we make things. Other stuff, too. The other useful metals, under the Morpork Mountains and the Rammerocks. I suppose it makes sense to have a reliable cheap supply nearer to the City."

They flew on.

"But let me show you this. The most important thing. The thing Vetinari considers highest priority."

They flew out over the harbour. Bekki saw, from seven hundred feet up, the different colours to the water that showed where the one navigable channel was. And where the sandbanks and silted waters were.

"Four hundred years of silting up." Gertrude said. "The reason why Chirm is no longer a port that can take the really big ships. In the old days, when it was a part of Sto Kerrig, it was called Rottendam. One of the biggest busiest ports in the world. Vetinari has got plans for it. See those odd-looking ships?"

There were seven or eight of them, moving at what looked like a slow crawl. Several had an odd arrangement aboard, looking like a fairground ferris wheel, which was moving slowly and inexorably. As the buckets on the wheel passed their apex and descended, they tilted and dislodged a shower of dirty sloppy sludgy earth into the ship's hold. Bekki also noted these were the new steam-ships, disgorging black sooty smoke from forward-mounted funnels as the ships moved.

"Dredgers of various types." Gertrude explained. "Steam powered. The steam power also powers the excavation apparatus. What nature put here over four centuries, we will be able to dig out in a matter of months. They're backed by golem power. You can't see them, but there are excavation buckets underwater, being dragged by golems. Who do not need to breathe and can work twenty-four-and eight. What's being excavated is being dumped on land, further down the coast. When it dries and gets sized, it will be gravel and sand for building."

Gertrude smiled.

"Chirm should be open again for the first big ships, ocean-going ships, in around six weeks." she said, happily. "The first in four hundred years. This is world-changing engineering. And I'm a small part of this. Isn't it great?"

Bekki realised she was dealing with a happy engineer who was exactly where the world wanted her to be.

"New roads, new Rail Way lines, and I can get my work at the Forward Air Base completed so much more quickly, because all the heavy raw materials I need will arrive by sea in the right quantities and be trucked over." she said. "Right now, all I can do is survey the ground, and excavate. We're dependent on air freight. And the Air Watch just doesn't have the capacity for heavy airlifts. Yet. When I can get all the stone and wood and concrete and cement I need, you are going to see a real difference out there!"

"This place reborn." Bekki said, interested. "A new city and a new country, even."

She paused, prodded by her Second Thoughts.

"But who rules here?" she asked. "Ankh-Morpork? Or does it all go back to being Sto Kerrig?"

"And that's politics." Gertrude said. "I imagine it's going to fuel some real arguments. But that's not for me to decide, happily. I just need to build an air base."

She reflected, and added, meaningfully

"Military Assistance to the Civil Power, remember? That includes us. The Air Watch."

They flew on, Gertrude pointing out works of interest.

Bekki thought of her nameless ancestors, who had taken ship from here, five or six centuries previously, for a new and better life in Howondaland, unwittingly contributing to the death of a whole country as it was steadily depleted of people. She wondered if any records had been taken down there, of names and origins of people on the emigrant ships, and if those records had actually survived.

She also wondered if her Witch senses might pick up on any trace, any psychic residue, of the hopes and dreams and fears of the emigrants. It was an interesting thought.

And again she thought

Strandpiel. To have a foot on two beaches, thousands of miles apart. Down there is where one of my feet is. Not Ankh-Morpork. Here. Maybe also in the Sto plains, in Scrote, where the Smith-Rhodes side came from. But the other, un-named, side of my family left from that dockside below me. Strandpiel. Here in Chirm, or properly Rottendam. Arrival in Caarp Town, or perhaps at Turban. Five or six or seven weeks at sea in between. I want to go down there. To find out.

The Street of Cunning Artificiers, Ankh-Morpork. Froude And Denny's Marine Architects, Ltd.

Marianne and Sissi had been given the guest tour, starting on the second-highest story of what Sissi recognised was a deceptively long building behind a narrow frontage on Cunning Artificers. Apparently the top floor was, regrettably, off limits, as this was where sensitive government contracts were carried out on behalf of the Navy. I hope you understand this, ladies. However, on this floor, we undertake the design of civilian and mercantile shipping.

Marianne was entranced to be in a room full of serious-looking people, engaged in drafting, refining, and discussing, plans for building ships. With Mr Denny and Mr Froude, she moved among them, studying plans and asking what Sissi suspected were informed and intelligent questions. She felt excluded; this was engineer talk.

"I must say, Major de Menières, for an Army engineer, you have an impressive grasp of what is necessary to build a ship." Mr Froude remarked.

Marianne shrugged.

"At a very deep level, Monsieur Froude, it is all engineering." she said. "With a common background and a knowledge of the principles involved, it is all intelligible. And so very exciting."

The next floor down was different. It involved more socially awkward men engaged in building models, men who tended to shuffle awkwardly, go red, and answer in monosyllables when asked to engage in conversation with women. Especially a rather persistent Quirmian woman who wanted to find out more about the models, how they were made, such craftmanship, and how they might be used in testing the properties of a full-sized ship built to the same pattern. Sissi, who had tried smiling at one of the men and seen a lobster-red flush blooming, tried to stop her toes curling with embarrassment.

"I think I had better take you down to where I can demonstrate to you what these models are used for, I think." Mr Denny said, kindly. He nodded to the modellers. "Carry on, gentlemen. Good show."

Relieved, Sissi and Marianne followed their hosts down several more flights of stairs. Sissi frowned. They were going below street level?

"We had to build this in the Undercity." Mr Froude explained. "There really isn't the space above ground."

"Big investment." Mr Denny said, briskly. "But I have to admit, it's paid off. Even the official navy design chaps at Chavham have realised. They're building one of their own, of course, but till then, they pay to use ours. We've got the expertise. This makes the Denny's shipyard the leader and the worldbeater."

"Technically speaking, the city has Eminent Domain over the Undercity." Mr Froude remarked.

"Which means, Vetinari effectively owns it." Mr Denny said, drily. "But he is prepared to lease it out in plots, or offer it rent-free to those prepared to innovate, renovate, and give back something of value to the City."

They arrived at a door which was guarded by two seemingly mild and inoffensive-looking civil servants dressed in black suits, with bowler hats. Sissi recognised what they were immediately and braced herself.

This could only mean one thing….

"The invited guests." Mr Denny said. The Dark Clerks politely stood aside.

"Sisimina N'Kima, Tump House." Sissi said, identifying herself to people she suspected shared a common background with her.

One of the Dark Clerks smiled.

"Who is also Miss Sisimina N'Kima, currently informally accredited as a special envoy, and diplomat at the Embassy of the Zulu Empire." he said, politely opening the door a little way.

