And in the clearing is a lady knight in full armor on a charging griffin crossing directly in front of Nick to meet an ambulatory robed skeleton with red glowing points where eyes would normally live.

He yelps in surprise, then stands up and starts running in the opposite direction. This takes a few seconds. Because of the suit.

He stops running. "What the hell did you do to that monster, because it seems a lot like magic which is a thing that always tries to kill me! This time by dropping me in the middle of a magic fight without my ship or 'bots! Augh!"

"I shattered its soul-eye with a sword. What are you?"

"I am a human from far, far away who did not! Expect! To be here!"

"...You're a human? What are you wearing, what's the matter with you?" She slides off her griffin, tells it, "Calm," and clanks over to Nick speculatively, still holding her swordstaff.

"This is my environment suit, it protects me from things. I'm not taking it off until I'm very sure I'm safe. Look, I'm from another world, assume I was raised by a hermit who lived in a cave or something when you try to explain things to me please. It'll save some time."

"Very well: I am a paladin, my job is to kill dark things, and in that suit you look more like some kind of undiscovered dark thing than a human, and if you want to prove that you aren't a dark thing you will need to either resemble a human more or touch bare skin to my Winter Light talisman." She gestures at a pendant around her neck imprinted with a symbol.

He depolarizes the visor, giving her a view of his face. "Does this help? Is your talisman going to do anything to me if I am in fact a human? And what defines a dark thing?"

"The talisman does nothing to humans, but burns dark things. Dark things are evil entities of various sorts that oppose the Light and work misery. And yes, that helps, but you might still be possessed by a dark thing."

She touches the pendant to his hand. When he doesn't burn, she nods and puts it back over her head. "Well, you're definitely not a dark thing, and probably a human." She sighs, and then puts her hand over a bloody patch of her hair and says, "Winter Light, by your grace and to better follow you, I beseech your power grant me healing for this wound sustained in your service." There is a blue-white glow under hand; she repeats herself with a hand on her knee and then attends to her mount's injuries the same way.

"It might be able to explode some dark things, then."

"Yes, but... Okay. Okay. You said dark possession is a thing. How do I stop that from happening to me?"

"You don't go near the sorts of dark things that possess people. Or you could keep the pendant, if you like, since you won't know how to be careful; I can get another."

"You and your griffin are the one party out of two I've encountered so far that has not immediately tried to kill me, so I'm inclined to trust you more than I'd normally trust magic. I'd appreciate the gift. Does the pendant do anything magical besides repel dark things?"

"Not outside a paladin's hands."

"Do I need to be touching it or will it still help protect me if it's in a pocket?"

"It will help more if you are wearing or touching it, but it is not useless in a pocket."

"Right, so I'll put it on whenever I calm down enough to decide it's safe to take off my helmet." He takes the pendant and puts it in a pocket. "Which leaves the question of where I go now. Can I get directions to the nearest city?"

"Leagues away. Ragnar can carry us both to the Order of the Winter Light's compound, and from there Andivar isn't far."

"You sure? The suit's pretty heavy. And I don't traditionally get along with nonhunman nonplant life."

"I can leave you here if you prefer, but you would have to walk for many miles to get to a village, let alone a city. Unless you're about twice as strong as a paladin, the fact that you can bear that load means that Ragnar can bear me, you, and it in the air for as long as it will take to get to the compound."

"Oh, it bears itself, mostly. That's a trick with motors and electricity. I doubt it's much heavier than your plate, though, so I'll take your offer and thank you for it."

So onto the griffin they get. Kaja helps him on - she's really strong - and then the griffin takes off.

He holds on as tightly as he thinks he can do so without upsetting the griffin. It's kind of unnerving to be using a vehicle one does not directly control.

"I'm nervous. Uh, Nicholas."

"Are you okay? Height-sick?"

"Not height-sick, I'm just used to flying my ship instead of being flown. It's a bit unnerving to think that I can't stop us from falling, even if your griffin is unlikely to fall."

