I dropped Tamerra off at her rooms, agreeing to meet in ten minutes’ time in the hangar bay. Under normal conditions only the airships with cargo to offload would be in the hangar, but with the storm outside all ships would have been brought to and confined in there.

I was already half in armour, so it was mostly a matter of putting more layers on in order to get myself into blizzard gear.

Rokhin was waiting for me outside to tell me that the men were waiting in the hangar. The tug Red Sky At Night was also waiting for us with a hold ballasted with Byzantium. I told him to get any and all Gearwings not retensioning from the stables – which should be Five, Twenty, Fourteen and Two.

In the hangar, the captain of the Red Sky saluted me (quite crisply too, I noticed).

“If you’re going out there, Messagemaster, my and my crew are going too.”

I nodded and thanked him. Now was no time to be messing around with insistences and warnings. They either knew the risks or didn’t.