“What a nightmare. Moa, have the secretary cancel my appointments for the day.”

Otto Hart shut his office door and clicked the lock closed. He rubbed his temple and poured himself a large mug of coffee. He’d been up all night; ever since the foundry’s guards had knocked on his door to say they’d caught the damned DeWalt woman sneaking into the foundry’s offices, he’d been wide awake. Then, before he could get there, she’d wounded her guard, stolen his clothes, and started running loose in the foundry. His foundry.

Now two of his cannons were missing, two of his men were dead on his docks, and Shimmertower’s prince had actually bothered to intervene. His foundry was shut down until the investigation was concluded. Which meant he was losing money,

And in the Gibson Company, money was power.

That couldn’t be allowed to stand. Hart sipped at his coffee. He’d have to do something, both about that bitch DeWalt and about the Hourglass. Hart was sure it was the Hourglass–there’d been entirely too many ship rats running around his foundry and only a handful of other ships in port. They’d locked down the dock and checked DeWalt’s records. No airships had left that day. Which meant the Hourglass was the only one missing. He offered a silent prayer of thanks that the DeWalt woman had kept such meticulous records.

He had someone thumbing through the Company records to find out who owned her. Until then, all he had to go on was the ship rats’ names. Carter–not enough there, he decided. And Twila Tighe.

That would have to be enough, he decided. He had to act now. He had to control the message before the other governors found out.

Hart pulled out a machine and plugged it into the myst battery on his chest. It ticked as he began pressing brass keys. Each punched a hole into the parchment below–a hole shaped like a letter. The keys punched down and clicked up, faster and faster, until the whole page was covered in punched-out pieces of parchment.

“Moa.” The door unlocked and opened, and the automaton clunked into the room. “Take this to my secretary. Have her spray fifty copies. Have her send the copies to the other Gibson Company holdings–ten to each. Then bring the master copy back to me.”

“I will do that. Shall I stay here for further instructions?” The machine asked. It clunked to the desk and grabbed the paper, crinkling it slightly with mechanical fingers.

“No. Get out, but come back when the copies are finished and you have the original again,” Hart said. He turned back to his desk as the automaton clunked and shook its way to the stairs. Informing the other Gibson Company governors would hurt his reputation. Still, his foundry had run smoothly for nearly a decade since he took it over. He could afford to lose a touch of prestige.

But not if the DeWalt woman’s betrayal went unpunished.

Otto Hart put away his writing machine and took a long sip of his warm drink. He decided it wouldn’t be enough to be a spider and wait for the Hourglass to land in his web. He’d need to send a wasp after her as well.

A brigantine would be enough of a wasp to subdue a sloop like the DeWalt woman’s records said Hourglass was. Two masts, seventy-five feet from bow to stern, with a pair of decks inside—one of which could carry mid-sized cannons. A crew of ten to keep her running and up to thirty for fighting. There was no way the Hourglass could withstand that many men–especially [Gibson Marines].

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For guns–three eighteen-pounders on the hold’s sides and a pair of [Long-Nines] up front. He’d replace the standard engines with sprinters and add another myst condenser. Then she’d be fast enough to hunt. She’d need some armor for the vital parts–the engines, condensers, and wheelhouse. That would slow her down, but it’d make any fight’s outcome certain. They could convert hold space into an armory, sleeping quarters, and extra reinforcements. The brigantine wouldn’t need to carry anything, after all.

And then it was just a question of who’d be the skipper. Governor Hart rubbed his temples again. The Gibson Company simply didn’t hire the kinds of men who’d run the ship like the wasp it’d need to be. Its skippers were business-like. Give them a direction to bring cargo from the foundry to the shipyards on Drelven, and they’d do it half a day faster than planned, with a skeleton crew to save weight. But give them a complex job–say, hunt down a specific ship somewhere over the Sunset Sea? They wouldn’t be able to do it.

And he couldn’t hire any captain off the docks, either. Some might be able to do it, but he had no leverage. They'd just go pirate themselves if he handed one of them the best pirate hunter the Company could build. But maybe…if he hired a pirate. One in his debt. That could work.

And Hart happened to know just the man. One who, as good foresight would have it, owed him a favor.

At first, he considered just sending a requisition to Smallfield. But after a moment, he reconsidered. He dipped a pen into a bottle of jet-black ink. Hiring this wasp would require a more personal touch.

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Skipper Cedric Giroux-Michaud,

You may not remember my name–Governor Otto Hart. However, I remember yours well, as well as your trial. You should have hung for your barbarity, but one prince elected to spare you and to have you committed to the dungeons of Smallfield instead. That prince was the ruler of Shimmertower, and he did so at my request.

The time has come for you to repay the favor.

You shall be removed from the dungeons and brought here, to Shimmertower. I shall be waiting with an airship, a crew, and a job. When you’ve finished that job, you shall report back to Shimmertower with proof of its completion. In return, I shall hand you a pardon for your various crimes against the Ludya Principalities and against the Gibson Company, and you shall be hired as a privateer in the service of the aforementioned Company.

Your task is to hunt a specific ship. By the time you arrive at Shimmertower, I shall have learned the name of her skipper–for now, know that you’re hunting the Hourglass.

Governor Otto Hart

Gibson Company

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With the ink drying and the letter marked with his seal, Otto Hart stood up and paced the room. Something was wrong. The…heist–how he hated that word–was well-planned, like he’d expected from the DeWalt woman. But it had slid off the rails far too quickly, with too many moving parts. A ship like his men said she was, the raiders could have just pulled up and killed the sentries, then grabbed the guns. The crew had no qualms about killing–two dead men attested to that.

So why hadn’t they chosen the easy way and killed their way in? Why use two away parties–the DeWalt woman and the ship rats who presumably snuck in through the pools? What was he missing?

The Moa returned, and Hart handed it the letter and requisition forms for the ship. Then he sat back at his desk, sipping his coffee and thinking. It didn’t matter, he decided. The wasp would run the Hourglass down, or they’d fall into his spider’s web. Either way, he’d have his answer soon enough.