They entered. It turned out to be a big, spacious, long room, almost a hallway, with a ceiling at normal room height. The structure of the room had a sort of antiquity to it, as if it belonged to a previous era and had been repurposed. Sissi noted the dumbwaiter lift that was probably used to safely convey things, rather than people, to the above-ground upper floors. She felt the moisture in the air and the suspicion of salt tang. She took in the group of people clustered at the far end of the room, nearby to its central feature. One of three long, narrow, tanks of water, with an apparatus above and running along its full length that looked like some sort of double-rail with pulleys and wires. The tank, like a bathtub for an impossibly tall thin person, appeared to be perhaps three feet deep at this end and was full of water, which was settling after agitation.

Puzzled, she followed the Proprietors as they walked to the group of people at the far end who appeared to be in animated conversation, almost argument. Several brown and white overalled technicians, some wearing waterproof coats, stood respectfully to one side.

Sissi noted a high proportion of uniforms among the watchers. Marianne's was just one more in the crowd.

A particularly elaborate uniform, blue with lots of gold braid and many silver rings at the cuffs, was doing the speaking. He was surrounded by a gaggle of lesser blue uniforms with progressively less gold braid and silver hoops. The uniform was occupying the same space as a man in his sixties, wide about the body, standing as if he was on the poop deck challenging pitch, roll, and a force six gale.

Sissi felt a moment of worry. It had already been remarked upon, with less of an element of confrontation: Marianne was going to be challenged, as an Army engineering officer, about her credentials, about what possible authority an Army officer had to promote a naval engineering solution to sailors. And her lighter blue Quirmian uniform would make her stand out twice over as an intruder, an interloper, in an environment where she had, as yet, no credibility.

For the moment, she was being ignored. The senior Navy officer was a crackle and a pop away from fulminating, but about something entirely different. Marianne, disregarded, manoeuvred herself to a position where she could observe freely.

"Hmmph. This carrier-for-air-vehicles notion." said the splendid uniform, with a dismissive tone. "I'll concede it's likely to be seaworthy. It won't sink, if I accept that a toy boat in what amounts to a bathtub or a boating pond can float, and that what we see here can scale up accurately to the real seas the real thing is going to encounter."

He nodded down to the model ship in the test tank. Sissi now realised why this place built elaborate scale models of the ships it proposed to build, and had a hazy intimation of why Denny and Froude's had emerged as market leaders in shipbuilding.

"The principle is firmly established, sir." one of the less gaudy uniforms said, in the diffident tones of a capable subordinate seeking to steer his commanding officer. "The stresses a real ship design will face, as well as its strengths and weaknesses, can be experimentally tested in a safe environment without risking an actual ship. Or its crew, on an otherwise untested design."

He paused and accepted the diamond-drill glare of his superior.

"We've been commissioning new ships for some time now, based on this sort of testing. And we haven't lost one yet."

The Very Senior Officer grunted.

"Well, yes. But this design. Just a big flat-topped deck with the superstructure pushed over to one side. This steam-power underneath. But the funnel isn't central, d'you see? Just shoved over to starboard along with the command bridge and things. Not dead centre, where common sense tells you it should go. You're not going to tell me that isn't building in lop-sidedness. Besides. It looks too empty. And where's the damn rigging going to go, hmmph? And any half-decent self-respecting ship needs masts!"

Sissi sighed. A sceptical set-in-his-ways Admiral of the Fleet, who'd probably been doing the job for too long and who was not necessarily closed to new ideas, just taking a lot longer to accept them. Surrounded by necessarily deferential junior officers.

She looked around for other potential allies. A couple of senior-looking Army officers, red uniforms this time. Generals at least, also suffering from gold braid fever, but not to the same extreme extent as the Navy men. At least they'd brought a smaller support train in their wake. And, interestingly, the two other uniforms, a sort of halfway house between off-colour white and full khaki, with the minimal necessary rank insignia. These looked smart, well kept, tidy, but everyday working wear, as if the people wearing them knew about the concept of full dress uniforms, but had elected not to bother with it today. And, happily, she knew both the wearers. She exchanged nods, accepting the wry and slightly world-weary nature of the acknowledging smiles.

"May I remind you this is all still a theoretical concept at this moment?"

The senior of the two off-white uniforms stepped forward. Marianne looked up from the model in the experimental tank, and she saw a woman in her middle thirties, with neatly tied auburn-red hair. She had a look of easily-carried authority about her, and the air of a woman who had learnt, slowly and patiently, to cope with idiots and slow thinkers. She also had the three pips of a Captain on the turnbacks of her uniform cuffs. It seemed to Marianne that this was an incredibly low rank to be in the same room with several generals and an Admiral, but this did not appear to deter the wearer.

"Admiral Harrap, this is a theoretical concept because even if this sort of ship is actually built, the idea cannot properly be realised because of long-standing naval custom and practice, the tradition that dictates women cannot go to sea as anything other than passengers. Sailors have a very long-standing superstition about women actually being working members of a ship's crew."

Her accent had a very slight hint of having been born somewhere else, where Morporkian was not the first local language. It wasn't unpleasant to listen to but suggested a spike culture with lots of sharp pointy things. Marianne had met her a couple of times on her flying visits to Howondaland. She knew the other off-white uniform better, who regularly visited the Zulu Empire and was Princess Ruth's primary communications link to Ankh-Morpork. A little voice in her head said that it was not accidental that both were here today at this planning meeting.

The second off-white uniform, the one with the two pips of Lieutenant on each cuff and epaulette, grinned over and acknowledged the presence of Sissi and Marianne.

"Da." she said. Her accent was slightly more marked than the Captain's. "At the moment, this is just discussion backed by some interesting models. I would say that this design is also far bigger than we can sustain. This model of carrier-for-air-vehicles is big enough to carry eighty pilots and their brooms. For it to work, it requires a full air complement. Right now we have only perhaps sixty fully trained pilots for all Air Watch duties. Let alone enough to crew a ship like this. It is far too big."

"I agree." the Captain said. "For the foreseeable future, this design, attractive though it is, is impractical for that reason alone. Not enough pilots."

"Captain Romanoff, could you train enough pilots?" one of the Generals asked. "What with the exciting possibility of your Air Watch supporting the Army in terms of advanced reconnaissance and ground support, I have a strong feeling we are all asking for resources you cannot at present provide. There is a very real danger of our asking for too much at this present moment."

"Training progresses." Olga Romanoff said. "At this very moment, Senior Sergeant von Strafenburg is leading an advanced flying class at our forward air station in Chirm. But the training of combat pilots is necessarily time-intensive. We are primarily City Watch and also manage the demands of the Pegasus Service. At any given moment, I can spare no more than six pilots for two-day courses at the Combat School. Otherwise the City itself has no air cover."

"Recruitment is also a bottleneck." the Lieutenant added. "We take only the very best air-capable people coming out of training in Lancre and the Chalk. Our main recruitment session happens in July, at the Witch Trials, with new people coming to us throughout the year. This is dependent on the number of young girls entering training as witches. And the profession demands the majority of Witches go to work as Witches. It isn't just about us. Recruitment of suitable people is limited."