"He won't fall, and if you fall from him I'll catch you."

"I wouldn't have gotten on if I thought he'd drop me, but I'm still nervous. It's hard to turn fear off. I'll be fine, this still definitely beats walking through unknown wilderness for weeks."

"Yes, probably. Do you know how you got here?"

"I was attacked by some sort of beast. A giant snake with a mirror for a head, or, instead of a head. It snuck past my perimeter sensors somehow, and when it 'ate' me, I was suddenly in a different world. That's when I fell in front of you and that skeleton-thing. As for how it gave me an jump to a new universe without hyperium and a singularity generator, I have no idea."

"He was a lich. The snake thing... I have no explanation."

"Me neither. My tentative plan is to build a new ship and go home, but it doesn't seem like you have the kind of technology I'm used to here. It'll be an uphill battle at best."

"I'm not sure what you're looking for..."

"Does 'computer' ring a bell'? How about 'electricity'? I'm assuming no, since swords are outdated weapons where I come from."

"...Lightning? Sorry, the Winter Light's gift of understanding doesn't tell me everything there is to know about the words you're using. Swords hold blessings better than most things, but maybe that's not a factor where you're from."

"Blessings are not a factor where I come from. We don't have dark things, or magic, or gods. We have to do everything by being clever with... Clockwork I suppose, and electricity, which could be summarized as chained lightning, and engines, which produce mechanical force, and computers that do lots and lots of math very very fast and this turns out to be useful for more than just accounting."

"...That sounds interesting. It must be nice without any dark things, at least."

"Yes, you can wander through the wilderness only fearing for wolves and bears instead of walking skeletons and so on. I don't think you really notice the lack of dark things until you visit a place that does have them. At any rate, would you like me to possibly make some useful devices?"

"Maybe; what would you be making?"

"It largely depends on what materials are available. Starting from the simplest and moving to the most difficult or complex: Mechanical engines that can move things and would power some other devices, water pumps and filters, a telegraph system that will allow fast communication between two buildings set up for it, light without fire via electricity, ice-making cold-making and heating machines, composite alloy/ceramic armor that is lighter and stronger than steel (though I have no idea how it'd interact with blessings), more sophisticated communication devices that can be moved around and will do voices properly instead of just simple codes, weapons of various sorts, computers which will take an entire explanation all on their own, robots which are non-alive mechanical servants that use computers and electricity to run."

"...I'm sure you could find people who would want all of those things. Paladins in particular could use communication setups so we could show up where dark things were quicker, and maybe the armor. We can already do light; it's a prayer like the healing one."

"I can take a section of the ceramic plating in this thing out and have someone see if it would be better than steel plate. Long-range communication is on the tricky side of things, if your society doesn't use electricity yet. I'll definitely look into it."

"...The obvious way to test your armor is to hit it with a sword as hard as we can, so if you give us some to test you might not get it back."

"That's acceptable. If it's just cut into pieces and not completely obliterated, I can fix it."

"You said ceramic so I'm imagining it shattering, but maybe it's not prone to that?"

"It's a special ceramic, and it's a ceramic composite. Ceramic is only some of the layers in it, which include carbon nanotubes, kinetic-reactance fluids, and titanium-steel alloys. And my joiner will mend a crack in just about anything."

"...Okay. Huh, that could be really handy. The joiner."

"If you're thinking surgery, let me warn you that it's not meant for use on living things. Its power source will run out eventually, and I can't make more without infrastructure. But if you think it'll be useful, I can try to rig a way to recharge it. And join things."

"I was thinking busted staffs and armor and walls, actually. I have very basic field medic training but usually the idea is to get the dark things destroyed before they've hurt anyone."

"Staffs and armor it could definitely do. Walls are big, it might be better to try something else instead of using the joiner's limited power on them. I also have a bevy of sensors and scanners. I'm trying to teach them how to detect dark things with the example of that lich as a dark thing, but I don't think it's working."

"Well, liches aren't very common. It would be more useful if you could detect woke shadows, which can be very hard to find."

