Hands on her hips, Janali stared out the window at the bright docks. Everything looked so calm, normal. Yet the table next to her held dangerously blasphemous navigation charts. She turned her back on the view to study Captain Reinvo leaning against the far wall of the officers’ lounge.

Janali considered the captain as he stared at the floor, lost in his own thoughts. She more than looked; she stared like she’d find the answers she needed if her eyes could bore a hole in his skull. He’d been out there with Metallo. He’d taken his own readings, copied Metallo’s charts. He knew something she did not.

He shifted, looking up. Seeing her staring at him, he flattened his back against the wall and met her gaze. “Milady?”

She blinked to soften her gaze. “Captain.” He’d worked for Janali’s mother at the time of her conception. He’d taken her to sea and taught her to sail. It was possible he was her father, especially when she considered the shape of his chin. But this was hardly the time for a heritage study. “Captain,” she repeated, “if you did not sail the ship past the end of the world, then how do you explain these readings?”

“But, milady...” He shook his head as though bewildered by the question. “I can’t.”

Janali slammed her hand down on the charts, thudding the table beneath and causing the captain to startle. “You must! We must. Or Metallo is lost.”

“Milady, I can’t see another course. Metallo is proud of his skills, and Empresses help us, he made no mistake.” The captain’s voice cracked, and his eyes glistened every time he spoke of Metallo. “Metallo knows he’s not lying. I’ve known him his whole life. He’s as honest, pious, and steadfast an officer as your fleet might want. The church will not accept these charts, and Metallo will not admit to a mistake he did not make.”

“If he recants, they must release him.”

Reinvo tilted his head and raised his eyebrow, making a grimace. She wasn’t sure if he was protesting the idea that Metallo would claim his charts plotting the course beyond the edge of the world and back were wrong, or that the church would release Metallo if he recanted.

She paced what space was available, avoiding looking at Reinvo.

“He’s as good as dead,” Reinvo muttered.

Janali threw her hands up. “That doesn’t help. Let me think.”

“Lady, I’ve seen too many summers not to know what will happen. I shouldn’t have shown you these copies I made of the navigational charts. I have to destroy these, and you should never speak of them.” Captain Reinvo reached for the charts on the table.

She leapt across the space and slapped her hand down on the charts. Meeting Reinvo eye to eye, she shouted, “You made the greatest discovery in history! I don’t care if these appear to contradict the church scrolls. I’m tired of being scared of the church.”

“Before the Perlustration arrived, I thought we'd keep this a secret. I knew you’d want to know all this. If you had more time, it might have been dealt with, quietly with measured steps. Now... well now, we’ll be lucky if they don’t come back for the entire crew. Worry about yourself. Please, forget this.” His blue-green eyes under the bushy brows begged her to drop it.

“You expected something like this would happen, didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “Lady, how could I know this would happen?”

She pointed at the charts. “You made these. Why?”

“Because... well...” He rubbed the back of his neck as his face slowly tightened. “I thought I might have to make a show of destroying the actual charts if Father Baenali got too far out of line.”

“Like running to the Perlustration with a witness.” His face fell, and she regretted pointing out he’d let the priest off the ship. She moved closer and touched his shoulder. “Captain, you’ve done nothing wrong. In fact, you’ve accomplished a miracle. You’ve brought the Vibrius and crew home safe.”

This close, his ever-present soft, sweet cigar scent she’d loved her whole childhood filled her nose. She exhaled, pushing aside the memories of him entertaining her with kid’s games and pretend pirate adventures on the family lake as a child. She needed to think. “Metallo is my crewman. This is my ship. You were sailing under my orders. And that means Metallo is my responsibility. I will save him. I have to.” She moved the charts further away from him. “And these are my charts.”

“Until we dock, I’m in command.” Reinvo pointed out the window at the docks with his bearded chin.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Janali said, her gut tightening. She kept her hand protectively on the charts.

Reinvo let out a deep sigh. “If I thought that’d stop you, I would. But I know better. You’ve been unstoppable your whole life.”

She tapped the charts. “These might save Metallo. I have to prove or disprove these. In either case, I have to provide a clear non-blasphemous explanation. Let me figure out how to do this. That will extract Metallo from the church’s grasp.”

