Marjory was busy with her cannon, taking advantage of the relatively low danger inside the kingdom to take the weapon apart and perform maintenance that was too dangerous to perform while we might be attacked by warped. She waved at me from inside the weapon’s empty water tank, but was clearly not in a talkative mood.

With each of my three companions busy at their own tasks, I settled down at the bow to watch the kingdom pass below us. It seemed like no matter how much time I spent looking down from the Swift, the wonder of seeing the ground so far below never stopped.

There was a huge difference between the wild lands outside the border and the kingdom’s interior. Instead of the seemingly endless grasslands or vast forest of the wilds, we were now passing over neat square fields. Fuzzy yellow brown squares of what was probably wheat alternated with green pasture, where I could just barely see the brown backs of herds of cattle and with the darker green of fruit tree orchards.

We were sailing at a higher altitude than when hunting warped, but significantly lower than the first time we came this way, and were probably visible from the ground. I chose our altitude according to the most favorable wind direction I could find, and wasn’t too afraid of being seen, since the people of Whitecliff had seen the Swift before. It was before the rank up, and she was a lot bigger now, but we did claim that she was a dwarven prototype on our previous stop. It was perhaps a bit fast for the next version to be ready, but dwarven engineering was legendary among humans. I was certain the people of Whitecliff would believe that the Swift was a different ship built along the same principles of the prototype they’d seen before.

I lost myself in watching the endless vista of the ground rolling beneath us, and in the minute adjustments to our altitude needed to stay in the best possible wind. With a full complement of Deckhands, the Swift was just as fast as she was before the rank up, and it felt like mere minutes later that the cliff face that gave Whitecliff half of its name appeared before us.

Doreen was still flying outside, and Marjory was still busy putting her cannon back together, but Mable had left the galley and came to stand next to me, watching the growing city in wonder. We were at about the same height as the top of the cliff and about a kilometer away, and I’d meant to bring the Swift to a landing at the same place we’d landed at previously.

Plans which went down the drain to the twanging sound of an arrow hitting my Sailor, seemingly out of nowhere. A sound like that of thunder followed closely behind the arrow, which pierced through the Shape’s head and continued flying until it hit the foremast and stuck into it. I barely registered Mable’s cry of alarm as I ran towards the wheel and yanked the altitude lever up to raise the Swift above the range of what must have been a Bowmaster. I dropped to the deck as soon as I’d locked the lever in place, just in time for a second shot to blast through the air above my head, and then we were high enough that the Ship’s hull was between us and the shooter.

I stood back up slowly, and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that Doreen was landing on deck and that all three ladies were safe.

“What the shattering was that?” Mable asked. The purser was looking wide eyed at the arrows sticking out of the foremast, and her breath was coming in short, quick gasps.

“Sniper or Bowmaster,” Doreen supplied the answer before I could, referring to the air aligned tier III and the Tier IV Archer variants. “From the angle, the shot came from the top of the cliff, and there aren’t many things that can shoot that far.”

“Definitely Bowmaster,” I added. “Sniper shoot far, but their arrows aren’t supersonic.”

“Why would anyone with a Bowmaster attack us though?” Doreen wondered. “There are very few people outside the White family who have them, and you’ve been this way before, so they should know that a flying ship isn’t necessarily hostile.”

“I don’t know,” I answered, and turned the Swift’s bow away from the city. I could hear the twanging sound of more arrows hitting her keel, and I really wanted to take her out of range. “And I’m not sticking around to find out. I don’t know precisely how much damage the Swift can take, and I’d really rather not find out.”

It took a few minutes to find the right wind, and another half an hour before I felt safe enough to stop.

“Doreen, can you fly below the Ship and see if we have any arrows lodged in the hull?” I asked, and went to yank the arrow that took out my Sailor, and the one that nearly did the same to me, out of the mast. “We need to get rid of them, and then we need to move again.”

The warped girl swore under her breath and leaped out of the Swift. I knew it’d take her a few seconds to generate enough lift to fly back up, and I knew she understood the importance of the task.

“Why bother?” Marjory asked. “They’re just ephemera, like your Archers’ arrows. They’ll dissipate in an hour or so.”

“Normally, yes,” I answered and threw the arrows overboard. “But high tier Archers can generate Shaped arrows instead of ephemera. It costs them vim that they can’t get back until they Unshape the arrow, but it also means that the arrows will remain until dismissed.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Because the arrows remain linked to the Archer that made them, and the Shaper can know precisely where they are, just like they know where their Shapes are.”

The dwarf repeated Doreen’s swearing, and the two of us spent several minutes looking for arrows that may have landed somewhere on the deck. We didn’t find any more, but Doreen reported finding no less than ten arrows stuck into the bottom of the hull. Free of any possible tracking methods, and high enough to be invisible from the ground, I took the Swift another hour’s sail away, before coming again to a stop.

“So,” I said to my three crew members. “What now?”