The ship cut through a wisp of mist, which left water running in tiny lines across the window as the wind wiped the glass clean again. A second wave struck the window, then a third, and an eerie hush fell over the ship. As if the thick white air was muffling the sound of the propellers.

"We're in the Ruins now," Tonya said. Clarissa could see the older woman was fingering one of the ribbons holding back her hair, a long blue strip of cloth with a number one stitched in gold thread. "Never run the Ruins as a race, but that's only because they don't run a course through here."

"But why would you fly through this, especially if it wasn't a race?" Clarissa asked.

"To prove it could be done. I'd heard rumours some smugglers were hiding caches of deadgrass here. I wanted to prove that they could. And prove I was good enough to take someone else's slip in the Shardwall," Tonya said, as she steered the ship directly into the sweeping currents, following the thin streams of moving white mist they could see.

Surprisingly, Tonya was staring carefully at the ball floating beside her head as she flew, her eyes focused on the liquid inside. "Nothing big nearby, no reason to play with our orientation," Tonya murmured to herself, barely loud enough for Clarissa to hear. "Something up ahead, and it has to be big. Nothing close enough otherwise."

The mist was thick enough that Clarissa didn't even know how far into it she could see. Everything was now just swirling white. But Tonya looked unperturbed, and didn't even slow the ship down any more than when they first entered the Ruins.

"Reminds me of when that typhoon swept through the Shardwall during the Raer Bowl," Tonya said. Clarissa could see the pilot wasn't actually looking at her, but was busy glancing from one nearby dial to another. "Couldn't see past the water on your goggles, had to navigate through the way the wind felt on your face. Not my favourite race, not by a long shot. But my last one."

"Your last race? Why did you stop?" Clarissa asked, partially to distract herself from her worries.

"I got what I needed. A purse large enough to win the race I'd always been running," Tonya said to Clarissa. She turned to the speaking tube and spoke again. "Captain, I could use some smoke. Straight ahead."

A moment later, a small canister came whistling into view, billowing a stream of bright orange smoke. The canister was swept along by the winds, and a few moments later it — and the smoke it spat — were lost in the mist.

"Good," Tonya said quietly. "Nothing ahead for a bit. Just hold steady. Something will tell me when it's time to turn."

They drifted into what looked like a sea of white, and water ran in streams along the domed window at the bow. To Clarissa, only the hum of the propellers told her they were moving forward. She fidgeted nervously and tried to recall the last thing Tonya had said to her. "You mean you won enough money on your last race?" Clarissa asked. "What did you need the money for?"

"You're a monastery kid," Tonya said in reply. "Have you ever worked at one of the floating farms?"

"The tiny isles near the Core," Clarissa recalled. "We all do."

"That might be a shift," Tonya muttered, still staring at the window. She glanced back at Clarissa for a moment, and asked, "Did you ever meet a man at the Ferella Ranch by the name of Effran Hughes?"

"Effran? He tells the best stories. He made that place my favourite work assignment. He'd bake these cookies, they were always amazing, and he'd tell us stories about the wonderful places around the endless sky. It's so sad, whatever happened to his wife," Clarissa blurted out, the words tumbling out in a rush.

"Yeah, it is. I haven't seen them since I dropped them off, three years ago. Rather wonder if you know what the Monastery does with those tiny farmstead isles," Tonya said, but her gaze was focused on the little glass ball floating beside her head. Something about what she saw made eyes widen in surprise. Her head swerved forward, her eyes sharp and intent on the swirling grey blanket washing against the window. A moment later she began pulling several levers, laughing under her breath.

"Gravity doesn't lie, and neither do the winds," Tonya crowed in triumph, and Clarissa could feel the ship turn sharply to the right. Clarissa watched out the left side of the window, and screamed when a wall of rock appeared in the mist, passing out of sight as the ship flew past.

"I could have shaved with that cut, Tonya," the captain said over the pipe, but he didn't sound unhappy. "Leslie's loaded the Banshee with the paint rounds, if you need to use it for ranging."

"Never was too good at the math for that, captain."

"Let me worry about that. Just ask me by the o'clock which way you want me to range."

"Aye, captain," Tonya said, staring at the window again. She frowned as she looked at it, then looked over at Clarissa. "Kid, does the seam look a little off-centre to you?"

