There was once a locomotive works in a city that never existed. You could hear it before you could see it. Hammers. Steam. Steel wheels rolling across iron tracks. Foremen shouting from elevated platforms. Cranes swinging boiler plates through clouds of black smoke. Hundreds of men reported before sunrise.

In a kingdom that never existed, there was a road that almost nobody traveled from beginning to end. It crossed two mountain ranges. Three rivers. A forest people avoided after dark. And enough empty country to make a man question whether civilization had been a temporary experiment. The king used the road for one reason. Messages. Not ordinary messages. Orders. Contracts. Warnings. Requests from governors.

The Captain had made the crossing enough times to stop fearing the sea in the ordinary way. He knew the route well enough to speak of it with confidence and just poorly enough to still be surprised by it. By late afternoon, the North Atlantic had begun its quiet mutiny. The pressure fell first. Then the gulls, which had spent the morning following the ship like creditors, vanished into the gray. The crew said little, but every man aboard could feel the change in the water.