"So this isn't even quick march, just normal march. Then I think I should definitely keep a stiff upper lip and just do it."

"It's the pace we're used to. But unwanted favors aren't. Shall we go?"

"...It's not me offering to keep pace as a favor, just judging that keeping pace is - what's best here, considering everything."

"More an aphorism than literal. If you don't want us to change to fit you, it's not a kindness for us to do it anyway."

"I might want you to change something! Just not this thing. Anyway, yes, let's go. If I've spare breath we can talk about optics and magic, Lantry."

And they head off. Lantry includes showing off some magic - buffing Walta with a Vigor sigil that enhances strength and endurance - in with some more discussion of sigil magic, its limits, and its returns for expertise.

In turn, she will attempt to explain optics! And get sidetracked into stars, tides, and The Longitude Problem, which can only really be solved with both compasses and accurate clocks that can stand being on a ship without losing time, for dead reckoning.

It transpires that they have not actually considered the Longitude Problem as a problem, since there's just one continent and there's very few places where the shortest path take you out of sight of land - pretty much just the path due east of the Tiers. (Also she's an expert on tides, but despite the extra moon and pretty different motion of the big one, the tides are basically the same, probably the same to the extent of Walta's knowledge other than specific times per day.)

"How sure are you there's only the one continent?"

"No one's ever returned from an attempt to find another. And, well, Kyros would try to conquer it if he thought it existed. There's also some guesses about how storms and big waves form and change as they travel that suggest there's an enormous band of open sea, but we don't know whether we're extrapolating right from the smaller seas between parts of Terratus, that could all be nonsense."

"We had mapped our world, and the oceans - can span thousands and thousands of miles, dozens the size of the Tiers. Maybe I'll find out if I ever have cause to leave."

"That would be, hmm, maybe four times the width of the continent? It's shaped roughly like this, and this part is the Tiers."

"Yeah, this continent doesn't look big enough to be the whole world. I should go try to measure the curvature somehow... I guess clocks won't be a priority for now, then."

"Probably not, though they do sound interesting... I wonder if Occulted Jade had some way of duplicating that. She took almost the whole School of Tides and left across the sea rather than fight Kyros. It seemed like a fool's errand, even if you were a coward, but maybe she knew something we don't."

"My intuition is that she did, but now is not the time to investigate it, I think."

"If it worked, we have a lot of time to catch up," she agreed. "And if it didn't... it's been a decade. The Archon would be the only one left."

"Unless she found land out there." She shrugs.

"Oh, that's what I meant by it working - her finding land. Fishing fleets have gone about as far as you could safely go without some trick, so if she didn't have one that worked there's no land to be found."

"Well, I have to think about things in the Tiers for now. I really hope we can find some nice iron ore and coal deposits..."

"As I recall, our coal hasn't been notable, though I'm sure we have some. You need it for, what was it, 'heat can be converted to force to motion', right? Is that as crucial as iron?"

"It's by far the easiest source of energy to move around, and makes good steel, specifically, much easier, it actually goes into the metal as part of the alloy. But you can get somewhere with, like, watermills and windmills and firewood. Maybe with magic too, but I don't know yet."

"There is a sigil of force, and while it's a bit temperamental, the most basic use of it could certainly push a cart harder than the strongest team of horses, if more irregular. Fire, also, and if all you need is a forge-heat, I expect you can do it. Lightning, since you can harness it. If you want water moving, or wind - better to ask a Tidecaster. Which we do have handy, much to my occasional regret."

"Lightning is really really useful. It was the future for us. New discoveries every year. Incredible potential, for all that steel and steam were established and explored by the time of the Frost."

"Oh? It's destructive and hard to direct, in my knowledge; not often associated with productive applications."

"Oh, I'll show you later. I'll show them all, hehehe..."