"We also need Teks." the Captain added. "Ground staff who know about thaumaturgy, maintenance, flight engineering, logistics. These are skilled occupations and hard to find. My concern is that at present I could only spare, at most, six pilots for one ship. And those pilots need to be supported by Teks. Thus taking ground staff away from essential work elsewhere."

Olga shook her head slightly.

"I want to make this idea work. Eventually. It is exciting. But at present, it is impractical."

"The problem is weight distribution." Marianne said, studying the model intently. People turned to look at her.

"It is true, mon Admiral, that the superstructure is offset to one side. But that need not matter if corresponding weight and mass under the waterline is offset to the other side of the centre of gravity. Intelligently distributed and calculated around the centre of gravity of the whole vessel, this would be a very stable design indeed."

There was a pause.

"And you are?" Admiral Harrap said.

"I am Major Marianne de Menières, of the Corps des Ingenieures de Quirm." She replied. "Although in my case, perhaps more correct to identify myself as une ingenieuse. I am currently in the service of the Queen-Regent-Elect of the Zulu Empire."

"I see." Admiral Harrap replied, frowning. "An Army engineer. Here to tell sailors how we should be doing our job."

Sissi frowned. Here it comes. Confrontation.

One of the red jackets stepped forwards.

"Hardly that, Admiral." the General said. "We've agreed our respective Services cannot exist in a vacuum any more and not talk to each other, where our roles overlap. I need to deploy lots of troops quickly and efficiently wherever they're needed. Sometimes the fastest way is to move them by ship. You have got the ships. Wherever those ships dock and establish a base harbour, you need local security on the ground to protect those ships in harbour. This is where our concerns meet. And I understand the Major has got a good idea for moving an Army by sea, even more quickly and capably. We should listen to her. We've seen the plans and the models."

The Admiral grunted.

"Interesting word, ingenieuse." Mr Froude said, a propos of nothing. "It sounds like ingenious. The Quirmian word for engineer. Probably how Morporkian gets the word."

There was the unmistakeable noise of the clicking and smooth sliding of a mechanism. It was coming from somewhere behind the group gathered at the test-tanks. It wasn't loud; it wasn't obtrusive; but it was definite. It had a compelling quality that made everybody present turn to watch.

Sissi wondered how long he'd been standing there, disregarded and overlooked, quietly listening while others, like the forceful Admiral Harrap, made their opinions clear. She reminded herself that he did things like this. Frequently. He used this skill as a weapon.

"Engineering is not one of my fortes." Lord Vetinari said, mildly. "But an ingenious mechanism which presents an elegant solution to a difficulty is something I can appreciate as a thing of beauty. It has a certain aesthetic to it."

He nodded to the nervous model-makers clustered nearby, who had evidently devised the working model and brought their brainchild down to the test-room.

"Thank you, gentlemen." the Patrician said, commanding their departure. "You may now leave us."

He waited as they gratefully scuttled out, then smiled slightly at a deferential audience.

"Major de Menières, I believe? The creator of this novel and ingenious concept? I believe the time is now right for you to demonstrate your idea. I believe this is a working model constructed in, what was it now, one-forty-eighth scale? The floor is yours, Major."

Marianne took a deep breath and stepped forward, appreciating that this was where she now had to work hard and sell a concept to key people who were expressing scepticism about her idea and her credentials. She was grateful for the encouraging smiles she was getting from Sissi, and from Irena and Olga, who had unobtrusively moved around the audience and spaced themselves among the sceptics. Lord Vetinari had stepped to one side and was looking expectant.

Another track in her mind was marvelling at a beautifully executed model of a section of the hull of a ship, possibly about four feet long. The model-makers had helpfully added some beautifully crafted figures of ship's crewmen at various positions, there, she realised, to give the viewer an objective picture of relative scales. And it was there. Exactly as she had visualised it and as she'd seen it on the smaller model the previous evening. She trusted that all the moving parts would indeed move as they should on the real thing.

She took a deep breath.

"Gentlemen." she said. "I am here because currently, my employer, the Queen-Regent-Elect of the Zulu Empire, recently became aware of a logistic and transport difficulty which is slowing progress in expanding the army available to her. The Zulu Empire is not a cavalry culture. It has had, up until recently, an infantry-based military. Princess Ruth intends to radically change that by employing as many cavalry as she can muster, so as to give her the decisive advantage in any civil strife. Such horsepeople as the Empire can muster are in her service and are training others to fight as cavalry. These were supplemented by adventurers from the Central Continent who came to her service, bringing their horses with them. But even though they performed magnificently in the brief war with Muntab, they were still too few to be decisive in a battle largely won by stratagem and better-trained and equipped Zulu footsoldiers.

"Her Highness decided that she needed more cavalry. Adventurers, soldiers for hire, if you will, trickled out to Howondaland in small groups to give her their allegiance. These added to her strength. But she needs more, in larger numbers."

Marianne nodded to Olga and Irena.

"Word went out to the Cossack peoples of the Central Continent that a Queen is looking for an Army and those who faithfully serve her would receive adventure, the opportunity to swing their sabres and bloody their lances in combat, and if they wished to settle afterwards, a honoured place in a new land. So far, four hundred Cossacks and their families have answered the call and taken boat from Barry's Island in the Neverlands, the nearest port and the fastest, least hazardous, sea route to Howondaland. They were received at the Bay of Sagalo, in the Queen-Regent-Elect's lands, where as her engineering officer I was tasked with creating a port capable of unloading large deep-draught freight ships."

She nodded to Admiral Harrap and the sailors.

"As a trained Army engineer, I had to learn quickly about naval needs, so as to perform this royal command. As an engineer, my job is to provide working solutions. Sagalo is now, necessarily slowly, disembarking ships and cargo to the Empire."

She paused here. Admiral Harrap and the other sailors looked thoughtful and reflective.

"From our intelligence, it's been going without a hitch." one of the Naval aides said. He made a small but significant nod to Olga Romanoff and Irena Politek. "One day, absolutely nothing there. Within a month, a jetty and a pierhead."

"Slow though." Harrap grunted. Marianne realised this was as near to acknowledgement as she was likely to get. "Damn slow."

But she smiled to herself, realising Harrap had also offered her an opening. Probably without realising.

"Does that matter too much?" Olga Romanoff remarked. "I am neither a soldier nor a sailor. But if there is no pressure of time, if the perimeter of the port is well defended and any likely enemy is a long way away, and the harbour is sheltered against storms, then unloading without haste would appear to be prudent. Especially given the nature of the cargo."

"Merchant shipping costs money, though." Admiral Harrap remarked. "Commercial captains are greedy buggers who are one step up from bloody pirates. Look at the rates they charge. Especially when you depend on them for support, and they bloody know it."

A civilian, who had sea-captain stamped all over him, looked across furiously.