"Please describe woke shadows."

"They're made with a specific kind of candle, and whoever made them sends them after their enemies. They seldom directly kill people - they cause nightmares, intolerable ones that can sometimes cause literal death from fear, and they whisper to people, which in conjunction with the nightmares and/or sleep deprivation causes people to act very out of character."

"...That's intensely creepy. What form do they take, though?"

"They're shadows. They're insubstantial and can fold up in very small spaces. I have a probe in the shape of a Winter Light sigil to check people's ears for them."

"I'm not sure how shadows are supposed to map to physical properties. I think I'd need to see one to learn how to find them."

"That might be a little difficult, but maybe the next time we're out on a specific report or suspicion of woke shadows we could bring you along."

"Are they impossible to control? At all difficult to destroy? What I'm getting at is, would you be offended at the idea of summoning exactly one long enough for me to get a good look at it before killing the thing?"

"Possession of those candles is illegal, waking shadows is illegal, and I don't recommend talking like that around the other paladins."

"I figured as much." Silent staring-at-landscape time.

And eventually here is a campus of paladin-related buildings with walls around it, near a small city. Kaja lands.

And Nick clambers off. "What kind of things does one do for a living around here?"

"In the compound? One is a paladin or a novice or a retired paladin. Elsewhere? Farmers and shoemakers and moneylenders and stonemasons and carpenters and innkeepers and such things."

"Which leaves me wondering how I will afford food and raw materials and such. None of the devices I described to you can be built from nothingness."

"Well, there are the moneylenders I mentioned."

"But the question is, will they trust someone with strange devices promising unheard-of benefits enough to deem it worth the risk of me taking their silver and never being seen again? I suppose there's only one way to find out."

"You can show them the devices you do have," she points out.

"I think I will go find a moneylender, then." His computer can absorb enough of the language to be going with, in an hour of wandering around. "Thanks again for the ride."

"...You don't speak Cirth, do you?"

"Not yet. My computer will pick it up well enough in a few hours, I suspect."

"...Computers can do that?"

"Yes. It's not perfect, though. And I'm missing three-quarters of the gear I would have for learning a new language under ideal circumstances. And it won't give me the language, not yet, it'll just be a sort of translator."

"Huh. Still, more efficient than having even a retired paladin follow you around."

"If you'll come talk to the Bright Sister I will be able to offer you the use of the campus cafeteria for the time being, at a minimum."

"It seems polite to explain myself to her, to the extent that I can, since you've just ferried me into her compound."

"I'll get my armor off first and see to Ragnar if you don't mind waiting."

"Not at all."

Nick has been standing in a corner, doing computer things. He follows. "Any rules I should know?"

"Be polite, call her Sister - that should cover it, more or less."

He nods. "Let's go, then."

"I am from another world, Sister. I was attacked by some sort of monster, a giant snake with a mirror for a head. When it 'ate' me, I suddenly fell directly between Kaja and a lich she was fighting. After that was resolved, I introduced myself, touched her sigil to show that I am human, and she offered to carry me here. I thank the Order of Winter's Light for its kindness, and I hope to find my way home, but it will be difficult to reconstruct the technology that allows me to cross between worlds here."

After being led out, he says, "I'll want to tell her about the communicating devices, once I'm sure I can make them."

"It'll be helpful. People send us messages when they think a mage may be turning to dark practices or if they think someone they know is plagued by a woke shadow or if they notice an imp active somewhere or see zombies coming. But it's not as fast as we would like."

"So about that food. If it's a cafeteria, I assume there will be other people chatting in Cirth, my computer can get a head start."

"It's between main mealtimes now, but yes, there will probably be some people getting porridge for an afternoon snack. I can speak Cirth to you as well, for that matter, if I ignore the words the Winter Light supplies me in your language."

"You should start speaking in Cirth, yes. Within half an hour I will understand a sufficient amount of it."

