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The pontoon bridge is only wide enough for two, so you and Alexius go on ahead with a controller following. Mustering all your courtesy, you nod to the bald leader of the Bridge Keepers and ask him politely about the bridges.

For the most part, he's happy to talk about the bridges themselves, which predate living memory and which his tribe repairs as a sacred duty. When you mention the cog, he nods and offers complicated but comprehensible directions out of the swamp and back into the jungles, where a once-savage tribe now worship the "God of the Golden Eye."

Alexius even has time to trade. Though he can't get the leader to part with his bullet necklace (or even explain where it came from), Alexius exchanges some Byzantine baubles of little value for a thumb-sized green stone that is probably an uncut emerald. You part on good terms.

You traverse the swamp using the Bridge Keepers' well-maintained waypoints, and though you feel their eyes on you, the swamp dwellers make no repeat appearance. Late one afternoon, you see jungle trees. You're on the far side of the swamp, close to your destination. At last you spot the Bridge Keepers again, working to maintain a wall near the forest edge.

"Impressive," Control says. "They display a remarkable degree of engineering knowledge for people who—oh by all the Icons, it's an airship."

And there it is, drifting overhead at the edge of the forest: a Byzantine airship.

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