The wind at one hundred and five thousand feet had died away to a faint, singing whisper.
Giles Croft stood at the head of the long oak drafting table that had been bolted to the center of the apex watching deck.
Around him stood the nine people who had transformed a starving, forgotten exile colony into the greatest great realm in the history of Aethel-Terra.
They wore no royal crowns.
They bore no velvet mantles or jewel-crusted scepters.
They wore the honest, practical clothes of master builders, their hands scarred by cold steel, wet lime, and drawing ink.
The drafting table had been built by Master Caleb from dense mountain white oak, its surface planed as smooth and true as an ice pond.
On it rested the complete Master Folio of Aethel-Terra. Forty large linen sheets detailing every aqueduct water chute, railway switch, spark power yard, and load-bearing truss erected across thirteen provinces over twelve years of nonstop building.