She gestures for him to follow and chatters in Cirth. "I don't understand how a machine could possibly do what the Winter Light's gifts do, or even a facsimile, but I can't think of a reason for you to make it up..." The cafeteria is serving porridge and bread; there are cooking smells for forthcoming dinnertime coming from the kitchen, but none of that food is out yet. "Help yourself to as much of this as you'd like." She herself takes a roll. There are some younger paladins (who call Kaja "Sister") and some older ones who are also eating the supplied food rather than wait for a real meal.

Kaja helpfully identifies objects in the room - bowls, tables, benches, novices, initiates, bread.

Nick repeats the names and composes simple sentences with them. But a demonstration of proper Cirth grammar from him will be a while yet.

When she's run out of things to name she goes back to talking idly about things like places in town he might find a moneylender, the local currency, where he might find a mage to send him home if that's a thing mages can do (she doesn't know), possible applications for his joiner, another language spoken by a local minority that he might want to add to his computer if he can do that but she can't speak it right now because the paladin language thing only works with a target...

After another bowl of porridge, he says in Cirth, "I know some Cirth now. It is good enough. I will go find a moneylender and show him my devices."

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"I don't think it will be very interesting. But if you want to, yes."

"If you don't need me I'll stay here, but if you do need help I have permission to go with you."

"It would be bad to misunderstand something important. I'd like you to come with, then."

Nick's computer listens carefully to all the conversation around him, absorbing more Cirth. Nick himself mostly seems... Unimpressed.

"If you can't get enough lent to find a place to sleep tonight I can ask about letting you stay in the compound."

"If I can't get lent enough to rent a room at an inn, I won't have enough to craft anything useful. I might ask to be paid to repair broken staffs and armor with the joiner."

"We don't have a lot of those around, but it would get you some coin at least."

"And presumably non-paladins have broken things. For that matter, my threader can make rope from wild grass. Rope is a thing that people sometimes need, yes?"

"Yes. Rope from grass would definitely be useful if it were any good."

"It usually turns out slightly green and shiny, but is not necessarily weak... What's rope made of, normally? Hemp and tar? For that matter I can probably make polyester, which makes for durable and comfortable garments if you blend-weave it with cotton. Of course, rope and garments will be my industry only if I don't get a loan sufficient to make other things."

"I am not actually sure how rope is usually made. But you could probably make a decent living and set some aside with the rope and the polyester."

"Or medicine! Can the winter's light heal people who aren't paladins? Do paladins get sick? Do you have access to antibiotics and antivirals?"

"Paladins can only heal ourselves and our mounts, but we don't get sick. I'm not sure what those things are. ...And it's 'Winter Light', you've made that mistake twice now."

"I see. And yes, you have my name right."

"Let's see it," agrees the moneylender.

He pulls out a flashlight and turns it on, then hands it over.

She looks at it, lights up various objects in her dim little shop, says, "You can make more of these?"

"Not immediately. I'm cut off from most of my tools. And they need some infrastructure, that one is using stored energy that will last a few days at best. I'm not familiar with the markets here, but I would guess that a month's wage's worth of materials and a week or so of effort would be enough for me to start making more."

"Have you got any business sense or are you one of those head-in-the-clouds inventor types?"

"Er, sorry, I'm still learning Cirth. I'm not sure what you're asking."

Kaja repeats the question, voice overlaid.

"Thank you, Kaja. I think I know business well enough. I was a trader of sorts before I ended up here by mistake."

"At this point you are only affecting your interest rate, not whether you get money at all," says the moneylender, "so take the high rate if you prefer, but would you tell me about your trading?"

"I owned a ship, and I traveled between places exchanging commodities along the way. I didn't settle into one particular route because the ship was specially designed for long range and low maintenance. Most often I would carry things like furs, food, lumber, other raw materials. Many businesses in my homeland are very particular about the way they distribute finished goods, so I didn't even bother with those most of the time."

"Particular?"