She didn’t tell the captain that such a proof would also remove some shackles from the science institutes and universities in Crelna. Her main goal was freeing Metallo, but if she freed science, even a little, all the better.

“This must be explained. I need time to devise a proper investigation.”

“You have a plan then?”

“Not yet. I said I needed time.”

Only there wasn’t time. If Metallo didn’t recant, he’d be burned alive for heresy. By the time he recanted, he’d be a twisted cripple. Neither of those fates seemed fair, but at least they’d know what happened to him. The church might issue a decree of nullity and strike his existence from the imperial records. What happened to such individuals, no one knew, and this everyone feared above all else. Such people were doomed to the void by virtue of having no record of their deeds to prove their worthiness of entering the Star Empresses’ sky domains.

“Can you ask the palace for help?” Captain Reinvo ventured to ask.

Instead of answering, she picked up her half-full cup of cold java, taking all the remaining bitter liquid into her mouth. The dark chilly fluid gave her an excuse to keep quiet for a bit longer. She tilted her head back, letting it slip down her throat as her lips puckered to the flavor. In the white porcelain cup, a few brown drops beaded on the flat bottom looking like a miniature map of the world. Her mind filling in the continent details of their coin-shaped world of Terra.

“I could try the palace. Empress Alsenna is supportive of scientific research. There is a reasonable explanation,” she said, tilting the cup letting Reinvo study it.

His eyes traced the same patterns in her cup before he answered. “Empresses know I’d be glad to hear it.” His voice normally deep and clear, used to giving commands, sounded tired and lost to her.

“You know, I’ve studied every experiment ever done to prove Terra is flat.” She tilted the cup back towards her to see the flat bottom again, the map illusion fading slightly as the liquid slowly pulled together. “I’ve even applied my new scientific methods to them, recreating the best experiments with superior instruments. I didn’t make a mistake, and there was nothing wrong with my experiments or equipment. Terra is flat, circular, and 24,000 miles wide. Exactly as written in the Scrolls of Life and taught to everyone in the church schools.”

Captain Reinvo nodded. “And until this incident, I would have thrown anyone that said otherwise off my ship. But, ma’am, I swear to the Empresses we’ve been where Lieutenant Metallo calculated. Where no ship has the right to claim it has been. I, too, took navigational measurements. Though not as precise, I cannot be over a thousand miles off course. Your mother would have ended my ship’s master contract before you were born if I couldn’t navigate on my own.”

She topped off her cup from the beaker left out. It had gone cold as well. Throwing her head back, she downed the whole cup in one go, letting the bitter cold liquid push shivers down her throat.

“It can’t have been past the edge. It’s not possible. The alternative is...” Her mind wouldn’t complete the blasphemous thought. “Well, I don’t see an alternative!”

She closed her eyes and leaned back against the bulkhead, unwilling to voice what they both knew. The Perlustration was not finished with the Vibrius or his crew.

Her head bounced with the rhythm of the ship’s movements against the bulkhead. The captain’s tale of being beyond the edge of the world will bring the Perlustration back to destroy her ship and burn the crew as heretics. Once Potentate Asonic got all the details from Lieutenant Metallo, he and his Perlustration priests would return with the army at their back. After that, it was a fair bet they’d discover the captain had shown her copies of the navigational charts, and they’d arrest her, too.

Potentate Asonic would tear her rooms and labs apart. He’d discover her hidden heat engines, high powered optical devices, and improved microscopes all enhanced by her use of the Star Empresses’ powers.

Potentate Asonic’s twisted smile at finding her machines was already fixed in her mind. It would be the same horribly joyful face he’d worn leaving the institute after arresting Professor Kinsdum and her assistants.

Still, those devices would be nothing compared to her journal detailing all the experiments to devise a mathematical formula describing the Star Empresses’ energy effects. Clearly based on Professor Kinsdum’s work, which Janali supposedly had no involvement with. That evidence would bring House Jedalor down. Her mother and all her sisters would be imprisoned. Their businesses torn apart and sold off as they rotted away in the temple dungeons.

If they were lucky.

She wasn’t in the Perlustration’s grip yet, and she’d destroy her own labs before she let the church investigators near her mother or younger sisters. Plus, they’d have to break her encryption, and she was the greatest living mathematician in history according to the researchers at Crelna.