"That's not fair, Admiral!" he objected. "Speaking on behalf of the Guild of Sailors, may I remark that a ship has got to be earning every day so as to make a reasonable profit? 'Sides, if my members go into a war-zone or a politically hazardous area on behalf of the Navy, we have a right to charge a premium."

He nodded at Olga.

"Just like your people indent for danger money and flight-pay on top of regular Watch money, ma'am."

She smiled.

"And, in time, a supplement for being part of a ship's company providing air support for shipping, both Naval and mercantile?" she replied, pleasantly.

Captain Jenkins reddened slightly and shuffled.

"Errr… issues to sort out, ma'am. You know. Plumbing. Ship's heads need reconfiguring. Takes time. Attitudes to change. Errr."

He was aware he was being stared at by Olga and Irena.

"Our people already visit your ships." Irena Politek said, meaningfully. "We are now routinely delivering mail. In order to do that, my comrades had to become accredited and accepted members of the Postmans' Guild. And believe me, that was not pleasant."

"We fly to Navy ships on station." Olga said. "We deliver the mail from shore. We are pleased to do that. On behalf of Naval command we deliver despatches and operational orders. We collect outgoing mail and reports and deliver these promptly to the Admiralty. On one occasion we attended to a medical emergency and evacuated a rating to a hospital on shore. I believe he is healing and no longer in danger of death."

"That's true." a Navy captain said, thoughtfully. "May I add that there's nothing better for morale than for the sailors to get a regular mail-call, however far from port we are? Bucks them up no end. And getting that magic carpet on deck on a heaving sea and evacuating Leading Seaman Simmonds. Amazing flying."

Olga smiled.

"The Air Watch is good at emergencies." she said. "Also, may I remark that landing a broomstick on one of your decks, at sea, is an exercise akin to flying between the wires of an egg-slicer? If anything immediately practical comes out of this carrier-for-air-vehicles notion, for my pilots to operate at sea with minimised hazards, it requires a flat unobstructed deck. This is a mandatory requirement."

"This is fascinating, but we are straying from the immediate point here. Merchant ships for hire require paying for." one of the Army generals prompted them. "They are not cheap, they charge by the day, and any delay adds to the bill. Therefore, Major de Menières, the economic argument dictates that turnaround time in port is as short as possible?"

Marianne, who had been listening to the secondary argument with fascination, recognised another easy ball was being thrown to her to catch.

"Most definitely, mon General Wrangle." she replied. "My Queen has capital available to her, but it is not a bottomless pit of money. As her loyal subordinates, we have a duty to use those resources wisely and economically."

She indicated the model.

"Bringing only four hundred cavalry and their families to Howondaland was a massive and an expensive undertaking. Even as we speak, perhaps another six hundred fighting men and women are gathering, attracted by the potential of Howondaland."

She nodded to Olga and Irena. Eyes turned. Everybody knew the Air Watch had done the recruiting. It was an open secret. The Pegasus Service got everywhere. Rodinian officers had landed in the Steppes in winter and, over tea and small cakes, sometimes over vodka, had steered the conversation around to generally warm and clement Howondaland and a Queen who needed sabres in a forthcoming conflict. The long converging treks to the Neverlands had begun shortly afterwards. Olga saw to it that letters and iconographs now returned from Howondaland to the various steppes settlements and stanitsas, keeping in touch with the people back home.

Marianne patted the side of the amazing model.

"But from that first experience, we need to convey them so much more swiftly this time. And above all, safely. The practice of loading horses, especially horses, on board ship, caring for them in transit, and disembarking them safely at their destination, can and must be improved. The idea came to me on the pierhead at Sagalo, where it took nearly four days to disembark our first guests."

"That's true." General Tom Wrangle said. "When we had to move a cavalry brigade by sea once, it took ten days to get loaded and another ten to disembark. The business with winching them aboard by crane, one at a time, and unloading them by crane at the other end, had all the potential for messy accidents." (5)

The other officer winced, as if a bad memory had surfaced.

"Messy. Distressing. Bad for morale. Especially if a trooper's spent a year working with his horse beforehand and, well, accidents happen. Then he realises he doesn't have a horse any more."

Field-Marshal Mountjoy-Standish, the man who commanded the whole Army on behalf of Vetinari, smiled at Marianne. He had the air of somebody who already knew the answer and had approved of it. But it still needed to be demonstrated.

"So what's the answer, Major?"

Marianne beamed.

"I call this the de Menières Portal." she said. "Regardez. On the sea, in appearance and performance, like any other cargo ship. Perhaps heavier, and with larger capacity? But once moored to a quayside…"

She smoothly activated a mechanism.

Two very large doors began to swing open in the side of the ship. Marianne explained these would be operated by a simple mechanism, a windlass and pulley arrangement, operated by the ship's crew. While she conceded that this could be slaved to a hydraulic mechanism driven by the ship's steam power, experience had taught her that it was always best to keep mechanical systems as simple as possible. An engineering maxim is that the more complexity you build into a system, the more likely it is to break down. Besides, the Zulu Empire, she had realised on arrival, was not an industrial society where peoples' mindset was geared to understanding mechanisms. That would come in time, but she had realised there that she needed to go back to first principles and work up. To educate people into accepting and understanding more complex concepts…

"As the outer doors open and are secured flat against the ship's hull, the inner door, an additional security against leakage, swings down and will engage with the quayside, where it forms a ramp, a gangway, if you will. The ship's side is now open to load cargo. As you can see, the portal is tall and wide enough to accommodate a cart or a caravan. Unloading those at Sagalo also presented a problem."

Marianne beamed at the audience.

"The interior of the vessel may, as is standard practice, be set out with individual stalls for horses, or left empty for large wheeled vehicles to be secured. There are long gently sloping ramps inside allowing horses to be loaded through the portal and moved to upper and lower decks within. Gentlemen, this system allows horses to be simply and swiftly walked aboard."

There was silence.

"Is it me?" Captain Jenkins asked. "The young lady is proposing putting a bloody great hole in the side of a ship, and installing a door. I've got a little problem with that…"

Marianne smiled.

"I see your concern, Captain. Now let me explain about waterproof sealing and how everything closes up. First, the ramp. Observe, as it is raised back into place. Observe the way the hinge mechanism recedes into its seating and seals. It only hinges one way. And when not in use as a ramp, the hinges disengage and lock. The outer doors only open outwards. These too close against waterproof sealing. And any pressure of seawater on them from the outside will only lock them tighter. The closure mechanism on the inside is designed to withstand enormous pressures."

"That's true." Mr Froude said. "Captain Jenkins, we've rigorously tested this hull in the Marine Simulation Environment."

Captain Jenkins looked blank.

"In the test tank, that is. It doesn't leak. It's seaworthy."

Admiral Harrap harrumphed, dubiously. Vetinari stepped forwards.

"Then we should, I think, witness a demonstration in the test tank. Mr Denny, Mr Froude?"

