The Measure of an Answer
They could see the cloudbank from the *Morrowfin*’s deck, a long white ridge gathered beyond the twin spires. The branch the marker had shown them ran toward it. Past that, the sky swallowed the line.
Nima had drawn the route three times on her chart, each version ending at the same blank edge. She held her pencil above the paper now, not adding to it.
“We know the branch is real,” Orra said. “We don’t know it’s a route a ship can take.”
“Or where it leads,” Nima said. “But the marker recognized it. If we activate it again, I may be able to measure how the signal travels.”
Vey kept one hand on the wheel. The *Morrowfin* was holding in open air, sails eased, the twin spires at a safe distance off the port quarter. “And if your measuring wakes something that wants to pull us along?”
“Then we stop the test,” Nima said.
“Tell me how.”
She glanced at Orra. The answer was hers to give. Orra had put the instrument into the groove. She had also felt the ship strain while the marker lit, the wind and the living course working against the crew’s control.
“We keep the ship outside the cleft,” Orra said. “No one puts the course under the keel. I go down on the winch, touch the instrument in, and count to three. If the ship shifts, Brask hauls me up. If the lift crystals start to drain, I pull the instrument free. We don’t follow anything that lights.”
Brask, beside the forward winch, looked pleased to have been assigned the hauling. “And if the rock decides to eat you?”
“Then you can put it on the bill.”
“Good. I like a clear accounting.”
Vey studied the cleft. “We do it once. If the ship moves, we leave. No second try because the first one gave us an interesting answer.”
Nima lowered her pencil. “Agreed.”
Orra checked her harness twice. The first check passed; the second was for the buckle she had not trusted since the gust beneath the saddle. Brask attached the main line and tested the winch. Nima brought her astrolabe to the rail, its brass rings nested together, and set a small glass-faced gauge beside it. A thread of light shifted across its surface as she adjusted the rings.
“What’s that reading?” Orra asked.
“Changes in the aether around the charted line. It won’t tell me what’s on the other end.” Nima paused over the last ring. “It might tell me whether there is an end.”
“That’s better than nothing.”
“Not by much.”
Next
The marker sent a signal beyond the cloudbank and received something back; before the crew follows that branch, they must find out whether the answer came from another node or from something they have not accounted for.