Clarissa stared at the window for a moment and shrugged in confusion. "What's the 'seam'?"

"It's the line on the window where the winds start pushing the water to the sides. If we were riding the winds dead on, it would be right in the centre of the window," Tonya said, and she glanced from the window to the glass ball and back. "Take a look."

Clarissa, already closer to the window, pointed her finger at the pattern the running water was making on the window, and could see the line. Distinctly to the left of the frame that ran along the middle, it also appeared to be shifting even further.

"You're right, and it's moving!" Clarissa exclaimed.

"Looks like I over-steered a bit," Tonya said, and she turned the wheel.

The line shifted again, snaking to the right. Clarissa watched it until it was hidden behind the frame, then turned around and held in her thumb.

"Not bad, kid," Tonya said, giving Clarissa a strange looking salute, a flick of two fingers off her right eyebrow. She held the wheel steady again, and the confident smile on the pilot's face only grew. "Almost starting to wonder what all the fuss is about with the Ruins."

"How do you know Effran Hughes?" Clarissa asked, when she found she could relax again. Walls of smooth rock, worn like the mountainsides of her home, were pushing past the mists on her right, but it looked to Clarissa like the mists were thinner, rather than that the Child was closer.

"Captain told you my name when you took passage with us, didn't he?" Tonya asked. "Tonya Hughes. Effran is my father."

"Oh, wow," Clarissa said. She thought back to some of the stories that old man had told her, and recalled more than one had been about some kind of race. She thought of one she remembered best, and asked, "Were you in something called 'The Drop'?"

"Oh, I remember that one. It's a windlass drop, where you plummet from one of those big Olencian Junks down to a wheat field with a one-tonne box. Meant to commemorate some kind of daring manoeuvre during some war, but the point is you have to get that box as close to a single flag in the middle of a wheat field as you can, as fast as you can." Tonya laughed, and smiled happily at Clarissa. It might have been a trick or the light, but her eyes seemed to glisten. "My first race. Surprised he remembers."

"He's doing really well," Clarissa said. "He's one of the people we ask to help orient newcomers. Some of them start out really bad."

Tonya frowned. "You ever heard of deadgrass?"

"Yeah. It gets talked about a fair but, but I've never understood much of it. The elders of the Monastery don't want us asking anyone about it," Clarissa admitted.

"There are a lot of stories about deadgrass. They're all sad," Tonya said. She frowned at the glass ball again, then turned to the pipe. "Captain, could you give me a range? Twelve o'clock."

"Stand by," the captain replied.

Clarissa held out her hands and waited for the shot. She didn't have to wait long before the gun howled and rocked the entire ship, but the cannon wasn't what she was listening for. Just before the roar of the gun left her ears, less than a second after the gun was fired, she heard the small crack of the shot hitting rock.

"About twenty-four hundred yards," Clarissa said quickly.

"Wait, what?" Tonya asked.

"Twenty-two hundred sixteen yards, give or take a dozen feet," the captain said a moment later.

"Clarissa has us pegged at twenty-four hundred, cap," Tonya mentioned.

"Air density in the Ruins is thicker than even at the Core," Captain said. "All that mist. Not bad though, it would be twenty-four hundred eight, if we were still outside."

"So a mile and a quarter until we run around," Tonya said. Her right hand was on the large lever, her fingers undulating anxiously as she waited. "Now to see where the winds flow next. Kid, watch the seam carefully. Let me know if it shifts in about half a minute."

"Half a minute," Clarissa nodded. "What happens then?"

"The winds should start blowing around that rock we're heading for. Stay ready," Tonya said.

Clarissa watched the window, barely willing to let herself breathe, fearing she would miss it. Seconds passed with agonizing sloth, and she had waited so long that she was worried she imagined it when the pattern of the water on the window changed.

"It changed, but," Clarissa began to say. "It's not a seam, it's spreading in every direction."

Tonya glanced at the glass ball, as it began to drift away from her. "Rakefire Muckspout!" Tonya cursed, and she swung several of the small levers at once. She then pulled the big lever hard towards her and turned to one of the speaking tubes. "Swivel propellers on overrun! Prep for main propellers at overrun in six seconds!"