The party of guests then got a demonstration of what the Maritime Simulation Environment was for, as a scale model of a ship fitted with the de Menières Portal was attached to the upper rails and towed the length of the tank. Several times. It was explained that everything in the test tank could be adjusted to give an appropriately scaled simulation of actual seas in all conditions, including storms. Finally the model, dripping with saline water, was taken out, and it was demonstrated that the interior was completely dry and the ship had passed all tests in the tank.

"This is test run one hundred and fifty-seven." said one of the duty engineering technicians. "Dry on all runs. No failure of the seals despite repeated testing, nearly to destruction. The rest of the boat will give way before the doors do."

"Are you answered, Admiral Harrap?" Vetinari asked.

The Admiral suddenly looked more noncommittal.

"It's worth a try, sir." he conceded. "But it's going to take a good few months to get a proper working test vessel off the slipway."

Vetinari appeared to consider this.

"If we were starting the design from scratch and if as a result of this presentation and discussion, we agreed to commence as from this moment, then yes." He said, pleasantly. He turned to the shipbuilder.

"Mr Denny. How is construction proceeding?"

As the realisation sank in for Marianne and Sissi, and Marianne gasped in surprise, the shipbuilding magnate grinned at them. He turned to Vetinari,

"I estimate the first vessel of the Hippocampus class will be ready for launch in about three weeks, my Lord." he replied.

"Capital." Vetinari replied. He disregarded Marianne's astonished cry of "But you are already building them?", and added "Possibly three weeks later, at the outside, the harbour at Chirm will have been sufficiently dredged to enable ocean-going large ships to dock there. The first in nearly four centuries."

He turned to look at Marianne. He scrutinised her carefully.

"General Wrangle plans to move at least a full cavalry squadron to Chirm to supplement our forces there." Vetinari said. "While it is true they could travel overland, it might be fitting for this to be the first shakedown cruise of the Hippocampus class vessels. Which will prove, without a doubt, that these ships will be fit for far longer voyages. Major de Menières, would you like to be present at the launch, and to sail on the maiden voyage of your brainchild? I'm sure the Queen-Regent-Elect would be pleased to permit this."

18 Spa Lane, Ankh-Morpork, later in the day.

"And that's basically it, Johanna." Olga Romanoff said, taking her ease at the dining room table and considering her glass of tea. She appreciated that Claude knew to serve her tea in a glass, and gave him marks for getting it almost the way she liked it. Johanna's household did not own a samovar, so she had to make allowances.

"Oh, and Vetinari was never there. Officially."

"Of course not." Johanna Smith-Rhodes agreed. "He cennot be seen to be openly favouring one side or the other who are competing for the Paramount Throne, and he must show scrupulous neutrality in his dealing with the Zulu Empire."

Olga smiled slightly.

"It is interesting that when he first saw the draft plans for the de Menières Portal, some weeks ago, he asked Denny and Froude's if the idea was feasible. They concluded it was, and he instructed them to build it into a new heavy cargo ship they're constructing. As the ship's pretty much completed anyway, and just needed refitting, it'll be ready for service in a week or two. And did I mention that Denny's also do refits on ships in service? The doors are going into three of those. Vetinari told the owners so."

"And he's clearing the sea-lanes into Chirm." Johanna said, reflectively. "And you tell me in about five weeks, something like four or five hundred Cossacks will be arriving there to take ship to Howondaland."

"Da." Olga affirmed. "A shorter overland journey. Mr Denny said the best possible steampower is going into those ships. The state of the art. Apparently what used to be a five-week voyage to Howondaland, with good winds, is now going to be just over three. Which compensates for the longer sea voyage. Steam power also means Cape Terror is going to be, well, less terrifying. Such ships are less at the mercy of the tides near the Edge, and need no wind."

"So how is Vetinari fixing it with my people?" Johanna asked. "A fleet carrying fighting cavalry who will be sworn to the service of the Zulu Empire cannot, for instance, expect to put into Caarp Town to resupply and give shore leave."

Olga shrugged.

"I understand Miss N'Kima has been asked to provide assurances." she said. "That the Cossacks will not be used in any offensive action against Rimwards Howondaland, nor will they cross the de facto border onto your country's side. Miss Sissi N'Kima is empowered to speak for Princess Ruth while she's here. Therefore one of the people she definitely will not be meeting, in any capacity at all, anywhere, is your country's Ambassador."

Johanna considered this.

"Who will not be reporting on this to Foreign Minister van der Graaf in Pratoria efterwards, es no meeting ever took place, enywhere, and therefore there is nothing to report on." she said. "Ja, makes sense. I know thet sort of meeting."

Olga smiled again.

"Got it in one, Johanna. Besides, Vetinari is making it clear the fleet will be sailing under the Ankh-Morporkian flag, and he expects no interference with it."

Johanna frowned. She asked out loud what Vetinari was offering Rimwards Howondaland, as compensation for not impeding a shipment of fighting cavalry to the Zulu Empire to boost its Army. Olga shrugged.

"No idea." she said, honestly. "What does your country want from Ankh-Morpork? My guess is he'll offer exactly what you think you want, but there'll be a sting in the tail. There always is, with Vetinari."

One of the other invited guests sipped her tea, thoughtfully.

"So when our people arrive in Chirm Country." Nadezhda Popova said. "Not only will long-dead harbour at Chirm be open for ships. There will be big ships. More fit for carrying horses, than ships we saw in Neverlands."

Olga grinned this time.

"Which is where you and Sophie Rawlinson come in." she said. "When the first Cossacks left from Barry's Island, you and Sophie were there as observers. Civilian clothes, not Air Watch uniforms. Vetinari insisted. They accepted you, because you are a Cossack. Sophie was very definitely accepted because she's good with horses."

Nadezhda and Olga shared a long slow private grin. The fourth person present noticed this.

"And then when we heard the unloading at Sagalo was going so slowly, I despatched you and Sophie to go there as observers." Olga said. "Again in civilian clothes, so you would not stand out. Sophie… well, she got involved. Without speaking a word of either Rodinian or Zulu, she helped with unloading the horses. Meanwhile, you spoke to Marianne de Menières, she explained about some of the ideas she was having for ships to transport horses, and showed you the plans she'd drawn up. You suggested running them past bright people in Ankh-Morpork who could give you an opinion on if they might be made to work, and attached them to your report for Vetinari."

"I am doing this, and Sophie, when she stopped being angry about bloody stupid way to load and unload horses from ships, she makes sure not a single one is hurt." Nadezhda remarked. "A little magic, but a lot of overseeing. People respond to Sophie, when she is emphatic."

"Da. She made a lot of friends there." Olga agreed. Again she and Nadezhda grinned at each other.

Yelena Garianovna, who was neither a Witch, a Watch member nor anything more than an Associate Assassin, listened with interest. She reflected while you could easily sit on the edges of a group of people discussing the affairs of the world and government policy, in a pub, for instance, it was vanishingly rare for those people to be among those who actually helped decide that policy, people who could talk from direct knowledge and involvement. This was new to her.