"I'm not quite sure why, but few places are willing to sell or buy finished goods in any kind of bulk outside of a long-term contract. It'd be too much hassle to be a travelling supermarket, keeping track of every little thing and where I bought it and what it does, so I just stick to commodities and tinkering."

"Are you going to operate your own storefront or sell through third parties here?"

"Ideally the latter, so I have more time to focus on actually making the things. And other devices, many of which you would find equally useful. I would like to point out that the application I'm thinking of is installing fixed lights in a building, not necessarily making more portable lights. That's going to be easier to scale up because I don't think lithium is for sale around here, and lithium is a critical component of any reasonably efficient power-storage device."

"I can't understand your jargon," says the moneylender.

"It's much easier and cheaper to put lights in roofs and walls and run wires to them, than to make more that can be carried around. I predict that most of my business will be installing them in buildings and powering and maintaining them after that."

"I assume the sister isn't going to follow you around helping you with your Cirth forever; are you going to hire help?"

"Another device that would take a while to explain is teaching me Cirth. Within a few days I will be reasonably fluent."

"The question stands."

"I'll hire help if and when I find that I need it."

"But you don't currently plan to?"

"I do expect to hire help eventually, but not for a couple of weeks when I have some finished products to present to people. Sorry, I'm not trying to dance around the question, I'm trying to be clear and failing at it."

"Hmmm." The moneylender steeples her fingers. "How much did you say you wanted?"

"Two months' wage to produce a proof-of-concept. If you're impressed with the viability of that, perhaps four times more again to fund an initial spurt of production and sales. You know people are going to want this, candles are terrible compared to what I can produce. And once electric light takes off, I can make machines that produce ice whenever you want, powered by the same source. And half a dozen other things besides."

"Whose wage, though?"

"A dockworker's or farmer's or some other low-skill thing. I literally arrived here this morning, Kaja rescued me from a lich, I don't even know what the currency is called but I know I can make it work."

"All right. I'll give you fifteen gold - in mostly silver so people will make change - at fifteen percent annually to be collected in six months unless you can repay sooner. Or, I'll give you thirty at twelve, if you hire my grandson, who I know will not steal from you and who can make sure you don't do anything obviously stupid."

"I'm thinking the latter, if he won't want a ridiculous excessive wage. I'll need some copper to use as raw material, if you use copper. And how will the twelve percent annually be compounded? For that matter, this country uses twelve months in a year, correct? Some places don't."

"Twelve months in a year, yes," blinks the moneychanger, "I can give you some of the money in copper -" And then she goes over the compounding math with him.

"I'll fill one in... I'm satisfied with the paladin's witness if you are."

"Yes, same here."

So they sign things and Kaja watches them sign things and the moneylender gives him a sack of coins and her grandson's address.

He asks Kaja, "Are you terribly bored? Ideally I could talk to her grandson with you to translate if I run into difficulty, but if you need to return to your compound I will make do."

"I don't need to be back until around suppertime, if you still need me, but you didn't seem to require much translation."

"I think I'll be alright. I might mess up idioms and turns-of-phrase, but I have the basics. Thank you for your help."

"You're welcome."

"Oh, I almost forgot, you were going to test a piece of my armor! Let's do that before I forget again."

"Sure. And you probably want to get... something... else... to wear."

And Kaja fetches her swordstaff, and awaits a piece of armor.

"I'm not sure I want to be holding it when you try this, you're likely to knock me over. I'll prop it against a wall?"

"On the ground. We like our walls."

He sets a forearm-guard, a shoulderpad, and a breastplate on the ground.

He fetches the armor. "It's resistant to fire, by the way, in that it won't let heat pass through it as easily as steel. I can make more, with a few days' warning and some coin for the materials. Would the Bright Sister be interested?"

"Let me see how it takes a blessing," says Kaja, "before I spend her time on finding out." She picks up the armguard. "If you don't mind?"

"I don't mind."

"...I hadn't expected it to become unusable to me. I wish you'd warned me. Well, in a few days I can replace it and have you bless a fresh piece and see if it turns out better. I still expect to make communication devices for the Order, which will take longer than armor, and I would like to know which to try for first."

