The scream of charged mana cannons rolled through the void like thunder in a brass cavern.Two bolts of purple plasma tore past, scorching the dark yards off the port outrigger. The thermal wake rattled the stone-cedar frame, static dancing across the deck."Brace!" Leon planted both hands on the tiller, shoulders absorbing the shock as the hull flexed through its dovetail joints, groaning but holding. "Julian, status on the boundary!"Julian was hunkered behind the deck-housing, glasses strapped tight, sight-glasses in one hand, slate in the other."Core stream's up to eighteen knots! Boundary's shearing hard against that basalt cluster to starboard, hitting it at this speed, and the drag rolls us ninety degrees!""Then we don't go around it." Leon's face set. "Kaelen, drop the port harness! Three notches on the starboard key!""Dropping port!" Kaelen scrambled down the catwalk and hauled the port line clear, disengaging the locking pawl.The port outrigger folded flush, shedding hal

The slipstream didn't fade so much as break. One moment they were riding warm golden current; the next, it shattered like a dropped pane of glass, and the quiet grain crossed into the northern quadrant of Node Three with nothing left to hold the cold at bay.The violet sky went black, bruised, and airless black with only the harsh, unblinking glare of a distant sun burning somewhere far below them in the spatial abyss. A sound like cracking ice ran the length of the hull as the ship's thin atmospheric pocket collapsed down to almost nothing, a shivering skin clinging to the railings."Frost on the deck!" Kaelen's breath came out in a cloud that froze before it had finished leaving his mouth. He yanked his scarf up over his nose and jammed his gloves tighter over knuckles that had already gone numb. "Master the joinery's contracting!"Leon held the tiller with both hands and felt it shudder under his palms. He didn't need Kaelen to tell him what was happening. Extreme cold did to season

"Thermal shockwave incoming!" Julian had both hands locked white-knuckled on the surveying console. "Vector three-four zero—it's a subterranean steam blast off the lower mantle. We're talking eight hundred degrees, maybe more!"Ahead of them, the void itself seemed to be boiling. A wall of blinding white vapor rolled through the ice canyon like a wave of molten glass, hundreds of yards high, swallowing floating bergs whole and flash-boiling them into expanding clouds of pressure before they'd even finished falling."We can't outclimb that!" Vane had his cloak pulled up over his face against the sudden thirty-degree spike in temperature. "Leon, turn us around, get back into open wind!""No." Leon planted his boots wide against the deck and didn't move the tiller an inch off its heading. "Turn our stern to a shockwave like that, and the pressure catches the rudder like a sail; it'll snap the mainmast clean at the step. We go straight into it.""Into it?" Torren had two children pulled c

The gale came through the chasm sideways, sub-zero and screaming, carrying the deep subterranean roar of the solar abyss up from five thousand miles below. Crimson light washed the ice cliffs in a color that had no business existing against that much black sky."Hold the eastern ledge!" Vane's voice carried clean across the gap.On the far bank, he and eight of the redeemed Guild shipwrights were fighting for every foot of ice they stood on. Vane's axe came around in a wide, ugly arc, steel ringing off Guild pikes and black-iron shields, while behind the fight, Guild sappers hammered charges into the granite-and-ice bedrock that was supposed to anchor the eastern half of the bridge.CLANG-BANG!Sparks scattered across the frozen lip as Vane caught a spear thrust on the flat of his axe, drove his shoulder into the trooper's chest, and put him over the edge without ceremony."Leon! Get that chord across! We can't hold this shelf forever!"On the western side, anchored against the weepin

The assault sled hit the western span at full speed, iron treads tearing into the ash decking with a grinding shriek that carried the length of the bridge. Twelve thousand pounds of cold Guild steel dropped onto a structure built for wind and thermal load, not point impact, and the whole ninety-foot arch shuddered under it, every reciprocal joint groaning at once."He's trying to overload the center!" Julian's voice tore across the deck of The Quiet Grain. "The bridge can take wind shear all day, but if that sled reaches the king-post, the concentrated load will crush the master joint outright!"At the exact center of the span, directly above the churning red furnace of the sun, Leon stood his ground. He let his mallet hang loose in one hand, weight resting against his leg. Beside him, Vane stepped forward instead, axe up, boots planted wide across the tongue-and-groove planking."Get back to the ship!" Vane's voice cut through the wind. "This isn't framing work. This is iron on iron.