"Olga Anastacia," she began, opting for the socially respectful-but-still-informal tone.(6). She had worked this out after several tries.(7)

"I understand the choices for Howondaland are stark and clear ones. It could not be clearer. On the one hand, an ill-educated despot who can hardly write his own name and others to read to him. He has dreams of greater power, as it was in former times, and is almost certain to provoke war with powerful neighbours."

She nodded to Johanna.

"On the other, an intelligent and capable woman, educated in Ankh-Morpork, who is looking to the future and is modernising her country. She has no wish for war with neighbours, although she wishes to create a modern Army on the Ankh-Morporkian model. One will build a future. The other will return to a past."

Yelena frowned for a moment.

"Is true I have not been in Ankh-Morpork for long. Not even half a year. So there is much for me to learn. I see why Lord Vetinari is supporting Princess Ruth. As world leader, he wishes no war to destroy Howondaland. He wants strong country, trading partner, friend. But at this time he is investing much money in doing all these things. He is paying for new ships, the ones to carry many horses. He is clearing docks at Chirm to receive big ships, to make sea voyage easier. But so much money spent. This cannot be all for the Zulu Queen, surely?"

Olga grinned.

"I have worked for Vetinari for a long time now. He sees the Pegasus Service as applied diplomacy. He trusts people like me, or Nottie Garlick, or Irena Politek, to speak for him as informal diplomats. And one thing I can assure you of is that Vetinari never has one single reason for any of his actions. It all interlocks. Yelena Lidianovna, this is what I think is happening. It is called the Chirm Project."

Olga explained, summing up the situation.

Chirm fell into ruin as it became over-farmed and denuded of resources. The Sto States were not always the bastions of liberal social attitudes that they are now. Farmers were still peasants, still had to pay rent to the noble houses of Sto Kerrig and Sto Helit and Sto Lat. Desperate and destitute people began to run, to the coast, to take the emigrant ships to places like the Sto Latian Widdershins Islands, now Sumtri; to New DamHamster, now New Pork in Aceria; and to the Caarp Colonies on the very edge of the world, in Howondaland. The country drained of people. The great port silted up. Chirm became one of the great wildernesses, like the Zemphis Country, a place where in recent living memory, adventurers roamed. It is said there may still be wild gnolls, maybe even orcs, in the Rammerork mountains. Where time permits, my pilots fly missions over this region, searching for signs of habitation. This is a reason, one of several, why we were funded to establish an Air Station in Chirm.

Vetinari does not want a wilderness so near this city. He considers it is time to reclaim it. This city is expanding. But the Ankh Estuary has little space for expanding its port and its shipyards. Everything is built up. Chirm offers a ready-made solution that can easily be linked by a new road and the Rail Ways. Rebuilding Chirm, a port already there, is the cheapest solution. Regreening the land and making it attractive to human habitation will create a stable country. If at this time support missions to Howondaland can deniably set off from Chirm, this is a fringe benefit. It also allows him to test new naval technology that will be of commercial use to Ankh-Morpork and strategically valuable to its Army.

Johanna Smith-Rhodes smiled wistfully.

"Ja. He made sure he got the copyright and the plans under Eminent Domain. Shame. Or else I'd have gone next door to talk to this Qurmian major and offer her the funding to build a ship, in return for shares."

Olga shrugged.

"The ships are built here. They will be on loan to Princess Ruth for her purposes, provided she reassures the neighbours that the cavalry they bring will not be launched across the Ulunghi into White Howondaland. Then they revert to Ankh-Morporkian ownership, and are used for civil purposes. Vetinari said that we export livestock around the world, for instance. Not just horses. Cattle. Sheep. Pigs. Where the Rail Ways do not act as the drover, where no Rail Way reaches, this will revolutionise bulk export by sea of live animals, and generate profit. Also, the Army will want them for fast safe transit of its horses. Faster deployment."

"And the designer?" Yelena asked.

"She will receive the thanks of a grateful City." Olga said. "She could walk into a job here instantly, if her service to Ruth N'Kweze ever ends. Also, Vetinari wishes the intellectual rights and the copyright of the design to be hers. He is not completely unreasonable. So heads up, Johanna, that's your cue. Emmanuelle might walk her round for a drink later tonight, and you can do the Dibbler stuff about being her best friend and her business manager. You're good at that."

"So when these ships convey Ankh-Morporkian cavalry to Chirm. Their maiden voyage."

Olga grinned again.

"A two or three day trip, maybe less. They will be trialling another idea, Nadezhda. Steam powered, with no need for masts – much. Therefore no inconvenient rigging to get tangled in. There will be an Air Watch presence on board the flagship, Nadezhda Veranovna. That will be you and Sophie Rawlinson. Sophie, because a boat full of horses. You, because you're a Sergeant. Maybe a Tek to support. I want you to demonstrate that an air presence on board ship works. Point out to the sailors it would be even worse luck for them, if they don't accept women on board. Got that? Also, you'll be there when the Cossacks arrive. Liaison. Important. I'll try to get people like Irena and Yulia and Serafima and Vasilisa over to help. Also, if we can teach Sophie how to say things like «Ваш интерес мне льстит. Однако то, что я хорошо разбираюсь в лошадях, не является хорошей причиной для того, чтобы вы просили меня выйти за меня»."

The three Rodinians laughed together, Yelena coming in a little later as she got the joke. She turned to Johanna.

"Apparently, the girl called Sophie is talented with horses. That is enough for a Cossack man. Have heard that in Lancre, if woman is capable of carrying a pig under her arm, this makes her a very good marriage prospect? Well. This girl Sophie. Good with horses. She is among Cossacks. Many offers of marriage."

"Da. She is both embarrassed, and a little bit annoyed." Nadezhda agreed.

The maid Eve stepped forward to refill teacups. Olga changed the subject.

"So you have returned to the Watch, Johanna." she remarked. "How do you find it?"

Johanna Smith-Rhodes shrugged.

"Much as it was when I last mustered as a Special." she said. "And so far, only one assignment. Apparently this dof of a man was keeping a pet elephant. A hermit elephant, admittedly, a smaller sub-species, but in his apartment, three floors up. I hed to rescue end impound the creature.(8) Then take it to safekeeping et the Zoo. Vetinari will decide ownership when the trial takes place."

Johanna grinned.

"And today a Special Constabel sits alongside a Sergeant and a Captain."

"In her own home, where we are guests." Nadezhda said. "I am off-duty and not in uniform."

"And I am here for a conference. On duty, but two hours are set aside in my diary for this." Olga said. "We are waiting for another person to arrive, I think?"

"Ja." Johanna said. "This is Sports Afternoon at the Guild. It is currently one forty-five. The person coming here officially counts as disabled, thus she has no sports teaching responsibilities."(9)

"Ethylene Glynnie." Yelena said. "She is interesting. I can speak in Rodinian, a language of which she has little understanding, and she can repeat what I have said, perfect to the word. Even though she is completely deaf. I wonder if this skill could be used in the learning of languages."