"No, the blessing will break, the material will be fine."

"Oh. Shall I loiter and begin repairing it while you inform the Bright Sister of this and ask for her judgment on communication devices and armor?"

"Yes. I'll be right back."

So he loiters and applies tools to his armor. It'll never be quite as strong again because the inner layers will be ruptured, but once it's at least in the correct shape he re-inserts it into the suit.

Kaja comes back. "Sister wants the communication things first."

"Then I will make communication things first. The easiest communication things involve running wires to the places you want to communicate with, but I'll just skip straight to wireless kinds. Expect it to take at least two weeks, and there will be chores to keep them working."

"What kind of chores?"

"Changing drained batteries for fresh ones, keeping a fire under a generator that produces the electricity they need and stores it in batteries, managing the way they are linked together if you add more."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

The electric light is a curiosity indeed. People keep coming to look at it.

When he has a decent crowd he launches into a sales pitch about oh how much brighter these are than candles, and they don't make smoke, and you don't need to change them every few hours, all you need to do to light an entire mansion is keep a fire going, who would like to have them installed in their building?

People want to know how much this would cost.

The lights cost three copper each, installing the wires will cost about two copper per light. The generator costs eight silver, but several people who are neighbors can share it.

This prices out a lot of people. He gets one immediate order from someone who runs a theater, though.

The city has walls around it and is a little cramped, so an actually empty lot is hard to find, but if he's willing to settle for "unoccupied" he can get one within his means in an undesirable part of town.

The gate guard is able to tell Nick that Kaja is in the temple.

"Could you please have her or the Bright Sister informed that the communication devices I promised them are ready?"

"It'd be easier for you to go in and tell them yourself, I'm not supposed to leave my post."

The initiate says he probably shouldn't go in the temple if he's not even planning on becoming a paladin.

Kaja comes out with some other paladins in about half an hour. "Hello, Nicholas. What brings you here?"

"Your communication devices are ready. You can call me Nick, by the way. To make them work best I will need to place equipment somewhere high up in the compound, and the generator that will power your batteries requires a fire so it should ideally be shielded from the rain but in a place that is in no danger of catching fire. I can also install candle-less lights, if the Bright Sister wishes."

"The lights would be most useful in the kitchen, probably, and perhaps an empty stall for the generator, the stable being made of stone and needing to be kept warm anyway? Unless it would disturb the griffins and winged horses. The tallest point of the compound is the temple spire but I don't think you should put things on it; perhaps the top of the novices' dormitory."

"The generator makes some noise, but I am not familiar enough with animals to guess if they will be disturbed by it. The novices' dormitories would be sufficiently high. I'd like to explain the radios to you and the Bright Sister before installing these things."

"How much noise? And we can go wait for her to have a moment if you need to speak to her anyway."

"I can wait, yes. Not too much more noise than a crackling fire. My large-scale generators in town will be quite loud, though."

To the Bright Sister's office they go. "That might or might not bother our companions but it's probably difficult to move, isn't it?"

"Once installed it will be fairly difficult to move, yes. Perhaps another place."

"Maybe the armory. It doesn't matter if the armory is loud."

"Speaking of the armory, is there anything that could use joining while I am already here?"

"I checked; someone did break a staff recently but the sword was fine and it's already been attached to a new staff. You could still fix it for next time someone needs one, though."

"I don't plan to be here too often, alas, and I only have the one joiner. I'm working on improving the city. Once I'm selling everyone electric light I can move on to clean water, medicine perhaps. I still want to leave eventually but hopefully I can leave behind enough education to spread useful things around the world."

Nick looks distracted. Waiting is only really boring if you don't have a database of movies in your eyelid.

Kaja goes along to make it clear that he is authorized and show him where things are.

"Do they need maintenance besides the batteries?"

"No, but eventually they will break and I will need to fix them. I give them at least three years as long as you don't treat them too roughly. It would be a while teaching someone to repair radios themselves."