But if the captain’s story was true, the world was larger than anyone knew.

Tired of letting her head bounce off the wall with the waves, she opened her eyes. The brown patterned wood-lined ceiling came into focus. The tung and linseed oil used to seal the wood scents mixed with the harbor air. Concentrating on the calm, rolling ocean waves and scents let her slow her thoughts down enough to deal with them.

She sympathized with his attitude of pent up frustration and admired his ability to keep it together in spite of everything going over the edge around him.

A short lived smile moved over her lips, recalling Kasen Clint’s accusation she read people as well as Kasen. Kasen was right.

“The Perlustration will want to make all this go away. Permanently.” She indicated the charts and then lifted her hand to include the ship.

Captain Reinvo grimaced but didn’t answer further. He knew this wasn’t a fantasy story where the hero got her man. This was real life, and far more complex.

She grabbed a compass locking it to the chart marks maximum width and took the distance measurement from the Holy City of Nacitas, the hub of the great disk of Terra, to the islands for the third time.

Making notes in the margins, she flipped between the charts and added up the distances. The total was the same as the last two times—13,217 miles. An impossible 1,217 miles beyond the edge of the world. Nothing but empty space should be there and certainly no seas for a ship to sail in.

The captain’s strong tall lettering caught her eye on the island’s chart. Leaning down, she read ‘Mount Canishast summit 17,500 ft’. There was a pair of almost identical lines drawn across the top of the mountain that went southeasterly. One was marked ‘MtT—st’ and the other ‘MtT—ac’.

“What do these marks mean?” She pointed at the odd pair of lines and their labels.

“The sky was clear at the top of the mountain there. I used the new telescope you wanted me to test. It was better than your earlier telescope. I used the tripod mount to take readings from the top of that mountain with Commander Ardlee.” He tapped the pair of lines that pointed south southeast from the islands.

She took a deep breath in expectation, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood straight.

“There was a black speck south and a bit east that did not move through the day. On a hunch, I took some careful readings of it. When I got back to the maps and worked it out, I think it might have been Mount Terrat. This is the measurement I took with my compass,” he said, putting a finger on the line labeled ‘MtT—st’. “This is my computed direction from the crest of that mountain to Mount Terrat based off the navigational readings,” he said, touching the other line.

She considered the pair of lines. “Captain,” she said excitedly, “why would they not be precisely aligned if it was Mount Terrat?”

“They wouldn’t unless...” Reinvo stepped over and bent down to read his own readings. “I hadn’t considered that, milady. They shouldn’t be, unless, we weren’t where we thought we were.”

She tapped the readings. “Unless you weren’t where you thought. That'd prove the navigation readings were off. Look at your actual sighting, if it was Mount Terrat, the islands would have to be shifted nearer to zero degrees longitude.”

She spun the glass crystal work which sat to the side on top of the small mirror. Lights and rainbows flashed as it revolved. The light reflected off the mirror and through the crystal into her eyes causing fractured flashes of images of objects around the room. One of her early professors at Crelna had experimented with prisms and mirrors.

The design of an advanced theodolite bloomed in her mind. “What we need to do is get a more precise reading and ensure we are sighting on Mount Terrat. Two teams, each taking a reading on the other using focused beacons. With that data and a precise review of key navigational stars from those islands, we'd properly locate these islands! But why would the navigational reading be so far off? The Sky Domain and star points of reference don’t change,” she mused as she wrote a short list of clockwork tools, parts, and drafting supplies she’d stored away out of sight in the family warehouse six months ago when she’d thought the Vibrius lost.

She’d need the help of some of her old professors and a select group of researchers to assist, and there was no better place in the world to build such a precision instrument as Crelna.

Handing the list to Reinvo, she smiled. “Congratulations, Captain, your hunch proved something is off with these charts.”

“Will it be enough?”

“It’s more than enough to get the empress’s support. With her support, I will have the political backing to petition the church to release Metallo.”

Reinvo folded the list and slipped it into his pocket, giving her the first real smile she’d seen on him since she boarded the ship. The discrepancy between the measured and computed directions had to be checked. This would let her do some incredible science work, and the discovery of these islands would forever change the world’s map.