"Being deaf forces you to pay attention." Olga said.

Her top-pocket communicator crackled into life.

"Excuse me. I am obliged to take this." she said. Idly, she wondered if on some other world somewhere, it was common for friends gathered together talking face-to-face to break off the conversation while one or more of their number took remote calls, often inconsequential ones, on a communications device. She wondered what such a society would look like.

-Valkyrie to Red Star Control. In accordance with standing orders, I am bringing the Luftschule back to Ankh-Morpork. Report that weather over Chirm has closed in and is now developing eight-tenths cloud with heavy rain. Advanced flying is now no longer advisible due to visibility and cloud. It is possible this rain will be over Ankh-Morpork by evening. Our estimated time of return in the City is three-thirty by Ankh-Morpork time. Over.

-Red Star Control to Valkryrie. Acknowledged, Valkyrie. I'll see the kettle's on for a brew and there's hot water for showers. Hope everyone's got a change of dry clothes in her locker? Advisory: I will need three pilots to cover evening shifts over the City, standard duties. Volunteers, ideally. Red Star out.

Olga frowned and activated her communicator. She remembered, and flicked the control lever round to Private Channel, Staff Officers Only.

"Red Star, Valkyrie. This is Syren. Whoever volunteers, or gets volunteered, for evening cover, get Firebird to stand down, would you? Send her straight to me. Mother Hen's with me at conference location 18 Spa Lane. It occurs to me I need to talk to her about a concern she raised with Mother Hen. Witch business. As you know, that's priority."

-The Code Twenty-Three in Howondaland? Got it, Syren. Still need to properly talk to her about that myself. Red Star out.

-Acknowledged, Syren. Valkyrie out.

"Sorry about that. Watch business." Olga apologised.

"And you can talk to somebody who's currently two thousand feet up, two hundred miles away." Johanna said. "just like that. Jislaaik!"

Olga shook her head.

"More like five hundred." she corrected. "In this sort of weather, with cloud getting thick and settling low, even on a pre-set course where you know the route, you go low. But not so low you crash into things. Hanna knows not to take avoidable risks."

"What is Code Twenty-Three?" Yelena asked.

Olga sighed. Nadezhda had given her a precis of Bekki's concerns over Hartebeeste. Apparently Mariella had contrived an excuse to get her out there and see the lie of the land and Bekki had reported no incidents, but lots of "ugggh!" feelings in the air. She'd also been able to meet most of the main players. She had come back with a definite feeling of "something's wrong here. It's like a pressure cooker about to blow."

Olga felt a commanding officer's guilt that so far she had only heard about this secondhand. She had a big, growing, feeling that this was one of those situations where Watch business must take second place. This would be Witch Business. This always took precedence. Over everything. Or else you were not a Witch.

Olga knew she was going to need to go to Hartebeeste herself.

"Ah. I see." Yelena said, thoughtfully, as Olga gave her the explanation of Code Twenty-Three that was thought appropriate for civilians, who were neither Watch nor Witches. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Johanna Smith-Rhodes, getting thoughtful and intent.

"Ponder should know." Johanna said. Olga appreciated this: Johanna and Ponder had a parenting style that agreed if it's to do with Assassination, my responsibility. If it's to do with magic, it's yours. It had served them well in dealing with their three daughters.

"Is she in any danger?" Johanna asked.

Olga sighed.

"Potentially, yes. If so, she will not be facing it alone."

Nadezhda scowled. It was the scowl of Mother Hen at intruders threatening her chicks.

"I wish to see this place for myself." she said. "Firebird was Fledgeling."

Johanna felt a sense of reassurance. She wondered how long a supernatural manifestation would last, with this sort of Witch pointing fingers at it in a meaningful way.

Including my daughter, she reminded herself.

Other guests arrived, and the main reason for the group discussion, between Witches and Teachers, began.

To be continued

Sorry, this monster got far too long. Draft notes for continuation are below – I'll get this out there, took far too long to write.

A new Gang is emerging. Whether a mixed bunch of Student Assassins and Air Cadet novice Witches ends up being called Famke's Gang or Lexi's Mafiyosya will be a matter for debate.

Рыжеволосая девушка

Ryzhevolosaya devushka

Story notes will be added at the end for anyone wanting insight into how these stories get constructed.

(1) I feel old. The Discworld started to happen 38 years ago (from 2021)

(2) Considered to be cruel and unusual punishment.

(3) Research note: William Froude revolutionised ship design by experimentation with small-scale models in flotation tanks that could be variably configured to simulate the flow of seawater around them, so as to safely assess the seaworthiness of a design. The Denny Brothers were shipbuildiers who worked with Froude and incorporated his experimental findings into the ships they built.

(4) That she was actually in the service of an entirely different nation altogether was a courtesy detail. It was accepted that trained and commissioned Army officers could move around a bit in the course of their careers, but this wasn't being a mercenary, good Gods, no. Officers were of too high a social class to be mercenaries.

(5) Even Britain, a country with long experience of moving things by sea to far-flung garrisons and distant wars, found this a bottleneck. A cavalry brigade destined for the Crimea in 1854 ran into this problem and wondered about easier, faster ways of transporting horses by sea. And safer ones. One cavalry officer remarked they'd have got there quicker if they just rode the damn hoses all the way across Europe, overland.

(6) As she told her pupils, these things are finely judged and gradated on first meeting. Although a Cossack she was still, in wider Rodinian society, a commoner. She was meeting for the first time one who in a different history might be a Tsarina, and was at the Grand Duchess level or slightly below that. She understood Lady Olga Romanoff had a relaxed attitude to her social rank and preferred easy informality, but on first meeting, you cannot presume that. She is also one who holds the Cossack conferred rank of Hetman and is a Captain in the structure of the City Watch, one who stands only a couple of rungs below Commander Vimes himself. On top of that, she is also ved'ma, a Witch, a position that calls for respect in any society. My question for you, class, which I am asking with her permission, is how would you address Olga Anastacia Ekatarinovna de Kokamaijne-Romanoff on first meeting her?

(7) Olga had adopted the usual look of resigned understanding, the one she had practice in when other Rodinians met her for the first time. Knowing Yelena taught Rodinian at the Assassins' School, she understood the need for the honorifics to progressively be downvoted from your Almost-Radiance through Your Imperial Highness through Your Grace, via Captain, right down to the everyday Olga Anastacia. Olga accepted Yelena was a down-to-earth intelligent and practical woman; but as a teacher of Rodinian Culture she also had to get all this govno out of the way first. This was understood.

(8) Catching up again, with The Price of Flight.