"All right. Thank you very much."

"I made a machine that can produce many copies of a book much more quickly than writing it out by hand. I would like permission from the Bright Sister to make many copies of the Precepts of the Winter Light in this way. I would sell them for two or three copper each, barely more than the cost of paper and ink."

"...I think you're confused about how our religious hierarchy works. You don't need anyone's permission to do that as long as you don't change anything in the Precepts."

"Then I will stop bothering you. In my world copying books is incredibly easy, easier than a printing press, even. So intellectual property- er, ownership of ideas, is taken very seriously. I thought it best to ask."

"We don't own the Winter Light's ideas. We just follow them."

"I'll be sure not to change the precepts, then. How are the radios treating you?"

"We've given them out to the mayors of towns too far to easily send runners. So far all we've gotten is two false alarms and a lone zombie, but it's still better to know about those sooner than later."

She is not careless and doesn't steal anything, she just keeps winding up in interpersonal conflicts with the other employees.

And some of them are purchased, although mediocre literacy rates and low levels of liquid capital mean it's not all that many that fast.

The theater person who took the first batch of electric lights takes a music-recorder and starts selling recordings. Someone else buys a recorder and some recordings and sells recordings of the recordings, which annoys the theater owner so grievously that they have to take it to arbitration. Arbitration rules that no punishment will be leveled against the music pirate. The theater owner responds by declining to sell further recordings and simply holds "listens" of recorded shows at a discounted rate relative to live performance.

Polyester is pretty cheap and becomes popular among the poor, and among those so rich that they can accentuate it with obviously expensive things and not risk being mistaken for poor people. People of reasonable means and uncertain status mostly steer clear. Lights become increasingly popular, although a lot of people conservatively just put one light in one room of their house. Radios are distributed (less rapidly than paladins on flying creatures could ferry them around) and used to communicate between towns; this winds up serving partly as a replacement for their ineffectual postal system and partly as early storm warning. The theater person starts playing the first halves of recorded plays and songs over the radio; people who want to hear the rest have to attend a listen.

Two days before the official repayment date of his loan, he goes to talk to the moneylender. Of the 32 gold and a bit he owes after interest, he has 29 ready. He reports that his businesses are steadily profiting, and asks for a few days' extension on the repayment of the other 3 gold.

She'll give him a few days, although not without squinting at him.

Out they go. One of them finds some coal in the mountains after enough tromping around in the cold.

The cold-trompers get a break and are replaced with two other teams travelling further and further away. Coal is good, but he needs iron as well to really get going on the kind of industry that will eventually lead to spaceships.

He could just buy some iron the next time traders come through - there's a lull between the times when it might snow and when it already has, when it's impractical to use sledges and when it risks getting you caught in a snowdrift if you use carts, but it'll snow soon. He could even radio someone far away about his demand for iron. (This is pointed out by his obnoxious staffperson.)

Someone promises a cartload when the snow's on the ground, sooner if he wants to pay enough to cover possible lost days due to early snow.

His staff find some iron! Isn't that nice? It's a long way away and a bit tricky to get at but it's plenty.

"...Do you think you have woke shadows?" asks the guard. "Or someone else?"

"Me. I can barely sleep. I keep thinking people are going to kill each other with my inventions. I feel like I'm going to catch some horrible disease and go blind and lose my hands and die. I tried to find them myself, but no, nothing, nothing. Your job is dealing with this. So, check somehow!"

The paladin's response to this is to tackle Nick and start tying him up.

They're trying to kill you! He struggles. Nick's strong, but not stronger than a paladin. He pulls his phaser- it's self-defense!- And throws it away as hard as he can force himself to do so.

He starts crying. "Oh, thank god, I'm not insane."

He looks at his phaser. "Could you fetch that thing for me, put it back on my belt?"

"What is it?"

"It's a phaser. A weapon. If you don't want to give me my weapon back quite yet, at least make sure nobody else touches it?"

