As I’ve mentioned before, late in a project almost anything can be a spoiler–so many clues, so many established patterns missing just one piece.\u00a0 Early on, all roads are open, but by now, many of them, the ways not taken, have been left behind.<\/p>\n
So this may be a spoiler for some, though I’ve tried not to let it be.\u00a0 If you are a reader who hates knowing anything before its time, then don’t read below the break.\u00a0 Stop now.\u00a0 Turn around, don’t look back, ignore the rest of this.\u00a0 For those who proceed, please do your speculating about where in the book this is, or what character you might know, in the Speculation Space.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Because of the spoiler possibilities, I’m not going to say where, or who, and just let the situation explain itself.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The ship rocked gently in the waves, as the other ships came nearer.\u00a0 All were galleys, one of them rowed by men in green and black uniforms, and the others by crews of what looked like brigands, but with green and black badges to match the pennants from flapping from the mastheads.\u00a0 Two slid alongside, one on either side; the others waited at a little distance.\u00a0 One hailed the captain.<\/p>\n “You have a passenger.”<\/p>\n “Aye, so I do.\u00a0 Standing there on deck.”<\/p>\n “We take.”<\/p>\n I can say a little about the ship–I had help with its design and details from David Watson, who lent me a huge book with period illustrations of ships in the Dutch fleets.\u00a0\u00a0 I wanted a bluff-bowed sailing ship somewhat out of period for the tech of the rest, but not too far ahead.\u00a0 We did a lot of looking and talking about different kinds of craft in different waters–the ship had to be capable of carrying cargo from the Immerhoft ports out into the Eastern Ocean, out around the Eastbight, and then into Bannerl\u00edth.\u00a0\u00a0 I asked a lot of questions and got more information than I could use in the book itself without turning it into a sea tale.\u00a0\u00a0 Having had to change out monitors twice since I finished, I can’t find my notes on the exact size, or the many different diagrams of its arrangement.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But I see it clearly in my mind.<\/em><\/p>\n I also needed other vessels, not only for this incident, but for general background–specialist vessels, general vessels large and small.\u00a0\u00a0 There are boats on rivers, boats using only sail power, boats using only oars, and boats that mix these.\u00a0 The book of illustrations was invaluable though I didn’t begin to use every kind of boat and ship in there.\u00a0\u00a0 More than one character travels by water in this book.\u00a0 More than one body of water is involved.\u00a0 (Yet another was scrapped for not fitting in well enough.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I’ve mentioned before, late in a project almost anything can be a spoiler–so many clues, so many established patterns missing just one piece.\u00a0 Early on, all roads are open, but by now, many of them, the ways not taken, have been left behind. So this may be a spoiler for some, though I’ve tried […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[12,28],"class_list":["post-2004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-snippet","tag-research","tag-snippet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2005,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions\/2005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}