(9) It wasn't just the pupils at the Guild school who tried to finagle a way out of compulsory Sports on a Wednesday afternoon. Johanna's version of a note from her mum to excuse her from Games was to get a permanent leave of absence for duties elsewhere; in the past these had included delivering lectures at the fools' Guild, as even this was preferable to standing in the rain in a cold muddy field somewhere. Today she was exploiting her re-activated status as a Watch Special, to advise the Air Watch on a specialised area where Olga Romanoff was seeking professional guidance. She could also claim Watch pay for sitting in her own living room drinking tea. Johanna didn't need the money but she was going to put it on her claims sheet as a matter of principle.

---

Draft continuation:

The de Menières door. How it fits to events in Chirm. Olga and Irena on-side with Sissi and Marianne. Vetinari decides.

Meanwhile, the Luftschule flies back from Chirm. Omnicom conversation. By then – two in the afternoon – Olga is in a scheduled conference at Johanna's. Also present, Nadezhda. From the Guild school, Yelena (teaching dressage is not her equine skill or interest) and Ethylene Glynnie. Oh, and Ponder is there too. They discuss the general education of prospective Witches, agreeing there is a duty of care to provide some – putting a pre-teen girl with an older sponsoring Witch to learn the Craft is not nearly enough, not now girls routinely attend school till they are fifteen or sixteen. Miss Tick turns up with Lucy Warbeck. Yelena offers to be "Education Officer" to the Air Watch and to handle getting the Air Cadets, plus non-Air Watch pupil Witches, up to the mark in their general education. A syllabus is discussed.

Bekki and Lexi, clocked out for the day, turn up. They are offered the chance to bathe and change clothes; Bekki wants to loan Lexi some non-uniform wear, in an attempt to get her to be normally thirteen, neither Witch nor Air Watch. Bekki reasons getting her to dress like a normal everyday 13 year old girl would be a good start.

Meanwhile, Famke turns up, having disdained the changing room showers at Teggs Nose, in a slightly dishevelled and smelly state, still in grubby sports kit. She is not best pleased to be told her sister and a guest have beaten her to the main bathrooms; Eve the maid, backed by Claude, deferentially suggests the bathroom in the staff quarters is free, Madam. Johanna sends Famke there.

Later, Famke and Lexi meet for the first time and sparks fly. Alpha 13 year old girls butting horns. Famke, who has cruised through life up to now, realises she is in the presence of a girl of the same age who is at least as good as her at most things, and, in one or two specialised areas, is better. This is uncomfortably new for Famke.

Lexi also learns her Air Watch callsign. And it isn't the one she hoped for.

They begin the rocky journey towards either killing each other or becoming spiky best friends.

Notes Dump

And story notes

Épée – the long slim fencing sword – in Russian, шпага, shpaga.

Lovely note: the шпага, shpaga, is also the simple engineering device used to assess the levels of fuel such as oil, lubricant, coolant, et c, in the tank of a vehicle. Because of its likeness to the fencing sword called the épée, Russian calls this the shpaga. Lexi's Air Watch call sign Shpaga might therefore translate into English as Dipstick. I love the double meaning.

Watching a performance of Sibelius' Second Symphony on YouTube. Amazing music. But it's firing ideas for fics.

I wrote…. and comments pages on YouTube can get lively – you put up a reasonable comment, there's always a complete dick who replies. Possibly a law of nature…make a sensible comment, expect a troll reply.

"As with any live gig, there are bits that don't go according to plan... spotted the trumpet player with an instrument malfunction, who has to stop playing. It looks as if his mouthpiece is coming loose, as he has to very quickly screw it back into place, hoping nobody is going to notice. (The camera was right on him at the time, though). Probably the equivalent of a rock musician who has to signal a roadie, and they do that quick crouched-over run on stage, hoping nobody's going to notice, fiddle with something, then do the quick hunched-over scuttle off stage again. (Do pro orchestras have roadies, and if so, do they wear evening suits?)"

Fortean Times is out again, FT409. It's only the 7th August – and this is the September edition. Ah well, timeslips and temporal anomalies are a subject the mag is very keen on.

Gems: the Australian university whose marine zoology department managed, with great effort and ingenuity and no doubt a bit of the old Steve Irwin approach, to get monitoring tags fixed to Great White Sharks so they could track and monitor their migration patterns.

As great expense was involved, they were less than enchanted to discover a Great White Shark appeared to have got two hundred miles inland, was apparently moving round the campus of a completely different Australian university, and even appeared to be attending lectures.

"Can't be a bloody student, then."

Apparently, a student at this other university had found a rejected tag on the beach, was stuck for what the bloody hell it was, and had dropped it in her bag hoping to get it ID'd. Then she'd forgotten about it.

Now I can see Ponder Stibbons scratching his head over the thaumic tags he thought he'd attached to, perhaps, a Deep Sea Giant Turtle or something (10), and why it apparently appeared to be buying a beer in the Mended Drum. Or else, as other members of the Faculty might point out, had become such an evolved life form that it could buy a train ticket to Sto Helit, and may I express the hope, Stibbons, that this University is not subsidising its travel arrangements?

(10) Well, I say "he". But I suspect Johanna might have helped, especially if the marine wildlife was potentially dangerous.

Also thinking:

Lexi Mumorovka baits Famke and takes delight in sledging her. Looking for the right sort of dissing and bitching.

Рыжеволосая девушка - Ryzhevolosaya devushka – red-haired girl.

Variations on a theme:

Рыжая головная боль - Ryzhaya golovnaya bol' – red-haired headache

Рыжая боль в заднице - Ryzhaya bol' v zadnitse – Red (haired) pain in the arse

The theme will be Vitriolic Best Buds, a situation where Famke realises she has met her match, doesn't like it very much, and bickering ensues between natural rivals, Alpha Thirteen-Year-Old-Girls. Meanwhile Lexi discovers she has a favourite enemy, and situations start happening, like

"Just because I'm buying you a coffee doesn't mean we've suddenly become best friends all of a sudden, alright?"

Against

"You amuse me, ryzhaya bol'ya. I am curious as to what happens next when around you. You have comedy value."

Softening to things like;

"You'll still have a face like it's been punched, whatever you do with your hair. But I really like the way you braid it. With a face like that, you have to work harder, I suppose."

"Da, but my face does not look like man with paintbrush has spattered it with lots of little blobs of brown. Веснушки. Vesnushki. What is word in Morporkian?"

"Freckles." Famke said, reluctantly.

Lexi smiled.

"Now you learn more Rodinian. I learn more Morporkian. Freckles. You have good hair, Famke Yohannovna. Freckles on face, not much anyone can do about that, but good hair. Do you wish me to show you Rodinian hair, плетение волос, pleteniye volos?"

Famke caught a familiar word.

"Pleteniye. Plet… plaiting. Braiding?"

"Is word. Braiding. Show you how to do it like mine."

Seeing a meeting somewhere in the middle. Famke as the best sort of bad influence on Lexi, who gets her to lighten up a little; Lexi in her turn makes Famke a little less anarchic and nihilistic. Their parents and responsible guardians (who may have engineered this, or at the very least are prepared to help it along) keep a watchful eye and are generally approving.