The novice picks up the phaser carefully and puts it in her skirt pocket. "Once he's sure all the shadows after you are gone and you're feeling calm and collected we can untie you," she tells him.

"They started the very same day that somebody ignored all my warnings and managed to electrocute themselves on their lights. I would almost think someone she knew sent them after me, but I'm no private investigator."

"The paladins will do their best to find who woke the shadows."

"Would you happen to know if my radios have been useful yet? Last time I asked they had only given false alarms."

"A radio called a band of paladins over to fight a lich, just yesterday. They aren't back yet."

Nick pulls up an engineering sim in his eyelid-screen and works on his plans for coal and iron mines, and a steel mill, until someone unties him.

Eventually - it takes a few hours - the paladin who killed the shadow in his ears comes back and says his residence and business are clear and his employees haven't been having bad dreams. The paladin and novice untie him, since he's been pretty placid.

"On good roads it can outpace a horse at full gallop for hours on end. On poor roads it will need to move more slowly. This is a prototype, I have discovered small flaws and opportunities for improvement, so the final version will be better."

"How does it do with snow?"

"About as well as horses: If you take it slowly and carefully, it'll do."

"Deep snow?" she asks, looking at it skeptically. "You haven't seen winter here yet."

"You're right, I haven't. If deep snow is such a concern I can build one with treads, perhaps. Such a thing would be more expensive, and slower, but capable of plowing through two or three feet of snow with ease, and deeper snow with slightly less ease."

She nods, quotes him a lower interest rate and a longer period for payback.

The problem here is that he'll need a lot more than 30 gold to get the mines and steel mill and coal-to-oil plant and assembly line up and running. He wants 400 gold in total, and has an itemized budget showing why such a large amount is necessary.

People want cars! A considerable number of them, actually. The value is obvious. And they've had all winter to radio to other towns about them.

The people who find out that he sells cars that do heating are very interested. Can he make other enclosed spaces do heating? Could he make houses perform this miracle? Could they be warm in the wintertime?

Kaja blesses the entire suit of armor, piece by piece. It glows brightly, although she says it's not quite as bright as fresh steel; it still adds up to better protection. And who might this armor be sized for?

"It's not sized for anyone in particular. They all interlock, see? Adjustable in something like a hundred places, enough that anyone about the right height can get it to fit properly."

"About the right height meaning?"

"Between five and six feet."

"That will cover most of us, then, I think Anders is taller than that though."

"I can make one custom and the rest standard. But... There is the issue of money. These are expensive to make and my feelings of charity to the Winter Light only go so far." He quotes a number. It's about three quarters as much as a good set of steel plate.

"We can't replace everyone's armor at once like that - we are mostly funded by donations, and those mostly timed when people die and not at any steady pace - but I can speak to the person who handles our accounts and see how many we can order up front."

Kaja is now fifty years old, and while Winter Light healing means she doesn't have any scars and looks younger than she is, she's coming up on retirement age to teach the novices or do other lighter work than going out and hitting things with a sword. She is at the compound when Nick turns up, on guard duty.

"Hail, Kaja. It's been a while. I'm going home soon. Thought I'd say goodbye."

"...Home? You mean - back where you came from? You've been here so long."

"I'm not the kind of person who can really be happy spending years and years in one place. I might come back and visit, but I haven't seen my old friends or family for over two decades. Even if I wasn't too fond of my family. They're still family, and it's time to go home."

"What about all your - stuff? Can your people handle it all right? Everyone's used to having it now."

"That's what my schools are for. I've been having as many people as possible taught, as best I can. There are thousands who know how to make a radio now, and almost ten thousand who can repair a car. And dozens who can make more armor, whenever you need it. Everything that nobody else understands, I'll be bringing with me."

"I guess I'd imagined you'd get used to it here. Settle in."

"Well. If I'd married or made close friends I might stay, but I'm a lonely sort, I never did. Like I said, I'm a wanderer. You can't help being what you are."

"That's true."

"Thank you."