Rather than describe dreamspace further from my blurb on the front page, I'm going to post an early preview from the first draft of Chapter 1.

Chapter 1: Innocent

Today we achieved it. We enfolded the mana matrices to a specially prepared crystal. While we’re not ready to slice the matrix enclosure into the arteria just yet, establishing the connection assures us it can be done. This almost makes the hardship and the accidents seem worthwhile.

- From the so-called “Mystery Journals”, printed in ancient Argosian, found buried in ruins excavated in Delumn during the 264th year of starslumber. References to authorship and place of publication appear to be nonsensical.

Railways snaked along the primitive continent of Temeros, a name intended for the world that had shrunk its ambitions to mere empire. Tracks started at the port city of Oen, stretching across the chest of the continent like a bandolier with a matching belt. Intersections, turnarounds, and passing loops were few. Engineers had just mastered the art of crafting their own engines to pull cars along the rails, limited only by the speed at which they could move iron and coal to the railyards in Temwich. The laying of new rails had just begun again, engineers having literally worked out just this year how to match the enchanted precision of their dreaded predecessors.

In one of the older engines, a relic from the previous Empress, a young girl waited as a priority courier carriage sped by. Barely reaching the window, her light brown northern complexion almost matched the leather she stood on, a careless observer would only notice her from outside by the dark hair collected neatly on her back.

"Irin, stop pressing your nose against the window and answer my question." The voice belonged to James of the Three Hills, a sometimes trader. Both of the passengers swayed as the driver engaged the engine, the wheels circling their axles in energetic orbit as the lone car sprung forward. Irin sat down.

I tapped my feet on the carriage floor, bouncing the locket we had traded for just hours before we had set out. I had left it empty after the Irenán fashion. It was a maiden’s locket, something my mother would normally have given me on my previous anniversary in anticipation of my approaching womanhood. But she had died shortly after birthing me, having taken advantage of the fact that the Uprising was accepting women to fight. My father had bought it for me yesterday, arriving home as soon as I set my journal down. He stood without tears in his eyes as he handed it over. He hadn’t said anything, but that was just his way. The burst of sympathy he simply couldn’t hold back from his daughter had said it all: he missed my mother so badly it was all he could do not to cry.

"All the silks? It’s hard to know what conditions will be like, but if Peter needs so much, we could manage fifty silver imperials by the time we leave Capital, once we offload everything else." James stared at my face, and didn’t respond to my answer for a few seconds.

"She’d be so proud of you. Even when she had to leave with the Fourth Ship Imperial, she did it because she wanted her little girl to grow up safely to be a trader. Maybe it’ll make you hope that we mainlanders are right, and that she’s watching you with the Nightlady." It was good that he was talking about her again. He had avoided the topic since he came back with the locket. I didn’t particularly care if he was trying to tempt me away from the Lightbringer at that moment. He had sworn the oaths anyway, so he was protected, even if he did believe in his heart that the Nightlady took the dead into her embrace.

You would believe that the rails would rock you from side to side after travelling by ironship or train car, but this was a carriage, a magical relic from the first imperial age, with some sort of strange wheel design that stopped the bumping from the wheels before it reached the car. While far less tiresome than riding along the mainland roads¬, I found it was still by far the most boring way to travel, lacking even the gentle rock of ironship travel across the Delisle straight. Steam wisped its way past the windows, like a child reluctant to leave bed. The engine hissed and chugged as it boiled away its supply of water, hissing gently. Trees passed like fence posts, blending together in a strange blur that you simply didn’t experience travelling by ironship. At least the view was interesting, but certainly not worth the cost to travel this way.

I shrugged to my father when I caught him looking at me. A smile peeked back from behind the little golden beard he kept. For some strange reason he seemed to enjoy the carriage ride, and his mood continued to soar as he quizzed me on the prices of various goods, played at bartering with me, and asked my opinions of the goods we brought with us, and I tried to motivate myself to find the answers for him. At least one of us was enjoying himself.

The driver opened the panel to the passenger room and told us that we were about to head through the last village on the approach to Capital. I remember being vaguely excited at this prospect, so much so that I was inadvertently projecting. I had never been to Capital, and it was an unexpected luxury. While we had to appear prosperous to negotiate with the Houses minor who brought goods from freelance traders, my father and I rarely had silver to spare for more than the necessities of our trade: fast transport, valuable commodities, and information.