She then moved her head to the other tube, and shouted "check clips!"

The ship pushed against Clarissa's legs. Hard. The unnoticeable pull off the tiny islands was replace by a sudden pull on her body that felt like she was filled with magnetized lead. Her knees buckled, and she clutched the rails as the ship tilted its bow up.

As Clarissa hung on, the mists parted and a wall of rock was all she could see out the window. The bare rocks looked as if they were falling, rushing from the top of the window to the bottom, until the ship tilted up and she could see mist straight ahead again. The ship surged to life as the main propellers began to thrum again, and Clarissa let out a sigh of relief as weightlessness returned.

But one quick glance at Tonya revealed that the pilot wasn't finished. She was switching levers in rapid succession, and her face warred between grin and grimace. She turned to the speaking tube, and shouted, "Brace! Aft powered turn, with a sixty degree rotation counter-clockwise!"

Clarissa somehow noticed, even as her heart started pounding, that the globe tied to her hand was being pulled up in the air.

The ship swung violently again, and the rocks below shifted into view on the right side. Then something shoved her back, nearly knocking her over despite her magnetic boots. The swirling mists drowned out the rock a moment later, and the water flowing across the window grew so thick they might as well be underwater.

"Now this is what we live for!" Tonya cried out, as the ship tried to throw Clarissa into the side of the hull. She actually stumbled, her feet coming off the deck, and she clutched the rail so hard her shoulders ached from the effort.

It only took a few seconds more, before Tonya pushed the large lever away, and flicked the other switches again. "Returning to cruising speed. You two okay down there?" she called out to engineering.

"Engine's happy," Anita said lightly. Clarissa was amazed at how easily the engineer had taken that last manoeuvre. "Yannick's going to research curse words when we finish, though. Says you deserve the effort."

"Everything right as blue sky up there, captain?" Tonya asked through the other nearby tube.

"Lost a smoke launcher, and Leslie misplaced his lunch off the side," the captain replied. "We fly this route again, I might make vomit coloured shirts our uniform."

Tonya laughed as she took the wheel in two hands again and stared at the window. "Wasn't expecting the rock to be quite that big, or having another one that big so close."

Clarissa nodded, panting. She tried to relax by taking slower breaths, but the best she managed was a frightened, somewhat manic laugh. "That was," she began to say, unable to finish the thought.

"Feels good, don't it?" Tonya asked.

"That's a description. Like calling the sky green," Clarissa muttered.

"Try something Leslie made once we're clear of the Ruins. Food tastes better after some real excitement. Everything's better," Tonya smiled wistfully as she spoke. "Guess it's the reason people take deadgrass. However you get it, the rush and the high ain't something you can deny yourself easily."

"What is deadgrass?"

"It's a drug. Crippling addictive. My parents were both users," Tonya said. "Dad recovered from it better, actually managed to kick it, but mom didn't manage. Least not until I got them to the farm."

Clarissa nodded, beginning to understand. "But the Monastery doesn't make people pay to come to the farms, do they? I know they're a place to get away from things like deadgrass, my teachers were willing to tell me that much," Clarissa said, gently. She was worried about Tonya's still glistening eyes, and the hands on the wheel had a distinct tremor to them. How much of that was excitement, she couldn't know.

"It ain't free, but the monastery only asks you pay what you can. Half a rusted copper tack would have been enough for them. Even booking passage on the Child was reasonable, considering the tensions between Volante and the Calmoori. The part that I spent every copper I made in those races, and the money my Dad managed to earn while keeping me and mom afloat, was paying off the debts that piled up from being hooked on deadgrass.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Clarissa said.

"Don't be. Should be thanking you and yours at the Monastery for having those farms. Mine is one more sad tale of deadgrass, but that tale ain't over. Misfortune's a hard wind, but learn to fly in a hurricane and there's nowhere beneath the blue you can't go," Tonya said.

Clarissa nodded, only barely hearing Tonya turn to the pipe and ask the captain to launch another smoke canister. But the ship's pilot had fought it, and as she hummed happily to herself and turned the ship gently to follow the rolling mists flowing between the islands, Clarissa wondered if Tonya's story had something to do with the ship's name.