Vonn grinned at the new gym fox. "Yes, I flew on the balloon. And on some gadgets of my own. Selen did some enchantment that helped a lot when I crashed. And Kotta here kept us from getting maimed by traps at Tukka's Hollow."

The newcomer said, "Nice, someone with experience. Have you been to Whispering Glen yet?"

"No; what's that one like?"

She told them about a dungeon of mystically created puzzles hinging on echoes and vibrations, patrolled by bats and sharp glass creatures. "It's a good workout. If you're from the south, have you been to that sealed-off place west of you? Nobody wants to talk about it here."

Vonn winced. He'd been hoping to report his findings to the Dungeoneers' Society, but the Duke had ruled it out. Vonn said, "Sorry, but apparently there's an official story developing."

"So you know something's going on?"

Selen held up one wing-arm. "Please don't press us. Bad stuff happened; leave it at that."

The girl frowned and tapped a club against one foot. "Fine. Want to fight a bit while you're here?"

He wasn't eager to hit her, but with the practice gear he got talked into it. To his surprise she wasn't nearly so good at him on the balance beams and rope-strung platforms. Rozila had the other common Vulin ability, Skulking, making her oddly quiet and sneaky in motion.

He helped her up after a couple of hits, then noticed Selen and Kotta had backed off to have their own brawl. "You live around here?"

"Yeah, in the Pipeworks district. Stop by sometime!" She named a street.

"I don't know when I'll be back, but sure. Lunch?"

#

Vonn peeled away from his friends and went out to a seedier part of the city, to a restaurant serving spicy vegetable bowls with bits of river fish. "This would go well with pasta," he said, picking at it.

"With what?" said Rozila.

"I don't know how much Selen's told you about me, but we're stuffed full of weird ideas."

She said, "Selen mentioned you were one of those Engineers. What was that about flying?"

Vonn's ears perked up. "I got involved in her balloon project, but I found out it's possible to build a machine that sails through the air." He talked a bit about the design.

She squinted, trying to follow. "A big, complicated crane kind of thing, just to turn a spinning oar?"

"A very fast one. I'm planning to try more like it on the ground." Trying not to get carried away talking about his machines, he asked, "You act?"

"A little. Bard level 1 so far. I don't know if I can ever do that for a living, so I'm still making barrels as a Craftsman."

"Do you have to be a certain level to be important as an actor?"

She shrugged. "The theaters don't take you seriously till you're at least third level."

"Seems too limiting, to me. Kotta has been getting better by showing off for bigger audiences with new stories, but he was a good storyteller before the System started telling him so." He thought of a Human friend back home. "Then again, I know an Artist who's been intent on doing better and better work to get the levels."

"Do you suppose you're going to be rich and famous with this Engineer stuff?"

"Someday, yeah."

#

She was nice, but didn't seem to understand half of what he'd been talking about. Like a flying machine was just another odd toy. Maybe better than being too impressed, though. She'd seemed to like him and maybe they'd meet up next time.

He spent the afternoon hanging around with Selen and her friends, learning about the postal business. Her family was ex-military and had developed shipping and logistics from that experience. They mostly did letters and small packages though, not large-scale trade. According to Selen, fewer than half of the city's people were literate, and even fewer in the villages she visited. So it was common to have someone else in your neighborhood read and write for you. Even in Shieldpoint where there was an active community of book-copying Monks offering teaching, most people stopped at or before the reading-writing-arithmetic level he associated with the nineteenth century.

"You like the clock?" asked a Human girl who lived down in the basement, one of several war orphans the family kept as live-in help.

Vonn broke his attention away from the mechanical clock up on the second-floor office level. "It's impressive, yeah. Someone is making good quality gears and springs."

"The last guy who lived here designed it. Went on to do other things."

"That's a shame. You know what's better than a complicated machine like this?"

"Hmm?"

"A thousand of them."

#

Vonn went with Kotta to watch a play called The Cave of Clouds, about an order of martial artists battling monsters and a rival sect in the east. The two-story theater had a scantily clad Elf lady selling fruit, and a raunchy opening act with a juggling jester. The play itself was more fun. Bursts of light and sound startled him up from his bench when the Storm Punch Technique came into play, and there was a touching scene of a dying master leaving an enchanted spear to his student. The spear really was enchanted for stage purposes, flinging people around in the final scene. "Or was it?" Vonn wondered aloud.

Kotta grinned toothily. "If they're good enough, you can't tell."

"I didn't know there was a market for that kind of play. Guess I underestimated the special effects. You can hit people without real harm, and then there's the magic."

"The effects don't make it a good story."

"Yes!" Vonn ranted about special effects budgets until Kotta laughed at him.

They walked off talking about the plays of two worlds, and what a deus ex machina was. "I should talk about Aristotle sometime." Vonn checked a list of upcoming productions on the way out but nothing grabbed his attention.

"Hoping for a suspiciously familiar title?" asked the Kobold.

"Kind of, but we already have one newcomer to take care of." Vonn laughed. "That first time, learning that I wasn't alone, was a shock. Now I half expect to find more."