Day 48: After taking breakfast at the hotel with his companions, having sent up his visiting card Never is summoned by coach to House Bellamy. He strikes a bargain with Camilla to investigate the purportedly haunted lower mine prospected by the dwarf, Kazgram Ungrask. In return for its use while on Nox, she also challenges the technomancer to make right the ornithopter that was her late husband’s demise. After finding troubling news in the local Guild Press and smoking a cigarette laced with Dragon Sand, Nai is visited by a waking dream he believes is the spirit of the Manticore calling out to him. Stuffing the paper in his pocket, the navigator heads across the street to the Lucky Star Saloon looking for Whitechapel. Finding the elf sitting at a corner table near the bar, he shows him the paper. They both mark a Naruk’kai woman enter and take a table. When Nai goes to leave and she gets up to block his path the shooting starts. Hired by the Northern Railway, the bounty hunter Alice Crowley, known as the Undertaker, is waiting outside. Alive wasn’t part of the plan. Nai shoots the Naruk’kai who falls badly wounded and Whitechapel drives Crowley back out the door. The third of their crew, a dragon-kin shapeshifter, reveals herself and enters a deadly duel of lead and magic with navigator. Outside on the porch, Whitechapel shoots down Corwley and after dragging her inside, shoots the shapeshifter. The navigator finishes off the Naruk’kai. Before the sheriff arrives, Whitechapel drags Crowley into the backroom feeding on what life remains in her. When the sheriff and his deputies arrive, flush with blood, Whitechapel stand them down with his Iron Star badge. After questioning a local coachman, they follow Never to House Bellamy where they find the technomancer working feverishly to replace the ill designed hydraulic manifold of the ornithopter.

 

Day 49: With the news in the paper that a Guild team is likely already at the site of the Manticore’s wreckage, with Whitechapel at the controls, the ornithopter lifts off and makes south.