A knock at the door sounded. Captain Reinvo checked, then held the door open letting crewman Brenth step in. His thick wool seaman’s coat glistened from a dusting of snow that hadn’t yet melted off. Brenth’s lanky frame made him look like a child playing dress-up in his father’s clothes in spite of being a veteran sailor of many years. He took off his dark beret and held it in both hands as he bowed to her, making his long ponytail of pitch black hair flop over his shoulder.

“Ma’am, they didn’t take Metallo to the temple.” He shuffled slightly from foot to foot and didn’t look directly at her.

“What do you mean? They arrested him and were going to question him at the temple. Potentate Asonic said that himself.”

“Ma’am, I ran as fast as I could to the temple. The carriage they used was there all right.” He wrung his beret in tight circles as he spoke. “’Cept, it was just sitting out front, the driver stoking the engine well. Potentate Asonic came out of the temple smiling like the Empresses themselves were holding his hand. He got into the carriage, and it pulled away.”

“He left?”

“Yes, ma’am. I caught a good view of the lieutenant in the coach. Thankfully, a carriage-man was pass’n. I offered him an extra two pence if he didn’t lose the temple carriage. But before we passed the temple, a second carriage came out of the temple yard, curtains closed. I was tossed on what to do when it turned in front of us. Not wanting to be spotted, I told the driver to back off. Well, you’re not going to like this.” He looked at Captain Reinvo who nodded to him.

“Go on,” she encouraged.

“The second followed the first, and I followed it. They came almost all the way back here. They stopp’n just two blocks away at the train depot. Going in that gilded gate to the private platforms. I paid the cabby and tried to find out what was what. I paid a pence to a porter coming off duty. He told me both the coaches were at a special church train. That train was due to leave tonight for Nacitas.”

Janali’s fists clenched. Potentate Asonic was taking the lieutenant where she couldn’t follow. Going to Nacitas delayed the interrogation for no reason. The more she considered it, the more the second carriage bothered her. “What about the crewman that went ashore with the ship’s priest? Has he come back yet?”

“Chief Oiler Wainli? He probably went back to the commune house after giving evidence. He isn’t welcome back aboard any ship I command, and he knows it.” Captain Reinvo’s brows dropped over his eyes as he pursed his mouth. At fifty-six years old, he was still a powerful looking man, especially when mad. “Milady, he’s an alley mutt that believes he’s a champion hound. Don’t waste your time on him. He’ll bite the hand that feeds him, if he thinks he’ll get more.”

In spite of Reinvo’s assessment of the man, her gut turned as she imagined him entrapped by the church. These men had survived storms, reefs, kept her ship afloat, repaired it, and returned it to Vental full of valuable cargo. They’d gone beyond just staying alive. They’d protected Janali’s honor and House Jedalor’s business interests. She was responsible for these men’s well-being until they returned to the merchant marine commune. Wainli might have been in that second carriage.

“Brenth, get me a private steam coach. I want its boiler at full pressure. Have it wait at the Jedalor dock entrance. I’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”

Brenth bowed and slipped out.

She paced the room. “If Asonic is taking Wainli and Metallo to Nacitas, I don’t have time to speak to the empress.”

“Wainli is a hot headed arrogant man. But, I wish no one to be in the hands of the Perlustration. Do you honestly think he’s going with them?”

“He might be ignorant enough to think he’s safe.” She stopped as a solution bloomed in her mind. “Augur Optimus Janith supports and blesses the science being done in Crelna. As the head of the church, the release of Metallo and Wainli only required his word.”

She had a letter of support from Augur Optimus Janith in her mementos from her research successes in Crelna. It might be enough to get her in to see him. She grabbed the small mirror and example crystal, putting them into her vest pockets.

“Unload the Vibrius as expected,” she ordered as she rolled up the charts. “Tell the warehouse managers to distribute goods. Stow the sand in warehouse eight. Then prepare the Jedalor yacht to sail for Crelna with two barrels of sand. Make sure it’s stocked and get the manager to give you a ship’s purse of three hundred crosses. Be ready to sail in two weeks. I might be a little delayed getting back. Just be ready.” She moved towards the door.

Captain Reinvo’s eyebrows launched at her statement. “Milady, what are you planning on doing?”

She waved the charts at him as she stepped past him. “I’m going to turn myself in to the church of course.”