We usually spared enough for good food, except the few times when margins were tight and we might skip a meal. The trip to capital hopefully marked the end of those times. We had prepared carefully, saving markers and silver for our chance to offer goods to a Great House in need. And Marken, with their formal marriage to ally with Temwich, were it. It was all thanks to their daughter presenting them with a short window of opportunity. If the deal went well, we could be on our way to founding our own House and claiming full Citizenship back at home. Then maybe the dirty looks from the labourers, aides and servers would be worth it, instead of feeling painfully ironic.

Tiring of my string of thought, I looked back out the window. The horror crept onto my face slowly as I saw the red metal flag whisk past the window, my father looking for himself, then rushing to the front of the car, yelling at the driver to force the car onto the sidetrack. I was frozen as my father shook the man, prodded, and yelled at him, and then frantically tried the buttons and levers himself. It seemed like he was at it for the better part of a minute, getting no reply, the driver not even moving except to breathe, before I realised it was too late.

I don’t remember much about the crash- the wheels screeching as the carriage tried to halt, the terrible sounds of metal crumpling other metal. I was thrown back further into something soft, and then it all seemed to blur together as I felt pain dragging me down into sleep. The next day I would realise that I had hit my head, even if it was on our silks.

After that, I next remember floating out of the wreck from my cushion of silks and cloths under some sort of magic. A woman was motioning me forward as the wind blew me towards her. She stood in front of a large village, which couldn’t be more than two hundred lengths away. My head drooped as I grew heavier, floating to the ground, and I noticed my best dress had been badly torn as I was lifted out of the wreckage. It was too ripped to be worth fixing.

"No, we haven’t lost it." A voice floated over to me. "Those engines are near impossible to wreck. You just have to fish it out- it has some magic on it. I’ve never seen anything wreck the steam intake or the buttons. The only difficulty is fitting a new carriage to it. We can’t make them anywhere near as well as- as they used to." I lifted my head back up, away from my dress and my rescuers, and then I saw him as my strange flight ended gently.

I ducked under the reaching arms of the woman who had called the wind, and scrambled over to my father. I ignored the shards of windows piercing my arms, completely numb to the pain. He would live if I could help him- it was that simple. It had to be! I dragged myself onto his red coat, which for some reason had become strangely sticky. My mind was a still a fog, with what I realise now was shock and the mental chill that occurs with emotion that is too strong not to project through the sympathy field. So the obvious facts of what had happened to him didn’t occur to me. My left hand was twisted strangely through my locket’s chain, I had pulled it crawling and it was knotted around my fist. I beat it slowly against his heart, not knowing what I could do to help him, but sure there was something. I collapsed against him at the agonising pain in my left wrist. I could see his eyes moving along my face as he tried in utter futility to gasp my name, I could feel him slipping away from me. I simply couldn’t let that happen.

I did the only thing that occurred to me. I pulled on my sympathy bond with my father, concentrating him back into his heart, resting under my hand. It wasn’t like using your arms to pull on something- it couldn’t have been, my arms were pincushions for glass and I had used all my strength just dragging myself to him. The last of it had eked out with my futile thumping. It was more like... more like I had done something that drew him to me, which would make him recognise and seek me out, and which made me incredibly attractive to the warmth I had always felt beyond those deep brown eyes. But he couldn’t go back into his body- I could feel that as certainly as I had previously felt him slipping away.

There was only one place left for him to go to, and suddenly my arms were agony again as his body collapsed into funeral dust below me, dropping me to the ground. I sobbed onto his ashes, catching my locket as the chain came loose. My captors closed around me, plotting to claim me, clean me, and close me off from the world. They talked of how strange ‘what I had just done’ was. Not that I could have paid any attention to them at the time. I was numb again as they carefully started tending to my wounds, telling me they knew of just the school for someone like me, ignoring my claims to be a grown trader who could look after herself as the grief-laden nonsense that I now remember them to be.

Before they took me away, I silently prayed that the Nightlady would look after him.