Lost in thought, he bumped into a Human man while walking toward the docks. "Sorry!"

The man said, "They say an Engineer around here found a way to fly. Is that you?" He was looking at a couple of tools that Vonn had tucked into his vest.

"That's me, yeah. Crashed the flying machine but I'll build another."

He whistled. "How do you even start with that kind of thing?"

Vonn told the stranger, "It's about making simple tools to make better tools, and finding ways to make a job simpler so you can move on to something more complicated."

"Kind of a super Smith, then."

"The Smiths are still really important too. Some of the things I'm making won't be important until I can make a hundred at a time."

The outsider thanked him and left, looking thoughtful enough that he might start banging into people himself.

Vonn went to the docks and frowned at some telltale signs of wooden pilings and boards needing replacement. The upkeep of this area was part of the town's tax obligation and they'd fallen behind. Was there any easy way to upgrade these things? Nothing came to mind except that it'd be a good place to try having a signal tower passing messages cross-river.

The general store often served as the post office. The Two Hoots mail company had been visiting regularly in the last year but traffic from downriver was still sporadic, usually brought by random travelers willing to promise to carry something.

The Centaur lady running the shop was busy dragging a barrel around. "We can't even get a steady barrel supply these days unless it's from elsewhere on the river."

The cooper's trade was specialized, done by a Craftsman in this district. It involved fire-hardened wooden slats held together with iron hoops. Vonn said, "My friends should be dealing with the mine problem about now."

"Well, good. Make sure the cooper's shop gets a share before you build your giant metal Dragon or whatever it is this time."

Vonn laughed. "That'd be worth an Engineer level, for sure."

She had a sturdy, heavy ink jar and a wooden box of carved metal parts for him. Fortunately she also had a sort of hand truck or wheelbarrow too. He'd been pleasantly surprised to learn that gadget was already well known, if not the principle of the lever behind it.

He took his haul to the print shop, where only Inkpaw was there, sprawled on a junky chair. Her eyes lit up as he brought the improved ink blend and explained. But instead of asking about it she said, "We found a customer for the reading books you want us to do. The Baron's son asked for a hundred!"

"Oh, good." That was a project that'd been on the back burner, as Selen would say. The printers had worked with the local monks to hand-write a prototype guide about thirty pages long, an ambitious thing to mass produce. He had looked it over but didn't dare get much involved in this one. What he really would've liked was to get that artist he'd helped, to produce an illustrated book about a cat in a hat. But printing images was still tricky; the printer kids hadn't mastered woodblock illustration.

But Vonn said, "His son? I thought the Baron himself was interested."

The girl shrugged. "As long as we get the money to do it!"

Vonn examined the press and pointed out a part that needed oiling.

"Hey, Vonn? Should we print news about that Fifth Dragon thing Kotta has been going on about?"

Vonn winced. "I really don't think that's a great idea, not yet anyway."

#

A little while later, Dad and Tazo finally got home. They arrived at the workshop, looking worn out. Vonn was busy playing with his new toys from Grandbridge, some precision parts he could use for the machine shop.

Tazo summarized what they'd been through. "But the method works! A long iron rail can help protect the miners and get production going again."

"Great! I had been thinking of this in terms of having a ring of metal around the place, but if you can run the energy directly into the tunnels that's even better." He tapped his chin, saying, "My questions then are whether that'll neutralize the death energy of that place over time, and how much power will be lost as they extend the rail."

"What do you mean?" asked Tazo.

"You're sending energy along the metal, but it must be leaking out to some extent or it wouldn't affect the monsters. So if you make the rail much longer, most will probably leak out before it can reach the end. What I would do is add an insulating layer, something that can prevent the leak except in the places where you want it. Even just lifting the rail off the ground might help."

"You're thinking of that idea of carrying lightning energy through metal?"

"Right. There was a huge argument between great inventors about the best way to do that. Call it the 'War of the Lightning Currents' -- not a real war though. The best answer involved an 'alternating current', pulsing at different amounts instead of a steady stream." He drew a sine wave on the blackboard.

Dad looked skeptical, as he often did about the details of Vonn's "visions". "You think that applies to the rails?"

"I'm not sure, but it's something for Tazo to test. I would measure the strength of the magic reaching the end of a rod, when the spell is cast in different ways."

Tazo sighed dramatically. "More numbers to write down."

He grinned. "Get used to it." Then he asked, "Where are Urika and Kotta and Polestar?"

"Off exploring the other villages in Kolm's territory, and overseeing getting the mines running again."

Dad said, "I think your former boss is going to end up as the replacement Baron."

Vonn's ears flattened. "What."

Tazo said, "Dad, I warned you it might be a problem."

Vonn told them, "We need a master Smith. Ashfall hit level 3 but she's just not as good. And the Baron specifically worried I was trying to edge Urika out."

"You're not," Dad assured him. "He's just getting pulled into something better for him."

Vonn paced. "But this makes me look bad. You put him up to changing jobs?"