"...Waltana Hampson, Engineer and Ironworker, Spark of Industry, Forge-Builder? I don't have a formal qualification as architect but I did contribute substantially to a bridge and some ships and, yes, a forge."

"Good suggestions. I'd amend it to 'of the School of Engineering', if that is broadly true; makes it sound on par with mage-guilds, which I think is the right kind of image."

"I never went to a school for it, it was more of a prodigy situation, but I might found one?"

"I think leave it as-is, then. The general rule of lying in treaties is 'only if no one can ever call you on it'."

"I don't know how to work lightning in without sounding stupid..."

"I don't know how it actually works, but you forged a spear that makes its own lightning. 'Lightning-Forger' seems apt."

"I have to put the lightning into this." She hefts an arm-sized cylinder up to the table, then sets it back down. "It just sounds a bit silly, to me, but if you think it works, I guess it works."

"Lightning Bottler? Either seems close enough to true to me."

She shakes her head and signs as

Waltana Hampson, Engineer and Ironworker, Spark of Industry, Forge-Builder and Lightning Smith

"A good list. A good agreement. Should we plan your workspace, and what you intend to start with?"

"What I should start with might depend on what you have to work with, and what your immediate needs are. Also, what natural resources are available- I've found a few small nodes of magnetite, but nothing truly impressive in terms of iron ore thus far. I don't know where you have camp, or if you have an army following along somewhere, or what your most urgent goals are."

"The best supply of iron in the Tiers is sieved from the river at Lethian's Crossing, though the Forge-Bound are planted there to exploit it. If you're near the Mountain Spire, moderate supplies of ingots can go through the portal from the Sunset Spire above the Crossing to the Mountain, and then to you. The Forge-Bound surveyors reported that there are a lot of surface deposits of iron across the Tiers, though; I can get a copy of the Master of Mining's report for the best sources in Vendrien's Well, and I suspect you could find enough there for a substantial project, though probably not enough to fuel your hundred-ring furnace for more than a few days. Unless the deposits go deep, which I suppose some of them ought to..."

"Some of them do. I'm also wondering if there's iron ores they don't recognize as iron ores yet, but that survey seems a good place to start."

"Then we should probably head back to the Mountain Spire, and send a bird to Tunon's Court. And you can take a look down at the world from above."

"Sounds like a plan." She fishes in her toolbelt and eventually produces a hand-size spyglass, with a little smirk. "From a scout kit. One thing I might be able to build you relatively soon is radiotelegraphs. Distant communication at the speed of light."

Lantry peers at the spyglass. "What is that?"

Things that have not yet been invented in Terratus include: optics. Even the very basics.

She hands it over delicately. "...Looking glass. Peer at the Spire through it. And adjust - this - until it's clear. Carefully."

He can follow instructions, though he's surprised enough when it works that he startles.

"This is remarkable! You must explain how it works ...Though not right now if you'd rather."

He also scribbles down a note about something he saw on the spire's walls. (The figures just below the top of the spires are faceless. Probably no one's seen that before.)

"Certainly, later. Maybe what I should start with is not iron but glass, then..." She makes a grabby-grabby motion. "I can not replace that yet, by the way. It came over with me."

"Of course, of course..." He hands it back. He does look pretty forlorn about it, though.

"Don't believe that act, he's just mugging for sympathy. Good at it, too."

It carefully goes back into its felt-lined case.

"The basic idea is that light goes in straight lines, except when it doesn't, so we can take the lines of light and put them a bit closer together... Mmh, optics needs diagrams. It's been a long day already and it's barely lunchtime, but that's reality."

"Oh, like a calm pool. Only on purpose? I admit, I'm probably just as interested as the scroll thief."

"Yes, reflections on water and in mirrors appear because the light bounces-" She starts making demonstrative hand motions. "Light from a distant mountain goes in all directions- Directly to your eye, like this, but also into the pool- And then bounces, so it's coming up from the pool, as if it had originally come from a mountain beneath the water."

"Like a mirror, yes. But I was thinking of the other thing - when you reach underwater in a clear pool, and it looks like your wrist bends right at the surface. We worked out at some point that the water wasn't doing anything there, so if you can move light - I don't understand, but I can guess it's related."